Thing 23 The End!

Yay! I made it through the programme and with a few weeks to spare too! I found it all a very interesting exercise, especially the self paced learning aspect as my team booked time together to work on it and time variations between us all is quite intriguing. I found that there were some tasks we did that I didn't like and thought were quite fiddly or not useful. But I guess that is the purpose of this to get us thinking about what works and what doesn't. This programme has made me a Facebook addict and I use librarything to find books to read. At the beginning I really didn't think I'd make it through but here we are! We are definitely living in interesting times and technology is changing so fast. If you don't jump aboard you'll be left behind and that's especially true in the library environment. Bring on web 2.0 in the library!!!

Thing 22 NetLibrary

Well almost there (I hope!) NetLibrary is quite comprehensive and I added some ebooks to my favourites account. I think it's quite a good idea but I didn't actually find that the search engine was all that user friendly. Perhaps I was searching incorrectly but it wasn't terribly helpful that it located the word within the text. I tried searching by other methods and it still kept happening. I did find that the ebooks were pretty cool though. For now though I will stick to books.

Thing 21 Podcasts

I found this to be quite a good idea, especially if the speaker has a nice voice! Some of the voices were awful but I found a review I like of poems from Guatanemo Bay. I have suscribed to it on my bloglines feeds. I really liked the idea that you can listen to the podcast, sit back and relax without having to trawl through endless advertising like you get in review magazines. There is some really interesting stuff available in podcasts. I can see a future for it and I think it's something we need to do here! I used the Yahoo directory as it was the easiest to search, I didn't like podcast.net, I found it hard to get good search results.

rollyo link

http://rollyo.com/budnz/car_buying_heaven/

Thing 20- youtube

I'm already a seasoned youtube user. I've been using it for over a year now and I find it's really great for looking up tv shows that you like or for the nostalgia value of watching things from when I was a child. I like to look up old advertisements, they are highly amusing. Also youtube is good for people wanting to promote their bands or to publish their video works. I even stumbled across a video of someone turning the knobs on their dryer. Hopefully he can find someone to share his interest with! I guess it has it's downside in that people can use it for negative purposes like teenage bullies etc but unfortunately those types of people will always find a way. Mostly youtube is good fun and it can be informative. Here is a link to the opening anthem that used to play on tv when I was little and getting ready for school on the farm:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=o-r_PutRulM

Thing 19

I had a look at several of the tasks on the web 2.0 shortlist. I thought Meebo sounded really interesting but I couldn't get into it as it was blocked by mailmarshall. I guess the council's ITC policy is not web 2.0! Very annoying. So then I had a look at Lulu which was very interesting, being a site for new writers to publish their work. Not really something that I can partake in but when I publish my great NZ novel then I can do it there. I think it's a really good way for talented newcomers to get work out there and seen by publishers. It's a good example of what web 2.0 can offer people. I then looked at Yelp! which was a site for reviews of US cities by individuals. This offered a wealth of information such as the best drag queen shows and plastic surgeons in New York as rated by locals and visitors alike. Much more interesting than a travel book! It also has maps to show you where the reviewed places are located. Very useful once again!

Zoho writer

I really liked this site, it was a lot of fun. There were lots of things you could do with it that you can't do with MS word such as add tags to the picture and add smiley faces. I also like the idea that there won't be any complications with variations in software. Being able to access your documents from anywhere is really good too. I can see a really good future for this technology and this might actually be the most useful thing on the web 2.0 program!

pug-got

 

 

This is a little 2004 model Peugeot 206 GTi which is my car de jour. I'm hoping to purchase one next year. It is very fast and a lot of fun.The get-up-and-go department has a responsive 2-litre engine which provides 130 kWs of power at 7,000 rpm. Torque is a wild 202 Nm at 4.750 rpm. Hopefully I can talk my bank manager into seeing the benefits of it's fuel economy. If not I might have to give up eating!

Thing 17 Wiki Sandbox

This exercise was a good way of getting us to use wikis. It was nice to see that they can be fun as well as informative. I posted my favourite holiday spot and my favourite TV programme with appropriate links. I'm very keen to continue looking through other entries on there. I was very impressed with some peoples holiday destinations, we have some jet setters amongst us!I really like the idea of the sandbox as making life fun and interesting is a far better way to get people to use wiki technology.

Thing 16 Wikis

I already knew quite a bit about Wikis from some of the training I've been doing and also from using Wikipedia. I think wikis are an interesting way to communicate and to share information that can be edited by all users. I think it is probably safer to use in a setting such as a library as the users will have a common interest in keeping the information whereas sites such as Wikipedia which are able to be edited by anyone don't have that safeguard. I think there are lots of areas in which we as an organisation could use Wikis to share information such as: library news, road test index, frequently asked questions, meetings, staff lists, building announcements, what's on, subject resource lists.

Thing 15 Libraries 2.0

I read through a couple of these discussions and felt that there were some good points raised. Rick Anderson stated that libraries should not be teaching research skills but eliminating barriers by having the best interfaces etc. I thought that was a different way of looking at it, as so often we focus time on showing people how to use complicated databases but if the complication was eliminated then it would be much easier for people to do it themselves with better results for the customer. He also stated that libraries no longer have a monopoly on information supply and I completely agree, once again if things are made more user friendly then libraries will continue to attract users who appreciate the environment and efficiency available. Michael Stephens stated that the library is human and Library 2.0 plans for it's users. I think this relates in to the above points as people that may be too apprehensive about approaching Web 2.0 on their own could feel comfortable about coming to the library as it's a warm, friendly environment with the best technology available and that the staff are the human face of the technology. I think that the future for libraries under 2.0 will be in providing easy, friendly access to the best technology, providing a great environment to visit and also having interesting book material as many people find that there is still something comforting and pleasant about borrowing a good read for home.

technoratti

This was a very interesting site to look through. The popular blogs were what I expected with mainly technology and celebrity gossip blogs in the running. I thought Boing Boing was another fascintaing blog on there, it's currently the most popular blog in the world according to technoratti. I tried the searching exercise and got the following results for "Learning 2.0" Blog posts- 6756 results, Tags- 505 results and Blog directories 451 results. I came to the conclusion that it was wise to try searching in several different types so that you can maximise your chances of finding the best results for what you are looking for.

