#17 Organise yourself with Delicious

Delicious, a social bookmarking sight is like many great things both simple and complex. At the simple level it is like Googledocs for "Favourites". This in itself is not to be underestimated as a feature. If you do not have access to your own PC, say if you are on holiday, Delicious can allow you to keep up with your favourite sites (if you are not RSS feeding them) without having to remember, write down or google the URLs. A time saver we can all agree.
As you dig deeper however, you find more. By tagging your favourites, you can see who else on delicious has also tagged that site and also what else they have tagged it as and what other sites they have tagged with the same words. This can lead to wonderful discoveries of similiar sites you may not have previously encountered but you wish you had, or if you are simply cruising the web to play six degrees of separation and see where the other tags take you.
Mmm, delicious.

#16 Subscribing to some blogs (RSS feeds part 2)

As alluded to above I tried and shied away from subscribing to a news service, being as I am a skimmer of news rather than a devourer of every scrap. Most newspapers offer 'latest news feeds', but who reads every little thing? Instead I went in search of some blogs or columns of interest. Two sites I visit for my sports fix provided a contrast. www.theworldgame.com.au, SBS's soccer site offered only a feed 'subscribe to world game blogs'. Of these there are many and I only wanted one in particular. Bogus. www.cricinfo.com on the other hand, a leading cricket news site had a link which explained their various feeds and in addition to an array of options for latest news either global, for a particular country or even player, also allowed you to subscribe to all their blogs as a whole or any individual one. Excellent.
So I did, and now Google reader happily feeds me the Ask Steven column in which people ask cricketing questions of a quirky statistical nature and they are answered, all of which I find to be of interest.
A similar question of narrowing down feeds also occured in a comparison of the two leading Melbourne newspapers. The Age, sadly again offered only general feeds, while the Herald Sun, is an inferior paper with superior feeds. So my experiences backed up my previous comments in post #15. However I am very confident that as this technology becomes more widely known and utilised this problem will begin to disappear.

#15 RSS Feeds

Really Simple Syndication is purportedly what RSS stands for, although my experience of using it via google reader has only been Relatively simple. It is a very handy technology for keeping up with your special interests, news services and the like. However I have found it to be a source of information overload. If you subscribe to a very frequently updated feed, you can find yourself innundated with updates to read. The internet is such a vast and ever changing realm of information that I find it almost immpossible to keep up with everything, even if you whittle it down through RSS. In these circumstances if you are on a limited usage Internet plan, undiscriminating use of RSS could be quite a drain. So it has limitations for news sites, but is excellent for following columnists and bloggers. With RSS you can get all your favourites (such as AJ25'sMusings) as soon as they post and need never miss a column or go trawling through blog archives again.

#14 Facebook

Social Networking Part 2: Facebook.
Facebook is now the most popular Social networking site on the web with teeming multitudes of users, a gi-normous 50% of whom are claimed to log on daily (ah the irony, social networking at the cost of a social life). This maybe because of the array of options one has about showing ones self to the world - my birthday? my age? my marital status? political views? Who should I show them to? Friends? Friends of friends? Everyone? Unlike the shameless display of MySpace, Facebook allows you to be quite cagey about who you meet, reclusive even, so that you need only have contact with people online that you actually know. It is also quite easy to search for people you know through your email address book and people you used to know by which school you went to (He's married? To her? No way).
So, the verdict. If you are looking for a social network to catch up with people you already know, Facebook wins hands down. It has more members and its variety of settings gives the impression of greater control over who sees (or reads) what. If on the other hand, (I told you I like to sit on the fence) you are a business or corporation of some kind looking for a promotional tool, something anyone can come along and get involved with MySpace is a better bet. In conclusion Facebook = individual, MySpace = Community. Until next time, AJ25 out.

#13 My Space

Hello readers, I am by nature a person who prefers to avoid controversy, I always seek to find a balanced even-handed perspective and strike a consensus. But this week I have no choice but to weigh in to one of the great questions of our age: MySpace or Facebook? This post is part one: MySpace.
MySpace was before the advent of facebook the pre-eminent social networking website. It allows you to post some information about yourself, what you have been doing, what you are planning to do. You can also post some pictures, links to audio and video. It is in general a good way to advertise yourself, or your business, library etc. I feel that MySpace does lend itself in particular to use as a billboard for events. Our library and others do have a MySpace prescence, many targeted at the youth demographic in particular with library info mixed in with content about local up and coming bands and events. It has proven an effective package, but is it a match for facebook? Find out next post.

