Exercise 17 - Web 2.0 Awards

For this exercise I decided to explore the Travel Award winner, Farecast.

http://www.farecast.com/

This site allows you to easily compare, filter and sort flight results from hundreds of airline, hotel and agency websites to find the right trip. It also predicts if fares are rising or dropping. Based on the prediction, it provides a recommendation to buy now or buy later.

It all sounds good in theory but when I put it to the test, the results weren't that impressive. I tried to find the best price for two tickets to Melbourne next month. Unfortunately the site was unable to offer any predictions about prices in this area. The site is standardised American (dates back to front) and prices in U.S. dollars which means you have to convert currencies. And the list of flights it found for me consisted of pages of flights from "multiple airlines" all at the same price of $1926. At the end of the day I would have been better off by going to the Air New Zealand, Qantas or Pacific Blue websites.

However, the site might be a better prospect if you plan to travel in the U.S or Canada - it claims to offer price predictions for all the major routes here. Or maybe for travel in Europe where Farecast can trawl the plethora of discount airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair to find you a bargain.

Exercise 16 Zoho Writer

I'm creating this blog entry on Zoho Writer just to test out some of the features.



Can it add photos?
What are the colour features like?


The toolbar is very like MS Word and the application seems very user friendly and comprehensive. Even the Spellchecker allows you to choose English (NZ) as an option. Also the standard keyboard shortcuts are working for me.



I can see that this site could be very useful. If it is as portable and accessible as it claims it would solve a lot of those problems when patrons come into the library and are unable to open their documents on our public access PCs because they have created the document at home using MS Vista and Word 2007 and we are still operating on Windows XP and Word 2003! Well, if they know about Zoho Writer that is!


Ok - above is just the copy /paste version of my wonderful full colour illustrated document. When I tried to publish the real document to this blog, Zoho Writer repeatedly gave the message "Unable to connect your blog. Username or password may be incorrect". I'm obviously doing something wrong! Will check with the 23 things experts on Monday!

Monday 1st Sept: This was very frustrating - Zoho still will not allow me to post to my blog. I have saved the document, clicked on publish, chosen the correct blog, user name, password etc. Several of us have looked at this and we just can't work it out!

Exercise 15 - Rollyo

Well, all I can say about this is thank goodness for the instructions from 23 things on how to add Rollyo to your blog! I don't think I would have managed without them.

I have added the Rollyo widget thingy but to be honest I think I don't think I will use it much! I suppose I am now very much into the information literacy way of thinking and keen on evaluating and exploring new websites as I find them. Rollyo is good but I can see that it might trap you into using the same sites over and over without the need to go on discovering. Since the web is constantly changing and expanding, new and better sites are being produced all the time (and old favourites disappear with the same frequency). As librarians I think we are all skilled in using the appropriate search terms to find that valuable piece of information on a particular website again if necessary. And if we can't, well another one will be along soon!

Exercise # 13

I was given the code for my glowing message which despite trying dozens of different copy paste variations could only be fixed by our wonderful 2.0 mentor altering the HTML code! Apparently there was a flaw in the code not visible to the untrained eye!

Here is the site I used:

http://glowtxt.com/

Hope everyone else has better luck than I did!

However, I did discover that my Gansta name is Da Mighty Beezy Whoa pimping!

http://www.namepistol.com/gangsta_name_generator.html

Is there no end to this frivolity?

Exercise 12 - Sandbox

I enjoyed having a look around this site - I like the way you could view everyone's favourite books, music, etc in one place without going into to explore their individual blogs. Another way to share information. The sharing of information is really becoming a theme of 23 Things!

Exercise 11

I liked the Booklovers' Wiki from Princeton Public Library. It allows patrons to participate and feel that they are part of their library culture. It's just the sort of interactive participation we talked about in Web 2.0/Library 2.0. Patrons want to be heard and this Wiki gives them a chance to create, publish and connect.
As well as connecting with patrons, wikis are a great way for staff to share information. They are almost like an electronic version of the "Question Book" we have at the library: the invaluable little book where staff can record crucial information such as where to send empty toner cartridges, what to do if the newspapers aren't delivered and where the Christmas decorations are kept. This is as well as keeping staff up to date with current developments and sharing best practice procedures such as in the Library Success: Best Practice wiki.

Exercise 14 Library Thing

I wasn't so interested in the tagging, cataloging tools that Library Thing offers, but the great resources the site has for readers' advisory and book groups. It's great to hear others' views and recommendations and the study questions in some of the book descriptions give you new perspectives on the book that you may not have thought about.
I also really liked the Zeitgeist section - a wonderful snapshot of what the world is reading. And in "Librarians who Library Thing" there is a section called "Funny Requests from Patrons" - really funny with stories that I'm sure we can all relate to!
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=17962

exercise # 10

I think that the dramatic thing about Web 2.0 is that it has changed the way we use the Internet. Internet users are no longer just the consumers of information, they are its creators. The emergence of Social media sites (YouTube, Snapfish), social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace) news sites (Oh My News, which has over 40,000 citizen journalists), podcasts, and Wikis has changed the construction and culture of the Web from one being built by a few thousand authors to one built by millions. We now want to control our media and now have enormous publishing power.

When I think back to the early 90's - before Google became a verb- I just could not have envisaged how the Internet could be such an interactive medium. It was exciting enough to be able to search an online encyclopedia and be able to jump from article to article with a click of a mouse. But now we have the tools to be able to contribute to online encyclopedias ourselves, and connect with our library users in new interactive ways. The National Library has its own MySpace page for instance and I think that our users will expect more and more of an electronic, 24/7, on demand service from us. Role on the virtual branch- but I'm not sure that I want to be rostered onto the 10pm - 6am shift!

exercise 9 - technorati

Ok, sorry people but I could not get excited about this site. The trouble is I just don't speak geek! I did my searches for Learning 2.0 and the main results seemed to be full of all this esoteric techie stuff - Second Life - Live Mesh - Twitter - Pownce ... what the ???
Also the avatar thingy that looks like a bloated Barbie Doll advertising "IMVU the world's greatest 3D chat" was well, quite frankly creepy.
And in the list of Technorati's top searches "Viagra" came in at number 4! What does this tell you?