#23 Is this really the end?

Wow, I've finished!! Thsi exercise has been very intriguing and worthwhile. There was quite a few things you can do that I never knew about. Favourites include flickr - a great way of adding and manipulating photos to show the world, and also LibraryThing. This would be very useful for me to catalogue lp's at home. I wasn't too keen on delicious or technorati, but found the existence of ZohoWriter fantastic! Even though the branch I am at does now have Word, it will be great to tell patrons of those branches that, as yet, don't. Patrons can benefit from all of these mentioned as well as being able to listen to books online and then downloading them to their ipod! All in all, although at times very hard to get time at work to do this program, and finding some links not working, the program was very beneficial to me, and therefore, to our patrons. Cheers.

#20 YouTube

I love Youtube! There are so many crazy videos on this (and some very useful informative videos). So much time can be wasted but it is a lot of fun. And now you don't even have to search for the best videos yourself anymore...just watch Friday night TV on Ch 10! Crazy....Anyway I had become addicted to the Tetris game on my TV! Yes, very sad, I know. Every ad break I was constantly playing it. Then the TV broke. It was a hard habit to break free from. But just as well, because I might have ended up like these guys in this YouTube video I found! Check it out...

#22 Audiobooks (or the end is in sight!)

I have had patrons ask me about this very subject! Can they download audiobooks to their MP3 players? So this was great. Not for me, but then I don't need it and am not one for listening to books on tape (not yet anyway!) But can see it would be perfect for those wanting a good book to listen to while they are busy online. I tried out another favourite - Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart which was great! I will recommend it! Also great for finding those books not easily accessible from anywhere else (including public libraries). And all for free!!!

#21 Podcasts, Smodcasts!

Before this program I had never really listened to many podcasts but have found these very useful and informative. I began by searching the podcast directory, yahoo search, thinking it would be very easy to navigate through and it is! I searched for information on one of my favourite authors - Fay Weldon. A couple of sites in particular brought up the most interesting info, with interviews from radio from her. These were http://www.wiredforbooks.org/ and http://www.redmood.com/. However, the best podcast directory I found was Podcast Alley. This is so simple, easy and fun to use! Containing interviews with musicians, forums, and a top ten of the month! I liked the 'pick a podcast genre' category. I chose 'food and drinl' and there were many 'alkcasts' to choose on this subject. Everyhting from restaurant reviews to menus and how to brew your own beer. This directory was definitaly my favourite.

#19 Web 2.0 awards

Fancy there being awards! Had a good look around a lot of these from the 'winners' category. Firstly, I went to the category 'music' and to the winner 'pandora' but access denied! So I went on to Yahoo answers which is great. I will defintaley keep this in mind for those tricky questions patrons ask! In the Events cateogy, under 'upcoming' it took me straight to Geelong and said there were no upcoming events! Surely not!! lol! So once again, had to trek to the Big Smoke where they had listed 27 upcoming events. Pretty short but informative. Lots of fun to just play around here.

#18 Web based applications

Well I never knew Zoho writer existed! It's fabulous! If onlyI had of known about this when our library pc's didn't provide access to Word! I could have avoided many verbal attacks from them!! It looks extrememly slick and very much like what we all know and use. Very easy to navigate through and provides pretty good templates such as resumes and cover letters. Also the added bonus of many features, in particular forums. This is great and I will be reccommending it to anyone who doesn't have access to word.

#16 So what's in a Wiki?

Having limited knowledge of Wiki's (I had only heard and used Wikipedia) there is a whole world out there of people putting in their little bits of info and knowledge (?) to the world. So deciphering whether or not the info is reliable depends on the site your looking at I guess. The library sites would be pretty reliable I'd say! Liked bookloverswiki - thought the idea of the staff book reviews was great. Even though we have that on our library website, it would be great to use this method as other staff and patrons can easily add their opinions to it. Also, as our library info such as new release titles is updated monthly, this would be an easy and quick tool to use. Wikipedia provided me with information on a certain TV series that has just ended, that I could not find using a google search. It was quite frustrating but Wikipedia came through with the goods!

#15 Web 2.0, library 2.0

Having been involved in a new library opening incorporating new technology - the first in our area to do so, this is quite relevant. Our library has just installed Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) to check-out and check-in. And it is working really well (and can make you lazy!) But we have also installed a self-check-out machine which works on the same basis. I thought that I would come across more patrons unwilling to use it for their fear of 'new' technology, but find most of them are embracing it. Others - well, I have been attacked with "now we have to do this ourselves? (in not so quite friendly terms!) Anyway, its patrons such as these that should in my opinion, be able to access hard copies of certain information. Unlike Rick Anderson's, 'Away from the icebergs' view that we should get rid of the 'just-in-case' hard copy collections. Also, it is necessary for those who don't have computer skills, or who would just like to read it in their own time, with no time restraints put on them for their computer usage.

