Thoughts on the blog.

All in all this exercise was a great eye-opening, mind expanding exercise. I feel a bit disappointed I didn't complete the tasks in the given time however for some reason I thought it was going to be an hour a week and it turned out sometimes to be quite a bit more than that - time I didn't always have.

Many of the tasks I also could have spent more time on and I know that I will need to revisit them to keep informed - I don't want to forget all that I have discovered in the past 10 weeks or so.

One thing which stood out for me as being very useful is the free online productivity tools. The people in the library often need to do their CV's or other correspondence and if they want to store the information online rather than on an external device this would be a good option for them. There have been problems lately with the computers crashing and losing information - this would alleviate that problem !

So thanks for the opportunity and help in discovering many great new tools - I now need to help some other people to also discover them.

Onwards...................

You Tube, podcasts, eBooks, eAudiobooks and Downloadable Media.

Thanks I enjoyed the walk down memory lane with some Fred Dagg !!

My kids are on You Tube quite a bit watching music videos, Bindi the jungle girl, soccer videos..the list goes on.

I had a look at a few podcasts - Podcasts New Zealand, Radio Nz podcasts and PodcastAlley.com - decided to have a more indepth look at the i-tunes podcasts as that's what is on my computer. Was great - lots of stuff for me and the kids. I'll definitely use this tool again and it's great as all the podcasts in i-tunes are free.

The next task was looking at eBooks etc. Wow that was cool. I was aware there were eBooks but didn't realise there were so many different ways that people can access them, including such things as the "kindle" digital book reader. It sure would be good for travelers so they wouldn't have to carry books or even have the difficulty of finding them in their own language.

There were some good sites showing the 10 best places to get free books - also a useful thing to know.The Net Library was currently unavailable however i will visit it at a later date.

Thats it for week 9 !

Online wordprocessing and spreadsheet tools.

Was great to have a go on Zoho writer and especially liked the fact that you could easily insert tables photo's and my favourite was the watermark feature !

Think these online tools are great because as things are saved online you can check them from different computers and don't have to worry about the different software versions that may or may not be available.

Also a good use is that you can have multiple users who can edit the same file.

I then had a look at the short list for the Web 2.0 awards list and had a browse of the following sites. Lulu, Google docs - liked the look of the family budget planner, My Heritage and I'm cooked - could have used the hot cross bun recipe ; will keep that for next year.

It's great to have these lists of the most popular because there is so much information out there that I like to look at the best sites and not waste all my time trying to find out where to go !

Managed to add myself to the favourite blog page on ACL PB Wiki. Fell like I'm finally getting through this Web learning programme !

Onwards to the next task

Week 7 Wiki's.

I was really pleased to see the ACL training and development wiki and I will be visiting it again.Was also pleased that it had a tutorial on databases and eResources-I will find this very useful and I noticed that other people do to looking at the recent activity. Wiki's are a great way for many people to share knowledge, brainstorm ideas, create and design an encyclopedia of knowledge.

I liked the Library success - a best practices wiki and it was great to see what other libraries are up to.The SJCPL wiki was also interesting and they had many applications - all of which would work well in libraries. eg history, local events, info on education, sports activities, book clubs....the list goes on.

Tagging del.icio.us andTechnorati

I'm still here,just got carried away with the other life ! I can see that having Del.icio.us as a tool would be good to keep track of your personal favorites. These mechanisms are all really good for people who are moving about and use different computers - like our patrons in the library or travelers. I was interested to see that the tags described the bookmarks so then i could look up the tag and see what else was related to that subject. Looked up howto and photography - it means that you would find things that maybe you wouldn't have found before !

I hadn't heard of Technorati before but it's a search engine to search blogs ! Tags are used to help categorise the search so you can check out other blogs with similar tags ; there's that time factor again - I can see how people get lost in their computers !!

The next thing i looked at was :

Web 2.0 and the Future of Libraries

• Email
• Favorite
• Download
• More…

• Twitter
• Facebook
• Buzz
• WordPress
• Blogger
• more »

I think the web is amazing and you can just add things here and there..............however there is a little bit of an information overload at times and even though you can get so much from the web people still will need the human interface and real books they can take home and know that the information they are getting is well studied and correct.

It will be important for libraries to keep up with innovations and what's happening on the web as well as the other ways of sourcing information. More importantly it will be important for us to know where to get accurate information as it seems everyone can put things on the web for all to see however sometimes things are opinions rather that fact.

