8:19 And the award goes to ...

Just been having a look at the short-list of award-winning Web 2.0 sites/applications and feeling heartened at recognising a good sprinkling of them ... many through the Learning 2.0 lessons.

I decided that "Fun stuff" sounded the most appealing section - it's been a long Monday! - and I had a look around http://www.hairmixer.com/

This site could actually be quite useful if you were contemplating an extreme hairstyle change and wanted a bit of inspiration or reassurance - otherwise it's just a bit of fun.

Here's the (disturbing) result of mixing my own face (circa 1976) with Pink's hair ... maybe not?!

Test

Test document writtenin Zoho Writer

+"Hi"from the dog !

 

 

8:18 Zoho, are you there-ah?

I've just created an account on Zoho, and have been looking at the benefits of using 'Zoho Writer', its online word processing application ... and I think I'm sold - for home use at least.

I think it's great that it's freely available (apart from mostly needing to be online to use it that is, although there are offline features), and that it can easily convert your documents into whatever kind of format you need. I know that I have plenty of old university assignments and bits of personal writing saved to discs that I probably will not be able to access again, because both the storage system and the word processing applications used are already rather antiquated. Fingers crossed, online universal applications like Zoho mean that documents created there will have a lot more longevity. (Although you really should save anything important to some other medium just in case, she nags.)

I also like some of the fancier features Zoho has, such as saving documents as tags - so that one document can be accessed under several folders/tags. From what I can see tags are an integral part of Web 2.0 - and a tag is really just another name for a keyword ... which is the librarian's stock and trade. Although I am sure most cataloguers will be wincing at the uncontrolled vocabulary used for tags. One person's potato being another person's spud and all that. There are also lots of other associated Zoho applications available, such as spreadsheets, that could eliminate the need for a personal user to buy an expensive software bundle - nice.

My main complaint so far is that sometimes you have to wait a bit for the things you click on in Zoho to work. So if you are doing something other than typing in plain text, you will likely find yourself somewhat frustrated when the interweb was being a bit porridgey.

Week 7 : Thing 17 : Getting to know you, getting to know all about you ...

Bebo, Myspace, Facebook, Yahoo! Groups, Hi5, Friendster and Orkut are all examples of large social networking sites, with the first three being the most popular (at least among English language speakers - apparently South Korea's CyWorld.com is huge).

I've just read an article that refers to a recent survey by computer experts rating the top 10 social networking sites according to "how easy they are to set up, their range of features, and most importantly the duel needs of both privacy and security". Interestingly, Bebo came out on top largely "due to encouraging responsible networking by enabling people to easily hide their details from others, and giving plenty of options to block unwanted people."

I think privacy and security are the big issues now; partly to protect oneself from unwanted pests/bullies/perverts, and partly because the episodes in your life that you are happy to share with friends may not make the best reading for potential employers down the track.

Personally I equate Bebo with teenagers, Facebook with 20 & 30-somethings, and Myspace with music groups.

I prefer more straight blog-like networks like Myspace because I think they are more personal. Facebook has a lot of cutsie features, (like sending people a virtual cake icon for their birthday) and is good for linking your site with your "friends" and their "friends" and so on down the line, but in many ways the most profound entries will always come from anonymous blogs.

6:16: Web 2.0, Business 2.0, Libraries 2.0, Learning 2.0, Librarian 2.0

(As ever) I found the potted description of "Libraries 2.0" on the wikipedia a helpful overview of the term-du-jour. I like the line "With new web tools information can be released to flow in every direction (library to user, user to library, library to library, and user to user)", which succinctly describes the underlying principle of Libraries 2.0. This very blog is largely an exercise in librarian to librarian information sharing in a virtual environment. (Wow, profound)

Read a good article (referenced by the wikipedia description) Maness, J. (2006). Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries. Webology, 3 (2), Article 25.
In which Maness describes Web 2.0 in a similar way - but rather more poetically - as "a matrix of dialogues, not a collection of monologues". Maness also refers to the term "biblioblogosphere" when describing weblogs written by librarians such as this. Maness goes on to define “Library 2.0” as “the application of interactive, collaborative, and multi-media web-based technologies to web-based library services and collections". When discussing the implications of blogs and wikis to libraries, he writes that "In a world where no information is inherently authoritative and valid, the critical thinking skills of information literacy are paramount to all other forms of learning".

