To boldly go

Ok, so having been inspired by those who are trucking on and doing L2.1 or just blogging on in general I'm going to keep exploring the Wonderful Wierd Wacky online world.

Who knows, I may even extend myself to LibraryLand in general and life beyond - yes it does exist. Can't guarantee that I'll post with any kind of regularity but post I will.

#23 THE END!

What have I learned?

Heaps. This has been a wonderful excuse to actually have a go at things I've been hearing about for ages and I intend to keep at least some things going.

On my definitely list:
My blog
Bloglines
Del.icio.us
Librarything
Wikis
Zoho

On my occasionally list:
Flickr
Image generators
YouTube

On my interesting but not me list:
Rollyo
Technorati

The really hard thing is going to be keeping the learning going, signing up and giving things a go just because you can. Hopefully L2.0 has made everyone braver about this, I know I am. There is also the questions of how we are going to use some of this stuff out there in libraryland. There are some wonderful possibilities - a del.icio.us account instead of bookmarked favourites on the Ref desk, a wiki instead of a paper manual, a Librarything "staff are reading" instead of a flyer and the possibilites just go on and on.

I'm going to be watching library websites with great interest to see how far the ripples spread.

#22 Audiobooks

Well, I agree that downloadable audiobooks are a very good idea but I must admit that the free selection is a little disappointing, but I guess that's because they have to rely on out of copyright titles etc. I'm not sure about the computerised voice either - even the lady from Telstra sounds a little more realistic.

I had a quick look at audible.com and their selection is quite fantastic. This is definitely something that libraries need to have on their radar and be talking to suppliers about.

#21 Podcasting

I've just added a feed from the Conversation hour on 774 to my Bloglines account. Very occasionally I'm in the car at the right time to hear part of this and am always tempteted to take the very long way round. Now I don't have to worry - I'm getting the whole thing delivered!

Can you believe that they podcast parliament!

#20 YouTube

I am still amazed, even after 11 weeks at how much stuff is out there. Some of it is just wonderful, a lot of it is mind bogglingly stupid and then there are the things that make you laugh.



True confessions - a friend showed this to me but how could I not share.

I quite like using YouTube. The searching is simple, the display is clean and it encourages serendipity which is usually how you find the best stuff. Unless you have friends like mine.

#19 Wonderful World of Web 2.0

I took the easy way out and just had a look at the winners list and blow me down if I didn't discover widget heaven.

I'm a big widget fan - with a name like that how could you not be and YourMinis (http://www.yourminis.com ) won the Widget category. So direct from yourminis I loaded the little weather watcher that you can see a couple of posts below this one. And this is not just a direct copy of someone else's script, I got to customise it which is why you are getting a 5 day forecast for Melbourne (Aus not Florida) with a blue background.

#18 Killer Apps

So

I signed up with Zoho to have a look at the Writer and discovered a whole world of funky stuff that I think is far more exciting. Don't get me wrong, being able to colaborate on a document without emailing a zillion times is great but they also have online meeting software and chat software. I needed this 2 weeks ago when I was trying to work out a way of getting 4 people in different places together for a 30 min meeting without using a phone conference!

Now I know. Stay tuned for lots of online meeting invitations from me in the near future.

#16 & 17 Wikis

I actually started playing around with Wikis a little while ago and think they are wonderful. I have ended up working with dispersed groups of people on various things and these smart little pieces of software get over so many long distance collaboration problems.

The Collections Co-op now has a wiki and we are working on one internally for the reference staff. The options are endless really.

#11 & 12 Librarything & Rollyo

Yes I know I'm going backwards but I promised to fill in this gap.

LOVE libraryThing but not so sure about Rollyo.

I am slowly adding my home collection to LibraryThing and keep getting distracted by all the other fun stuff there. I love the Zeitgeist and the fabulous things you find just taking a general schmooze around. There are thousands of people who read the same stuff I do! Even though I don't know any of them that's kind of comforting after the regular reaction my bookshelves get - kind of a bemused 'huh'.