#14 Technorati

I wasn't all that impressed with Technorati - obviously it depends on what type of search you do. Searching learning 2.0 in posts produced 6329 results while tags produced 621 and blog 746. Whether I searched this accuraetly I am not sure, but could predict the results. Searching the most popular blogs was interesting. I like boingboing! Even the name attracts me.. After trying to decipher how to tag my posts, I decided not to as it looked a little confusing I wasn't too sure about the "manually ping us here" part! Sounds a little daunting..

#13 Del.icio.us

Tagging is a pretty simple and understandable way of alerting vieweers to your blog or info content. Being pretty broad and free-flowing wbich can also be negative point if your're researching something specific. Just like my 'googling' - I end up anywhere and everywhere and some places I don't want to be! I think this wou;d appeal to the younger library patrons. Very visual and attractive.

#12 roll your own search engine with Rollyo

I couldn't really get this to work too well for me - maybe I'm missing something? For those who can get around it, it may be a good thing for keeping tabs on your favourite sites, but I can't see myself delving too much further into it. Given it a good go, but this one's not for me.

#11 LibraryThing

Well this was really easy to use and looks pretty good too! It was good to play around with this and see the different ways of setting the titles out. Quite impressive! I think I will use this to catalogue my partner's 1000+ record collection! Quite a demanding task but when I have a spare few 100hrs, I may just take up this librarything!

#10 playing around with image generators

This site was so much fun to look around - you can certainly waste alot of time! In fact, I was almost late for work from playing around! The best image generator I found was the Bob Dylan music video http://www.dylanmessaging.com/create This was so brilliant! Being a Dylan fan, I was so excited by it that I sent a friend a birthday greeting from Bob! I did play around with a couple of the other sites and found some very cute ones! Might ahve to send some more greetings to unsuspecting friends...

You can check out my Dylan video message at http://tinyurl.com/2d4jvc

#9 Finding feeds

As in my last blog, I am still sifting through many sites, some of which I get totally lost in! For example, the EBSCO publishing site. I found this through a google blog search which was the easy part! Deciphering the info once I got there was a little harder! Google blog is easy to use though and I found a very disgruntled blog from a scorned Ebay buyer! So beware buying such things 'motobecane' road bikes! Whatever that is...There is so much to look at, that with having no definite direction, but just 'surfing' can take up a lot of time. But will add the best feeds to my blogline as I find them. So stay tuned...

#8 Make life 'really simple' with RSS and a newsreader

At first I thought this was a little daunting, but had fun looking through the different sites. Setting up a bloglines account was simple. I enjoyed searching through the many sites around and adding them as feeds to my blog. Checking out other colleagues blogs was very interesting! There are so many fantastic ones out there that I feel I need to step up the mark! I used both methods of adding the feeds - copying and pasting when I couldn't find the feed symbol! Probably because I was looking at so many sites and getting distracted that I didn't know what I was looking at anymore! Anyway, here is the link to my feeds : http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs

#7 Technology blog

I have learnt quite a lot from this learning program - for instance, I wasn't aware that flickr, nor even 'blogger' existed. Myspace, and photobucket, yes, although I haven't really used those programs very much yet. And then of course, there's Ebay. Something which you can get addicted to quite easily...not so good for the credit card bill!

On a different note, the last couple of weeks I have become very familiar with our new library system using RFID, and the introduction of a newer, improved self check-out machine! It's amazing - so many people have been drawn to it. Today, an elderly patron used it for the second time completely independently, and was so pleased with herself! It was fantastic! " Much easier to use than those money machines" she said, " and no numbers to remember"! Although I can't keep count of how many comments I get referring to 'machines will take over our jobs'!

Had lots of fun looking through flickr and mash-up sites FD's toys - especially like the badge maker site. Am trying to get onto mappr however, the site msut be down. I think I really need this one as I am hopeless with directions!

#5. Flickr and Mash-ups

Here is the cover of The Rolling Stones record, Sticky Fingers. I took this image from a flickr album. You can find the album by following this link, http://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/248080669/

The album was the first to be released on the Stones' 'Rolling Stones Records' label in 1971. The appeal (and controversey) of this album was the fact that the zipper was a real working zipper! The problem however, was that during shipment of the albums, the zipper would press into the album and therefore damage the record.

The photo was taken by Andy Warhol and contrary to popular belief at the time, the model is not Mick Jagger. Most likely, it was thought to be Warhol's asssistant. As a Stones fan, I am still on the lookout for this original pressing, but alas, have to be somewhat satisfied with the less dramatic cover with no working zip.

Rolling along...

Finally, I have joined almost all of my friends in the 'blog' game. It's almost like if you don't have one, where have you been? Just like everyone now has a mobile, so they do a blog. This week has introduced me to more technology at the one time than ever, with a library system being installed. I'm a little over technology today.. but all for the greater good of librarians!