excerise # 8

The great thing about social bookmarking and tagging is that it provides a way of making the vast amount of information on the web more manageable. I like the way it allows you to personalise the way you use and manage information - you can choose tags that have special importance and meaning for you.

In a work context it facilitates the sharing of information and resources. Someone else may have already tagged that great site which contains just the information you need!

Bloglines vs Technorati search tools

I preferred Bloglines as it was easy to search using "search for feeds" and produced some accurate results. Like many web tools, the more specific the information requested, the better the results. For example, searching using the term "libraries" produced 6,560 feeds, whereas the term "libraries new zealand" produced a more manageable 5 results. A particular feature I liked on Bloglines was the "Matching Posts" feature which provided links to other sites that may be of interest. I found a Books on National Radio feed this way.

Technorati certainly produced some results (38,746 blogs using the keyword "libraries"). I also liked the way Technorati featured videos which enabled me to find a whole group of videos about New Zealand Libraries.

RSS feeds

Absolutely brilliant! I just love the way that news can be personalised to your specific interests and tastes. It's like having a newspaper with only the best bits in! You don't have to throw away the sports pages and that tedious real estate supplement unread. You know that the things that are served up for your perusal are going to be the things that interest you. I suppose the downside is that you may become very one-sided in your interests and completely become out of touch with what is going on in everyone else's universe. Ah well.

Things we love

This sounds like a segment from Rove, but I love the Scrabulous application on Facebook. Not only can I play frivolous (and sometimes serious) wordgames with my daughter who lives just a few kilometres away, but also with friend who has emigrated to Fiji. In fact, when we send the automated message reminding the other player that it is their turn to play, it reassures us that even though we haven't sent an email or made a phone call that contains real news, we are still keeping in touch.

Flickr mashups

With a daughter recently returned from Europe and a son currently travelling around Africa, I loved the idea of Trippermap (http://www.trippermap.com). This nifty little application allows you to put a world map on your blog or website & Trippermap then plots your photos from Flickr on your own personal trip map.

First Blog with a photo!

Ok, so this is not exactly a photo of "something in my branch", but as I will never remember to take the camera to work this photo of the mobile will have to do!

Flickr seemed easy enough to use and it looks as though it's a good way to store and share photos online. Having to set up yet another email account (yahoo this time) was a pain though. Soon I'll have email accounts (and the accompanying spam) for Africa!

First Post on Blogger!

Hi to all at NSL! OK, the blog has been set up and we are ready to post! The most exciting thing about doing this was choosing the colours and design - lots of orange!!

It seems weird to be posting thoughts online for all to read. Diaries and journals used to be private - a way of expressing thoughts that no-one else would share. Now it seems as though our opinions are not worthwhile unless validated by everyone else reading them in cyberspace!