So much stuff out there!

I like the idea of One Sentence (http://www.onesentence.org/) - 2nd place winner in Fun Stuff - but found most of the one sentences very ornery. I use Google Maps a lot with great success - so was interested to see that it had 1st place in Mapping. Looked at Wayfaring - which was 2nd place in Mapping - but found in more clumsy than Google Maps maybe just cos I'm more used to Google Maps. Had a quick look @ Frappr (3rd in Mapping) - but seemed way to social for me at this point in time.... Got distracted and had to play Guess the Google (grant.robinson.name/projects/guess-the-google) 3rd place under Games - which was fun but was a bit disappointed they didn't tell you the answer for the ones you got incorrect.
Ran out of time to look at any more so didn't find any Library related stuff - but may come back - Lulu looked interesting...

Zoho, Zoho it's off to blog I go!

There is a huge advantage to having your documents online and being able to either work on them from various locations without transporting them (whether via e-mail, CD or memory stick), or to share them with colleagues who need access to the same document. This has already happened at work with a Google Spreadsheet being shared among staff to record in one location our donation figures from across the corporation's branches. I can see the value of this in other areas such as periodicals as well. I found the toolbars rather limiting at first - but then a lot of what I work with contains images or tables and importing these into Zoho from already existing documents didn't work that well - but there are always ways around these things...

Ochre Oasis

 

 

 

OCHRE OASIS.doc

 

I can definitely see the advantage of having documents online

and being able to work with them from various locations or sharing

them with other people who need access to the same document!

 

Sandy Wiki

I felt that the PBWiki gave good hands on experience as to what Wikis are all about and enabled me to get a feel on how to actually use and be able to edit one.

Wiktastic!

I think Wikis are great - in a controlled environment such as our library service they could be of extreme value in communication in general or in working on a special project, or for subject / autor lists. As we have staff in a number of different locations - seperated by considerable distance in some cases - to have a central document that can be revised and /or edited by anyone on the working party would be a bonus. I also feel that as we would generally be all working towards the same end in this we shouldn't suffer from many "edit wars" and have to go to arbitration as must be the case in bigger Wikis... (I also thought the Commoncraft video explained Wikis in a very clear and concise way...)

Libraries and invisible technology

I think it is time for public libraries to become more adventurous in the technological world, as I believe we need to be dynamic and remain at the forefront of technology and not slip behind. I think libraries as they are now could well fade away unless we metamorphose ourselves with Web 2.0 and have some of these technologies being incorporated within libraries in an integral and what may well be an invisible way.
However we can't just accept everything holus bolus, but will have to learn to step carefully between the technologies - willingly embracing ones which can help public libraries and the people who use them and rejecting the others.
Also technologies that are simple to use and explain are important - and they are the ones that I have seen as most beneficial in the Learning 2.0 training. I think technologies and printed books can co-exist - I believe it will be a long time before books as we know them disappear - but there will be other formats as well.

Ballooning Blogospheres

I found the whole idea of Technorati rather overwhelming. The simple fact that a tool like Technorati is needed to monitor the ballooning blogosphere is, to me, a scary thought. I have blogged about this before - but the fact that there are so many people out there just doing this is crazy. I found the searches to be rather limiting and again was disappointed with the lack of Australian material - it seemed to be predominately American. However I did "claim" my blog and played around with making a watchlist.
I can see that blogs can be a powerful office / company / business tool and Technorati would be very useful in maintaining these and keeping them current.

Fan.tast.ic!

I really like Del.icio.us! I have been really frustrated with my Bookmarks recently because I could never find the one I was after and have just re-organized them (on all three computers that I regularly use)! I also would often not bookmark a site I really liked because it just increased my list and I would probably never have found it again. Now with Del.icio.us and tagging I can bookmark as many sites as I want and still find them (on any computer!) as long as my tags are standardized.
The social sharing is also pretty good - as just after a quick peek at sites others had bookmarked I found similar sites that I would find of interest. To be explored in more depth another time!
And having the network badge on my blog makes it all just handy!

Rolling my own...

For this exercise I just added a few of my favourite websites to Rollyo - so I can choose to search one of them easily. However I can see the advantage to being able to search specific topics on specific sites and if the need arose I would spend the time creating subject searches in the areas I needed.

In True Librarian Style...

I have played around with Library Thing before - and think it is a very useful tool - which (someday when I have time!) I plan to take advantage of to order my own bookshelves.

Generating Images

I have always enjoyed playing around with images and text and can see the benefits in many of the image generators that I played with, however I also found them somewhat limiting as I couldn't always be as creative as I wanted to be when using them.
I thought the "put your message into a Bob Dylan video clip" was extremely clever and I finally came across a caricature generator which was rather fun - and I created the little bloke on the left. I have put a link to both of these generators in this blog. Also played around with the reflection maker and glitter text as can be seen by other additions to my blog.
I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of other generators out there and found most of them so amazingly pointless that even though I know it happens, I find it difficult to comprehend that not only do people create them, but that even more people use them and e-mail them to even more people.

Feeding Really Syndicated Simpletons

I came to this exercise knowing nothing about RSS feeds and struggled to understand what they actually were until I had joined Bloglines and was starting to add feeds. From there I suddenly clicked and realized their potential.
By far the toughest part of this exercise was linking Bloglines to my blog. However when I finally got the feeds to appear on my blog there was a definite sense of achievement.
In looking for feeds using search tools, I found Google Blog Search the one that was clearest to use and brought up the most relevant feeds for what I wanted at the moment. However, by far the easiest way initially was to go to known websites and locate the RSS link – from there it was easy…