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