#12 Flickr

Hot Air Balloon Cappodocia-between valleys, originally uploaded by deryacc.

Looks rather pleasant doesn't it? This photo, which was posted on Flickr by one "deryacc" is entitled "Hot Air Balloon Cappodocia-between valleys". I have always had a great desire to travel to this unique region of Turkey and drift across its surreal landscapes. But alas, for now pictures and dreams will have to do. Flickr is a great site because it allows people to show off their great skills as photograhers or just show off themselves when otherwise they would have no chance to do so. Flickr is also very user friendly both when setting up an account and navigating the site. The main drawback is finding a yahoo account name that isn't taken already. (tip: "this id is not valid" and "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" and variations thereof are already taken).

#11 Library Thing

Greetings once again reader! Ever since I started working at the Library I have slowly been noticing changes in myself. My room is more orderly, my clothes are folded and put away, my DVD collection is alphabetised by title. Ironically though due to ever decreasing space as my collection increases my books have defied this new found mania for order. No more! Library Thing allows me to impose an order on my unruly collection which I could physically never attain. I found it quite addictive, first I added three books, then three more, now a dozen. All are displayed with a picture of the cover, general title/author information and a rating (although this is less helpful than it sounds, obviously if you own a book you are probably going to rate it pretty highly) along with a display noting how many other members own this book and how many reviews there are for it. You can then click on the authors name and see a list of all their works, with a nice big tick next to the ones on your shelf. You can also see which other members libraries have most titles in common with yours. I discovered one person who shared four of the twelve books I had loaded. I then snooped into their collection and discovered many more titles of theirs that either I own or have read. I loved playing around with this site, the only drawback is you can only add two-hundred titles before you have to pay. I do not know how many books I own but it must be rapidly approaching this limit. Only one way to find out . . .

#10 Image Generators

Hello Reader, if you like my mockery of my machine and would like to share your own rapier wit with the world you can do so at www.ComicStripGenerator.com . The process is relatively simple. First upload an image or select one of the many on-site. Then, once selected an image can have text added and edited. And there you have it, you are as much a cartoonist as Gary Larson (but less amusing). While doing this it occured to me that my blog suffering from a small but steady number of followers (0) may benefit from a stronger brand image. So I used the site http://cooltext.com to customise and create:

Has my blog found its new logo? Will readership increase? Will my computer freeze just as I am almost finished? Stay tuned.

#9 Virtual Worlds

What can I say reader, about virtual worlds? Second life arguably the most prominent of the virtual world allows one to shop walk around, talk to others, much like real life except with whimsical graphics and the ability to fly. What I found most interesting was the rapidity with which the world has become commercialised, even to the extent of being able to convert U.S Dollars to the virtual "Linden Dollars" of second life and vice-versa. Institutions have also rapidly taken to second life with literal virtual classrooms. Mentioned in one of the YouTube videos was I think a somewhat unforeseen benefit of the site - learning another language by communicating with fellow learners and native speakers in 'everyday' situations. But be careful of the company you keep though, as you cannot practice pronunciation in a virtual world and the often short-handed abbreviated language of web speak may not be the best way to learn to write in any language.
C U L8r 4 Now. AJ25.

#8 iGoogle

Ah, iGoogle. Easy to learn, difficult to master. Create your own webpage in thirty seconds? Easy enough if you are not fussy. If on the other hand you are something of a perfectionist, are very discerning in terms of decor or simply don't care about american sports (College Basketball? Huh?), it may take some time to arrange things just so. Fortunately this is very easy to do with just a few clicks of the mouse. Colours, themes, clocks they're all there to be customised. They even have gadgets for the non-american if you look closely enough (Cricinfo - international cricket scores live! Much better).
I also had a look at some YouTube of how the employees of Google go about their business. It is different, but it works well for them. I certainly think my place of work would benefit from the google view on catering . . .

