I visited Technorati as part of my week 6 tasks for 23 things. I think that technorati is a great tool and does for blogs what google does for the web. Technorati searches different blogs for the information you are looking for, and presents it to you much in the same way that a search engine would retrieve different web links. I think it is handy for sorting rather than having to go to different blog sites and do individual searches for their information.
While at Technorati I did a search for Web 2.0 tags. The search brought up many up to date blog posts on the subject of Web 2.0. One of the things that I discovered while looking at the information that was brought up is that Firefox 3.0 debuts today. One blogger described it as the first Web 2.0 friendly browser out there. Seeing as I'm Web 2.0 friendly these days myself I will have to check it out and see if this new browser is for me. I wouldn't have heard about this new browser had it not been for my technorati search and the current information that it has available.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Week 6 Del.icio.us
I discovered Del.icio.us through doing this exercise for Web 2.0 and plan to get an account for myself. I like Del.icio.us in that no matter where I am I have access to the websites that I like. In the past there have been times that I have been on vacation and I may not remember the exact name or address to a site and am unable to visit it because the information is bookmarked on my computer and I am not around my computer at that time. But with Del.icio.us I have access to my bookmarked links no matter where I am. And I see the benefit to using Del.icio.us as a research tool as well because you can carry the information with you if you go on business and have access to another computer, or are in school and go to the computer lab and decide you want to save something or pull up something. It's all there. Another benefit of Del.icio.us and its social aspect is that if you are doing research you can browse under the tag of the subject you are looking for and find other websites that you may not have known existed. So I find that Del.icio.us is a helpful tool that I will be using.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
SHELFARI!!!!!!!!!!! Too cool!
I just wanted to take a moment to let everyone out there know about Shelfari! I had never heard about Shelfari before and discovered them though 'Ask a Librarian's' Myspace. Who says that myspace can't be used for good? lol.
Shelfari is similar to Library Things in that it catalogs your collection and even categorizes it into sections like 'read', 'wish list', etc. But Shelfari is more like a social network in that it is set up similarly to myspace. There are members, groups you can belong to, you can tag books, see who is online, see new members, etc. It's like a social network joining people with similar interests in books. How cool is that? And the way that Shelfari showcases your collection is very neat. They have your books arranged on a bookshelf and if someone highlights the book they are given the option to add the book to their shelf or go to amazon for more information on the book. And the thing that caught my eye is that Shelfari has an myspace app that you can add to your myspace account to have your book list displayed on your myspace profile! How cool is that?
Here...have fun!
http://www.shelfari.com/
Shelfari is similar to Library Things in that it catalogs your collection and even categorizes it into sections like 'read', 'wish list', etc. But Shelfari is more like a social network in that it is set up similarly to myspace. There are members, groups you can belong to, you can tag books, see who is online, see new members, etc. It's like a social network joining people with similar interests in books. How cool is that? And the way that Shelfari showcases your collection is very neat. They have your books arranged on a bookshelf and if someone highlights the book they are given the option to add the book to their shelf or go to amazon for more information on the book. And the thing that caught my eye is that Shelfari has an myspace app that you can add to your myspace account to have your book list displayed on your myspace profile! How cool is that?
Here...have fun!
http://www.shelfari.com/
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Week 5: WebFeat
I just completed the final activity for Week 5. I played around with WebFeat to see what I could find. I did a search for my hometown of Pahokee and found 16 articles. The first article at the top of the page caught me eye because it was a Florida Trend article from their September 2007 issue talking about my neighbors and their rental property business! I see them every day and they failed to mention being named in the Florida Trend article, so it was a pleasant discovery. There were other articles brought up that seemed interesting and that I wanted to read, but I was having problems with WebFeat. After the initial article, when I tried to click 'view' on another article the site would redirect me to a page stating that i had logged out successfully, which isn't what I had tried to do. That was disappointing because I wanted to play with WebFeat some more. I even closed the page and started a new session, but continued to have the same problem. I will have to play with it again some other time.
I like WebFeat because I like that instead of looking at each database individually you can plug in a search term and it will search all databases and retrieve the information for you. It is a great tool to have on the site.
I like WebFeat because I like that instead of looking at each database individually you can plug in a search term and it will search all databases and retrieve the information for you. It is a great tool to have on the site.
