I think that through this course I have been able to further expand on my knowledge of web 2.0. This course has helped me to be more efficient online and gave me awareness of many tools that are fun and useful that I wasn't previosly aware of, such as Zoho Writer, which helps with transferring files and such (love it!) and LibraryThing, which is just lots of fun.
It took me a while to actually get in to doing the exercises and finding it fun.
Some particular highlights:
- the web awards
- facebooking :P
- LibraryThing
- Image generator things
- Conan the librarian!
Thanks for providing this interesting and helpful course :)
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
#22 - facebook as a tool for promotion
I've never really considered this much. Plenty of organisations use them to create awareness as people join the page if they are fans and then all their "friends" see the update seeing that they joined. However getting to know your patrons and what exactly the users want is another thing.
I think it is a good idea to get into the space of the people and ask them what they want as was mentioned in a recommended article. However, this could be seen as being invasive if it is pushed too much.
Maybe if there was a page that linked to our own search catalogue and then have something ust as interactive on our own page.
Sounds good I suppose :P
I think it is a good idea to get into the space of the people and ask them what they want as was mentioned in a recommended article. However, this could be seen as being invasive if it is pushed too much.
Maybe if there was a page that linked to our own search catalogue and then have something ust as interactive on our own page.
Sounds good I suppose :P
Sunday, September 21, 2008
#21 social networking
:) This is my favourite thing on all the interweb! I love facebook. I would even go so far as to call myself a facebook addict however the apps are very time consuming so its good when you want to procrastinate and play some games with your mates or make new friends or fight bunnies.
I visited Auckland's page on bebo and added them as my friend. Where is NSL's page? I'll make one if I can't find one :) I love making group pages on bebo. However I find that bebo hasn't adjusted well to the addition of apps to social networking sites and there pages are now hard to view. A lot of people have so many apps that you have to scroll for miles before you are able to actually leave a comment for them. I have this same issue with MySpace. Their pages seem to just go on forever and I see little point in wasting so much time on them.
MySpace is mildly outdated as no-one i know still uses their MySpace accounts or has deleted them. That is why it would be unfashionable for me to create a MySpace account at this point in time. I did however use their serach function to look up pages of my favourite band. I like it how they make videos available to watch. This feature is also available on bebo. However Bebo presents it in a nicer way. I looked up my favourite band on bebo too and found 23 fan groups and joined all of them.
That is why the best social networking site is Facebook <3. Facebook has an IM fuction which I like a lot. It means I do not have to log in to msn to chat with my mates and can chat to people who are on facebook at the sametime. i also love the fact that facebook recommends people you may know. Bebo is more popular among tweens and promotes anonymity whereas facebook encourages people to use their real identity so that people they know can find them. I had a look for library groups and was mildly suprised by what I found :)
I visited Auckland's page on bebo and added them as my friend. Where is NSL's page? I'll make one if I can't find one :) I love making group pages on bebo. However I find that bebo hasn't adjusted well to the addition of apps to social networking sites and there pages are now hard to view. A lot of people have so many apps that you have to scroll for miles before you are able to actually leave a comment for them. I have this same issue with MySpace. Their pages seem to just go on forever and I see little point in wasting so much time on them.
MySpace is mildly outdated as no-one i know still uses their MySpace accounts or has deleted them. That is why it would be unfashionable for me to create a MySpace account at this point in time. I did however use their serach function to look up pages of my favourite band. I like it how they make videos available to watch. This feature is also available on bebo. However Bebo presents it in a nicer way. I looked up my favourite band on bebo too and found 23 fan groups and joined all of them.
That is why the best social networking site is Facebook <3. Facebook has an IM fuction which I like a lot. It means I do not have to log in to msn to chat with my mates and can chat to people who are on facebook at the sametime. i also love the fact that facebook recommends people you may know. Bebo is more popular among tweens and promotes anonymity whereas facebook encourages people to use their real identity so that people they know can find them. I had a look for library groups and was mildly suprised by what I found :)
#20 eeeeeebooks
I used google books to search for Pride and Prejudice. There were many results and it was easy to find a copy of the book online. I love being able to use eBooks. I use them a lot for research assignments at uni. The University of Auckland has many eBooks however for some reason they are only available to one person at a time which is rather annoying due to the fact that someone may accidently leave a window open which they aren't using and no one can access that particular eBook even if they were using it first and had to go offline because their internet connection is so fail. Grr ><. lol. Anyway, I think it could be something to do with copyrights or something (anyone?).
Pride and Prejudice was available as a PDF to read online, a downloadable PDF or in basic HTML. I don't mind just reading PDF documents as it is just like reading a book. In fact I read New Moon and Eclipse by stephenie meyer as PDF documents which was so much faster than waiting as a hold or even for my order from Real Groovy to arrive.
Reading books online lacks the physical element of reading. Scrolling just isn't as fun as page turning :P and occasionally your eyes need a break from the monitor. I think that most people enjoy reading books more than ebooks and it takes some adjusting to get into an ebook. It would be useful if NSL could offer eBooks to patrons however, it will be a while before it catches
Pride and Prejudice was available as a PDF to read online, a downloadable PDF or in basic HTML. I don't mind just reading PDF documents as it is just like reading a book. In fact I read New Moon and Eclipse by stephenie meyer as PDF documents which was so much faster than waiting as a hold or even for my order from Real Groovy to arrive.
