Task 23 Summary!

this is such a cleverly designed program - the information in each task builds on that in the previous task, and while I found some of the material in weeks 1-7 (up to the rss feeds bit) to be really very time consuming indeed, after that it became easier and I think the functions / tools featured in the last half of the program are definitely more 'high end' and useful to me personally & professionally than some of those in the earlier part of the program.
In my own case, i don't have up to date pc equipment at home, so it was quite a task fitting it in at work. I also don't have a digital camera or lots of the other technological gizmo's that would enable greater access to some of these products. That got me thinking about how there is really becoming a divide between the 'haves' and 'havenots' in technology terms, and how libraries traditionally try hard to place themselves as a provider to those who may not have great technology access. It seems that these days (in my experience) there are also greater expectations from people who actually 'have' got good technology access at home - they also expect that we will be able to provide them with the latest and greatest materials that will complement their own equipment - such as downloads and mp3's for loan and the like. I think this also places an extra demand on library staff - on a typical day we could work with a customer who had not even used a mouse much, right through to someone who had high expectations of technology access and provision - and they do expect us to know the answers to all their questions! it may be that in 12 months time (or less) we will all need a '23 things' update! congratulations to all those responsible for this program.

task 22 - e books

the gutenberg site is just a bit cluttered and hard to manage for my liking, but there's certainly some great content there, and a number of titles that I would enjoy listening to. I don't have an mp3 player so it was all a bit academic really. I was not actually able to listen to anything, but I know if i had the right gear it would be pretty easy. there was one (a louisa may alcott story) that i tried to access, but it was agonisingly slow so i gave it away. I personally really enjoy talking books on cd (in the car), and can see that if I got into mp3 technology (or similar) that I'd really get a lot of it, and so would library patrons. the idea of the access 'expiring' after a given period of time is certainly enticing.

task 21 Podcasts

Actually found the podcast directories to be not wonderfully user friendly, and one of them had no links older than 2006? - Because I'm doing this task in a bit of a hurry I didn't really try very hard with the directories, and will have a look later. I decided instead to just go to the radio national website, and look for some of their really good book shows, and they have a great link to all their podcasts by topic. I'm a bit of a phillip adams 'late night live' fan as well, so have put the rss feed for LNL and for the 'book show' onto my bloglines account. I'm often sewing while i'm listening to LNL and sometimes it's not a good combination - I've had to rip out seams more than once! Now I could download the podcast and listen to it whenever i feel like it. Libraries could download interviews with authors, (or lots of other technology / cultural material) for broadcast, (if legal or course!) or link to podcasts of relevant topics from their homepages.

task #20 you tube

I was looking forward to this one because i particularly wanted to see the video of the arnhem land dancers and their interpretation of 'zorba' - I loved it, and was able to see other peoples comments and reactions to it. as always, opinions are divided, but of course mine is the right one! I can see that you tube could perhaps become a bit of a messy screen, but if you have particular interests or topics to pursue or share, you would be able to get straight to what you want with relative ease.

Task 17 (just working backwards for a change!)

finally got my blog into the sandbox - did not realise that the password was in front of my eyes the whole time! it's interesting to see how many zillions of people have participated in this program.

task 19

Backpackit - that's the answer to all my prayers - no wonder it was a 2.0 award winner. I'm going to investigate the calendar sharing option. I'm going to sign up, use the calendar for work purposes and then share it with the people in my team and my supervisor, so they know my whereabouts and shift times. I've been mucking about with publisher calendars and 'word' templates and they've been a total pain to share with other people. Yet another thing that we all wanted but needed someone with the knowledge to actually 'build'. post script - I went into it a few days later and it would be tremendous but I need to pay for it (dammit!)

Task 18

zoho writer - now here's something really, really useful! Just what we've all been imagining the web should be able to do if only someone would sort it out for the rest of us - and they have! I think I'll most likely use this - the idea of being able to email files / save files without having to worry about protocols and suffixes and all that tedious stuff is a great relief.

week 7 task 16

wiki's - I had not previously understood that previous versions of wiki entries can be 'retrieved' and viewed. This would be useful for authentication or verification purposes. I noticed also that the link to the book related wiki (can't remember the link, but it's on the 23 things list) - may well have had a different 'user-driven' content than what a 'list of books' or 'list of reviews' may have had if it was just mounted on the web by library staff members. I noticed, for example, that there were a great deal of reviews (over 50) for non-fiction titles, and 57 or so for 'contemporary' fiction titles - this is a lot more reviews than were posted for other categories such as 'romance', 'mystery' and the like (allegedly 'traditional' public library fodder). There was also a lot for 'biography & memoir'. I wonder if library staff would have predicted this outcome if they had been the 'fat controllers' of the wiki and its content?

week 6 task #14 & #15

technorati

I guess it's an incredibly brave move to try and tag or organise in any way the great 'soup' of blog posts out there - which probably explains why the 'blog post' search mechanism sends back some very broad and amorphous results! - it will be interesting to see if the specificity improves in time. Searching for whole blogs (rather than posts) and videos and photo's is useful, and reasonably easy to use.

perspectives on web 2.0 - I personally like the idea of 'giving them what they want' which seems to be a library 2.0 philosophy - and I can cope with the idea that the technology we harness will just 'morph' almost daily. We just need to get over the idea that we have to be 'in control' of everything. The trick will be remembering to accommodate those patrons who like the status quo as it is - and who want to get old-fashioned stuff like books!

