I've Made it to the End!

The end is in sight. I certainly didn't think I would manage to finish everything in the time given. Fortunately having broadband now has definitely made a difference. No more frustration waiting for things to load.


Did I enjoy doing this? Some exercises were interesting to do and maybe one day I will look through the notes and decide to go back to some of the sites and have a further look at them.
It was interesting to see what won/got placed in the Web 2.0 awards and I enjoyed looking at Zoho, Library Thing and Del.ico.us.

What have I gained? Apart from knowing now that such sites exist it hasn't made me any keener to use the internet than before, exept if I am looking for something specific. However, for people doing research then the information on the internet is amazing and I can see why so many people spend so much time on it.

What have I learned? The art of personal communication (face to face) seems to be taking a back step in favour of internet communication, which is a real shame. Teenagers, especially, and a lot of adults mostly seem to want to communicate by technology, either by social networking on the internet or by texting on mobile phones. How are they going to manage later when they have to personally communicate with work colleagues and the general public.

Will the internet take over from the printed copy eventually? I do hope not.

Social Networking

Having read some of the articles I can see that there could be an advantage for the libraries to use social networking. It was interesting, though, as it all seemed to be geared to teenagers. One article suggested asking for ideas of books and videos to order (we have 'suggestions to purchase' on our web-site) and asking for ideas re hours and layout. It seems to me that if social networking is to be introduced than far more staff will be needed, to answer questions, make comments and keep the information up to date. Will that mean deploying some of the regular staff to fill this role?

21 - The Coming of Age in my Time

Call me old-fashioned but I cannot understand why people feel they need to tell the world what they are thinking, doing etc etc.

I have been invited to be a 'friend' on Facebook previously but have never accepted the invitation. Nothing has changed after looking at these social sites. If they only want named 'friends' to see the information, what is wrong with a personal email. This can have a rebound effect as one member of family found out some information, concerning another member of family, that had been posted on a friend's facebook site that she passed onto me, before I had heard personally from the person concerned. I was not impressed!

Same goes for the Library Bebo site. What is the difference between that and having a good website which gives all the information.

ebooks

Found several Shakespeare plays and one Jane Austen book on the website 'ask Sam', http://www.asksam.com/ebooks/default.asp but didn't try and download them. I find it hard enough and also not very comfortable to read anything at the computer so downloading an ebook for enjoyment reading would not be anything I would do. However for anyone doing research of some kind and needing a book that is no longer in print, then I think being able to access it on-line (if available) would be of great help.

Another site I looked at was http://sunsite3.berkeley.edu/Literature/

One site I was impressed with was for elderly and slightly impaired readers. It states 'Are your eyes tired? Are the letters too small? Have a particular sight condition? This digital library has been designed to provide you an adaptive reading experience! Just click above on "set display" and select the font size, font color and background color. The color combinations were carefully selected from the latest research information available on the reading needs of the partially sighted and old age readers. For the blind or visually impaired every book has been formatted into HTML code, avoiding proprietary formats that are not friendly with Text to Speech Software.' The link is http://www.readeasily.com/

Podcasts in Travel Tools

While checking out stuff on the internet for our next holiday I managed to get on a site called Travel Tools that had podcasts and an RSS feed. Marvellous I thought! I can do this week's exercise at the same time as I am doing something that is for my own benefit as well. I have now added the RSS feed to my bloglines.

The website also had information about RSS feeds - What is an RSS feed-
How do I start using RSS - How do I subscribe to RSS. Then it gives a list and small explanation of various RSS readers. Links are below:


http://www.queenslandholidays.com.au/travel-tools/rss/how-do-i-start-using-rss.cfm

RSS http://www.queenslandholidays.com.au/rss/qh-rss.xml

Food, Glorious Food.

As I enjoy looking at recipes, iFoods, which won 3rd place in the Food section of the Web 2.0 awards list, was a website I could spend (waste) a lot of time looking at. There are iFoods recipes, members recipes and recipe categories. http://ifoods.tv/web/

I also looked at I'm Cooked, the first place winner, but that site didn't appeal. That seemed to be home made videos of people cooking sent to the web. Urbanspoon, the 2nd place winner, was quite different. That gives details of places to eat around the world, though it mainly covers the USA and Canada. London is covered and also Melbourne and Sydney. I looked at the Sydney site and that covers inner and outer areas of Sydney, gives price ranges and also types of food. The sidebar includes recent restaurant reviews from the Sydney Morning Herald.
http://www.urbanspoon.com/c/70/Sydney-restaurants.html

As I was still looking for the track 'A Long Black Veil' I thought I would also check out a couple of the Music winners. I couldn't figure out Mog, though. It said one could download for free but I couldn't see how it was done.