#5 Google Docs

Greetings once more readers, I have some splendid news for you. Not only is google docs an excellent way of avoiding complications with CDs, USBs or those pesky attachments. It allows you to create and store documents on-line and even better, upload files from whatever computer you happen to be on. But what I'm most happy about is that while I could not get the google docs 'Create new doc' page to load properly on a work computer, my ye olde PC managed it with ease! Ha!

#7 Google Book Search.

I must confess, usually I look for new books on Amazon if I wish to get them reserved for me at the library and I was unaware of the existance of google book search. Google has a number of advantages over amazon. Firstly, the screen is a lot less cluttered tham amazon and sticks to the basic info the average searcher is looking to extract - Basic publishing information, a 'blurb' and a few reviews (which may be more or less helpful, or contain spoilers, but I quibble because Amazon is the same). I particularly like the listing of all known different editions. Best of all though is the link "Find in a library" which will lead to the libraries australia site and list all libries, both public and university, which hold the item. There are drawbacks however. Firstly I could not discern any order in the results. Example I searched for one of my favourite authors Jose Saramago and was presented with a random collection of his works, which did not appear to be in any order, not chronological nor alphabetical. I also found no way of sorting the results a'la Amazon (I love to sort by publication date to find new and upcoming works). On the plus side I was able to track my favourite book from when I was in Prep, "William Tell" by Margaret Early, a retelling of the fable in 32 lavish pages illustrated in an illuminated manuscript style. Sadly I do not own the book, but now I know which libries do! In conclusion I will still be using Amazon to find new reading material, but if I know specifically what I am after, or an older title, Google Book Search is a useful resource which will give you most of what you need to know.

#6 Google Maps

I have just spent some time on the most excellent google maps. Maps and satellite pictures of everywhere in the city, and presumably as much of the world that they have been able to snoop. I was able to use the route planning to discover the quickest drive from my house to work is 4.5 km, yet the bus I catch takes a leisurely meander for 7.2km down backstreets taking twice as long! Even more amazing/disturbing is street view, where a picture, at street level is taken at every address and one can click and drag to walk down the street like a virtual tourist! (The picture of my house was taken sometime on a Wednesday morning as the recycling bin is out, if they'd let me know they were coming I would have mowed the lawn!). It is fun, but privacy campaigns must have convulsions, until next time AJ25 out.

#4 What is Web 2.0?

What is Web 2.0 I hear you ask? I confess I been somewhat vague in my earlier posts. But now having been shown the way to some articles online I can tell you some more about it and about how it relates to libraries. (Did I mention I work at a library?) Web 2.0 does not as is a common misconception relate to any particular advance in web technology but rather a different way of using existing technology in a new way. This new way is all about users of the internet sharing content online user to user rather than just using applications from a central source. This appears a very democratic system and the boundries of this new frontier are still blurry, allowing people on the web to share photos, blogs and music (not always with respect to copyrights or privacy). This is exciting for libraries because no longer do you just come to us for information (although we are happy for you to, of course!), but you can share information with us, or with other library users. Exciting times with endless possibilities in front of us!

P.S. Why is there no post for activity #3? No, not due to a superstition concerning the number 3 but because, this activity was named "Registering your Blog". I think that will suffice.

#2 Creating a blog

Dear Reader, I see you have returned to read of my further adventures in cyberspace today's post: creating a blog. Despite the rather odd word blog, they are actually rather easy to set up, requiring only an email address to create one at the blogspot on google. The hardest part was thinking of something to call my blog. Or as the case was, several things to call my blog after my initial choices were taken already (curses!). So now I have my own platform from which the world can here my voice (should they care to listen) and my musings . . . if only I could think of something worthwhile to say. After all nothing encourages meaningless babble like an open mike, so I think I will finish here for now. AJ out.

#1. About Learning 2.0

Welcome reader! This is an auspicious day, for you are present at the creation of a new blog, the start of a new journey as I discover the thrill of the YPRL Learning 2.0 23 things program. The program, over the coming weeks promises to take me through the world of 2.0 technologies, from google maps to flickr to the social pages of myspace and facebook. So sit back my friend, put on the kettle and through this blog follow my frustrations, laugh at my misfortune and (if by this stage you have not lost interest) my final (hopefully) triumph over the forces of technology, slow internet and a seven year old PC. Enjoy!