#19

I love montage- a- google & guess the google! The montages are beautiful & I will be looking for ways to use them in my collages. And SO easy to do

Guess the google is lots of fun- once you start you won't be able to stop- & it's perfect for librarians because to be good at it you have to understand keywords!!

#18 web based apps

Well I tried, I really tried. I looked at zoho, watched the video on zoho meeting, could see some possibilities with it. Then looked at zoho writer, selected a template & created a shared document. Fine. Tried to publish it to my blog, got as far as hitting the publish button then zap- site blocked by our web filter!!! So there you go
What I was wanting to publish was the thought that there are too many apps all requiring different logins & passwords etc, I've forgotten half of mine already. Which is where google is so clever- one login, then you have access to shared docs, picasa etc & I have to say I prefer to use their products for that reason alone
I can certainly see the value of shared docs eg for a team to work up a project without 10,000 emails flying back & forth. We have tried it & it works, just have to remember to use it, so easy to fall back into email habit!

#17 Just love that google! ( & RSS feeds)

The value of RSS feeds was demonstrated to me today- I got an alert from the feed I set up to google systems from blogspot, about the new beta google translation tool. The actual translation tool is not perfect but babelfish isn't perfect either. The real winner is the SEARCH & TRANSLATE tool- it rocks! You can search for a topic, select the translation you want & off you go eg a search for "peking duck" brings up a list of relevant Chinese websites AND translated English versions of them. So you could do a search for a patron & bring up a list of results for them in their language ( as long as it s one of the languages google covers- it's not comprehensive but does include trad & simplified Chinese, Arabic, Spanish, German, French etc.)
PLUS you can get toolbar buttons to translate text into the language you want, even the whole webpage. Try translating your library homepage. It's so clever that if you translate the page into Chinese & follow a link, it translates the page you link to as well! While the translations are not perfect, they are readable & it is only in beta. I can see lots of potential in this

http://www.google.com/translate_t

#16 wikis

I like the idea of the reader reviews on the book lovers blog, the wiki format makes it easy to manage- but it could have been done on a blog too I think? The subject guide blog is not very attractive visually- & the news item was about the 2006 winter olympics! Which I guess proves that the golden rule applies no matter how hi tech you are- if you can't maintain it, forget it! But I really like the way you can list links at the side, in categories. My goodness I can't believe the illustration on the library best practice wiki is a card catalogue!!!!!!!!!What an incongruous image. I really do think that if we are going to use wikis in public libraries we are going to have to make them look more appealing. We have started an ideas wiki for staff, called the Idea Box. We will also be creating an Information Services wiki to try to cut down on emails flying back & forth

# 13 delicious

This is what I call delicious!
Photo by Darren Hester (Macon, Georgia USA)

Well I have learned one thing already - the interface for Fiction Connection is a tag cloud!So now I know how they do it. Very clever. Fun, but I don't really think it is that useful- who has the time to keep up with all these alerts etc once they are set up? I do like the visual representation of the groupings, rather than using folders, & I suppose it might be useful to share tags but I found the rss & blogrolls have a lot more potential. But anything that can take a creative approach to what is basically indexing is all right by me- I HATED cataloguing!

# 13 Technorati

I'm not sure about the usefulness of technorati, though I like its name. But it isn't what it suggests- to me it sounded like a sophisticated group of tech savvy glitterati- but no. My search on travel brought 250,000+ blog posts up & going by the first page they were mostly completely self indulgent & uninteresting. So I did a blog search- 29,890 but more of the same.
A more specific search on Vanuatu was better, 804 posts, & I did enjoy some photos of the market at Port Vila which looked just as I remember it, but really I don't know if I would bother with this again

# 12 rollyo

Wow! I love this tool. From a personal point of view, how cool to be able to search all the travel related websites I usually use AT ONCE! I could spend hours searching for holidays I'll never take....try it, the search box is on the right & it was very easy to install.
From a library point of view well- homework help searchrolls about popular topics; info about books, authors etc; library technology; current events. I wonder if it would work with the GULLIVER databases- have to try it.

#11 Library thing

What a great product! I have only had a quick look but can already think of ways to use this- for example, as part of a book blog on the library website where patrons & staff could share their reading experiences, make recommendations, create booklists...the possibilities are endless.
The chiclet linking to my catalogue is on the right, but there are not many titles in it yet . I loved the widget, it was so easy to use & displays the selected titles so nicely. I'l be coming back to this one.

# 10

This is my librarian avatar. Don't mess with me!

This is from http://www.doppelme.com/create/step2.asp

#10 Play around with image generators

These image generators are fun!

This is from http://www.says-it.com/record/

I have now added some shared items using google reader- I can go on to the next exercise at last! Found out you can also use google reader to create a feed from your blogs which displays next to the favourites icon in IE7, so I did that as well. It's time to move on....

Very interesting- the link takes you to my bloglines account but the blog feeds it lists are not mine! Hmmmmm.......there is a ghost in the machine. I'll think about it over the weekend but just now my head hurts

# 8 share my blogs

This is my last try! If you can't see my blogfeeds from this I give up!


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

# 8 Make life really simple with rss

This has been a very interesting exercise- quite hard at first but as I went on I could really see how I could use it
I also got the idea from a colleague's blog to use google reader & that worked very well! I was able to share items on my blog from the rss feeds to travel blogs that I set up in google reader very easily. This could be useful when working on a project with a team....but it's also fun reading about bars in Cologne & garlic festivals in Sweden.....
I think I will use google reader in preference to bloglines as it is so easy to import shared items into my blog with the automatic widget. Feedster is a disappointment, the little screen takes too long to load.
I need to explore more but there are lots of possibilities here for sharing info. I want to incorporate some rss feeds into our website as well
Plenty of food for thought!