first go

Well, here goes with a "Zoho" document.
I was looking for an emoticon labelled trepidation, but I must have missed it!
I have uploaded stuff to Googledocs before, but it didn't look as good as it did "on the ground", so I kind of left it alone. Also - it wasn't as though I could transfer all my stuff there quickly. It took a while. Never mind, I'll have another look another day...
♥
- the inserts are easy to access!
(but the smiley cool emoticon didn't come out...)
And the text colours and formatting... although I need to find a formatting icon soon so I can watch what's going on...
I have just had to work out the saving and deleting thingy... Not bad.
This could work when editing stuff for insertion into one's blog...

- a picture of Mexico, courtesy of Reynaldofineart.

Week 7 or Thing 17...!

Bebo, Myspace, Facebook.... I have a Facebook page, since about January this year. With about 28 friends. I belong to seven groups. I have a Scrabulous application and I still can't decide between Shelfari and Visual Bookshelf.... It's one good way of keeping up with the diaspora of Zimbabweans, and relatives who don't send Christmas cards or emails. I don't think I want to use it for anything else.
However it looks really good, being used by a library... Certainly a way of communicating that would appeal to many young people out there. Just think of the Learn.net usage after school! As mentioned before, I approve of both Hennipin County Library on Facebook and Auckland City Libraries on Bebo. I looked for other library users on Facebook, and came up with a few! There's a Library 2.0 Interest group on Facebook with over 6000 members, just in case you'ld like to subscribe to yet another discussion board or site... and plenty more groups out there with similar interests.

Library 2.0?

Hmm...
I like the idea. I am enjoying this "blogging", and I like the concepts I have seen from Hennipin County Library on Facebook and Auckland City Libraries on Bebo, that libraries can use.

For public libraries? In reading the OCLC newsletter articles, I am happy with quite a bit of what they suggest. I think that we can do great things with Library 2.0. I don't think we can afford to let it go by without adopting many of the techniques and patterns for our own use. I like the idea of wikis run by libraries, for example, and even a kind of interactive catalogue. We have a start with that at the moment - "ratings". (Out of interest, just how much is this used, I wonder?)

So, I have a few reservations, which could be dealt with by being particularly careful in our utilisation of the wonders of Web 2.0.

1. I don't know how our website 'hits' compare with our through-the-door figures. It would be good to have an idea. And I am not talking about all the libraries, but about our library in particular. A "destination of choice". People happily use the web to help them find what they want, but they still come to the library for the "serendipity", the perchance discovery of a tactile book. Something that feels smooth and just the right kind of weight for a late night read, or a summer beach book. Something that has the right size print.... Amazon tries to do this with its "search insides"...but there are still people who would rather escape the rest of the cyberworld and return to "ye olde ways" of picking up a book and looking at it at times. Libraries have a place here too. Interesting to see that Dr Wendy Schultz seems to feel that we will get there again one day in Library 4.0.
   
2. Beware the time factor. We may be 'free-ing' up staff to get out into the library to work with the people, but they may just have to pop back to the workstation to work on the wiki/myspace and respond to all those comments... 2.0 interface is a great thing, but to produce quality stuff will take a bit of time. I presume that it goes without saying that we want quality?
3. And I think we need to know a whole lot more about our customers before we devote too much precious time and energy to this. The ratings? The website hits? What happened to Airpac? Do customers want 'more' or do they want 'different'? Must we "tell" them what they want? We're going to have to get Big Brotherly in order to find out. Are they ready for that too?

Technorati

I hit Technorati on a bad day, but I signed up my blog and inserted a widget! ... I loved their error messages tho' : "Doh! The Technorati Monster escaped again." and "Sorry! We have a zillion pages, but not that one. The good news is that you've successfully discovered our spartan, but friendly Error page." from the link from Manukau's paragraph about claiming one's blog...

I saw the differences between the searches, I had a look at Boing Boing and I actually enjoyed the concept - more so than my previous post on del.icio.us. Maybe it was prettier? I also, one day, want a tag cloud... have a look at the one on Paper Cuts, the NYTimes Blog about books.

del.icio.us or not

Dare I say it... del.icio.us is not really my thing. I had a good look at the PLCMCL's bookmarks, and tried to find my way through the rather confusing searches.
But, I have a hard enough time trying to think of good enough 'reviews' or tags for books I have read, for example, without trying to interpret other people's. I worry that I cannot think of enough 'tags' to catch all the possibilities that might be out there. I am so glad cataloguers exist.

