(Week#9) Podcasts, Video & ebooks

My final entry for this blog... hmmm... Talked about videos in the last section...moving onto Podcasts. Grabbed an EaglesFanCast - Views on the Philadelphia Eagles podcast and added it to my Bloglines account.. Reasonably easy when I clicked on the advanced tab on Podcasts.com - it seemed like the logical choice. I listened to a few podcasts, but couldn't get the Vodcasts working.... Project Gutenburg.. interesting...whenever I find E-books online, especially the free sources, I see whether they have any Maori content. This one had two... one of which was, Austral English : A dictionary of Australasian words, phrases and usages with those aboriginal-Australian and Maori words which have become incorporated in the language, and the commoner scientific words that have had their origin in Australasia. Didn't attempt to download though. Didn't have file extensions I was familiar with. Have used Netlibrary often in the past as this was one of the first e-book sources subscribed to by academic libraries - well the two that I've worked for - and they certainly present a solution for multiple access to core texts by multiple users, simultaneously where license agreements allow. The only drawback is becoming accustomed to working in a digital environment versus the print environment. Signing off.. I have been pleasantly surprised by some of the fab new technologies that exist in the digital realm that has been called Web 2.0. While at first, discovery of it started out as mystery... this training experience has somewhat clarified the term at least, even though I might not fully comprehend the concept. Have realised that I'm not so far removed from that realm after all.. I didn't realise I used so much of what is now termed Web 2.0 technologies.. I have heard comments - none specific enough to be able to link to them, that Web 2.0 is evolving into something else which is now being chatted about... My final comment on blogs? Seems like a very simple online web content management system with editing tools..made publicly available to all to publish and help continue to create and shape the Web 2.0 digital environment.. so, this is me...signing out...'til I have to blog again.

(Week#8) Online Applications & Tools

From the winners list of SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards, I chose Google Earth and Google Maps. Google Earth gives a fab look from space - a satellite image of the earth, with streets, towns and country directories incorporated so you can see the image of your home, your neighbours home or anyone else's home for that matter... except in places that the satellite image doesn't magnify further. Google Maps have a fabulous street view in most parts of New Zealand except for the very rural parts where the street camera person didn't capture because, well I guess it was a lot of driving around to do. In these circumstances street views of houses or properties aren't available and one has to resort to the traditional map. Didn't know Google Videos existed.. did a few brief searches that I've used before on YouTube, but was disappointed as most content seemed duplicated...Will give it a further look when I have more time to match content. Web 2.0 - hmmm seems that my understanding of it has grown somewhat after working through this exercise.. and glad that I found some surprises...

(Week#7) Social networking

Auckland City Bebo site - interesting...it's all I can say really, Hennepin County Library Bebo site - well, that seems to be hitting the market with comments from patrons teeming in.. Myspace and Facebook.. I've recently set up a Facebook account because a close friend who lives in Aussie no longer updates her Bebo site and in order to keep up with what's happening with her and her children, I had to sign up. I have a Bebo site, but rarely have time to go in and update it. I don't chat to many people through it, find that I spend so much time at work in front of a computer, I don't really have the energy to continue sitting in front of a computer for fun.. Well, unless I'm watching a good movie or walking down memory lane watching old school tunes on YouTube. The Zoho online authoring tools (https://accounts.zoho.com/u/h)... an alternative to having documents saved to your hard drive rather than having to email or save them from place to place or in various locations or on portable hard drive items in order to access them. Had heard about these sites, but had never used them until now. I can see the usefulness of this website tool and so created an account. The obvious immediate advantages are that you don't have to carry or send your e-docs, just save them to the website. I created a quick word document, named it test and saved it. Then I imported an existing Word document 2007 and that read OK. Original formatting didn't hold, but it was close enough.. also the "print preview" option is great.. that way, you can reformat with relative ease - although I didn't.

(Week#6) Tagging, folksonomies etc.

Interesting.. downloaded the Delicious bookmark and added to my home Mozilla Firefox browser - a screen capture and slightly doctored image using MSPaint is my thumbnail for this section. Delicious installed an additional item on the menu toolbar between History and Bookmarks.. and seems to act the same way the Bookmarks menu item on a browser does. Also, set up a Delicious account and added one bookmark to it. It is located online at http://delicious.com/WelcomeOneandAll/. I guess I'll have accounts online everywhere using my "bogus" WelcomeOneandAll.. Oh well, hopefully with inactivity they'll get deleted in the future sometime, somehow. Seriously, I've set up so many accounts, I can't remember what I've used as passwords or usernames. I've tried to be consistent though. I'm pretty sure that this isn't the end yet.. still got 4 more modules to finish..Signed up to Technorati and am in the process of "claiming my blog" - this blog. Apparently it takes an hour, so I'll check back later and see. Have put my Technorati code in my profile as this is a permanent feature on the front page of my blog - one of the conditions of claiming my blog through Technorati. Web 2.0 - The Machine is using us by Michael Welsh, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University - is a very succinct response to Web 2.0 articulated as, "Web 2.0 is linking people .... people sharing, trading and collaborating ... " hooray!!!

