Week 9 (#23)

Well I am at the end of the tunnel at last. It has been hard going this last week, I have been busy with other things and as I had plenty of time to finish I seem to have slowed down.
I have enjoyed the journey even though it seems to have taken alot of time most days. There are web sites that I will most likely not be visiting again but now have the knowledge of their existance. I have had my eyes opened as to the absolute vastness of the Web. I knew there was a lot of stuff out there but am amazed by just how much, and we have only really skimmed the surface I am sure. I have learned alot and feel much more knowledgable about the web in general. Now when peolple talk about things like blogs, wikis, podcasts, you tube, flickr and social networking I will not feel like an idiot.
So thank you for providing the opputunity to do this program and would willingly participate in any in the future.

Week 9 (#22)

Net Libary: This format might be useful for some people but it is not for me. I thought it would be useful for students as there seems to be a good selection of Cliffs notes and classic titles.

I like the idea of books on line and the fact that you can add to your favourites and make notes about each one, which would be good for students or if you are doing research.

Very little if any contemporary fiction which is what I like to read and I like to actually have a book with pages that I can turn. I find it hard going to read much more than a page worth of writing from a computer screen at the best of times let alone a whole book. Also I would not be able to curl up with a computer or take it to bed to read, (I would hate to wake up and find the computer lying on my face!!!)

Week 9 (#21)

Podcasts: Well I found these quite confusing and rather boring. I looked at Podcast.net first and found this site dull and hard to find anything interesting. Most of the podcast i found were old and out of date. Podcastalley was the better site and I couldn't make head nor tail out of Yahoo podcast. On podcastalley I found the Onion Radio News, which seems to be popular site, which contains unusual and weird news items. I have added the Onion News to my bloglines as well.

Week 9 (#20) You tube

I found You Tube interesting to look at and I can see understand why people spend hours looking at it. I wanted something cute and relavant, and as christmas is nearly upon us, and I really like the muppets, I thought this was appropriate.

My blog from Zoho!!!

Well here I am in Zoho! This seems to be a very good site for people who do not have Word or if they use different computers in the course of their work and need to get to the same information. It saves the need to carry USB's or discs with the information on. But that would mean that every computer would have access to the internet.

I know that would be unusual these days, but hey, it could happen. Therefore you still may need to carry backup. Overall I think the Zoho site is really good.

P.S really like the emotions icons!!!

Week 8 (#'s 18 & 19)

I have published my blog for #18 from Zoho and I found this a really easy process.

Web 2.0 Awards has absolutely so much to explore that I didn't really know where to start. I had a brief look a few sites before I settled into Google Maps. I love to look at where I live and all over the place with the satalite version. It is really interesting to see the view from above. My only wish is that I could make the map enlarge to the whole page. I also looked at the Cocktail builder site, that gave you interesting random cocktail receipies. Had a quick look at a couple of others as well. All in all I could have spent a lot of time looking and may go back to this site later.

Week 7 (#'s 16 & 17)

Wiki's are a wonderful idea! I like the Princeton Libraries booklovers site and think it would be a great idea for us to have a site that the public could put there own reviews, and for us to be able to direct them when looking for some recommendations. I think it would be a good idea to have a place where community groups could add and update there own information. As now we have C.I.T.Y. to find the information but wouldn't it be great if the groups could update there own information and add snippets of information, eg fund raising events, galas, open days etc. These are two ideas that I think would work well for us.


I have just added my link to Favourite Blogs and it was a really easy thing to do.
I added two items, one to Favourite Books and one to Favourite Websites, which was looking pretty lonely with not one website added to it. For my favourite book, which is actually a series of books I even managed to add a link, which is something I wouldn't have been able to do a few weeks ago. So thank you for this program which is actually teaching me something!!!

Week 6 (#'s 13, 14 & 15)

Del.icio.us, to me, does not have a very appealing home page, though it seems to have everything you need and seems to have clear instructions on how to sign up etc. It would be good for people who use the internet and certain websites regularly and for this reason I can understand and see its usefulness. Probably a good tool for people who do a lot of research, or students or teachers that would regularly look up up sites on certain subjects, and for those people who use different computers on a regular basis. I have the few websites that I visit regularly on my 'favorites' and that is good enough for me and my limited use of the internet.

Technorati makes you realise just how many people there are out there with nothing better to do than blog. I found when I searched "Learning 2.0" there were about 5x as many results for keywords than with tags. The perfect sentence to sum up what I think is that:
'People seem to write everything about nothing and nothing about everything"

As for Library 2.0 I think it basically is a great concept allowing people, other than us librarians, to contribute to our gathering of information, and with our busy lifestyles these days being able to access said information from wherever you are; work, home, school etc is essential. I think libraries still have to be a physical space for those of us who love to have a book in hand and have face to face contact with other people but it also needs to grow with the times and be a cyberspace as well. I think the following quote says it all - "The only constant since the beginning of time is change".

