#13 & 14 Week 6 Del.icio.us & Thecnorati

#13 Del.icio.us



For this weeks exercise, I made Delicious account and made bookmarks based on popular tags or ACL Delicious account. I also installed Delicious buttons on my Firefox web browser and used tag button to bookmark random web pages I searched from google, too. The tagging is easy but I think I will spend more time to organise these bookmarks and use them efficiently in the future.The site is easy and straightforward and the layout and graphics are fresh and pretty. The downside of this tool will be that Delicious is also belongs to yahoo account which delay loading time too long. To link my Delicious account I used network badge option.

#14 Technorati

It is first time I actually introduced my blog in the Internet. I made account and claimed my blog in Technorati. Claim option is at the end of 'My Profile' Page. Possibly after verification the page may be appear by responding keyword search in Techonorati.

I also tried seaching 'Learning 2.0' using different buttons on the top of the home pages.

* Screen dump of search result using 'Posts button' - This search listed many posts that has keywords learning and 2.0.




* Screen dump of search result using 'blogs button' - This search found one blog that has keyword 'Learning 2.0' in its blog title.


I couldn't quite understand meaning of Blog directory because when I used blog directory link, which was in the second low of links from home page, there was no result related to the keyword 'Learning 2.0'.

Finally, I will skip exploring 'popular blog, searches and tags' for now as this option is not available at the moment.

Honestly, I would be really happy to sit down and search all these options and have taste of it but reality is that I need to brows these in very short period of time so that I have only very rough impression on these tools. I agree that using Delicious is useful because it is used as Auckland City Library reference tool and it seems quite simple. Technorati make me a bit worried when I have to see those strange ads attached to the web pages. It's good to know one option to publicise your own blog for future reference.

#11 Week 5 Librarythings

I had looking at Librarything web site. It is similar to Bookjetty that I did last year. It let you record books using database from number of different libraries and amazon web page. I added 10 book records and added LT Search box. I doesn't look pretty as blogspot has limit of pixel size on Widget row but I wouldn't venture to fix it considering time strain.
This will be useful when you seek some opinions about the book or remembering your reading lists. I can be used as a recommended or nominated book lists to be read, personally.

Additionally, the following widget was added as a result of my colleague's advise. This option can be found when you click 'Widgets' link on the top right corner in the home page.

#10 Week 4 tweet tweet, Twitter!

<== My twitter page link.

First time I have learn about twitter, I wondered why I would want to report my every details of my life to strangers. Honestly, I have to say that I haven't changed this first impression. Well, since then many people have been using twitter, some says it's useful for finding out news getting info. I looks like individual news report system, though one might wonder how much he/she can rely on the truth of facts of enourmous amounts of comments.

Apart from these personal opinion about the twitter, I tried to use it because it is part of the training and one can not ignore it when so many people using it as a trend. I signed up using my gmail account then wrote some logs and followed National Library and EBSCO Publishing twitter pages. Then I wasn't sure how to link twitter to this blog so that I used profile setting and added twitter widgets to my blog. Then I found out I could use twitter button to link the pages so I used it, too.

I don't quite understand people who uses facebook and twitter and all sorts of different blogging pages to link all times. They must have heaps of time to do that or be extreamly organised. I would use twitter if I am in a team with team members who uses it all the time or have target customer who is only teenagers who can find my business only by twitter. Or if you want to find out news of celebrity or investigate paticular people's affair, this will be very very useful. For the library, I don't think I will use it for customers as I meet them mainly in person at desk rather than online. But when I have position to advertise the library concentraiting teen memembers very actively, this could be one of the options.

# 9 Week 4 Really Simple Syndication - Bloglines

For RSS thing, I chose blogline instead of google reader as I practice and subscribed numbers of feeds. I tried to find way to link the bloglines of my own but I couldn't find a way so I attatched the Screen dump of my bloglines page.

'Bloglines' is quite simple to register because what you need is only your email address. They still provide blogging options but you don't need to make it unless you really need it. I made 10 rss subscriptions by copying the rss subscription pages to rss add function in 'Bloglines'. Billboard.com was a bit tricky as it automaticlly generate pop-up window for desktop RSS Reader only. I just type the rss address of billbord.com in the bloglines and it did work.

I learned about RSS last year and have been using Google Reader but I don't tend to use it at all. Many of the RSS only shows part of articles so that I have to go the web pages if I want to read and numbers of to-be-read lists overwhelms me so I avoid and pretend there are nothing to read -.-;. It is actually convenient function but when time goes by the articles becomes like junk mails. I think that one might one to be careful and really organised when he/she decides to use it. Or RSS developer may need to provide more advanced refining tools for user.

#8 Week 3 Image generator - Letter James

Finally, Last piece of week 3 things. I had a quick look of image generators suggested and chose 'LetterJames'. I chose it because there are number of picutures you can use and I could understand what I am doing in the web site. They are quite interesting sites, when you play with them while don't need to worry about copyright issue. It is amazing that you can actually change the image just by simply typing texts.

