Week 9 - Thing 23 - The End! (and Beyond)

Well, I've made it the end of the program! I have found many new and interesting "Things" along the way. Some I'll continue to use, like RSS feeds (though maybe not through Bloglines), Del.icio.us bookmarking, and Podcasts (as well as Facebook and YouTube which I use regularly anyway.) Other Things, I'm not sure whether I'll use them or not, like wikis and online production tools like Zoho Writer. Now that I know how easy it is to edit wikis I may help out with a few that I have used in the past. With others, its good to know that they are out there and what can be done with them even though I have no use for them personally.

Looking at the eBooks on Netlibrary was a good reminder of what is available and I will remember to recommend it to our patrons.

I have enjoyed looking at new things and discovering useful and interesting stuff. It is interesting to see where the internet is heading, with more interactivity of users, that it is becoming a much more active, collaborative medium than a passive surfing and reading and viewing static pages. While I'll been using some interactive sites for years (like forums and more recently facebook), it is interesting to see the extent and variety that is being developed, and the growing popularity of such sites.
I have been trying to stay ahead on this program so that I would be able to help my work mates on any problems they may have (since I know they will be asking me anyway). I enjoy helping them with learning these things and in doing so I am discovering some things that I didn't find while I was doing the tasks myself.

I think because of this program, I will try to keep more up to date about new development in the interest and web 2.0 applications being developed. I'll find myself some good blogs or sites about this sort of stuff and add them to my RSS feeds.

Week 9 - Thing 22 - Netlibrary eBooks

I remember making a Netlibrary account when ACL first added to our list of databases, but I haven't looked at it since. I have made myself another account and have had a look around. It appears to have changed its look and I think that there are more books available to ACL members than there were originally. It is good that there are lots (152) Cliffs Notes eBooks available. These are good resources for students, and most aren't available as real books at ACL. There also seems to be a lot of business books and computer books, which I think would be amount the more popular items to be used in ebook format.
I think that ebooks are a good way to supplement our physical collections at the library. I think the student resources on here should be promoted more and having another look at it has reminded me about what is available.

Week 9 - Thing 21 - Podcasts

I'd heard of podcasts and there are a few things that I'm interested in that have been published as podcasts, but I haven't bothered to look at them because I thought it involved more than it does. Reading this task I realised that this is a lot easier to do use than I thought is was going to be. So now all I have to do is find the time to listen to them. Maybe I'll load them on my MP3 player and listen to them on my way to work.
The yahoo audio search finds musicas well as podcasts, but adding podcast to the search seemed to help.
There are some I found there that I'll download when I get home. I didn't like the layout and feel of Podcast Alley, but as with Podcast.net, all the sites seem to have different podcasts listed so it is probably worth searching on all of them.
I'll do a big search at some point and add some podcast feeds to my bloglines account at some point. I'm glad to have learned just how easy it is to use them.

Week 9 - Thing 20 - YouTube

YouTube is a great site with tons and tons of cool videos that have been added and are continually being added to. I have watched lots of YouTube videos and am always finding more things to watch. I liked the Conan the Librarian clip. Me and my partner haven't watched any American Idol on TV,but have recently been entertained by looking at the worst auditions for the show on YouTube.

This is a clip that I found funny, called "Americans are NOT Stupid".

Week 8 - Thing 19 - Web 2.0 Tools

I looked at the short list(though still quite big) of Web 2.0 Awards winners and looked through the list. I recognised a number of the names, some from this Learning 2.0 program and some from my personal internet use.
There were 2 that caught my eye. Cocktail Builder which has cocktail recipes on the site which users can add more. You can search for those weird sounding cocktails you have heard of but don't know what's in them. There is also a cool feature that you can put in a bottle or 2 of alcohol that you have and it will give you the drinks that you can make with it. It has user ratings for the cocktails and you can add drinks to a list so you can print out the ones you want to make. It would be great when planning a cocktail party. I would have found this a lot more useful about 10 years ago, but I'll probably use it at some point.

Another one I liked was Guess-the-Google game. The maker of Montage-a-google has made a game out of it. With Montage-a-Google, you put in a word and it searches for images on Google Images and creates a montage out of them. Guess-the-Google turns this around to make a game from it by giving you a montage of images and you have to guess the keyword used in the search. It is a cool little game that is a fun way to waste a bit of time.

Thing 18

I've signed up for a Zoho Writer account and had a look around.  I created a test spreadsheet to see how it worked.  I have a spreadsheet program at home but not excel and it can't do multiply sheets which zoho can. My partner doesn't have a spreadsheet program on her computer so maybe this would be good for her to use. 

Then I had a look at the writer program and read the welcome document to see what it can do. I can see that it would be useful for sharing and editing documents away form your own computer.

