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.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
#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.
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.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
#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.
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.
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.
Friday, December 4, 2009
#12 Flickr
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).
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
#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:
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