While I see the point of Rollyo and think that it would be fantastic for those searching for similar stuff all the time, I don't really think it's something I'll use straight away. Good to have it lurking in the back of my brain though as you never can tell when it might save the day.

#15 Everything 2.0

Do libraries have a place in a 2.0 world? Yes I absolutely think they do.

Where will that place be? Hopefully right in the middle of things but I suspect for some libraries they will end up at the very edge of a farflung galaxy in the backblocks (to badly paraphrase Douglas Adams).

What will that place look like? My guess would be that my place won't look anything like yours, as it shouldn't if we are serving our communities properly.

Library 2.0 is really just a ramped up version of what libraries have been doing since the dawn of time - organising stuff so people can find and use it, keeping stuff so it is available to the next generation and helping people create new stuff (from recipes to research). The difference now is that the world has got smaller, the amount of stuff has got bigger and literally everyone is organising, keeping and creating.

I think we have some important choices to make about how we face this new world. We can demand that it plays by our rules or we'll go home, we can sit on the sidelines until we've got it worked out (by which time the game will have changed) or we can get in there and play along. If we aren't part of the game it will change without us and we will lose all hope of ever getting back in. That doesn't mean that we all have to in the middle of it but we do have to be open to ideas, giving things a go and cheering on those who are willing to be up the front where the hard knocks are happening.

One of the blogs I read had a great quote: "If you haven't failed you weren't trying hard enough". How sad for us if we didn't even get a 2.0 paper cut.

So let the games begin!!! (just let me go get my floaties, see previous post)

#14 Technorati overload

Well, I checked it out and all I can say is that the blogosphere can be a scary place. Scary big, scary wierd, scary funny - honestly who would have thought that so many people could spend so much time writing about absolutely anything and everything.

I think that this is where my preference for wading over jumping starts to show. I've been back a few times, going a little deeper with each visit but being very careful where I put my feet. Maybe next time I'll take on TomKat or Brangelina but only if I have my storm rated floaties on and my finger on the off button.

This does somewhat downgrade my geek rating but I'm sure I'll get it back up there soon enough.

Whilst paddling in the shallow end I did find "Cooking for Engineers" (http://www.cookingforengineers.com/). If you like your recipes with step-by-step photos and a Ghant chart then this is the site for you.

#13 Totally del.icio.us

I know I've skipped 11 & 12 but I really will go back and do them.

In the meantime I've uploaded all my bookmarks into del.icio.us and have been having fun tagging and sharing them. I must say I'm a bit of a fan of the tag cloud, I love the way it shows patterns of usage at a glance. I suspect tags like 'book' and 'food' are just going to keep getting bigger and bigger in my little cloud.

This is going to be really useful if I ever change jobs - no more exporting & importing and hoping nothing gets lost in transit. Come to think of it it'll be handy when I move around from PC to PC here and when I travel, all my favourite stuff just a few clicks away.

deeelicious!

I love Bloglines!

I feel like I haven't done anything L2ish for ages but then realised this isn't exactly true. Whilst I haven't made a rollyo yet or put any of my stuff on LibraryThing (although I have created an account) or even made any more images I LOVE! Bloglines.

I have a bunch of library type blogs plugged in and it has become part of my 'first thing' routine - turn everything on and put in all my passwords, get a coffee while my PC thinks about things for a bit, check email then check Bloglines and see what is happening in libraryland. There are some wonderful, inspiring things going on out there! It's nice to start the day thinking anything is possible.

If I get nothing else out of all this (not likely) then this will be worth it all on it's own.

#10 Images

How cool is that! The little wave picture below was sent straight to my blog from the image generator. I've also made personalised noodle soup, of only you could get it to do this in real life.

I used redkid for the soup (www.redkid.net/generator/soup/sign.php) and imagechef for the wave (www.imagechef.com/ic/make.jsp?tid=Wave+Animated) both are listed on generatorblog (http://generatorblog.blogspot.com ) and that was only going through the A's on the list.