I have written this post using Zoho Writer and will try exporting it to my blog.  If it is in my blog then it works.

Week 7 - Thing 17 - Editing Wikis

I was keen to give this a go and once the password was added I tried adding my blog to the favourites page of the libraries PBwiki site.
I tried several times to get the link to my blog to work properly, following the instructions but it didn't work. After several attempts I was going to leave it looking like other peoples before me with just the url link, but then I notice that there was a link in the top right hand corner that said "Switch to Classic Mode". When I clicked on this it changed to a different editing mode and the links were in the format used in the instructions. So I added mine using the format suggested and saved it and it worked.
The newer Point-and-Click Mode seems to be the default editing mode and it may be easier because there is no need to learn the syntax required for the classic mode. However, I couldn't get my link to look right with my blogger name displayed rather than the link url until I when to classic mode. I guess with the 2 options people can choose the one that works best for them.

Week 7 - Thing 16 - Wikis

While it may sound like something out of Star Wars, Wikis are very useful. I often look at Wikipedia for info on a variety of topics. Because it is user created, there are topics that would never be covered in a conventional encyclopaedia. Info on the plots and characters of obscure, out-of-print comic books being printed in Britannica? I don't think so, but Wikipedia has this kind of stuff.
I know of some wikis that have been created for group projects for hobby groups. They are ideal for a community of people to work together to create something, a good way to share the workload and get creative input from a variety of people.

It makes sense for Libraries to make use of wikis if they want customer input into their websites. Getting people to add info or book reviews is a great idea, and helps make the community feel involved with the library.

Week 6 - Thing 15 - Library 2.0

I've had a read through a number of the articles about Libraries 2.0 and watched some videos on youtube about Web 2.0. They are quite interesting and thought provoking.
I think that the future of academic libraries and non-fiction collections will be affected greatly by the ever-developing information technologies. Even now many people are looking to the net for information rather than books. If I'm looking for a few facts or quick info I'll do a google search. Books are good for more indepth research but with time this may change. In many cases, for academic research it is already easier to look at online journal databases rather than try and track down the journals themselves.
One big area that I don't think will change much (except to become a bigger part of libraries) is the entertainment side of books and library collections. People wanting to read for pleasure are still going to want books to read, since reading screens is just not the same. DVD collections may disappear when downloading technologies become the predominant way of renting or buying movies, but I don't see paper and ink books disappearing any time soon.
I think it is a real possibly that libraries collections will change their focus to being more about entertainment reading, with bigger fiction and biography sections and smaller non-fiction sections supplemented by electronic info databases.

In any case, it will be interesting to see what the future brings for our industry.

Week 6 - Thing 14 - Technorati

I've had a look around Technorati and I'm so not keen on it. It might be good for finding blogs you are interested in, but I already waste too much web without finding more blogs that I want to ready.
I looked at searching and at the popular blogs. It was interesting to see in one of the popular blogs that you can make money from this blogging thing, and that some people are making a living from it as full time bloggers. Now there is something to aspire to. ;-)
Don't think I'll quit my day job just yet though.

I set up a technorati account and "claimed" my blog, so it is now listed on technorati.

Claiming My blog with technorati

Technorati Profile

Week 6 - Thing 13 - Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking tool. I'm definitely learning some new terms doing this Web 2.0 training. I hadn't heard of social bookmarking before. I have had a look around this website and it looks interesting. You can do searches for stuff you are intersted in and get a list of sites bookmarked and tagged by others. You can see how many people have bookmarked the sites giving an indication of its popularity.

To get the best benefits of this site you need to register; then you can save your own bookmarks and access them on any computer. I tried to do this, but it wants to add buttons to your web browser, and since I was using a work computer at the time I decided not to go ahead with this. The site doesn't have buttons set up for adding to Opera, the web browser that I use at home but I did a search and found a site that has made some Opera buttons. Here it is: http://erlang.no/?p=14. I haven't tried them yet, but I'll get it a go at some point.

I think I'll go ahead and start using this site to store some bookmarks. I think I'll mostly just use my normal bookmarks on my browser, but occasionally I do use other peoples computers and it will be useful to have my bookmarks available. So this is another site that I think I will continue to use.

Week 5 - Thing 12 - Rolling My Own Rollyo

I have rolled my own Rollyo at http://www.rollyo.com/ and added a widget to my blog.
The search roll I created was for New Zealand News and will search the NZ Herald site and stuff.co.nz and a few other nz sites.
I can definitely see the use of this online tool. If you want to do searches but limit the results to sites that you like, this is the tool for you. There are tons of searches on the site that have already been created and it is reasonable easy to create you own. However, I did find managing my account and editing searches to be a bit tricky. Some of the features are not self-explanatory and confusing. I think I have got if figure out now but I took a few attempts.

