#12 Rollyo

Testing the Rollyo search....

Rollyo is a useful tool especially if you want to the be able to use your bookmark links on more that one computer. Libraries can make great use of this and create 'best of web' feature on their internet pages.

Again I like that the site has all the tools and code so I can include my Rollyo searches below. It was also easy to upload some of my bookmark sites to the Rollyo search so I didn't have to re-type the URLs or spend too much time setting them up.

Select...Library 2.0News - AUShopping!Search The Web

#11 LibraryThing

I really like LibraryThing but I don't see myself spending the time maintaining my personal collection of books. I think it would be useful for book clubs and other social networking, or even for small corporate collections where there isn't a librarian. Amazon has a lot of self help and management titles so if a company had a couple of shelves of books, they could easily create a record of them. I noticed that one man collected so many book covers that he made a poster of himself - who has the time for that?????? [seriously, if anyone does have the time send me a link to the image]

What I did like is that the code for sharing your library was available from the Tools tab. LibraryThing made it easy to include your images and book account on your blog - like I have on the left.

Week 5 - Play week

#10 Play around with an image generator

I seem to be doing this for every blog entry so I won't stop now.

This week I scanned one of my favourite photos that I took while in Fiji - uploaded it to Flickr - then used FD Toys to put the image on to a billboard.

#9 Finding Feeds

This week I checked out the sites recommended in the 23 Things. My use of the internet is usually in relation to something specific I want to find at that time, for example what's on at the movies, if a new book is out, are there any new theatre shows worth getting tickets for and if I can't wait until the next episode of something on TV I'll see if it's already been aired in America and find out what happens. Because I'm not used to tracking these things it was good to use the 'feed finders' for suggestions.

Feedster, Topix, Syndic8 and Technorati are all easy to use. Of the four sites I liked Feedster and Technorati best. I found them easier to use and I liked a lot of the suggested feeds. As it says on the Technorati site -

I still prefer the search feature on Bloglines though. Seeing as I had a session open it was easier to use that for searching and adding feeds. I was also able to load interesting clips to my public blog quickly too.

I can see that it would be useful for Libraries to be able to offer their users regular updates via feeds - when the Library website is updated, or new events being held at the Library are advertised. I can also see an application for some Libraries using feeds on their sites or the homepage on the computers in the Library. Users could always see the latest news and weather for their city or any other feeds of interest to groups of people.

The time consuming part for me is having to login to Bloglines and check for new feeds. The RSS feeds on IE 7 look as though it will be easier to view feeds, and of course having access to a reader from the desktop at work would be great!

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation.

Week 4

8 RSS and Newsreader
Looking for newsfeeds was a great excuse to spend some time on the internet surfing sites I like and looking for news on personal interest items. I'm not sure how much time this saves, but creating a bloglines account is useful to get snapshot of what's happening.

I'm still playing around with my public blog. With learning 2.0 t's easy to blog about the weekly topics. Left to my own devices on bloglines - who knows what I'll fill the public blog with.......

http://www.bloglines.com/blog/vl2109

More fun stuff from what I've already learnt

I really like the idea of mashups and software generators so I went surfing for more fun stuff. What I found is the Generator Blog - this blog as a lot fun (useless) sites to play around with.


Generate images, beer labels, action figures, messages, star wars names, band names and lots of other things you don't really need.




I got my name in lights with notcelebrity.co.uk

Week 3

#5 Flickr
Flickr has a lot of great images but they all look too professional to convince me I should be uploading my holiday snaps (maybe all the ones taken at the wrong angle and with the sun in people's eyes are marked private).

There were some interesting photos and I found a great Flickrblog entry The Secret Life of Gummy Bears.

#6 Mashups and online applications
I like the Spell with Flickr site and I created the image below. A similar site is FlickrFont.

#7 Technology related post
Below are some links to a barcode technology that I think is great. Toby first told me about 2D barcodes and how these are used to download information to your camera phone by taking a picture of the barcode.

• Barcode scanning world "Outside, in a cafe, a mobile handset camera is pointed at an advertisement, poster, leaflet or beer-mat. In just one click, the user arrives at a webpage designed specifically for that location."
  
• Semacode "Semacode works by embedding a URL (web address) into a sort of two-dimensional barcode which looks like a dense crossword puzzle - called the tag. The SDK software contains the capability to detect and decode the tag very rapidly with the camera on your phone. It extracts the URL and sends you to that address using the phone's built-in browser."


• Semapedia "Our goal is to connect the virtual and physical world by bringing the right information from the internet to the relevant place in physical space.

The Semapedia goal is to link the physical world to information on Wikipedia. To do this people create tags by pasting Wikipedia URLs on the site, the tag is then created and can be placed on the physical object. This lets others with barcode reading software on their phone, connect the Wikipedia site.

The Semapedia map lets you look for tags in a region as well as list any that you want others to see. This Flickr image is for a tag in Melbourne.

First post

It's a bit disconcerting that as someone who often has a lot to say, I come to an online forum and find nothing much to say at all.

After listening to the 7 1/2 habits of life long learning one of the easiest habits for me is the toolbox. Not that I call it that, but surrounding myself with books and technology is easily done. The more difficult habit for me is keeping the end in mind. I don't plan personal goals very well so this is something I can develop during the Learning 2.0 program.