#23

This has been a bit of a rollercoster for me. Initially a steep learning curve, learning how to blog and look at the online social websites like Bebo and Myspace. Some things I had never heard about and some that I knew about, but had never looked at. Then moving onto Flickr, RSS feeds, online image generator and technorati. I read about the future of libraries and online productivity tools like Zoho and looked at YouTube and ebooks. I enjoyed using the image generator and technorati but probably the most useful for me will be ebooks and Zoho. A steep learning curve that gradually became easier as I progressed.
I am pleased that I was given the opportunity to participate, so now when somebody mentions RSS feeds or technorati or Flickr at least I will now know what they are talking about about and maybe learn something more.

# 22 eBooks

Netlibrary was easy to open and search and I used the Basic Search button to search for Cliffs notes and found there are 199 titles on eBooks, great for our student patrons, as we don't have any physical copies for this study resource. I looked at Sams Teach yourself computer ebooks, which for me will be useful. There are 773 ebooks on netlibrary in the ACL collection so it is something I will be using more in the future. I looked at Amazon but there is a cost involved so I wouldn't be so inclined to use that whereas the ACLelectronic site is free to library members. eBooks are something that are going to be very useful for our students at Epsom.

# 21 Podcasts

Initially looking at search tools for locating podcasts was a bit frustrating. I looked at Yahoo but that had music videos on it which is not what my understanding of a podcast is. I looked at Podcast.net - international podcast then keyed in Babel which brought up music which I couldn't listen to without installing something else! Then I clicked onto the Top Ten podcasts and listened to an interview in podcast alley.com....success finally!. These search engines have merit especially the book review sites so maybe I will come back and use a few specific sites like that for my own book club.
Ciao

# 20 You Tube

This is so cool. I found this video clip with the shortest time frame which seemed to down load quite easily, or so I thought. Anyway I downloaded it again. Interesting to hunt through these online video hosting sites like You Tube and see the multitude of videos available online.I chose the "talking" cats because I thought they were quite funny and reminded me of my own cat...no other reason. We all watched Conan the Librarian video and thought "if only"! I also was able to get into the Italian film director Pasolini "stuff" and watch a video of someone talking about his work which was amazing for such an obscure subject....the choice seems endless!

# 19

I looked at Web 2.0 2007 awards list. I used the link to the short list. and looked at Ma.gnolia in Bookmarking. I searched a food site which was recipes and personal comments and tips on how best to cook the recipe. However my favourite site was Zillow in Real Estate. I write (yes, I still use the post) to a friend who lives in San Diego so I was able, in Real Estate, to key in her address and instantly up popped an aerial view of her street and house. Very cool and very exciting.
Buonaserata.

Week 8 # 18

This is so cool. Online productivity tools such as Zoho writer are definitely something I would use. I like the features Zoho has like the share documents and also being able to add line comments, and of course the attractiveness of the coloured buttons has a certain appeal. It is similar to Word but more sophisticated and I will come back to this later to become more familiar with it.

# 17 Thing

Amazing...the usefulness of Wikis in libraries as in Bulletin Boards etc and noticed that Remuera Library have been busy setting up their own wiki...great idea. I added into FavBlogs and Travel blogs...great fun reading others people's fav destinations.

I couldn't get the PB wiki instructional video to work which was disappointing, but hey I can recognise what a HTML is now...we are learning so much with this ACLLEARN. 2.0.
Ciao

#16 Wikis

The largest of these is Wikipaedia...Easy to use but, prone to being subjective, and not enough control over facts. I have used wikilyrics when I've wanted the words to a song and correctness wasn't too important and that was fun, Explaination about Wiki was great, but for facts I like to use another source as a comparison because of the "open"editing process in wiki. BookLovers wiki library success you need an email address to edit..great feature. Here at our community library we promote our online resources at every opportunity and if would be great fun to have the ability to develop our own wiki.

Buonaserata

#15

I looked at Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 and the use of technology regarding Libraries of the future. I really enjoyed the Web 2.0 video...I thought that was very clever. Not sure whether the "meeting users in their space not ours" refers to all library users of the future being in contact solely online or not. A scary concept and hopefully not coming too soon. I note also that most if not all these concepts are American.....where do the British stand in all of this technology?
This was fun and in our community library we are getting very competitive in what number we are completing......the end is in sight!
Buonaserata

Week 6 # 14

O.K. I looked at technorati and found it difficult to draw any conclusions. I can't see a huge amount of difference between posts, tags etc. The only surprising thing to me, is the scale of online social networking and the inference from some of the blogs, that people like me are thought of as "technology" pariah's for being so unfamiliar with the online technology out there.
It's like online snobbery.