Week 5: Library Things
I had never heard of Library Things before this exercise. I like how it's set up and being able to find people with similiar reading interests. I have created an account with some of my favorite "cute" books! If you are interested to take a peek at the 5 books I added, here is the link to my catalog http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hiddenme2
Week 5- PLAY WEEK!!! Image Generators
Image Generator
For this week's exercise I am discovering many different image generators that I never knew existed. I just used the image generator at http://oneletterwords.com/ecards/saint/ to create an honorary italian grandmother certificate. The image on the left was made to show an example of what the certificate looks like.
Many other cool image generators can be found at http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/
Letter James is a very cool website for image generators as well. You can play with the pictures found on their site and even order calendars with the personalized images! I will definitely look around that site some more and play more with it later. There is lots of fun to be had there! Check it out at:http://www.letterjames.com/start.php?mod=calendar-generator
As part of the discovery exercise I would like to share a site that I found which has a lot of image generators http://www.imagegenerator.org/ They have a compilation of many different sites that have image and text generators!
Without having pictures of my own saved on this computer I am limited to how much I can play with these image generators, but I can't wait to have a second look at them at home!
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Week 4: RSS Feeds
I am always online when I am at home, so I had heard of rss feeds before but didn't really know what they were or had any experience with them. This week's thing was very educational because it taught me about rss feeds-what they are, how I can use them, etc. And I was also introduced to bloglines, which is a website I had never heard of before. Now I know what an rss feed is in case someone were to ask me, and I am also able to recomment bloglines to patrons and friends, whereas before I wouldn't have even known that such a thing existed.
I will answer some questions suggested for week 4 of 23 things:
What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
The thing that I like about RSS and newsreaders is that they are short and sweet. If you have limited time to go online you can just go to bloglines, log into your account, and read through the feeds that interest you instead of having to go to the individual sites that you want to visit, waiting for the site to load, etc. It reduces a lot of time because you don't have to surf around or wait for pictures to load. Instead you have everything that you want in one concise, quick loading (because of no images) location. It's a real timesaver.
How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?
I can subscribe to feeds that interest me and that way I don't have to go through the trouble of remembering different website addresses, and I can cut down on the time that it would take me to visit each location and read up on what I'm looking for.
How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
Libraries can benefit by creating accounts, if they choose to do so and subscribe to different things that they think may benefit staff or be of interest to them. That way they can have all of the news in one location and it makes it faster for staff to look up news and information. It would also be smart for a library to have an rss feed because more patrons would be willing to receive snippets of information with their other news than to visit the library's website and spend valuable time reading a lengthier article.
And to end this blog I just thought I'd mention that surprisingly I found myself having fun while browsing through bloglines and signing up for feeds that looked fun. Before this week's exercise I would have never thought to do that. Good job 23 things team in finding fun new things to learn and enjoy!
I will answer some questions suggested for week 4 of 23 things:
What do you like about RSS and newsreaders?
The thing that I like about RSS and newsreaders is that they are short and sweet. If you have limited time to go online you can just go to bloglines, log into your account, and read through the feeds that interest you instead of having to go to the individual sites that you want to visit, waiting for the site to load, etc. It reduces a lot of time because you don't have to surf around or wait for pictures to load. Instead you have everything that you want in one concise, quick loading (because of no images) location. It's a real timesaver.
How do you think you might be able to use this technology in your work or personal life?
I can subscribe to feeds that interest me and that way I don't have to go through the trouble of remembering different website addresses, and I can cut down on the time that it would take me to visit each location and read up on what I'm looking for.
How can libraries use RSS or take advantage of this new technology?
Libraries can benefit by creating accounts, if they choose to do so and subscribe to different things that they think may benefit staff or be of interest to them. That way they can have all of the news in one location and it makes it faster for staff to look up news and information. It would also be smart for a library to have an rss feed because more patrons would be willing to receive snippets of information with their other news than to visit the library's website and spend valuable time reading a lengthier article.
And to end this blog I just thought I'd mention that surprisingly I found myself having fun while browsing through bloglines and signing up for feeds that looked fun. Before this week's exercise I would have never thought to do that. Good job 23 things team in finding fun new things to learn and enjoy!
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