#14 Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

mmmmm ok so Technorati gives some order to the millions of blogs out there but after repeated attempts it would not take mine:-(
The number of blogs and the speed at which they are multiplying is amazing.......information overload......I imagine that is why applications such as this are so popular.......an attempt at creating some order to this new world.

Technorati take 2

Technorati Profile

Technorati

Technorati Profile

#13 Tagging, folksonomies and social bookmarking in Del.icio.au

I am impressed! what a tool! I love tagging, it makes so much sense and it is fun and it makes the system work for you, the individual.

I can see that Del.icio.us would be an absolute boon on the reference desk. A Del.icio.us account could be set up for the library with all the suitable and most requested sites added and tagged. A wonderful resource.

I have yet to understand the social implications but i was interested to see who had also added some of my bookmarks.

Love it:-)

#12 Roll your own search engine with Rollyo

mmmm not sure about Rollyo....I set up my own search engine related to the travels of my children in South American. I did think you needed add all the websites that your Rollyo account could search but discovered it can search the net for items relevant to your search engine........i am not convinced i will use this application but i imagine it warrants future investigation.

As for adding my search roll to my blog?......i throw my hands up in dispair......where on earth is my "add and arrange page elements" button on my blog dashboard?

#11 All about library thing

Library thing is addictive. A very interesting application where you can post your books and have links to reviews and statistics about your books....you can be linked to other people who have read your books and the site makes suggestions about future reading based on your enteries. It is fascinating to see how many people share your tastes. I found a number of my books have not been added by anyone so I feel rather exclusive:-) Take a look at my library......I have only included books i have read in the past 6 months.

http://www.librarything.com/home/ladywriter59

Kingston Libraries in Melbourne's bayside suburbs has library thing built into their catalogue, allowing patrons to find new books by similar authors or similar topics. When you add your books you "tag" the books with words you find relevant and "tag clouds" which are groups of topic labels people have given the books are generated. You can use tags to find books that you maybe interested in.

Take a look at how Library thing works at Kingston Libraries at:http://203.2.224.13/amlibweb/webquery.dll

The Kingston Online Catalogue is enhanced by LibraryThing to help you find books that interest you. To find out more information speak to a member of staff or visit our LibraryThing page.

#10 Play around with image generators

Image generators seem like lots of fun .....I looked at three possiblities

The generator Blog was a collection of image generators people have discovered

http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/

on this site I created a map of my children's travels

On a site called FD Toys http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ I made an "Warhol" effect to a photo of me....heart your heart out Marilyn:-) http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/warholizer.php

And finally at this site I made a blog header http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/blogheader.php

I think the FD Toys seems like the one I would use most...it seems to be linked to flickr.com which is fast becomming a favourite site of mine. Another site I looked at was Letter James but it seemed to be for ordering commericial applications with your photos......useful but maybe later on.http://www.letterjames.com/start.php?mod=image-personalization

#9 Finding feeds

I had a look around the feed searching applications. Feedster is unavailable with a "watch this space" for developments on their site. Google blog search seemed to search for blogs which I am not really interested in at this stage....I was looking more for feeds to news sources and update services for organisations I like to follow.

I subscribed to ERL's what's new feed.

I found feeds to my children's flickr sites.

I found an number of library related sites with feeds. In all I now have 13 feeds.

I think the way I like best of finding feeds is to find the RSS icon on a site I like and simply click on it to add it to my bloglines account.

The addtional activity of looking and subscribing to Ebscohost's ANZ resource centre was fascinting ...this is a very impressive database with some wonderful features. I subscribed to a feed from The Age newspaper but i am wondering what this will entail. Will i discover the whole Age in my bloglines in box? or selected articles? I will look into subscribing to some other serial titles in the future.

I am wondering why some websites do not have feed subscribtions....i was hoping to subscribe to the Melbourne Writer's Festival website but they do not have a feed application. You need to subscribe to an email posting list. I am wondering if email posting lists are just an old fashioned way of keeping your audience informed? I believe you can cut and paste URL's to see if you can add them to bloglines but in this case it did not work.

I still have to discover how to organise my feeds into something managable.....i take it you can use folders and create order in this manner.

#8 really simple feeds with RSS

Phew!!!! well I think i have mastered RSS feeds but not without tearing out my hair in the process. I have subscribed to a few feeds .....the state library employment page......who knows i might land myself a job:-) I can see this will be very interesting and very useful. I am looking forward to seeing just what is on offer although i think managing your feeds might become and issue. I think i will become selective about just what i subscribe to as there are only so many hours in a day to read. The importance of keeping a log of user names and passwords became glaringly obivious during this exercise as i struggled to remember the user name i signed up to bloglines with.....i wasted at least two hours playing around and even had to create a new account to get around the problem.

Click here to see my blogline subscribtions to RSS feeds

http://www.bloglines.com/public/lady-writer

#7 technology

I had to fill in a survey of the IT services and resources in our library for my technician's course and was surprised to find there any many forms of technology the library has yet to embrace.

We have

DVD's
CDRoms
Ebooks....well do we? online we have something that passes for ebooks
Online databases
Internet access for patrons
email questions to staff
links to websites in catalogue
PC computers for patrons
printing
USB port access
emails to patrons
training for IT equipment
Microsoft office
blog
wiki
discussion forum ...mmm do we?
RSS reader on website.....have to check on this one

We do not have

BluRay videos
SMS messaging to patrons
headphones for computers
self check
RFID
computer booking system
Apple computers for patrons
scanning
DVD-RW drives
DVD drives
DVD-Rom drives
digital cameras
digital video cameras
DVD player
chat, instant messaging
video streaming
pod casts
patron contribution to catalogue
second life presence
Social network page

There is so much to learn and new things happening everyday......how will i ever get to be technologically savvy? I heard someone say once that young people are technological natives and us older ones are technological immigrants....rings very true

#6 more fun with flickr

My creation
Originally uploaded by lady_writer

i have spent some time fiddling around with flickr.....i explored mashups which i believe are the use of application programming interfaces to create third party tools (what did i just say?:-)). People have created mashups that use flickr as a base. Some of these are "mappr" which is putting pictures on maps and "flickr color pickr" that finds flickr pics that are specific colours.
I used a tool called "trading cards" to produce the card shown here.

#5 Discovering Flickr

Tiny Tave
Originally uploaded by Octavia_Helena

This is my daughter in Boliva on a salt flats tour.......she posted this picture on her flickr page and i thought she was at the snow.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

#2 Starting a blog

I have finally started Learning 2.0. Months behind everyone else but hey.......better late than never. I am going to become very educated in my web use now and learn all sorts of fancy tricks.