The End!

This has been a very interesting exercise enabling me to learn about some things that the internet offers that I had never heard of before. I was very impressed with the PBWiki site and I have since set up my own PBWiki to share a lot of electronic information that I had accumulated as president of my condo Board. I was wondering what would be the best way to pass the information on to the new Board and this has proved to be an ideal method. It is easy to use and it provides an easy way to share and back up some important information.
I already knew that there was a wealth of information on the internet - too much sometimes to get my head around or to find easily. These exercises have introduced me to a lot of ways to narrow a search and to organize the information that I find on the web so it was a very valuable experience and I am very grateful to have been included.
During this exercise I was glad to be able to help someone who does not have a computer at home and is therefore not very confident using one. I think the program must be very intimidating for anyone in this position because even though help sessions were available it is very hard to take advantage of them if you feel you will look dumb and do not even have keyboarding skills. I think a buddy system would be useful to help in cases like this.
I would definitely like to participate in any future discovery programs like this.

Award winners

I looked into a few of these sites that I thought would be useful for me. I liked Yahoo!UI because I am interested in building a website for my condominium association and I have no skills in this area. Yahoo!UI looks like a useful tool to be able to use patterns that other people have developed and stored in a library (there are other things that are formed into libraries apart from books and periodicals!). I also looked at Farecast because I am looking for a cheap fare to Varadero to attend a wedding in April. And finally I looked at Zillow which lets you look at the real estate market for the whole of America.

Zoho Writer

This would be a great tool for circulating our condominium newsletter (assuming everyone has a computer!)

I created a document to play with the buttons on the toolbar and see how the tool compares with Microsoft Word which I have a lot of experience using to prepare proposal documents at IBM.

I had trouble with the special character button because every time I used it I got stuck and could not close the box. I ended up losing my document each time - very frustrating! I liked the superscript and subscript buttons, the horizontal line and the buttons to add urls and html. There was also a much bigger selection of background colours than I am used to seeing. I wonder if my printer could cope with them all?

I could not find a spellchecker or thesaurus which I have always found useful in Word.

The Future

"....It’s the open, programmable Web, and quite a change from monolithic, proprietary operating systems and programs of the past characterized by long development times and software release cycles."
When I read this phrase I felt quite nostalgic for the fun times I had writing and using those "programs of the past". I feel quite sad that I missed the opportunity to learn the new technologies once I became a Project Manager because now there is a disconnect between my skills and the knowledge required to contribute to this exciting new form of programming. I have always enjoyed developing and debugging program code much more than using it - perhaps part of my desire to always know how things work!

None of the suggested perspectives were available when I tried to link to them - I wish I could figure out why!

I love the principle that Beta is forever! That really shows that the world is changing so fast that nothing can stand still anymore because people are demanding constant change in order to keep up. I also liked the concept of the Long Tail effect which shows why websites can become so successful selling limited product but to huge markets.

Although I understood the concept of Web 2.0 I would never have thought of applying it to library service but it makes a lot of sense to me that the same concepts of collaboration and constant change should apply to lots of public services. The end result is the same - involving and communicating with your users in a very open way.

Technorati

I am not sure I can see a value for Technorati at the moment. I have no interest in sharing my blogs with the world (they are not interesting enough) and I do not have the time to spend searching to find other peoples blogs that I want to read. I already read two newspapers online every day using the canada.com website and there are plenty of links in this site to interestng stuff that I do not have to go searching for.

Searching for the exact phrase Learning 2.0 in all blog posts turned up 1,097 results. It looks as if a lot of people are using Helene Blowers program! Searching the tags for "Learning 2.0" gave me 281 hits, again from a lot of people who are doing a discovery exercise. Searching the blog directory gave me 384 hits and this time I noticed several foreign language hits about the program.

Del-icio-us

It was interesting to go searching through the links and read comments from people and their research but I am not sure that I want to use this at the moment to organize my bookmarks. I am all for an easy life but I am not sure I have the time to spend on the setup!