week 6 task 13

now i see how this tool /lesson is building on the stuff in the previous tasks. I may personally not have found rollyo to be all that useful, but I can definitely see wide applications for delicious. It would be good for personal interests (such as crafts / hobbies etc.), for study and research interests, and also relevant work related sites. I looked at some crochet site links from other peoples tags - and found some good links to patterns. This may have taken ages to trawl through google or similar to find them. I also found some interesting library reader development stuff which I have an interest in.

week 5 task 12 rollyo

not entirely excited by rollyo. it would be useful I suppose if you did really need to collect your favourite sites on any given topic. it seems to me that there are probably other tools that do it better. years ago I remember reading an article which suggested that trying to catalogue the internet would be like 'pinning jelly to the wall'. rollyo (and the like) enable us to pin our own personally relevant jelly to the wall - to a degree - which is good. I would probably use it to create my own particular search rolls, but would not necessarily look at anyone else's search rolls.

later on in the week

I had another think about this, and it would be useful to put all your job searching sites in together (or something like that) - I'd previously thought bloglines would be good for this, but I'm now a bit confused about the whole thing!

Week 5 task 11

Really, really enjoyed ' library thing' - and think it would be good to do an in library demo for booklovers - as well as an in-library demo for people to look at 'bookcrossing' - which is a site where you can 'release' books into the wild, and trace their progress as they journey around the world. One of the books i added to my 'library thing' catalogue is a cookbook from 1924 - 'ida Bailey Allens Modern Cook book : 2500 recipes'. I own a copy of this book, purchased in a south gippsland junk shop, and i use it from time to time and it lives permanently on my bedside table. (yes - I know that's a little weird). Next time I go into library thing I must see if there's any other groups or readers who appreciate the wisdom of ida Bailey Allen

Week 5 Task 10 -

I've had a look at a few image & text generators, but didn't really find much that I found even mildly titillating! I thought a Douglas Adams quote generator might be fun, and likewise a 'jargon generator' but I found them a bit puerile - I probably just need to muck around with a few others until I find something suitably warped that i might enjoy. The dummies cover opposite was generated using dummiez book cover maker 2007

Week 4 - tasks 8 & 9

Got the bloglines account and adding feeds thing sorted - but needed to offer a few unladylike words to assist in the process. I've added a few personal interest feeds, and some library related feeds. On reflection, I think a newsreader account would be really useful if an individual was job hunting, ( library staff member or a member of the public) You could assemble all your job hunting sites (those with applicable feeds at least) into the one place, and it would make checking them heaps easier. In a library sense, blogs are good for upcoming events and programs, and i think they could be useful for library supported book clubs as well. there's a directory of australian blogs, which was interesting to look at. There's something a little 'out there' and 'organic' about a lot of people's interest / hobby blogs - and I find this appealing.

http://www.wgrlc.vic.gov.au

Week #3 task 7 - technology post

What interests me about technology, is conveying 'how stuff works' to other people, because it's an exercise in appreciating different learning styles. Some folk need to know in-depth how technology works, others just need to know enough to 'get what they want'. In a previous library job, we had a program called 'L-Web' which was basically a drop-in style of public program, where we showed customers the basic fundamentals of the web - just the very basics of searching and navigating around a google page, or similar. I found the best way to start was to ask people what they were interested in - what they wanted to find out from the Internet. If people had a particular topic, such as real estate, selling or buying cars or household items, or planning a holiday, it was much easier for them to focus on their personal area of interest.
In one of my first library jobs, in an advertising agency, we were using 'dialog' and 'aussienet' (way before the internet as we know it now), and only the select few were allowed to access these tools. I was at work on the day that Chernobyl happened, and we read it first on dialog.
I remember also, being in the city at SLV for training, on 9/11 - you could not buy a newspaper in the whole of Melbourne - they were all gone. People did not really 'believe' it until they had read it in the paper. When the beaconsfield mine disaster happened, I didn't try to find a newspaper, I just went straight to the Internet to see what was happening.

Week #3 task 6 - more flickr

I chose to look at some of the flickr mashups / links and found one called 'palette organiser' (don't ask me how I found it!). It looked like it might be good for anyone who does scrapbooking, or similar crafts, because you could upload a photo and then palette organiser suggests appropriate colours which may complement your work. I am a big sewer (the English language really is hard to get on with sometimes - I mean that I do a lot of sewing!) so I could probably use this program (or similar) to determine which colours of fabrics complement others. I'm a little wary of some of these 'rules' about what colours go with others, but it could still be fun.

I also had a look at 'retrievr' which allows you to sketch a small picture in a retrieval box, and see if flickr can retrieve similar images. It's very experimental, and started to get a little surreal, as I drew in a picture of a smiley face, and it found a miserable face with tears!

I had a look at the librarian tradingcards too, but got a bit confused as I couldn't work out what you actually do with them?

Warneet Pier on Flickr - Photo Sharing! week #3 task 5

Warneet Pier on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

For learning task no 3, I am really unsure about the etiquette of just 'lifting' a photo from flickr, so presumably just having this link to it will enable people to see who the photographer is / or who provided it?? the picture featured is similar to the view I see on my regular walks, although I note there are no thick clouds of mossies in the picture. I don't have a digital camera yet, but will have to make the leap fairly soon, as my old Ricoh is about to celebrate its 27th birthday. I'm sure it will get very grumpy when it sees the new fangled replacement.

Late Starter - week #3

I went to a pony race at a country race course, some years ago, and put money on the only horse that did not get away from the gate until well after the rest of the field. He was late out because he was busy sorting himself out and getting organsied and making sure he looked gorgeous. Once out, he had to go like crazy to catch up to the rest of the field. I feel a little like that horse, with regard to this learning 2.0 exercise, because the rest of the field is way ahead and I will have to go like crazy to catch up.