Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Week 6, #14 - Technorati

Well as with many of the sites there is a lot to explore on Technorati and not enough time. I will need to come back and explore in more detail. I watched the video on using Technorati. I do find the videos very helpful as a learning tool. Something the library should invest in as well. I find while trying to explore these sites that it is extremely easy to get side tracked. I go to a site and then I am sucked into reading an article. I see that this is where delicious can be useful because I have just started tagging any article that strikes me. The little icon on the toolbar is very helpful.

As far as tagging in general - since I am new to the concept - it will take awhile before I understand all the implications. I have created a separate blog, but I'm not sure that I want to put it out into the world and have others find it. That is both an attractive thought - to connect with people around the world and it also is appealing to stay under the radar and just involve the people I actually know.

It is surprising that there are over 50 million blogs and over 100.000 added every day. It becomes overwhelming. I am enjoying a lot of the information I am finding on the web. just the tip of the iceberg.

I looked at the Top 100 blogs and most weren't of interest to me. (I did look at the Post Secret blog - where people mail postcards with their secrets written on them. It's like an open intranet Confessional). When I tried to search for library blogs - nothing of interest came up.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Week 6 - #13 - Deli.ico.ous

This will be a quick post - but want to get at least something up about week 6. I liked the Learning 2.0 delicious page - both the tv and food recommendations. I can see this page is already growing as more and more articles are being posted. I thought I would be able to add a video that I found interesting, but it kept going into the delicious account that I set up.

So only whoever owns the account can post to it, but other people can add to the side. I have put it in my RSS feeds, so I'm sure it will get more interesting as more people add to it.

I enjoyed going to the different libraries and seeing how they are using RSS feeds. The video was interesting to learn how you can use other people's recommendations to harvest information on the internet. Find people who you respect and then see what they are reading. I like the idea of RSS feeds bringing you information rather than you going out and having to search for it. I have learned a lot in the last couple lessons. The more I play with it - the wider the implications become.

It is now time to call it a week.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Week 5, #12 Rollyo

Okay - well let's see if I can paste my rollyo search here:




Now that should display as a button. I found this a pretty confusing lesson. I made a hiking search tool and put in a few sites that are of interest to me. I think I would need to add more sites to make this really useful. I'll roll on to the lesson and leave this for now.

Friday, February 9, 2007

Week 5, #11 - Web 2.0 Awards list.

I like maps so I decided to explore Wayfarer at http://www.wayfaring.com/. There was all sorts of interesting stuff on this site. First there were different maps and points of interest that people have created. I was interested in "Haunted places in Dartmoor" so I read about a few of those places.

You can create a map of your life. I decided to try and do that. I took a map of Canada and was going to create a map of where I met my husband, our first road trip together and all the places we have been since. You can mark anyplace on the map. It was cool to be able to get down to the street level in Jasper and remember the town. I liked the combination of satellite and map names, but the satellite can't get into close. Would have liked to see the Canadian Rockies.

I tried marking the road trip - but the navigation wasn't clear on how to do mistakes. I need more time to explore this site. Since I have a map at home with pins in all the places I have been and where Bill and I have been together - it seems that this website could accomplish that in a cool way.

I am going to San Francisco on Sunday - so I did use the map to zero in on the area of San Francisco and street names I need to know. Will have to explore a bit more.

Monday, February 5, 2007

Week 5, # 10 another one.

ImageChef.com - Create custom images

Here's another one. Hard to decide between the coffee cup and the beach. I'll go with the beach. See if this really works once I post it.

Week 5, #10


Well here's a little something from Toon Generator. This is coming off an hour of Info/Greet. Guess I need more coffee....

Friday, February 2, 2007

Week 4- #9 Find Library blogs or news feeds.

I tried out the various search engines and didn't find much that I liked. I liked that Feedster has a sort by relevance button - the the blogs still weren't that relevant. Topic.net at least gave more relevant information.

I searched the news for some recent attacks on women in Santa Cruz. In addition to the attacks on women I found out that Mountain Lion sitings are on the rise in the area. This is because of the mountain lion attack in northern California where the 65 year old woman saved her 70 year old husband by fighting off a mountain lion by poking a pen in it's eye and when the pen just bent, went back to hammering it with a club. The eeriest thing was that when the mountain lion finally let go - he didn't run away - just glared at her and slowly stalked off. The sad part of the story is that they killed TWO mountain lions, just to see if one of them was the attacker. That's annoying. Now everyone is seeing mountain lions all over Santa Cruz. Six sitings a day. So I'm a little off topic. That's how I find these search engines - they take you off topic. What was I looking for? Oh yes...

Finally - all the advertising is extremely annoying. I hate commercials which is part of the reason I don't watch TV. Now there are commercials on all these web pages, it's getting worse and worse.

In sum, I will probably just find relevant blogs from people I know or subjects of interest and add them to Bloglines as I go, rather than going searching for them. It's late on friday afternoon. I am done with RSS feeds and I'm moving on.

Week 4 - #8 RSS Feeds / Set Up Blog Line Account

This lesson took awhile to sink in. I quickly set up the Blogline account, but then didn't know how to find blogs or sites to put into Blogline. I see this is addressed in thing #9. I spent a lot of time trying to figure this one out. I did somehow set up a Google Alert which started emailing me irrelevant email topics and figured out how to turn that off. I will have to look at Google Alerts, in more detail.

I enjoyed adding the blogs of the library staff in my unit to my Bloglines account - so I can see when they add things to their blogs. I am really enjoying the creativity of the staff blogs.

I have set up some entertainment and fitness article links and I'm enjoying reading them. I will find lots of uses for RSS feeds as I get to use them more.

I think the most confusing things about this lesson was opening all the different accounts and trying to keep track of where you were. Also the way the lesson was set up - it seemed like there was a more direct link between RSS and my new blog, which I never did discover. Onto the next lesson which will probably give me some new sites to add to the Blogline account.

Thursday, February 1, 2007