December 08, 2009

RSS+

I really liked using Rss feeds in the last 2.0 program and it was fun and interesting to find even more ways to utilise them.

The features on AccessScience are great - all sites should have this easy ability to save searches and findings, the amount of time I've spent searching the uni library for the same thing will boggle the mind.

The seemingly never ending ability of Rss feeds to connect to anything is amazing, I'm sure in the future I will only need to look at a single webpage to discover everything I need to know.

December 07, 2009

Library Tweet

Helpful Hint use sort due date tab on your myinfo page to make sure you are aware of due dates and aren't caught out by any DVD or magazines


(140 exactly :))

Twittering Libraries

It was really fun to explore how libraries are using Twitter, it is a very effective means of communication and I was surprised and glad to see that many of them had large numbers of followers.

My favorite of the accounts I looked at was the one by Rodney Libraries - I thought it was nicely laid out with informative and interesting information. If someone was to follow this account they would know all the news and be well aware of all the Libraries services and events. It was great to see; reviews, reminders about giving the correct email and photos from local events.

Compared to this I found the one for the National Library of NZ, confusing and unhelpful. While their graphics were lovely and the site well presented the tweets seemed to be a private conversation between the contributor and followers - something about cows. Very informal communication style and not very informative.

More Twittering

Searching Twitter was quite and experience, I had no idea that all those search engines existed, it's definitely much bigger and more well organised than I first thought.

I thought that Twoogle was the best, it was clever and fun to use. Amazing how everything is so interconnected and efficient.

For my search I used the Twitter search engine and Twazzup - I chose Diana Gabaldon as my topic, I've just been reading her latest book 'An Echo in the Bone" and I was curious what kind of information would come up. In the generic Twitter search I mostly just got links to people tweets saying that they were reading her books or saying how much they liked them (nice to see she is so popular). There were also one account called superbooks that use their tweets to recommend good books - which I thought was a cool idea.

In the Twazzup search, I got exactly the same links to the real time tweets, but there was also links to; news items about Diana, where to buy her books and a very helpful tag cloud - for further browsing. This search engine is much better than the ordinary twitter one as it gave the same info but added on it. I would definatilly come back to this search engine in the future.

December 04, 2009

Twitter

I have always thought that Twitter was inane and pointless and the closer examination of it for this exercise only increased my feelings.

First I looked at Meg Cabot's page and while I do think it is generous of her spend time connecting with her fans, do I really need to know that she just locked her cat in the cupboard? I thought that her page layout was great, with all her books as background and things like a link to her website advertising book giveaways was a nice touch. I also really liked the fact that she used; full sentences, punctuation and correct spelling - much more professional and easier to read.

This contrasts with one of the other sites I looked at - Cookbook via Twitter. I could not use these recipes as I understood about one word in three and the directions are too lacking in detail. There are so many wonderful and helpful cooking websites out there and I don't see the point in the need to write a recipe in only 140 characters. Although it is nice that someone is taking the time to post these for any ones benefit and while they are not for me I can see that some people might find them very, quick and helpful.

December 03, 2009

sunflowers


texturized sunflowers
Originally uploaded by Nancee_art
Here is my image from Flickr

Creative Commons

Exploring ideas such as creative commons is what is best about the web 2.0 program, I already know about Facebook and twitter but it is great to discover and learn about things lesser know yet far better resources like creative commons.

The CC license of this program is - people are free to share and adapt the work so long as it is attributed and is not for profit. Also that theses conditions can be waived with the permission from the copyright holder.

The Photo I chose from Flicker had var similar conditions as the web 2.0 program - people are able to share and adapt the content so long as they attribute it to the author/licensor. The one difference was that the other conditions was share alike - anyone can use and adapt the work but they have to distribute it under a similar licence.

December 02, 2009

OpenID

I feel that OpenID is a very effective organizing method and it could be of great use to people. For my self personally I don't think I would ever use this technology, I find using the same password for all my sites works well and since they are ones like LibraryThing and Goodreads I'm not to worried about people hacking into my account.

I also find that creating one username that is both easy to remember and not to generic that others have already taken really helps in organisation - I like using my name and favorite number.

Loved the video - informative and funny.