Wk 7: Wikis cont.

The link didn't work the first time so I will try again

I am glad to learn more about wikis, other than wikipedia. Wikipedia has the drawback that lots of people assume the infomation given is always going to be 100% accurate, but that is not the case because it can be edited by anyone. But its broad range of topics and usually straightforward way of explaining things can make it a useful tool, once you understand its limitations.

Wikis can also be helpful for sharing of information among colleagues at work or students in the same class. For example, if librarians want to collect information about a certain topic that is particularly relevant to their customers, wikis could help. Co-workers can add information as they find it and that information can get collected in one place so that it would be easily accessible to all staff.
http://marylandlibrariessandbox.pbwiki.com/My+Favorite+Things

Wk 7: Wikis

http://marylandlibrariessandbox.pbwiki.com/My-Favorite-Things

This is my page I created of favorite things in the Maryland Libraries Sandbox. It was fun and I will be adding to it with other items. I wanted to set it up and see how to do it first.

Wk 6, Thing 14: Technorati

This can be a good search tool for finding blogs on different subjects and keywords. I liked exploring that aspect of it. But I didn't find much use for the "popular" feature (favorited blogs, top searches, top blogs). I don't know why some of those blogs got to the top and most don't seem interesting to me. I am not the type to read what someone has to say just on random topics (current or not).

Wk 6, Thing 13: Del.icio.us

This not a useful portion of the project. The video tutorial didn't work. The introduction that was provided didn't help...it was too advanced and was condescending to novice techies. I tried just jumping into the topic and looking at PLCMCL2 to see examples of Del.icio.us tags. But just looking around that site didn't clarify why and how this tool could be useful.

Wk 5, Thing 12: Rollyo

Rollyo is a good thing to know about. If you are doing research on a topic and have gathered together a bunch of websites etc. that are on that topic, then you can do one search on rollyo and come up with information from several hand-picked sources in one step. I also like the fact that you can find out about websites that others have searched on different topics and find ones you haven't heard of before.

Wk 5: Rollyo

Here is my Rollyo search box for New York City.

Select Search Engine...New York CitySearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

Wk 5 Thing 11: Library Thing

Library Thing is a interesting site where I could spend lots of time wandering around in. It could be a useful tool to figure out what to read next, depending on your mood. I like being able to find out more about people who read similar books and also check out their catalog. The groups are another aspect I would like to explore more. One thing that would be nice is if the site had a capability for the member to make a list of books from their catalog on topics such as "what books I read recently," or "which books I would like to read" etc. I put up a widget of some of my books (with a link to my catalog) and I like the way it looks.

Wk 5 Thing 10: Image generators

Here is my Yahoo avatar. It was fun to create. I also fiddled around with Meez...also a fun way to create avatars. But it was little slow and cumbersome. Here is a the link to Yahoo's avatars: http://uk.avatars.yahoo.com/

Wk 4 Thing 9: News feeds cont.

So I am learning a whole new vocabulary with this project....bloglines, RSS, newsfeeds, widget, avatar etc. and getting the chance to put the terms into practice. This is one of the best parts of the process so far. I have seen some of these terms while surfing the web and I'm glad to understand them better.

I enjoyed learning about the different newsfeeds and blog finders and exploring each a bit. These are good sources for finding information about different topics from a variety of sources. And I was excited to create a widget of a newsfeed (see earlier post)! I checked it today and the newsfeed widget was updated! I know...a simple thing for techies...bear with me.

Wk 4 Thing 8: RSS and Bloglines

Bloglines is another fun thing to learn about. It is neat to have different news sources and other websites in one place and have them continuously updated. It would be nice, however, if the pictures showed up as well as the text. But I understand that the main purpose is to see a quick scan of news items. Now that I know that something like this exists and how to use it, I will keep it in mind for other sites I come across. This tool can be useful as a repository for sites that I see that I don't want to forget about and would like to refer to in the future.