Wave image

#9 Feed finding

Maybe it's just because it's 4.55 and late in the week but I found the feed finders like Feedster and Google a but overwhealming. Even when I thought I'd been really specific in my search I got a squillion hits.



So I ended up using the search function in bloglines and I'm now getting weather updates, All Blacks rugby news (because we are going to WIN! the world cup). I'm also getting updates from a few L2 blogs, just to keep up with what you all out there are up to. :-)

#8 RSS

Well, it was sort of simple. Setting up my Bloglines account wasn't hard but once I got in it was kind of...so now what. With a bit of faffing around of the 'wonder what happens if I click here' variety I have subscribed to 6 feeds, 4 from the Bloglines list and 2 I found myself (yeah me!). I must say it's nice getting the latest bits from different sources all in one spot. One of the blogs I subscribe to had nothing new added yesterday so I didn't even have to have a look at it, I knew I wasn't missing anything and didn't get disappointed or feel I was wasting time by going to check it out and not seeing anything new.

Now that I have it set up I can just keep adding things as I come across them in my travels.

#7 100 words on Technology

Well here goes.

I remember sitting at the PC that had our first and only (dial up) internet connection at work some time in the midish 90s. A couple of us had decided that we just wanted to see if it was really as flash as all the articles said it was and thought we'd put it through it's paces. The only place I could think of that had a web site that might be even vaguely useful (this was work time) and interesting was the NY Public Library. Don't forget that this was way pre-Google so having found their web address in a paper article we brought it up and started playing. A few clicks of the mouse and basic searches later we were looking at a digital copy of a photograph from the Library of Congress of Abraham Lincoln standing on the back of a wagon giving the Gettysburgh address.

Right then I knew this was going to be big.

Now I own a laptop with a wireless connection so I can be online anywhere, anytime, a phone that has more stuff on it than I know what to do with and an ipod that has made me realise I have quite weird taste in music. I know a 1yr old who has a blog - his dad does the typing at this stage but I'm sure that won't last long.

I went to hear Stephen Abram yesterday and one of his messages was "If you thought this was big, you ain't seen nothing yet". I don't know about living my entire life online, I'm busy enough as it is but wow, when you can share photos instantly with your family & friends no matter where they are, find a recipe for turkey stuffing and locate John & Kevin's views on climate change all within a few clicks the mind boggles as to what might be next.

#6 Photo Phun

There seems to be no end of stuff that you can do with a Flickr account. I have created a little cube of my holiday photos that now sits on my desk. I made it with my Flickr photos and one of the Flickr Toys from bighugelabs.com. You pick your photos and they send you a pdf to print, cut out and stick and voila! photo cube!

The photo is a bit fuzzy but you get the idea.

Flickr Badge

Thanks to AndrewL who doesn't know it but has shown me how to create a Flickr badge and insert it into my blog. Now you can see my holiday photos without having to click on the link, just watch the little slideshow on the left!

Cool!

# Flickr - but wait there's more

I have created and account and loaded a few of my holiday photos if you want to have a look. Click here to have a look at Thailand and see what a phone camera is capable of.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/14156585@N02/sets/72157602155313738/

#5 Flickr

I haven't actually created a Flickr account yet but have discovered some really cool stuff just looking at other people's photos.

Once you get into the tags you have the option to cluster which bunches together all the photos with that tag into groups, shows the other tags for those photos and lets you explore from there rather than trawling through a squillion images (1,297,059 of cats and 1,200 odd of Melbourne graffiti). So if you see 'Cluster' in your travels through Flickr give it a click!

Also check out these links for some awesome pictures of the Eiffel Tower in green
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nightblue/1337519417/in/set-72157601898885573/

and some arty support for the French rugby team on cafes and pubs
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cathou/1392906649/in/photostream/

I'm hoping to take some photos over the weekend and have my own account up and running to show you soon.

First Post!

Ok, so here is my first post to my blog. Not very exciting I know but one small step...

I'm going to try and find a halfway decent photo of me to add to my profile so stay tuned for that.

I'm looking forward to learning more with Learning 2!