Technorati a.k.a. what a lot of blogs!

Just had a look on http://www.technorati.com/ for "Learning 2.0" references.
Firstly I went to the advanced search option, chose to look in blogs and looked for the whole phrase, which I put in speech marks. (You may not have to for the phrase option, but I find it a very useful search habit for sites like Google when I only want hits on a specific phrase.) Only 6 results came up - surprisingly few. I then searched for "Learning 2.0" in the tags box and got 183 hits - now that's more like it! And finally I looked for it in the URL box (even though you're really meant to put a URL in there rather than a phrase), and got 262 hits. Jackpot.

Next it was on to http://www.technorati.com/pop/ to see what's popular.
Apparently Jenifer Garner and Ben Affleck are (both made it into the top 15 searches). The most popular blog (as rated by fans) is http://www.boingboing.net/ - which mostly looks at pop culture and technology related issues. The top movie at the moment is "Dark Knight" and the top news story relates to the Olympics.

Week 6, thing 14: Del.icio.us is plain yummy ...

Rather like a tasty bone.
Well if you'd like to take a nosy, I've created a Delicious account here http://delicious.com/ADogsLife and it is a site that I would be happy to come back to.

It was kind of like guided net-surfing, and I can see how a lot of time could be spent/wasted following the different website links that various keywords/tags throw up. It's good to see the numbers of Delicious account holders next to each site as an indication of popularity.

My only down-side was that I was unable to export my current bookmarks from Outlook, as it really seemed to be mostly geared for those with an Internet Explorer browser.
N'mind, was a fun exercise coming up with some new ones.

Wiki post - lucky number 13

I was feeling a bit gung-ho and decided to go through the process of signing on as an approved user of the Manukau Libraries wiki as a learning exercise ... or was that an exercise in ego? Verification came through to my gmail and I duly added comments to the fav. blogs, movies and television show lists. I'm feel slightly conspicuous now though, as my comments display a little differently to everyone else who have stuck with the generic login.
Oh well, dogs are rarely noted for being modest in their opinions!

Wikitastic!

As you may have noticed from my previous post, when looking for a quick definition I find the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page an incredibly useful resource.

I would hesitate to cite it academically, because I am unsure as to the quality of the moderation. However if one was writing on an emerging or marginal popular culture topic, then it may well be the only (somewhat) authoritative source of information.

Wikis are a great way of gathering information and opinions in a thematic way, but the quality of the content will vary and is difficult to police. In libraries it's a good way to encourage interaction from the public and to foster improved communication and engagement among staff. Although, obviously, it will need to be set up with its intended use very much in mind.

What do podcasts have to do with dolphins?

Nothing actually! But, now that I have your attention, for my 11th “thing”, I thought I would wax lyrical about the value of podcasts.

According to the slightly sus, but ever-helpful Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast

“A podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
The term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast",[1] the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed (see history of podcasting). Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred to a mobile device after they are downloaded.[2] As more devices other than iPods became able to synchronize with podcast feeds, the term was redefined by some parties as an abbreviation for the backronym "Personal On Demand broadCASTING".[3][4][5]
Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.”

I particularly like the way NZ Radio stations such as Radio New Zealand http://www.radionz.co.nz/podcasts and KiwiFM http://www.kiwifm.co.nz/Listen/tabid/53/Default.aspx now offer podcasts archiving some of their broadcasts.

Some podcasts are also cited on the relevant musicians webpages, and others are even cited within articles, e.g. this Scoop article publicising the weekly KiwFM interview with Helen Clark http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0807/S00310.htm

Flickering images

To have a play on Flickr I created a public account and uploaded twenty-eight photos of myself (as a dog) at the beach here http://www.flickr.com/people/caninetravels/

I created my Flickr account's icon from one of the photos by cropping it down to one little square.

I also chose to organise my photostream by making the photos all display a little smaller, so that they could all fit on one page.

I went back a little later and tagged all my photos "NZ beach dog", in an effort to make them more easily retrievable for mash-up applications.

Flickr's "Montager" mosaic application http://www.deviousgelatin.com/montager/image.php *said* it was looking for the tags "NZ beach dog", but kept telling me that "there were no images associated with that tag".
....

Having taken a deep breath, I decided to leave the mosaic and create my own trading card at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php

Behold my success!