Che sera sera.

# 13 Del.icio.us

http://www.tastebook.com/home I was interested in this link and although this seemed relatively simple to use , I got to the point of signing up for Del.icio.us adding the buttons when a warning popped up on the screen...so I didn't go any further. However I looked at how others had tagged links similar to what I was interested in. Another example of the social networking that is expanding at an astonishing speed!
I would also like to add that most of us at my community library are doing this either in our lunch time or after work hours. It seems that, we that work part time, do not have enough time to complete these exercises in the given time period. I am running out of time because I still have 10 exercises to complete. Can I have an extension.

Buonaserata

# 12

I looked at Rollyo, created an account, then added an element that was of interest to me, to my blog site. This is yet another useful aid or tool that was relatively easy to search for and add to my blog by following the directions of #12 on how to roll your own search engine. Also a more knowledgable colleague helped me ... once again

Week 5 # 11

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/g.traveller9
Librarything was interesting. Its astonishing what is actually on the net. The concept of being able to add tags I thought would be helpful for the home library and one could categorise the collection personally according to likes and dislikes or even wherabouts. Adding the tags was very easy and I just added a couple of tags to my collection to see how it worked.

Week 5 # 10

I played around with doppelme and had fun creating my avatar which I then added to my blog by emailing to my gmail and then following the instructions on how to cut and paste the HTML. I also looked at electricdecember.org, had fun putting decorations onto a tree and then in the christmas spirit went on to calendar generator and that looked pretty cool...but time is running short and there is work to be done so.....

Extra comments on # 9

I looked at Feedster and Topix.net and Technorati either going directly to their home page or using another search engine. Either way was easy, but going directly was quicker of course. I didn't find Syndic8 as easy to use. .. and I didn't like the layout of the links. I found looking through ACL online newszone and international newspapers such as the Herald Tribune a quick source of the latest news and with an easy to spot RSS link. I also looked at www.slashdot.org/ which I found really easy and very informative.
So there are many different options depending on what you want to look for and out of them all I probably found Syndic8 most confusing.

Week 4 RSS Feeds # 8 and #9

Well, initially I have found these steps # 8 and 9 to be quite frustrating, because it took me some time to understand where to look for the RSS feeds. However, the concept of being able to click on these information sources and get regular updates on news is amazing technology. I guess it is a source that news professionals use to keep up to date with international events as they happen. I chose to subscribe to newsfeeds that I thought I recognised as reliable international sources, such as National Geographic, CNN, BBC, but presumably the feeds are all in a similar category. I also went into an information source from Google and noted their RSS feed and added that to my list. Then later I was reading The N.Z. Herald online through Auckland City Libraries and noticed the article I was reading had the RSS symbol in the top right hand corner, so I clicked on that and up popped the list of subscribers..... I would not have noticed that before!
Don't know if I will ever use this regularly but it was an interesting exercise.

Buonaserata

Week 3 thingy 7

The technology that interests me is the ipod clock radio. it has remote control, alarm settings, AM/FM, LCD screen, sleep control plus it charges the MP3 as it plays...an amazing tool that is a"must have" if you are in to your music because you can listen to the music stored in your ipod through the ipod clock radio with your friends. So this new technology has changed the ipod from the individuals sole sound to a shared sound.

Week 3 things 6 and 7 as requested

I looked at the 3rd party application labs.systemoneone.at/retrivr and found this really exciting and could think of many ways in which this would be a really useful tool. It was great fun using "sketch"with the colour palette. Wow ...amazing technology. What next!
Buonagiornata

Week 3 Things 5,6,7

I have found this quite an interesting experience navigating around Flickr. The Privacy Act in NZ is quoted at great length when one tries to get information on any manner of things and yet on sites such as Flickr, it seems that everyone wants to share all aspects of their life with the world in general! However, the travel photos are of interest to me and I found this photo of the grand canal in Venice on www.flickr.co./photo/valerio

Week 2 Things 4

Well, I've done that, I've traveled through this maze of 21st Century social networking such as Bebo, MySpace and FaceBook and I've concluded that we will have to redefine the word "friend". Interesting and also time consuming but not for me.
Buonagiornata

Week one

Well this has been a frustrating, time consuming but interesting exercise!
This was designed to improve my computer knowledge, however i feel this is in an area that I doubt I will use again.
Happy key boarding fellow bloggers.

Buonagiornata.
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