Thursday, September 27, 2007

Library Thing (Task 11)

What a way to share your favourite books with others. This would be great for people with an enthusiasm for a particular series of books or a particular subject.
Here is a link to my page
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/marys23things

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

My Zwinky



Here is the free Zwinky avatar I created. Zwinky gives you a choice of basic body shapes, hair, eyes, clothes and accessories. The basic avatar is free but you must pay for a more choice of clothes, themes, etc. You can get your free avatar at http://home.zwinky.com/

You could also try Stardoll. At this site you can dress up famous people, or create your own 'mydoll'. My daughter has played at this site frequently. http://www.stardoll.com/en/show/

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Finding RSS feeds (Task 9)

In my travels I found a site called FaganFinder which provides links to a selection of RSS search engines. The url for this site is http://www.faganfinder.com/blogs/

Using FaganFinder I found a simple little search engine called Find That Feed -http://grumet.net/syo/findThatFeed My search retrieved a fine selection of library related RSS feed sites .

I also liked http://www.syndic8.com/ I didn't think Feedster found as many library feeds.

If you are into blogs which you might want to create a feed for try http://theaustralianindex.com = this is a search engine for Australian blogs, many of which offer an RSS feed.

My Thoughts About RSS + some interesting feeds (Task 8)

RSS could be very useful for maintaining a social network of ideas within the library community. The sharing of ideas is the best way to develop new strategies for the future.

RSS feeds allow the news to come to you, potentially very time-saving as you do not need to visit each news site to explore new posts.

Here is a selection of my shared RSS feeds http://www.google.com/reader/shared/11038826715317950021

Sunday, September 9, 2007

Web 2.0 is just the beginning (Task 7)

I thought that because this exercise was about technology, and specificallyWeb 2.0 technologies, I would report on information I found on the web. The internet, after all, is often the best place to learn about the internet.

Check out the Read/Write Web http://www.readwriteweb.com weblog which provides web technology news, reviews and analysis. This site has some great articles which help you get a grip on new ideas. For example, their predictions for 2007 include the expansion of web 2.0 technologies such as RSS, and Widgets, as well as Web 3.0 features such as the "Semantic Web" and "Structured Data". [http://www.readwriteweb.com/bestof.php]

Web 2.0 describes sites, services, or technology that promote sharing and collaboration on the web. Web 3.0 is basically designed to turn the Web into one big database. Machines will be able to read Web pages in much the same way as humans read them. The Semantic Web is a set of design principles or standards "in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web]

Another useful article by Read/WriteWeb is Australia's top 60 Web 2.0 applications
The sites are ranked by how prominent they are based on four criteria: Web 2.0 characteristics; Coolness/ Innovation; Maturity; Commercial success or number of users.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/aussie_top10.html

Don't forget that most computing magazines also have comprehensive websites where you will find information about everything Internet. Here are two to try out:
PC Magazine: http://www.pcmag.com/
Australian NetGuide http://www.netguide.com.au/v2/


Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Flickr-Storm (Task 6)

IMG_2712
IMG_2712,
originally uploaded by OZinOH.

Here is one photo I found using Flick-Storm. http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/ This site allows you to search for photos in Flickr by Creative Commons license, compile them in a batch and save them.

For example, I chose the Advanced search option and searched for "Photos for non-commercial Use" I used the search term grevillea. Here is a sample of the photos I found: http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/set/3b82db1d5a290457062f43aab7f93d251f81ee44?size=square

Riverfire, Brisbane, 2007

Here a sample of the photos from Riverfire. This photo was uploaded to Flickr on September 1, 2007 by greenplasticdave

Here are links to some more photos of Riverfire 2007

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tony_a_rush/1306182788/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/southernbase/1319449557/

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.