fingers crossed !!

ooh i like that portable dvd player, what great prizes.. ;-)

the end!

I really enjoyed doing this (as I did with the last Web 2.0 learning exercises). I think it is really important for us as librarians to at least be aware of these new sorts of technologies that are emerging on the web - even better if we can be confident to pass this knowledge on to customers.

Sites such as Digg and Reddit really stood out to me. I am increasingly sceptical about the "slant" of alot of information in television news bulletins, etc, and whose interests are being served. These sites offer a refreshing alternative. I like the way the most popular stories are determined by the users.

Tools I think would be most useful to our customers are : the genealogy sites (Geni, MyHeritage and also LitLovers so they can get help with setting up a bookclub) and the other reading sites (Authorsontheweb, Bookreporter, etc) for helping them decide what to read next.

This was great fun and I'm glad I was able to participate, :-)

social networks for week #5

Well, I have signed up to Digg and had a look around Reddit (which I assume is a play on "I have read it").

I love the way these sites serve as an alternative to the traditional, formal news type of websites. On Digg, I found a story on how Kellogg's Stock Takes Big Hit After Dumping Phelps for Bong , referring to the recent images of swiming champ Michael Phelps taking a "hit from the bong". I especially liked reading the feedback below the article - is this a sign of how fed up people are with the so-called war on drugs, or simply a sign of the current economic times .. ?

Reddit is similar to Digg. I find the interface a bit too simple though! Digg seems to strike the right balance between being user-friendly and looking good on the page. With Reddit, when you click on the headline of a story it takes you straight to the original source of the story. The story I liked was one about how a double amputee had a mermaid tail made for her (by Weta workshops) so she could swim. Again, I really enjoyed the comments about the article.

The fact that users contribute to these pages gives a refreshing perspective - you don't get the sense that the news has been filtered/censored by the powers that be in the media.I think sites like this will become more and more influential and important !

goanimate

This one is fun! I think it would appeal more to younger people and to graphic novel enthusiasts. It is really easy to use- you create your own comic strip using various characters/settings and even set it to music.
I think using this format would be a great way to get messages across to children. Not really my thing but I did enjoy playing around with this. You can see my creation over to the right. :)

animoto ! week #4

animoto is fANtastic! is allows you to create a video (similar to a slideshow) of your photographs, set to music..
again i must say,i love how all the web 2.0 technology works together. using animoto, you can take photos straight from your photos on facebook, flickr, etc. you can choose your own music from your computer and there is also a selection you can take straight from animoto. it is super easy to send videos to your friends too..
-- fun for all ages indeed !
i often teach the digital photography class and i would definitely add in a bit about animoto. i will be reccommending this to customers and friends!

i have made a few vids, lets see if i can embed them... ;)

and.... Bookjetty.. !

Bookjetty is a great way to keep track of what you are reading, what you want to read, and what you have read. You can create a virtual bookshelf! You can link to your friends' bookshelves! I will never have any trouble with finding a good book to read - working in a library, I usually don't.

Again, I can't see how to embed it to my blog as per my family tree, but see the link below :

http://www.bookjetty.com/

:)

Authors on the web!

If I wanted to find information on any of my favourite authors, authorsontheweb.com would be a great place to start. This website links you to authors' websites - it would appear the authors/publisher etc have their webpages created through this site.

Bookreporter.com is another useful site. There are reviews, interviews, contests, newsletters to sign up for.. Again, I could spend a lot of time looking around this site. I shall attempt to embed a link to this site in my blog.... but there doesn't seem to be an option for blogger! or do you mean if i just put it like this http://www.bookreporter.com/ ... ?

litLovers - for week 3

LitLovers focus is on books (funnily enough!) and book clubs - anyone who wanted to set up a book club would find all the info they could possibly need to get started in the LitClub section. If you don't know what books to focus on, you can have a look at LitClub's most popular books and reccommended lists. You can look up a recipe to match a book and check out some icebreakers to get book club started. There are blogs to read, courses to take and lots of fun activities.

The book I would choose for a book club is No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. There is no search engine within the site- this would be a useful feature. In the LitGuides section I found reviews, info about the author and also a list of book club discussion questions.

Although there were a few other books I looked for here and couldn't find, for books that are inculded there is a great deal of information.

genealogy, week #2

license to play is off to a great start, could spend so much time on these sites.. my heritage and geni are fantastic tools for people to create their own family tree !

when I think about doing a family tree, I have images of people up to their armpits in old dusty papers and paraphenalia- the sort of thing that could become confusing,and easy to lose track of where you are up to. But doing it online eliminates so much of this ! being able to add photos so easily is fantastic too. I love how these new web technologies are able to access photos from flickr, facebook, etc - these sites are all interconnected and working together. You can save a lot of time here, not having to dig around the depths of your computer for photos.

my heritage has a strong focus on photos - once you have uploaded someone's photo and labelled them, my heritage will recognise the face from then on. some impressive facial recognition software at work.

geni is my favourite of the two, I found the site a bit more intuitive, easier to navigate, and simpler to use. I could go for hours on this site ! I like the way the tree looks on the page too. Now lets see if I can embed my tree on this blog... and there it is! top right corner, yay.. :)

License to play !!

Well, here we go again !
Indeed, I am resurrecting my old blog. As you can see I haven't touched it since we did the web 2.0 stuff last time. I have, however, commented on other blogs in this time, for which I needed to log in to my blog - so it was really no trouble finding my blog and remembering passwords, etc.
Looking back, I can remember how much I enjoyed doing the web 2.0 exercises, especially setting up my RSS feed reader - I now have the RSS feeder going straight to my gmail. I alos loved playing around with images and making mash-ups.
I am not sure what my blogger name is though!

Anyway, this looks great and I want to get started !