(Week#5) Wikis

Visited the Library Research Guides Wiki, Norwich University, Northfield, Vermont, USA (mediawiki) http://library2.norwich.edu/guide/index.php/Main_Page a glorified webpage posing as a wiki.. You can't publish to any of the site except for asking the librarian a question - if offline - then leaving a message for a librarian to respond to you... An initiative of the Norwich University Library... http://www.norwich.edu/academics/library/. Use Wikipedia a lot - I'm afraid to say, perhaps the largest OPEN SOURCE wiki on the web to date. I'm also familiar with a wiki set up for the Maori Subject Headings (now 2) to enable feedback on new terms created for the thesaurus from authorised contributors and browse capabilities from outsiders. However, my log in passwords have never worked - must get back to the person at National Library about that. The idea is that contributors can work on a newly constructed term at their leisure, commenting, amending and finally coming up with a term that all and sundry are happy with. Uploaded my PC jigsaw image (featured at the beginning of this section) to the Manukau Libraries Wiki and added my blog address..plus a few comments.. because I could. I'd say that's enough of wiki's for now...

(Week#4) Flickr & Image Hosting

Used the ManukauLearn account to upload an image of our first family PC (purchased in Jan 03 and recycled at an Auckland PC recycling plant in Apr 2009) to Flickr - 2.58MB, took about well... let's just say, I'm still waiting..and waiting...and waiting - oh, there you go, 28% and waiting.. about 7 minutes in total, for it to upload. Added a description & tag. My photo now sits in the Photostream. Waiting for the upload gave me enough time to play on Picasa Web Albums. My Google account automatically populated the sign in boxes and voila I was logged in! Because I knew it would take an eternity to upload a photo, I decided I would download a pic. and found one posted & named, Africa Slideshow short.. This is the source of my thumbnail at the beginning of this section.. 'tis beautiful and colours match my blog website so well. Also had time to play on a jigsaw generator. So, uploaded the back image of the same PC and generated the image which is the thumbnail on Week#5's post. Went to Flickr Montager and searched for my PC, which was the only imaged tagged with PC, then created a montage at http://www.deviousgelatin.com/montager/image.php - couldn't download that image though and when I bookmarked the generated montage, I tried the link again and it didn't work. Nevermind.. need to play more on the site.

(Week#3) Image Generators, Library Thing & Rollyo

Selected Book Cover link from the left column of The Generator Blog site http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/ which took me to http://www.oreillymaker.com/. Started constructing the Invisibility book cover, then realised that the selection of colours weren't to my liking. Decided to locate a colour more in line with those already used on my blog - well, as close as possible to the brown shades used in the other book covers for my posts so far..Found and html colour website http://www.w3schools.com/Html/html_colors.asp.. and selcted "993300" - from the list.. not as exhaustive as I'd have liked, but close enough. The LibraryThing site is interesting... maybe if I wanted to highlight some really cool books on a website( if I was to construct one) I'd find this tool useful.. I found three books on invisibility, added those to my library, then linked it on my gadget page in the right column. Rollyo? Well, I constructed a search engine rolling Te ARA websites into it... quick and easy, reasonably good source of information... perhaps might look into using this again.. perhaps..set it up as a public profile online at: http://www.rollyo.com/welcomeoneandall/

(Week#2) RSS Feeds and Bloglines Account

Okay - set up a bloglines account, using the Bloglines tutorial. RSS Feeds seem a tad redundant for me... but perhaps I don't spend enough time on the Internet. I'm sure some very talented person wrote the script which has helped a myriad of Internet users retrieve regularly updated information from websites of their choice. My Bloglines account with the URL
http://www.bloglines.com/public/welcomeoneandall
was created way back in June 2008 and fortunately I've consistently set up all accounts with the same login and passwords.. oops, mum's the word there. I've also added an RSS feed link below should anyone wish to receive RSS feeds from my blog....yeah right!.

(Week#1) Web 2.0 - 50 words about setting up a gmail account and blog page

Alrighty then, here goes... setting up a gmail account was much easier than I remembered. Last account I set up was a hotmail account that I no longer use, over 5 years ago. The hardest part about the establishment phase is remembering the bogus name and account details - all so very far removed from ones actual identity that the details are captured in a word document and saved in two places. Setting up the blog itself? Easy as pie. The hard part, writing 50 words about the experience....Okay, amended this Mon 29 June 2009 so that each week's exercise is in Week order & tagged accordingly.. Registered my blog on the Manukau Libraries registration list last 15 July 2008, whenever this was originally set up and now on my way to complete the 2.0 training...