Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Thing #16, Wiki's

I thought the wiki's were somewhat interesting, but at the same time, I'm so tired of wiki's. Since wikipedia came, everyone has piggybacked off of it and made their own variation. It's a good thing, but at the same time it has me wary because anyone can say anything about any subject, whether they're telling the truth or not. The honor system keeps a webpage mainly accurate, but at the same time, many different opinions can clash, so it's hard to keep it unbiased. The library wiki's seem to be trying to show a few things the libraries have to offer, but they don't have the same effect as going to an actual library. There are reviews of some books on BookLoversWiki, but there aren't a lot. Hopefully in time these sites will grow, but for now they don't have a lot of information on them.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Thing #15, Library 2.0

I read Rick Anderson's "Away from the 'Icebergs'," which discussed certain things libraries can do to keep up with the influx of information becoming available to people. I was a little disappointed to look at the three things libraries can do, because it just made me depressed. The first one was to get rid of your older collection so you're not wasting space, because people are going to find what they're looking for online. Part of me does agree, but at the same time, I keep imagining those paranoid movies about the future where the computer rules and books are forbidden. To me, print is something physical, that is hard to get rid of, and can continually be found and referred to. Something online is changing, and consists of 1's and 0's, so it can be easily discarded or lost. The fact that information can be so easily gotten rid of like that is scary to me. And where are the people getting the information from to put online? From books, in my mind. I was also a bit skeptical about the "Bring the library to you" approach. Libraries are places where people meet and talk and ideas are exchanged in person! To take that away from people just seems scary.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Thing #14, Technorati

I found that Technorati is basically a lot of searching through blogs, or like a blog search engine. Some of the blogs I saw were some favorites of mine, and I didn't even consider them as "blogs," just as websites that updated daily with interesting new things. In the popular searches part of the site, I saw some interesting names there. For instance, a number of people had done searches for "Skype," but it was because recently Skype had a service blackout for about three days. Also being searched for were some celebrities, including a Spanish celebrity I had never heard of, but was immensely popular on Spanish-speaking blogs. The favorite blogs tended to be technical blogs, which isn't surprising since a number of technical-minded people use the internet and look at these blogs.

Thing #13, Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us was pretty interesting, but I don't know if I can get used to the idea. The link to see the 12-minute tutorial was broken, so I pretty much had to just look around myself. I couldn't really get my head around just EXACTLY what it was until I read the helpful "learn more" button. It basically explained it as having bookmarks from your computer placed on a website so you can go to those sites wherever you want to, away from your home computer. This made sense to me, and it seemed like a nifty idea. My idea of "tagging" was from LiveJournal, where you could use tags to say what you'd talked about. For example, if you're a Dr. Who fan, any post you'd made about it could have a Dr. Who tag, so you could easily search for any Dr. Who references. This is how Del.icio.us looks to me. I am also having a hard time with it's name. Why the periods in the word "delicious"? I just don't get it.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Thing #12, Rollyo

To me, Rollyo was kinda interesting, but I lost interest quickly because its pretty much a search engine. If you're really interested in a topic, couldn't you just use Google to search for it? Maybe I've grown too dependent on Google and Wikipedia to look for everything I need to know about. Here is my Rollyo search, on cuteness:

http://rollyo.com/wonderninja/my_cuteness/

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Thing #11, Library Thing

Here's another "thing" I love! I really love reading books and finding new things to read, so LibraryThing is good to know what I've already read and what other people who like my books would suggest. The only downside is having to input or search for every book you've read or own, and for a librarian, that can be a considerable number of books. But its lots of fun searching for good books to read! Its like shopping on Amazon.com and not having to spend anything. Here is my link:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Cobrani

Thing #10, Images

This was interesting! I liked playing with the images, and was able to make a few. I wanted to to the Simpsons generator, but you really need pictures of yourself online. I didn't have any available, so this is something to do at home, I think.

Thing #9, MERLIN

After all the fun websites like Flickr and Bloglines and stuff, I was disappointed with MERLIN. It didn't really seem all that special or flashy to me. It seemed like any other library website that had links to other technology-related information for customers. It had a lot more sites available than a regular website, but the format it was presented in was kinda dry and just seemed like it was a jumping point to better websites.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Thing #8, Bloglines

Wooo, Bloglines! This is pretty cool stuff here. Before I thought RSS feeds were crazy, convoluted things where you had to go to some specific web page to see what you had signed up for, and it was harder than just looking on the original web page you'd subscribe to. Bloglines is nifty because you can just click on the name of the site you've subscribed to and it shows you the top headlines. The only thing I don't like is that it kinda takes the fun out of just casually putzing around a website and clicking on things randomly, just to see what you can see. I hope to definitely use this in the future though. I chose to do the optional activity, and here's my public link:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/Wonderninja

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Talking about Skype, Thing #7

I adore the program Skype. A friend of mine over in England introduced me to it, and now I have so many of my friends on it. It acts as an instant messenger, file transfer, and voice communication tool. It's completely free, and it's as easy as talking on the phone. Sometimes the quality is even better than on the phone, since the phone can cut out. You can also post a picture of yourself as your icon. Another aspect is that you can search for other people to talk to on Skype, so if you felt like talking to someone in say, Brazil, you can see who's available to chat in Brazil and just start calling or instant messaging them. While IMing a person, you can also insert fun little emoticons, which I love.

Thing #6, Mashups

Having recently come from a trip to San Diego, I was intruiged by Yahoo! Travels "Trip Planner" mashup site. You plan your trip with driving directions, hotel planning, nearby restaurants and such, and then when you come home, you can upload your pictures and show where you've been. You can comment on other people's trips, and get directions and addresses to where they've been. For my trip to San Diego, I didn't go to a lot of different places, so Trip Planner probably wouldn't be used to its full effect.