Reading books online lacks the physical element of reading. Scrolling just isn't as fun as page turning :P and occasionally your eyes need a break from the monitor. I think that most people enjoy reading books more than ebooks and it takes some adjusting to get into an ebook. It would be useful if NSL could offer eBooks to patrons however, it will be a while before it catches
#19 - Podcasts the way of the future
I'm not so keen on pod casts, it's sort of like listening to talk back radio which is incredibly boring. I guess I just have to find something I am more interested in order to fully appreciate the use of this tool.
I did try to find some "interesting library related pod casts like book review pod casts or library news" as suggested by the exercises blog but failed to find anything that I found sufficiently interesting. However I do feel that this could be an interesting tool to link in with our library as we could link pod casts such as the NY times book review to books or at least encourage our users to notice and use this technology in order to gain further knowledge on what they are researching or to find out more about books that they have heard of and are not sure whether they would like them.
Even though I didn't find a sufficiently interesting library pod cast, I did find a Hamish & Andy pod cast :D Hopefully, I will be able to use these tools in the future in order to find more hilarious and entertaining pod casts
I did try to find some "interesting library related pod casts like book review pod casts or library news" as suggested by the exercises blog but failed to find anything that I found sufficiently interesting. However I do feel that this could be an interesting tool to link in with our library as we could link pod casts such as the NY times book review to books or at least encourage our users to notice and use this technology in order to gain further knowledge on what they are researching or to find out more about books that they have heard of and are not sure whether they would like them.
Even though I didn't find a sufficiently interesting library pod cast, I did find a Hamish & Andy pod cast :D Hopefully, I will be able to use these tools in the future in order to find more hilarious and entertaining pod casts
#18 - youtube lol
Haha omg i loved Conan the librarian. I watched a few random librarian vids on youtube and god there is so much rubbish on there but there is so much funny stuff too. The videos that interested me most were :
The Librarian Song
;) I chose this vid because it was something to do with librarians and also a song! it isn't really that funny but it is slightly amusing and that is why I chose it. The librarian comedian that I watched was mildly disturbing and i now know why librarians are not also comedians.
However I don't know how useful this would be in a library. I guess patrons could watch video links at home to certain things but really in a library watching video clips may be slightly annoying.
The Librarian Song
;) I chose this vid because it was something to do with librarians and also a song! it isn't really that funny but it is slightly amusing and that is why I chose it. The librarian comedian that I watched was mildly disturbing and i now know why librarians are not also comedians.
However I don't know how useful this would be in a library. I guess patrons could watch video links at home to certain things but really in a library watching video clips may be slightly annoying.
#17 - exploring the interweb awards
i love it! this exercise was heaps of fun. i love looking at the "best of" things. Google took home quite a few as to be expected. Google is taking over the internet O_o anyone else freaked out about that? i suppose that's another blog entirely :P
I looked at a few sites:
- Cocktail Builder - you just enter the ingredients you have and it tells you what cocktails you can make
- Groowy - this looks cool, an online desktop but groowy "are no longer accepting new accounts." and that is why i was unable to check that out which was pretty disappointing
- Twitter - i joined this which is apparently more useful than facebook...but I don't know anyone on it
- mango - you can learn languages with this american voice guy. quite interesting but it is much better to have an actual teacher, i think face to face is a much easier way of learning
- Pandora - which is also now unavailable to users outside of the US due to copyright restrictions
The website that I checked out to write about though was Last.fm. This site is interesting because it connects to your media player like iTunes and gets information about what type of music you listen to and then can adapt your experience with their website. i love it how the web becomes so personalised these days. Like when amazon recommends you read certain books because of what you browsed earlier. It's great. I liked that you don't have to download the plugin in order to be able to enjoy the site and that it is free unless you would like to upgrade unlike the other finalists in the music category. It is also fun for the social aspect and meeting people with the same music tastes as you. I think it would be possible to utilise a similar type of tool in the library in the way that we log the books that people read and the rating they give to these books. We would be able to recommend books that they might also enjoy and other people who enjoy a similar taste in books. It would be useful to have forums for discussion of genres, books, authors etc and a direct link for patrons to reserve a copy of the book.
This sounds exciting to me and I can't wait for it to be implemented by our system however this may take quite some time.
I looked at a few sites:
- Cocktail Builder - you just enter the ingredients you have and it tells you what cocktails you can make
- Groowy - this looks cool, an online desktop but groowy "are no longer accepting new accounts." and that is why i was unable to check that out which was pretty disappointing
- Twitter - i joined this which is apparently more useful than facebook...but I don't know anyone on it
- mango - you can learn languages with this american voice guy. quite interesting but it is much better to have an actual teacher, i think face to face is a much easier way of learning
- Pandora - which is also now unavailable to users outside of the US due to copyright restrictions
The website that I checked out to write about though was Last.fm. This site is interesting because it connects to your media player like iTunes and gets information about what type of music you listen to and then can adapt your experience with their website. i love it how the web becomes so personalised these days. Like when amazon recommends you read certain books because of what you browsed earlier. It's great. I liked that you don't have to download the plugin in order to be able to enjoy the site and that it is free unless you would like to upgrade unlike the other finalists in the music category. It is also fun for the social aspect and meeting people with the same music tastes as you. I think it would be possible to utilise a similar type of tool in the library in the way that we log the books that people read and the rating they give to these books. We would be able to recommend books that they might also enjoy and other people who enjoy a similar taste in books. It would be useful to have forums for discussion of genres, books, authors etc and a direct link for patrons to reserve a copy of the book.
This sounds exciting to me and I can't wait for it to be implemented by our system however this may take quite some time.
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