Not my thing!

If you know me, you know I have rather unusual tastes in literature so it's sometimes difficult for me to connect with others who share my interests. I guess that Library Thing would be a useful tool for me to find like-minded readers but my initial searches were not very successful. As with all tools, I need to invest more time in understanding its features before jumping to any conclusions.

I do love the idea of sharing tags, ratings, comments and reviews of books online. I am a great fan of the relatively new BiblioCommons platform being adopted by more and more libraries. Users can connect with each other through their library catalogue by adding reviews, comments, ratings and tags to their own collections and by creating annotated lists. It can even include books not held by the hosting library as well as web sites. It adds a wonderful rich layer to searching that is not available in traditional catalogues. Plus, it allows users to organize their materials. If I hadn't already invested so much effort into organizing my books via BiblioCommons, I might give Library Thing more of my time. I may, however, consider using it for a specific area of my collection and will try a little harder to search for more materials with it.

Link to my Library Thing library: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/MelissaPoremba

Feed me!

RSS feeds are another of my favourite Web 2.0 tools. I love having updates sent to my reader without having to go to each site to see if anything has changed.

I subscribe to many RSS feeds. My favourites are Library Link of the Day (which I used to receive via email), Miss Information's blog, Arts & Letters Daily, Merriam-Webster Word of the Day and any of the numerous ones from Library Journal and School Library Journal.

For pure fun and interest, I also subscribe to Mathematical Fiction and Mathematics in Movies.

BlogLines is another reader that I use. It has a great collection of feeds to get you started. For someone working in libraryland like me, it was easy to start with their "Quick Pics" lists for "Books" (Guardian Unlimited Books, New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly Best Sellers, USAToday.com Books) and "Libraries" (Librarian.net, Library Stuff, Resource Shelf, Shifted Librarian). Once I got started, I removed the ones that weren't of interest to me and added others. (Look under "What interests you?" and then select "more" from the BlogLines introductory pages.)

I have shifted most of me feeds over to Google Reader as I'm experimenting with organizing all my tools in one location by adding gadgets to my iGoogle page. I love all these tools but hate having to go to so many sites to access them.

PBWorks for me

I promised FlyForLess that I would bring the condiments for the hamburgers.  Although, if you've seen the size of the burger on his blog, you'll be correct in thinking I'll need a truck to supply enough!

I love PBWorks!  In fact, wikis and social bookmarking are probably my favourite Betty Blogger tools. I prefer wikis to blogs as they give more organizational options than the chronological format offered by blogs.  I

I've always wanted to run a Forest of Reading bookclub using a wiki, but I can envision many more applications for one as well.

Google Docs--Experiment 2

Copying and pasting Document Link from Google Docs:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1qxDS1WqhCoOC7pvZhuXVRreaygLLvcsQHBPtqYZJOOc

In the example above, the URL does not appear as a hyperlink and therefore cannot take Library Lady to my Google Docs story.

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1qxDS1WqhCoOC7pvZhuXVRreaygLLvcsQHBPtqYZJOOc

In this example, the URL is now a hyperlink--hovering over it causes the cursor to change into the 'clicking hand' symbol.  Clicking on it will take Library Lady to my Google Docs story so she can read about my cooking disasters and give me credit for finishing Task 6.

Google Docs--Experiment 1

Copying and pasting the Embed code from Google Docs:

Persnickety Picasa

The tags that were assigned to the picture I sent to Library Lady were:  owls, cake and math.  Yes, I managed to find something of interest to me (math and owls) and to Betty (cake).

I'm not comfortable posting photos on the Internet even though I did experiment by embedding a slide show below using Picasa Web Albums.  I had a nasty experience last year when downloading Picasa 3 to my computer.  (In all fairness, it was my own fault for not reading ALL the instructions CAREFULLY.)

I do like looking at some of the pictures in Picasa, but I can also find them simply by searching Google Images.  (Picasa is a Google product so the public pictures appear in both Google Images and Picasa, although GI gives tons more to choose from.)

Keeping Up

This morning my kids and I were discussing the changing world of Facebook--both positive and negative.  They mentioned reading news articles about some changes and developments.  So just for fun, I did a quick Google News search and the following are just a few of the articles about Facebook from the last few days:

• Facebook Launches Safety Page  (good news for parents)
• Facebook May Get a Real 'Delete Account' Option  (good news for everyone!)
• Facebook Questions:  How's it Stack Up?  (a new feature just added in Beta to select few)
• Twitter Launches 'Who to Follow Feature' (Twitter copying Facebook feature)
• Woman Finds Husband's Other Wife on Facebook (cheaper than a P.I., I guess, but no less devastating)
• Facebook Offers Child Safety Panic Button in UK (let's hope they add this feature worldwide)

And least surprising of all... Time Spent on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Grows

'Keeping up with the Jones' takes on a whole new meaning in today's world of social networking!