LibraryThing Catalogue

My LibraryThing catalogue can be found at: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/geeklibraryguy

Week 5 - Thing 11 - Librarything

I have set up an account at http://www.librarything.com/ and have had a little play around with it.

I think LibraryThing is a good idea; it could be fun to list all your books you own or like, and find online people to discuss them with. I don't really want to share my reading interests with the world at large, but I might share them with my friends. So I am more likely to use one of the similar applications on Facebook rather than LibraryThing.

I didn't like the fact that LibraryThing cost money after the first 200 books. Another thing that I found frustrating was that there is so much variety in the way some of the authors names are entered. For example, I first tried to find books by George R. R. Martin. Depending on whether you put a space between the Rs and/or include the dots, you get different results. Same problem with J.R.R. Tolkien and Raymond E Feist. I guess the moral is don't read books by authors that use initials in their names. :-)
(Can you guess what genre of books I prefer?)

Week 5 - Thing 10 - Online Image Generators

I had some fun playing around with some Online Image Generators this week. There are heaps of them to choose from. I like several at http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/ and I'm going to go back and look at more of them later.

I made two pictures of myself.

The first one I made with DoppelMe Avatar Generator which can be found at http://www.doppelme.com/. This one was make with the limited options available without registering for the site. There are tons more options if you do register.

The image on the right is a South Park version of me. I created this at http://www.sp-studio.de/. I like that one better than the DoppelMe image, it looks cooler, but both are close for cartoon images of myself. Both generators are easy to use, although the South Park Character Generator requires you to use some other program to cut the image out of a screen capture. The site has instructions on how to do the first step of capturing the screen shot and pasting it into you image program (they give you the instructions when you click on the save button).

Week 4 - Thing 9 - Locating Library and News Feeds

I have had a look at bloglines search tool and at the other feed searching/collecting websites. I did a search for some library related searches and added a few to my bloglines account. I also did searches on some personal interests and found some blogs, but none of them were as interesting as the online forums that I already look at. Because the online forums I use are high use, I find they are better than reading a few blogs that are infrequently updated.

I have decided that I don't really like the feed searching sites much. I guess that have their uses, but I don't think they are for me. I think I'll stick to googling subjects when I'm looking for info, rather than looking for feeds about the stuff I am interested in.
However, since learning about RSS feeds, I now take notice of the orange "RSS" icons (and other feed icons) on sites and will add them to my bloglines account if the sites/feeds are interesting.

Week 3 - Thing 8 - RSS feeds and Bloglines

I have signed up to bloglines and explored the wonderful world of "Real Simple Syndication" or RSS. I have added about a dozen feeds to my account. I have never used these before and find it interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet, I'll need to use it some more before deciding if I'll keep using it or not.
I like the idea of having lots of sights all brought to one place for me to check. Unfortunately, not all of the sites feed the whole posts in this format. For example, the New Zealand Herald's Sideswipe has only the top three lines, so it is pretty useless. I'm not going to continue to subscribe to that feed.
I'll see how much I like this rather than visiting the web sites themselves. I think it might be good for some sites, but others I will go to the actual site. This might help me keep a better track of some of the sites I like to read but don't regularly due to time.

Week 3 - Thing 7 - Something Technological

For this task, we have to blog about anything technology related that interests us. The iPhone is a geek toy that I'd like to get, it can do all kinds of things and can even make phone calls. ;-)
If and when it makes it to NZ, I'll consider getting one. I'd probably have to buy it on hire purchase as the cost it on the high side.
What I like about it is that it can do all the things that I want in one devise. I don't like filling my pockets with a cell phone, a mp3 player and a this and a that. The iPhone combines a phone and video iPod so I could make phone calls, watch videos, and listen to music all on the one handy devise, and surf the net too.
But I have my reservations about it too. Firstly, there is the price, and how much extra it is for the phone service contract that they will probably force you to buy along with the phone. The other problem is that it is not a 3g phone, so the internet speed is low unless you use a wi-fi hotspot. It is possible that future versions may have 3g technology so it would be disappointing to buy an early model to find the better model is just around the corner.
But it could be a long way off before the iPhones are available here legitimately.