Times are changing and so is the way we source information - it will be interesting to see in the future how libraries operate - we are changing with the times : computers and now wireless available free of charge...........who knows what the future will bring ?

0

Rollyo

Well I'm sure this must be very good when it's up and running but I've tried a few times to get some info on it and both times have got the message that "Rollyo is(again sorry) it's undergoing some much needed maintenance..............will leave them to it I think and get on with the next task at hand !!!

Twitter and Library thing

If only I had more time in a day - Not sure what I'd start with but a whole new world is opening up !!

Twitter is great but it would take me all day to look up all the things I'm interested in !! Neat to get all the comments from other people and new ideas.

Library thing is also a great engine. I looked up a chick lit author I'd enjoyed reading over the holidays (Claudia Carrol) and was neat to be able to see what others thought of it, other books she'd read and also different authors who may interest me. This is a great thing for people looking for similar type authors or books to read when they've read all from a particular one they like.

Another thing I like about it is that you can see the different covers the book has had - interesting to see how they are different around the world !

Popular covers

Maybe when I have a little more time I might try to get one of the free advance copies of a book in return for a review - very good idea for book-lovers and helpful for the publishers to get a feel for how the book is going to go !

RSS feeds and library related blogs

Generally this is a good idea but i found that there was a bit of an overload of information !

I set up a google reader and bloglines account and looked into related feeds - libraries, movies weather and book news and author interviews.

It's very easy to set up feeds from gmail and also to remove feeds which is good as I like to keep the extra's to a minimum. I seemed to get a lot of extra emails with updates which I just had to get rid of - all takes time !

I will look into this some more however at this stage I think I prefer to use my bookmarks on the computer for my favourite sites.

I can see for people who don't have their own computer and work through their e-mail accounts on the library computers that this could be a good idea.

I did prefer the postage stamp option in picnik however I would have to upgrade for that and didn't want to. I can see these image generators are pretty cool for people who want to edit photo's but don't want to pay heaps of money for things like photoshop. I will definitely recommend them to people at the library and also have another look myself for more options in the future. Glad to have finally got myself to achieve this task as it took a wee while to get here !! Onwards to RSS and Newsreaders.....................

tranquility Success !! Managed to play around with my photo on Picnik through flicka - pretty much tried everything: especially liked that I could make my horizon level and also sharpened my image a bit as well as changing some colours. Was good to see a video and learn what mashups are so I knew that I was using one ! Anyway I don't know if the image looks better but it looks different and it was fun doing it !

The trouble with Flickr !

Well I've spent quite a lot of time setting up a flickr account, having first to have a yahoo address , disabling my cookies (whatever they were !) then getting started.

I've now my own account and have downloaded my first photo however I don't seem to be able to find the edit photo area in the flickr website - it doesn't even show up in the help area. What have I missed ?

I do love looking at other peoples photo's as I am a very keen photographer - great to see what other people are up to.At this stage I am an i-photo, photoshop girl so would be keen to see what flickr has to offer in comparison in their editing - help !

This is my original image - thought I might make the sky a different colour to see how that looked. Just for fun !

So looking forward to hearing if I've missed something very obvious. Cheers

myspace link

Hi again.

A few months back ladyhawke came to NZ and I hadn't heard of her. I looked her up on the computer and found her myspace website. Thought it was quite good the way she put comments up for her fans - telling them what she was up to and how she felt etc.

Was able to listen to her music and see what it was like - have had her CD out a few times from the library now and quite like it !!

Here's the link up if you're interested !

http://www.myspace.com/ladyhawkerock

Bebo, My Space and Facebook

fritz.stummel said...

So this week I've had a look at Bebo ,My Space and Facebook. They're great tools for people wanting to get info. out there to lots of people - people they may know or not !!
eg. think it's great for bands to put info. about themselves up and that people can give them feedback - sort of like a fan-club.
The personal ones were interesting to look at however I wasn't tempted at this stage to open up an account of my own. I looked at a friends Facebook account and could go from there to see what her mates where up to as well as search out a few people I knew.
They are very popular with the younger generation however I prefer to remain in my happy relatively private world - perhaps just because that's how I grew up - not every one knowing what you were up to all the time !

Got it ! My own blog

Saturday morning 8.40am - should really be icing my 4 year olds birthday cake !

Setting up the e-mail was very easy but can't say the same about my blog!

Anyway here's my first one up and running so looking forward to learning some new tricks.

Better get ready for the fun and games (party at 11am- for 5 little girls and 1 little guy - the lucky cousin)