Twittering Time Away

Twitter is another tool that I have simply because I needed to for a course. I believe that there are very few people in the world from whom I need updates every few minutes. Well, except, of course, my kids. (They tell me it is easier to update their status via Twitter than via Facebook.)  Anyway, there must be lots of people out there with interesting lives worthy of 140 characters of commentary because Twitter reached the 20 Billion tweets mark today. That's 20,000,000,000!

However, I have talked to other people who find it useful and now that I've done some more investigating, I can see their point. You can keep up-to-date on news by following any of the major networks. In countries where news is censored, Twitter allowed residents to voice their opinions; a great example is the election in Iran. My local newspaper now allows you to follow the classified ads via Twitter. While I don't care what Ashton Kutcher or Larry King are doing every minute, these other news items are worth following. I also discovered that Twitter may be helpful for professional reasons. Did you know that you can follow Library Journal and LJ Book Reviews via Twitter!

Facing up to Facebook

I'm still not sure about Facebook. I had to set up an account a few years ago for a class I was taking. I have friends who use theirs all the time so I follow them but I rarely bother to put anything up on my own account.  I think that might make me a "lurker."

My kids love the site and have figured out how to use Facebook and its applications in ways I never dreamed of.  When I mentioned this Betty Blogger task to them, they offered to give me Facebook lessons for "old people"! Believe it or not, I didn't realize one could "chat" via Facebook so I nearly jumped out of my chair the first time I received an invitation to do so.  If you don't have kids around to help, you can always check out Facebook for Dummies--it might be more patient with you than a 15 year-old!

Of course with my teens using this tool all the time, I have concerns about their security. I wanted to learn how to use Facebook so I could discuss its positive and negative aspects with them as well as its various security settings.  It turns out that my daughter thought her pictures were visible only to her 'friends' but in fact 'friends of friends' could see her albums so we spent some time editing the settings for each. 

We've also spent time talking about social networking etiquette as Facebook postings are being used by employers among others. Rob Nickel, a retired O.P.P. officer who now runs Cyber-Safety gave a lecture at my kids' school about criminals using Facebook to look for opportunities. And there are numerous articles about the use of Facebook information in court cases.

I'm not sure how much longer I'll maintain my Facebook account, but I've certainly learned a great deal by setting up my own account, exploring its settings and experimenting with its features.

Digging Diigo

Argh!  When I returned from vacation I got so caught up in reading everyone else's blog that I forgot to get my own done!

I investigated different social bookmarking tools for an assignment a few years ago and wound up recommending Furl and Diigo.  I had been using Delicious but liked the additional features of the other two.  In the end, Diigo bought out Furl so my decision was simplified!  I only wished I had been using Diigo right from the start of my student days as the commenting, archiving, highlighting and sticky note features would have been extremely helpful.  As I became more comfortable with it, I started to use it as a search tool by entering tags to see what sites others had bookmarked with those same terms.  I would look to see how many people had bookmarked a site and use that as a gauge of its value.  I also started to come across the same users over and over again and began to identify some as 'experts'.  Instead of using a search engine and sifting through pages of results, I would simply look to see which sites they were identifying.  Another use for Diigo that I hadn't anticipated came when our home computer crashed.  If my favourite/bookmarked sites had resided only on my browser, they would have been lost to me and I would have had to start collecting them all over again.  Thanks to Diigo, I had a 'backup' set!

So, for Library Lady's questions this week...

I bookmarked Mathematical Fiction and Mathematics in Movies using the tags mathematics, fiction, and numeracy education.  And yes, I will definitely continue to use Diigo outside of Betty Blogger summer school.

Streaming with YouTube

 love YouTube!  At first I thought it was for kids and entertainment but it really is a fantastic learning tool.  In fact, YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google (which happens to own YouTube!)  Further, it can be particularly helpful for visual learners who would rather watch a demonstration than read a set of instructions.

I will definitely continue to use it!

As a matter of fact, it has already come in handy with respect to the Betty Blogger program. In trying to understand what Web 2.0 means, I found the following streamed video helpful.




And this is the video that Library Lady showed us at the Welcome Party to give us some perspective on the growth and importance of social networking.

Let's get started!

I'm excited to begin exploring all the intriguing Web 2.0 tools out there. I will need to psych myself up and tell myself I can do it. The point is to explore, enjoy and then decide what, if any, place these cool new applications might have in my life.

At this point, I would have to rate my current Web 2.0 savvy at a 5. I'm familiar with a few things (thanks to my kids) but want to learn more. I will have to, if I want to enjoy one of the great prizes that those who complete the program will have a chance of winning: an Apple iPad, or a Sony Reader!