Week 3 Thing 6 - Flickr Fun and Mashups

I've had a bit of a look around some of the things you can do your flickr photos using mashups and 3rd party sites. There are a huge number of cool things you can do.
I like Big Huge Labs, which have a long list of stuff. You can make your own calendars, create wallpaper for your desk, or add a frame to make the picture look like a stamp or polaroid photo, to name but a few.
I like one called Cube, which allows you to choose 6 photos and it will arrange them for printing out in the correct way to fold up into a cube. You can even create dice by selecting the option to add dots to each face. I'm going to try this one out over the weekend. I also like the one that allows you to make trading cards, since I used to waste a lot of money of trading card games when I was at uni.
All of these little toys look like it is so easy to use, too. Just upload photos or link it your Flickr account and choose photos you have there, fill in a few options and it does the rest, like magic. :-)

Week 3 Thing 5 Flickr

Take a look to the right side of my blog page and see what I have been up to. This week I have been exploring the photo sharing website Flickr. After looking around the site I decided to do something with it. So I created an account and uploaded some photos. I then created a Flickr Badge and added it to my blog. The photos are all animals; some from the Auckland Zoo, one photo from Western Springs and some are photos of my pets. Take a guess at which photos are of my pets.

I found Flickr to be a great site for uploading your photos and sharing them with the world or just your friends or family if you so desire. There are a huge number of photos that people are sharing. It would be easy to spend hours looking thru the fascinating images on that site.

Week 2 - Thing 4 Part 3 Facebook

Now, Facebook is something I am familiar with. I set up a profile a several weeks ago and have fast become addicted. I like that it is easy to use and is a good way to find and keep in touch with old friends as well as current friends. I have found several friends on there that I haven't seen for years after they headed off overseas.
It also as a large number of appications that can be added to your profile to play games, compare friends in a variety of fun ways, or give virtual gifts.
Maybe it is showing my age, but I also prefer that most people write in proper english rather that in txtspk, or the use of rAnDom CaPitAls tO MAkE wRItiNg loOk COol aNd HArDeR tO ReAd, which is something I found annoying on bebo.
One thing that is interesting is that facebook is almost completely useless if you don't have an account. With bebo and Myspace you don't have to be a member to view other peoples profiles, but with facebook the most you can see is a persons name and picture. And even this is a recent change; previously you had to sign up to even do a search for someone.

Week 2 - Thing 4 Part 2 Myspace

I have now signed up for Myspace. I found that signing up was a little more complicated than bebo but not too bad. Once I was set up, I found it is a lot harder to change stuff. Whereas changing the look of my bebo profile involved a few clicks of the mouse, according to the Myspace FAQ it requires html code to change the colour and look of my page. And if you don't know html, it suggests asking someone that has changed their own page.
While I have used html in the past, I have forgotten most of what I once knew. I could learn it again, but why bother? I don't like it.
Another thing I don't like is that when I am logged in, my page is covered with advertising. My profile that others view doesn't appear to have the ads, but they clog the page I look at.
I see little personal use for this site since Bebo is much more user friendly and not cluttered with ads. The one advantage to Myspace, for me, is that it seems more popular as a place for known bands and celebrities to promote themselves. So if I'm looking for info on my favourite band I might end up looking at their Myspace page. Otherwise I think I'll stay clear.
My myspace page, which I have done very little with, is: http://myspace.com/geeklibraryguy

Week 2 - Thing 4 Part 1 - Bebo

To get a feel for Bebo I have set up an account. At first I found the site a little confusing as an outsider looking at other peoples profiles. But once I had set up my account I found it reasonable easy to navigate around and learn what to do. After filling in the set up info and modifying my url I added Auckland City Libraries as a friend. I then looked around and found the music available thru the site. Looking through this and listening to free songs, I found a new band I like and have a sign up as a fan, so they are listed on my profile as a band I like.
I then looked at the skins by clicking on the "Change Skins" link. I looked at them and found a bunch of them that I liked and added as favourite skins. Then I finally decided on one to use, Binary Rain, kind of like the Matrix (thou I may change it sometime just for variety).
Since none of my friends have Bebo accounts my page will see little use, but I can see how it could be good to keep in touch with friends and share stuff with them (like photos, vids, music tastes etc).
My Bebo site is: http://www.bebo.com/geeklibraryguy/

Week 1 - Second Post

I have now looked around the blog settings and had a bit of a play with the look of my blog. I have changed some of the colours and the font for my blog title using the options under the template tab. More importantly, I have set the time zone correctly under the settings so that my post times are now accurate.
When I get a bit more time, I will fill in some details about myself for the "About Me" section.

Now it is time to register this blog so it can be tracked and my progress can be recorded as I complete the 23 things that are needed for this project.

Week 1 - First Blog Post!

This is my first blog post. This is a blog I am setting up to learn about blogging and "Web 2.0" stuff as part of a work learning project. As you might have guessed I work in a Library.
Some of the stuff we will be learning over the next 12 weeks will be easy as I already know about some of the things we will be looking at (like facebook, I already have a profile) but others will be new, for example, blogging.
I'll been considering setting up a blog for a while, but wasn't sure if I would post on it much, and whether I wanted to share elements of my life with the world. Now I'm doing this for work, I will see how much I will enjoy doing it and can decide if I'm going to continue with a personal blog or not. Only time will tell...