Week 10 - The last Post?!

These Web 2.0 exercises have been a big learning curve for me, even though I was in some ways already familiar with some web 2.0 aspects (e.g. Facebook and Youtube).

My favourite discoveries have been: seeing how many of these online tools operate together (e.g. being able to post a blog from flickr); realizing how easy all of this online stuff is if you try; Bloglines and Lastfm; and understanding that you can be truly portable now and that even word processing is no longer tied to a specific computer in a fixed location.

The best thing for about this course is that it has got me looking at this web 2.0 stuff which I had always wanted to do but had never got around to it. I am pleased I made the effort now. Note - without the prize incentive I may not have ever finished - sad but true!

I think the course as it was was excellent in terms of its format and content. For me it was pitched at the right level. As an introductory course I wouldn't change it. The only thing I suggest is clarifying at the outset what the purpose of having the blog is (i.e. Is it there purely to document our answers to the excerises? Do we have to strictly answer every question?) and how much work time can be spent on it.

I would definitely be happy do another programme like this in the future. It was FUN! Thank you!

PS - finished with 30 minutes to spare!!!

Week 10 - Inspector Gadget

I added the Socrates 'Quote of the Day" which was a gadget provided by Blogger. I like the idea of reading quotes by Socrates but I don't like the fact it doesn't fit neatly in the sidebar of the blog - so I might change it if/when I find something I like better. I tried to get an online-radio widget from yourminis but for some reason it hasn't arrived on my blog even though it said it was "sent".

As a library I guess we could use widgets a light information/entertainment/distraction for people when they visit our website. For example, we could have the local weather forecast or some funny quotes. This might make people have a more pleasant experience when they visit our website.

However, it would be very cool if we could get some custom-made widgets for our website that promoted our library and our stock. I imagine we could have "book of the day" or "DVD of the day" where the widget displays a book/DVD cover along with it's title, author etc. It would, of course, be a book/DVD that we stock in our library. We could encourage people to request the item by having some text saying something like Request this here. What would then be even cooler would be if people could - with one click - be taken to our library catalogue to request the book/DVD of the day.

It wouldn't just have to be book covers. We could have daily quotes from classic literature or great movies in our widget. We would, once again, stock in our library the items from which these quotes come and make it possible for people to request them.

That's my inspector gadget ideas anyway!

Week 9 - Survey Tools

Goodness me! Here are more online tools that I didn't no existed prior to this web 2.0 exercise. I looked at SurveyMonkey and signed up for it. As a library we could use such survey tool to ask about:
- what customers think about our website, what they use our website for, how easy it is for them to find information (there was already a sample website survey on SurveyMonkey.
- how our online library customers use the internet (i.e do they email, chat, social network etc) and what they expect from us in terms of online services
- how and why our customers use electronic databases

Basically it seems to me we could use these online survey tools to ask about anything we want ... it would just be up to us to work out what it is we want/need to know and to formulate questions that will give meaningful answers. That, I think will be the hard part!

Week 9 - Life is no Picnik?

I liked Picnik and the fact I could completely obliterate a normal looking wedding photo in a few easy steps. For me the photo looks a bit like an Andy Warhol piece, then again that may just be the acid tab I popped for afternoon tea.

To get the photo you see above I experimented a bit with cropping before altering the saturation of colour and sharpness. By the way, that's me on the left being groomsman at a friend's wedding.

I like the photo effect, even if "The Wheel" aka Leanne Ferris looked dubious when I said it looked Warhol-ish.

With Picnik I liked the fact you could send photos off via email/facebook etc but was a bit disappointed not to see an option to upload direct to my blog. Was I not looking in the right place? Did anyone else upload a photo from picnik direct to their blog? Am I now expecting too much of these web 2.0 services? Am I becoming ungrateful? Will I complete this Web 2.0 training by midnight tonight??? Stay tuned ...

Week 9 - Zoho Writer

I am writing today's blog entry on Zoho Writer. I didn't actually know you could get web-based word processing software so this is a pleasant surpise. It's a great idea because it's free but, it seems to me, most of its benefit comes from the fact that its portable. One possible downside that it might have is compatibility: can it be opened by other word processing software such as MS Word? I will do some investigating ...

Week 8 - Wikis

Wikis could be useful for building subject guides for customers ... and perhaps also staff. Perhaps we could have a "useful reference sources" type wiki where we record useful websites etc that helped answer certain reference queries.

Like it said in the readings wikis are great for doing a shared project (i.e to save lots of emails between multiple people) but I don't personally see the need for it in my day to day work here.

I do like the of making a wiki available for the whole community to build it's own community database. I say, put the technology up there and let the people do it how they want. We would just be the hosts. Done properly it could be a place to go for information about all kinds of things about Whangarei and its communities. The only way to find out if it would work would be to put the technology up there and let people loose!

Get down James Brown!!!

Here are a couple of my favourite clips showing just what a funky chicken he was on the dancefloor! If I was there in the 1960's I would have been up the front screaming just as loud as the girls!