Week 5 (#10, 11 & 12)

I had trouble finding a site that had an image that I wanted to upload. Most of the sites I visited didn't seem to be user friendly. Either I had to have an account and a login to be able to save my image e.g the M & M generator, or I had trouble actually finding any point to some of the sites.

The Smiley face generator and the Chocolate bar were quite cute and fun.

For some people I can see that these generators might be useful, but I found there were so many of them that I didn't really know where to start and looking at them all was very time consuming.

Library Thing was a fascinating site and I quite enjoyed exploring it. I did not want to join as I have my own way of keeping track of what I read and do not have much of a personal library. I am not into writing reviews or finding like minded readers to discuss what I have read with. I think it could be a great site for people who love to keep track of their own reading and like to discuss it with others. There seems to be far too many people out there spending too much time on a computer. When I have free time I would rather be reading than talking about it. Obviously the social networking side of things does not interes me much.

Rollyo was interesting and I added my own searchroll to my blog. I liked that I could group together my favourite sites under one heading to make it easier to look up at a later date.

Week 4 (#8 & 9)

RSS feeds was something I had never heard of before. Now I have discovered that it can be frustrating searching through websites for ones I am interested in adding to my Bloglines and then finding if they have a feed or not. Although I can see the benefits of having all updates on on websites and news that you like to follow or keep track of, in one place, I don't think it is something that I will keep up once this exercise is finished. I did like the way you could pick certain subjects that interested you, e.g. Motorsport, from sites such as the NZ Herald, thus saving you time having to look through all the paper for what you want to read. This may be one way for libraries to keep up with relevant topical situations, eg olympics.
For someone who sits in front of a computer all day and likes up to the minute information I can see the usefullness for these feeds. For someone who only accesses the internet occasionally I feel that RSS feeds are not really useful.
Up until now I have had quite a narrow view of internet and this has certainly widened my horizons. I really did not think there was that much stuff out there.


When looking at Feedster, Topix.net, Syndic8.com and Technorati I found that Feedster was boring and I did not like the way it gave you no options and you had to type in your specific search. I liked Topix.net in the way that it was relevant to where you live and gave you options of places to go and things to look at. Technorati seemed too confusing to me and the tutorial was not any more enlightening.

Week 3 (#6 & #7) Flickr mashups etc

Mashups are a wonderful idea but I get totally confused trying to discover what is really needed to achieve this. Maybe if I had a flickr account and had photos that I wanted to play around with I might be interested in exploring this further. It seems that there is no end to the possibilites of what you can do with your images.

As for technology I have only just learned how to operate a digital camera, when my husband decided we should get one, he thought I was the one that should learn how to use it. I have mastered turning it on to Auto and taking photos from there. I can download the images onto the computer and print them at the camera shop, but anything much else is still beyond me at this stage.

Week 3 (#5): Flickr

I have been told that an account on somewhere like Flickr would be good so that I can share my photos with my children who live overseas. This seems like an easier option than emailing and sending photos either printed or on disk.
I have found a photo on Flickr that is just about the exact same one as I took a couple of months ago on a trip to the Gold Coast to visit my daughter. The photo is taken from Tamborine Mountain and looks back to all the skyscrapers of the coast. The tallest building is called the Q1 Tower and is the tallest residential building (87 floors) in the southern hemisphere. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ancelb/1473117289/

Week 2

I have ventured into Facebook and Bebo and to a lesser extent Myspace. I have my own Facebook and Bebo logins but only because I was invited to join by friends and relatives living overseas.

For me I like Facebook the best as it seems to be more grown up. I quite enjoy the interaction between the people I know and find it quite a good way of catching up with them. It seems to me that you could spend a lot of time on these sites really doing nothing productive and for some people they seem to be quite addictive. I probably would not have bothered to join any of these sites if not requested to and am not really interested in getting serious about any of them, to me they are just a bit of fun.

Myspace holds no real interest for me and there is too much stuff to look at.
I find I can't just browse randomly, I need to have a purpose when I use the internet.

First attempt

Well... This is my first attempt at this - not sure what I am supposed to be doing but will try to learn some new skills along the way!!! I will try to live up to the following quote:
'In the nonstop tsunami of global information, librarians provide us with floaties and teach us how to swim' - Linton Weeks