18 and 19: Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

This was great i really enjoyed the social aspect of this. I visited Etzy which is a retail place that sells handmade products. It had the most interesting products i have every seen, which is saying something because i am a total shopoholic. I could have spent hours looking through the site, except i doubt my boss would have liked it :).

I also looked at Last Fm was was brilliant all i did was type in one artist that i liked and it basically listed 5 or 6 most of them i do like but some i also haven't heard of which is great becasue i am always looking to discover some new music.

This tool would be great in libraries because patron could use these tools to find blogs about there favorite topics with just one easy click and not have to wade through a search engine search which sometimes brings up irrelivant websites.

17. Playing around with PBWiki

Gee it would have helped if i pressed the Edit button huh. I spent about 15 minutes trying to added my blog until i figured out that i hadn't pressed the edit button, smart huh. Apart from that little hitch it was great. The PB Wiki Tips was also very good as it gave some good tips on how to make a wikki a little more user friendly, which would be good if you were new to the wiki game and wanted some simple tips on how to improve your wiki.

16. So what's in a wiki?

Wiki's are a very interesting concept. I quiet liked the book reveiw blog as the more input you have on those sort of topics and the different point of views add greatly to the websites as it is never very interesting to listen to the point of view of just one person, especially when that person doesn't like the same thought of things as you do, this way you can get many different points of view and you are bound to find something that interests you. which is always a good thing. I don't however know how comfortable I would be using a Wiki for research as you don't always know how accurate the information is but if you are just looking for background information and keep in mind that the information could be incorrect of out of date they are a great concept.

15. On Learning 2.0 and Web 2.0

What does Library 2.0 mean to me. I Really liked some of the points made by Rick Anderson in Away from the Iceberg as it makes alot of sense to focus as much energy and time as possible into building up a electronic collection then in expanding a print collection as with a electronic more information can be stored and accessed by a greater number of people than a print collection could be, plus it would be alot easier to maintain.

14.Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

Technorati is a great site if you want to track down blogs about anything or everything really. The only thing i am a little worried about is that they don't seem to be very authoritive which isn't really very good in the library profession, however if you wanted to know about the latest technology which is being released as they technology sites seem very informative. I didn't tag my blog on technorati because i don't really want it to be easily accessible to anyone on the web.

13. Tagging, Folksomonies and Social Bookmarking in Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us sound like a very useful site. I had a lot of trouble trying to register for Del.icio.us as our network does not allow us to download anything onto our computers so i started a registration but couldn't get past the username and password section which was a bit of a pain and i didn't really get a good idea of how the service works from the discovery recouces because they were just written and it didn't really have any screen dumps or anything that could give you a better idea of how the site actually work but from other peoples accounts on the Del.icio.us site the service is a really useful tool for anyone who likes to keep up with whats happening on the web.

7. Blog about Technology

Ooops i just realised I forgot to do task 7. The technology I am going to blog about is something that is used greatly at our library, this is a DAISY player. DAISY stands for Digital Accessible Information System. These machines a like MP3 Playings except it allowes you to navigate through talking books by chapter or page numbers like a sighted person could. The Machine also talks to you, which makes it much easier for people with vision problems to figure out where the buttons are are how to use the machines. There a two different types of DAISY machines they are Plextor and Victor and these machines a made in Japan and Canada respectively. These machine are invaluable technology as it gives Vision Impaired people a opportunity to enjoy books just as much as sighted people do without having to rely on technology that is over 20 years old (like the old cassette tapes).