Rollyo

I created an account called margaretsapl. I added a bookmarklet to my Favourites and I got a message warning me that it might not be safe. I hope enough people have done this exercise before me to prove that it is OK!
I am having trouble seeing the advantage of this site at the moment. Google has an icon on the toolbar that allows you to search for news stories which looks like the same kind of idea. If you have to specify a list of websites to search aren't you limiting the results you get?
Here is the link to my searchroll called chicken recipes: http://rollyo.com/margaretsapl/chicken_recipes/
I suppose this could be a useful way to search for items that are in your favourite shops in your local area.

Library Thing

I created an account called cazreader and added some of the books that I have on my nightstand. It looks like a great way to run a book club and get feedback from other people who have also read your books.

Image Generators

There were some really neat things you can do with image generators but the one I found that was the most fun was one that allows you to dress a doll and change her features. This is the doll that I created and this is the link to the site that allows you to do this: http://dollmakercode.com/doll-maker.php

RSS feeds

I found a few feeds that look as if they were set up just so someone can put advertising on their site and get paid for the number of visitors they get!

RSS Feeds

Wow - there is so much information out there! I easily found 10 feeds to put in my blogline account and I added Pat's blog because that is the only one for which I know the URL. Adding the bookmarklet to the bookmarks toolbar made this really easy.
I like to read the Edmonton Journal online in the morning and so I will see if using a newsfeed is a better way of keeping up to date. Feeds like Pete's Picks are a great way to keep up with what is happening in the local library.

Technology

I have been looking at Second Life because I find it a fascinating concept. The idea is that you have an online persona which you can use to view online catalogues, properties etc and make purchases. I heard that people are using it to sell "real estate" which only exists on the internet and I want to find out just how this works. It all seems so weird!

Webapps

I found a game that pulled a photo from Flickr and counted down while you tried to guess the title. It said you would be playing against people from around the world but nobody else was playing with me. I found it very slow to load the picture and accept the title when I guessed it but I did manage to accumulate some points!
I tried to create a trading card but it took forever to load my photo and then it timed out.

Twillingate Harbour 1

Twillingate Harbour 1
Originally uploaded by mkgregson

This is one of my favourite photos taken on our trip to Newfoundland last year. Twillingate is on the northern stretch of coast known as Iceberg Alley but we did not see any icebergs although we did see some whales.

Welcome to the pub!

Welcome to the pub!
Originally uploaded by mkgregson

We had to take a picture of this sign outside a pub in Bedfordshire, England. We went in and had a very enjoyable meal in spite of what the sign says!

Flickr

I had an old Yahoo Photos account that I managed to convert to a Flickr account and I have added a few of my favourite photos from my digital albums.

Net Library

I had some problems finding where to create an account then when I did manage it I encountered an error in NetLibrary while doing a search - frustrating! I did manage to find that there are some Italian language courses that might be useful to prepare for my holiday next year.

Podcasts

I listened to a few podcasts some of which I had to shut down because they were so long! There were lectures and radio talk shows, personal rants, digital photography tips and comedy acts. I found lots of audio books and book reviews.

YouTube

This is my favourite YouTube video: little Connie Talbot singing Somewhere Over The Rainbow and flooring Simon Cowell. Some of you may have heard about Paul Potts who won this contest singing Nessun Dorma and has now signed a contract with Simon Cowell. Connie would have won if Paul had not entered!


Friends are always sending YouTubes to me and some of them are very funny. I have also looked at some of the videos that are listed as the most popular each month and some of them can be really gross. If I had young children I would be concerned at how easy it is to find something very inappropriate for young children to see. This one that I chose is definitely one of the better ones!

I think videos are very useful when added to instructional posts on the internet. For example I checked a site that showed me how to make a particular crochet stitch.

Helping Pat

Today I helped Pat get through some of the 23 things but something was wrong when we went into the SAPL pbwiki - the sidebar was not showing so we could not find Favourites. We found a place where it said Favourites but Pat's message has ended up editing the Front Page instead.

Book search

I used the Bull Run Library Wiki to find out which libraries have copies of my brother's book on music called Unpremeditated Art: there are several in Canada including one at the University of Alberta.

Day 1

I created my blog.