I also checked out Picasa, as we have that on our home PC and learnt about the new upgrade, so next time the message comes up to upgrade I shall say 'yes'. http://picasa.google.com/

You Tube

It is fascinating to see all the different videos on 'You Tube'. Broadband is wonderful. I can now download them in seconds, whereas before they stopped and started and my server usually cut me off before they had fully loaded. I went looking for Joan Baez singing 'A Long Black Veil' and got lots of videos of her singing, but not that song. Then I found a variety of artists singing the song, but not the version I like. What amazed me was that some of the videos were made long before the Web and You Tube. I eventually settled on one from the BBC announcing the forthcoming contestants for the upcoming programme 'Strictly Come Dancing' as a friend and I had recently been discussing it. Here is the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbQ1LTxHFjg

I couldn't embed it, but I was able to send it to my email and then I copied and pasted the link.

I looked at some of the Library videos and thought the one of the race around the library, finding information, was a good idea, especially as a way of children/young adults learning how to use the resources.

Medieval Festival, Prague

This looks interesting.  It seems as if it is somewhat like Microsoft Word but everything is available from the toolbars, so may be easier to use for formatting and editing a document.  I am going to attempt to transfer some pictures from my computer.  Watch this space!  .

 

Zoho, Goodo!

This is very similar to Microsoft Word but as some computers don't have that installed, this is a good option. I liked the fact that everything to do with formatting , editing and decorating etc can be found on the toolbars. I somehow managed to make a collage in Picasa and then export it to Zoho. Took me a while and had to put it on the desktop first. Hope I can now delete it from there without losing it completely. I did notice that as I wrote, my picture seemed to shrink and I haven't got all of it in. Also I tried to add a smiley emotion to my introduction after I had inserted the picture and the picture disappeared. Thank goodness for the 'undo' button.

Here is the link below.

http://writer.zoho.com/index.do

When I checked back on this link all I got was the link to the Zoho page. After a round of telephone calls I finally discovered that I could publish what I had done to my blog. I did this and it still didn't appear in my blog. After much too-do I finally found it in the drafts and then published it. However it has gone on as a completely separate blog instead of being attached to this one.

This looks interesting. It seems as if it is somewhat like Microsoft Word but everything is available from the toolbars, so may be easier to use for formatting and editing a document. I am going to attempt to transfer some pictures from my computer. Watch this space! .

Home Library List

This was most enjoyable to look at and if I had more time I would have liked to have looked at the reviews that people have posted on some of the books in my list. Maybe one day I will go back and catalogue all the books in my bookcase. They are a very rum lot and as the books are on the shelves two deep, I am sure I have forgotten half of what I have. I have looked at this site peviously and mentioned it to people in my book club, who were also very impressed.
The link to my list is: Link is http://www.librarything.com/catalog/tperkins17

Roll yer own

I didn't find I had too much trouble with this exercise. I just forgot that I had to create a post in my blog with the link to the searchroll and then send the link of my blogpost. I just sent the link of my searchroll. The advantage of having a search roll in Rollyo is like having a list in 'favourites' except that the list can then be accessed from any computer plus it can be organised according to topic. ie all the health websites or all the travel wesites.

Link to searchroll: http://rollyo.com/search.html?q=greece&sid=454522

Image Generators

The first time I tried this I thought I had managed very well. I found an image and copied and pasted it to my blog. Unfortunately when I checked the end result I found I had the title and a whole lot of code, but no picture. Probably just as well as it was meant to be a Black Forest Cake and that would have made me feel peckish everytime I opened my blog.

Then I got some help and with two of us working through it managed to get the pictue across to my blog in the form of a jigsaw.
http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/viewpostcard.php?id=82116-6f439

I used Letter James to get the picture and FD Toys to make a jigsaw.

Perspectives

I had omitted this exercise as I really do not like reading anything too long on line and wanted to print off the various articles to read at a later date. Then I forgot about it and now having read them I think I must have forgotten about it deliberately. Dare I say what a load of pretentious claptrap! I honestly couldn't even understand the English written on some of them and English is my first language. The outcome of the articles as far as I could make out was that the Web and everything connected with it, such as YouTube and Blogsites should be easily accessible and if patrons won't come to the Library than the Library should go to them via the Net. Also I felt the articles were slanted towards university libraries as opposed to public libraries.

Sandbox wiki

I managed to add my blog to the Favourites Blogs page with no trouble. I went into work to look at the discovery resources as I knew it would be far quicker than using dial-up at home. However it is now a week later that I am writing this blog and to be honest I have forgotten everything I looked at. Hopefully Iwill be going onto broadband in a couple of weeks and then I can go back to this exercise and maybe add some more to this blog.