Thing 12

Well Rollyo was back up and running so I could complete this task. Had a good browse around on here and tried setting up my own roll. I didn't actually find the site very useful and thought that there were other means of achieving the same results with less fuss and complication such as setting up a favourites link on your pc. I also found that it was quite hard to set up your own roll as my one wouldn't load. I can see that for some common searches there would be benefits there but it's not something I'd recommend.

Thing 13

I know I'm skipping thing 12 but Rollyo wasn't working so I moved on. I found Del.icio.us very interesting and do think that it has it's place as a tool for us in our jobs. For example, I looked at a popular thread around explaining myspace to parents. This is very relevant to my role as it's highly likely I'll be doing something similar in the near future and it was good to see what some of the common issues were for parents dealng with their teens usage. What I like about going throught Del.icio.us was that it made it easy to find such topics and popular threads thus cutting down on the time needed to search the internet for information when preparing for a class. I also found the youtube video Social Bookmarking in Plain English very useful in explaining to me how it worked and how to get the best out of it.

Thing 9

Hopefully now I will be fully caught up! For this exercise I searched for library related material using the suggested sites and kept it vague to see what reults would show up. Bloglines search results were very unclear but covered all matters to do with the subject, matching feeds were excellent and a useful idea. Feedster was down for an upgrade, promising to be better than ever so I'm all excited about that:P
Topix wasn't very user friendly at all, hard to narrow down the search results. I liked syndic8, the results were very clear and it was easy to use, I'd be happy to use it again! Technorati was very user friendly too and had comprehensive results.

Thing 6 Mashups etc

Phew getting there now! I finally got around to doing this task. I had a lot of fun playing with the generators on the "Big Huge Labs" site, using some family photos and seeing what badges, magazine covers etc I could come up with. The one I like best was the Andy Warhol generator. That result turned out quite amusingly and I like that you could shuffle the images too if you didn't like the order. I have posted my result here.

Thing 7 Technology

Technology- it's really changing the way we do things and what we can do. For example, I love itunes and my ipod. I have over 4000 songs. The huge difference it makes can be illustrated by my 21st birthday (2003) and my birthday this year. At my 21st, I had to select CDs and remember to change them over. Not able to give much of a random selection. At my last birthday, I hooked up a USB transmitter to my laptop and programmed a list on itunes with 6 hours of assorted music. This played through my stereo as the transmitter has it's own frequency of 107FM. Funny how a few small technological advances can make such a huge change! It's even the same stereo...

Library Thing linkup

Week 5/Thing 10

This exercise I looked firstly at Librarything which I thought was really good, I entered in a couple of books I had read recently. From here I was able to view the reading lists of others who had enjoyed the same books. What great idea and so simple. Wish I though of that....
I also had a look at the image generator which was very fun. I thought this exercise was a lot of fun too and I had fun making a whole army of Che Guevaras! Unfortunately they didn't all fit right so I tried another which was the image reflector. Nice simple picture but quite a good effect.

Week 4

RSS feeds. This exercise was not too difficult, just a lot of copying and pasting between the sites and bloglines. I have created a Blogline account and have added 10 feeds to it. Mostly I added feeds from newspaper websites but I also added "ACL Learning 2.0" and a library cartoon site. I can see the potential with this service for people in a hurry that need to keep posted on particular news items. I don't think I'll be using it too much in my current situation though.
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/budnz82

Thing 5/Week 3

Bright albert park
Originally uploaded by Budnz82

This is my picture that I have uploaded onto Flickr. I have found Flickr quite easy to use and it's interesting looking at other material people have posted. For example I found other pics of Albert Park. I also searched ACL Learning 2.0 in the TAGS section and it turned up 4 photos. I really liked the "Organizr" feature, it was quite intuitive. The tags are quite a good way to search too and would probably be a good way for customers to search if they aren't familiar with database searches.

Facebook

Just had to post a postscript to my last entry I tried out Facebook on my home computer and I LOVE it! So easy to use and I have lots of friends/family/colleagues on there so I've been catching up with people I haven't spoken to for ages! The feature where it can search your mailboxes for contacts is very helpful. I think I'll be a Facebook advocate from now on :-)

Week Two/Thing Four

Ok so this task didn't go too well. Our team had time booked for doing this and three of our esteemed folk were away doing various things, unfortunately they were the ones with prior experience. So with the blind leading the blind and using some very slow computers we didn't manage to complete the exercise. The computers upstairs were not up to the job and took 10 minutes just to load Bebo. They also didn't have the correct version of flashplayer so would not display correctly. I did have a look at Bebo, Facebook and Myspace. I signed up for Bebo, which I thought was aimed more at kids and seemed a bit unfriendly to new users. I liked Facebook, it was quite intuiative. Myspace was interesting and I'll definitely be looking on there in the future, especially for bands etc. I'm going to have another go at completing this exercise but I'll do it at home because my home computer is faster!

Blog...

I'm setting this up as a traning exercise for work, an interesting task and surely much better than most other such activities. In case anyone is interested my quote came from James Dean. Not too sure what I'm going to post but hey I'll try to make it interesting for readers (not to mention moi!). Today being Tuesday is the beginning of my week and it's had a good start. Myself and a colleague received awards for our work with digital photography. Let's hope the rest of the week continues in that vein...