# 7 Week 3 Flickr image editing Tool - Picnik

Actual photo

Edited Photo

I can't believe I am still in Week3 but here I am. I used picnik for this practice. Changed Colour to make look like evening sunset and Added Text and Frame.It is really simple task when I am summarising it but It took several hours. Connecting to picnik from flickr and loading the editing options was so long tasks for just little changes. After long browsing I decided what frame to take or filters or effect - actually I gave to use any effect as they are not suitable or required payment. Then there was problem saving changes to flickr itself because of internet speed. It kept freezing monitor and showed failure messages without right reason. I kept tried and even left the browser open over night and came back. Finally I gave up and downloaded to my computer and uploaded to flickr and came to work to use blogging tool. But I think flickr function were disabled in the Library so I had to download picture again to library computer and uploaded to blogspot. Only if I knew... I guess this practice is not really suitable for Library or Public computers.

I think the I would not recommend customer to use flickr especially in the library computers. Why waste your time? You can use them pretty well if you live in America or have high speed broadband connection only for yourself. Offline Picasa, web camera bundle photo editing application will do better job with no cost.

#6 - 2 Week 3 My creation using FD's Flickr ToysTrading Card Maker

My creation
Originally uploaded by web2learner2

Next, I had a look at FD Toys’ Trading Card Maker. While I look for librarian trading card I became curious about avatar-like graphics and found interesting article related to this task. The Article 'A Dozen Back to School Uses for Big Huge Labs Trading Card Generator' explains general idea of making trading cards and introduces useful applications that make the avatars or images. It was really useful as I needed way more understanding of the 'Trading cards'. I also picked up Avatar making tool, 'Face your manga' and replaced it with my real picture.

#6 - 1 Week3 Third Party online application and Mashups in Flickr

I am still in flickr. For this exercise, I chose Flickr Color Pickr from suggested mashup application in Flickr. It is quite interesting search option when you looking for pictures based on colors.


This time I chose some pictures as Color Pickr suggested pictures as I click on colors and added to 'my favorite' on the Flickr. Then used slide function to share these photos.

Part of # 5 (Week 3) activity - my photo on Flickr

How do you catch a bus?
Originally uploaded by web2learner2

I have uploaded this old photo to Flickr for practice and now posting it using Flickr' blogging tool. I used editing tool 'Picnik' to adjust color and frame it.

#5 Week 3 Flick, Flick - Flickr

Fifth things to do this programme was learning Image Hosting Websites. Flickr is one of those popular Image hosting web sites according to what I heard. It was shame that it is belong to Yahoo which is really troublesome mail hosting web site. I had to made account through quite frustrating sign up process - I could have use aclelgar account to avoid this hassle if I had read instruction more carefully.

While I am learning about tags which is similar to labels or subject keywords, I discovered an interesting photo to from 'Interesting- Last 7 days' tag page. It's called 'The M&M's Painter' and posted by Stéfan. I wrote a comment for asking permission to blog but I need to wait to log to get the answer so I am leaving the link only. When I get the permission I might use Flickr's blogging function to post the page seperately. One of the reason I don't use blog that actively is that I am quite unsure about the matter related to copyright and blogging. I haven't have full understanding of how much we are allowed to share the pictures and blogs when and where to ask permission and how. Simple icons you allows you to blog or send email to friends looks so easy. But I much can I do it?

I also have found 'Pets that own ACL Staff', Auckland Art Gallery and 'Auckland Outreach Therapy Pets' groups while I was searching groups with 'auckland' and 'libraries' keyword and checked lovely photos shared by group members.

For the last tough I upload a photo in Flickr and blogged on previous post. I am so ready to go next thing.

#4 Week 2 - socialised

For this task was having a look at social networking web sites. I had short look around for Bebo, LinkedIn MySpace and facebook. I made accounts in MySpace and Facebook. It wasn't very pleasant experience each websites requires sing up to just look around because I am not very fond of idea that I have to keep recording my details on the net.

I made account on MySpace and Facebook. Only reason I made account on MySpace was I wanted to know about MySpace more as I aleady have Facebook account and there are some public pages so you can see them even though you didn't sign up. However I feel that there are more people using Facebook instead of MySpace which made me difficult to find anyone who had account in facebook. I tried some 'My public Play lists' under my music page. I also tried to add link from another pages but It wasn't easy and so time-consuming. Nonethless, help option was not there for me to help either, which made me really was frustrating. I prefer MySpace when I search video links (example: Eddie Izzard - Death star Canteen) though. It shows popular funny videos and you don't need to sign up. It is more easy to share them if you use blogspot.

I have mentioned a lot about the MySpace, however if I have to choose to use social network website, I will choose facebook only because many people use it. Both social network websites are so time-consuming that I cannot decide what is really beneficall for me in short period of time.

Links of my profile

- My Facebook
- My MySpace(?)

#1 & 2 Week1 - Another start

Now, now, another learning curve of Web 2.0 this year.

First thing I did for this week was looking at introduction of the ACL Learning 2.0 programme to find out that we are going to do 23 things over 9 weeks by 29 th of March 2010 and explore blogger, Flicker, Delicious, YouTube, PBWicke and Bloglines. Some of them I have already tried and some I haven't. After completing this programme, I expect that I am going to be for comfortable using these tools and will meet customers more confidently when they need helf related this subject.

I had made google account last year for ACL Web 2.0 learning so I am using same account from last year but I made new blog page for this year and posting this first article. It is interesting to notice that blogger allows you make different blog pages depending on what you are writing about. ACL 2.0 pages uses different pages and links based on need of information. Last year I didn't need to make extra blog so I used single blog page but now I am creating a diffrent page.

Next thing for this week is to register the programme.