Wikis

The concept of the Wiki is a good idea as a way of sharing resources, but the fact that it is open to anyone to add, edit or delete information can be open to abuse. Can you believe everything you read? I noticed that on a couple of the library wikis patrons wanting to open an account to edit a wiki now have to provide their email address first so that a link can be sent to them confirming their address. This is due to vandalism problems. I confess I do use Wikipaedia, which I find very useful and interesting but realise that if I need specific information on a subject then I need to do a check somewhere else as well.

There was an interesting item on the late news on TV on Friday 29th August about Wikipaedia. Do not believe everything you read on the site as it is easily doctored.

Technorati

What can one say! I reckon one must have an awful lot of spare time to use this site. It is not for me. I got 732 results in 'Posts', 343 in blogs and got an error message first time when looking for tags. Was told there was a 'hiccup' and to try again later. When I did there were 1385 results.

Delicious

Thought the Del.cio.us sight was most interesting and could see a lot of potential for the site It's no wonder that schools are using it . As so many of the kids today are computer savvy I am sure they would far rather use something like this site for doing school projects than having to come to the library and find that the books they need are out. Providing that the local schools would let the libraries know what projects the children are studying it would be worthwhile setting up the site on our homework computers, but that probably would mean a lot of extra work for the children's and/or information services librarians.

For me personally, when I have some spare time, the thought of being able to access relevant recipes quickly, instead of thumbing through my various cookbooks, sounds like a great idea. Also finding information for travelling. This is one site I will probably go back to at a later date.

RSS Feeds

Found the first part of this exercise rather confusing and had to get some help with it at work. Even when I had managed to subscribe to a few newsfeeds and they were entered on my bloglines account, when I opened them there was nothing to read there.

For the second part of the exercise I managed to look at all the search tools recommended and liked Topix.net, as being local it contained Auckland news as well as overseas news. I managed to find the RSS icon and got it into my bloglines account. Hurray! Haven't checked it yet to see if there is anything there when I open it though.

Mish Mash

I had a look at Trading Cards and some of the things there look as if they could be fun and interesting to do. I have noticed now that when getting thankyou' cards for weddings, births etc, that people are using their own photos on the cards. I haven't yet seen one that would qualify under 'mash-ups' but there would be no reason why that couldn't be done. The picture programme I have at home can do collage's, albums and photos can be put on the Web.

Age and Technology

Is it an age thing that I find some of the new technology hard to follow or is my brain just wired a different way? No rude answers please!
I have mastered how to record on the video recorder and play DVDs on the DVD player , though when they were first purchased I wasn't much good in tuning them in. I have a mobile phone (but with a black and white screen and no camera) and have learnt to text. I have no wish to buy a fancy phone as they seem so complicated to use and as for a blackberry!
Digital cameras are great, though it took some time for the mindset to change to realise that I could take photos of everything and anything in sight as I could just delete the unwanted pictures at a later date and as long as I had a big enough memory stick, the number of photos taken wasn't limited. They could then be downloaded to the computer where one has been used as the background to the desktop and our screensaver is an ever changing slide show.

Exploring Flickr

What can I say. I found this very time consuming, not least because I am only on dial-up and my server will insist on cutting the connection if I stay on the line too long. I checked out some of the links but I think I am technophobic as I really couldn't understand a lot of it. I don't think my mind goes in the same direction as all the people who have displayed their photos and tags. I some how ended up with a map of Oxford first time round and then managed to get Carfax Tower but tried again when I had to go back in to get the web link and then managed to find the images straight away.
I looked up photos of Carfax Tower as it was one of my teenage haunts - the meet and greeting place of all young lovers and others. Some of the photos were of the tower itself and others were taken from the top looking down on the streets around and surrounding districts.

Oxford a town of dreaming spires
An education to which one aspires
Undergrads in gowns they strut
A contrast to the village slut
At the crossroads where four main streets meet
Stands Carfax Tower, a place of meet and greet.
Young lovers gaze into each other's eyes
While those stood-up try to walk on by.
Climb to the top and what do you see?
A view all around across city and lea.
Cars are now banned, there are buses galore
If you don't maind waiting, that's for sure.
Tourists abound, what languagesdo I hear?
French and German, like music to my ear.

The link is
Photos of Carfax Tower, Oxford

Frustration

Frustration is the name of the game


Too many hours spent choosing a name


Instructions for me hard to follow


In misery at the computer I wallow


Ten weeks of exercises to complete


The first one has me beat.


Cannot find the landscape tab


The colours in my blog to change


Instructions printed - still no light



So here it is in pink and white


Will it get easier over time?


Here's hoping that it will be fine.