BUT I can see that there will be people who will enjoy this kind of random exercise. I can see the potential for finding sites that others have tagged, but I will just use other people's and I don't need to create my own. Another case of the time factor again?

Potential for Readers Advisory.
Potential for tidying up the huge (and clumsy) list of 'favourites' on our generic computers.

It's a Wiki world we live in...putting my blog on our wiki.

This exercise was a little full of trial and error.

I have - once - in the long distant past - had access to a Wiki, after a course we went on run by James Herring in 2006. It was a rushed thing, done at the end of the day, and kind of tumbled into non-use fairly soon, I believe. The old address is still there, from the emails we used to receive: nzworkshops wiki. I must admit, his whole course was fascinating, but we never had enough time... (isn't this always the way...?)

I am happy with Wikipedia. It is often a great way to at least find out a little about the thing you're looking for, if you know nothing about it. Then you can at least spell it correctly when you go looking for it in the more 'reputable' resources.
By the way...here is an article from PC Pro magazine, 9th June 2008, about Encyclopaedia Britannica in which it describes
"rolling out a new system allowing readers to potentially contribute to articles....

Britannica has long been a vocal critic of Wikipedia's user-generated content, and has repeatedly attacked the accuracy of its articles. Unsurprisingly then, it is keen to stress that its new website will not be following the Wiki-model, describing it "as a collaborative process but not a democratic one.""

This could be a little more like it. An idea similar to the update on the Library Success wiki we have been directed to:

"Update! Because of vandalism problems, e-mail confirmation is now required. Please enter your e-mail address when you create an account and you will be sent a link to confirm your address (after which you will be able to edit the wiki). .... Sorry for the inconvenience."

Perhaps this is the way for wikis to go, if they want to improve their general reception and use? Or else it is the way for reputable sources to go, as EB has done. I like their comment, taken from the same PC Pro article:

"At the new Britannica site, we will welcome and facilitate the increased participation of our contributors, scholars, and regular users, but we will continue to accept all responsibility of what we write under our name. We are not abdicating our responsibility as publishers or burying it under the now-fashionable wisdom of the crowds."

So - I have been onto the Manukau Libraries wiki, and entered my blog address under the favourite blogs page, and taken a link from the Library Success wiki to my Bloglines account, and I'll see if we ourselves have the time to develop anything worthwhile of our own in the future. You see, it is DEFINITELY a "time and commitment" thing. It's not worth doing in a half-hearted fashion, like the "practice wiki" for that course way back in 2006...

More picture fun...

My attempt at a Trading Card... I think I have had enough fun with pictures to last me a life-time...!

Technology...

Technology! What a vast and fast-moving part of our lives. A small step for man and a giant leap for mankind. The computer that put the men on the moon was smaller than our first 286....
And telephones. Communicating...
I can remember having one of those party-line telephones, with a handle on the side that you had to turn for short rings and long rings, and one long one to get the exchange. Mind you, you could then give the person on the exchange the list of numbers you wanted for that day, and they acted a little like a secretary, and 'phoned you back when they'd reached them... I haven't found such a good service on my cell-phone yet...
Cell-phones. Well, back in the bad days in Zim they were a god-send when the kids and I eventually found petrol queues on our way home, and could 'phone our husband and father and let him know where we were, so that he didn't think we had been taken out by the 'war verterans' who gathered every evening on the side of the road. Mind you, I still feel like answering them with, "How did you know I was here?", now that we live in a more peaceful place. They can be a little intrusive, perhaps? And now they have developed even further and I haven't even caught up yet!

Other thoughts on technology :-

• One hopes to see great developments that bear the future of our planet in mind - some form of "fuel-burning" technology, that will provide us with all our 'needs', which doesn't strip our planet of any more natural resources.
• Technology put to good use. Beneficial.
• Technology that we control, not which controls us. I do wonder, sometimes, just who or what is in charge... don't you?
  

Somehow, I think that along the way we have lost the patience, good manners and charm required when we had the party-line telephone, and the operator on the other end. I don't think 'technology' has any answers for that.

Views

A Picasa slideshow

Flickr...2

ancient waterways 2
Originally uploaded by floccinouci

Finally getting somewhere with Flickr. Let's hope this works!

Flickr..

Well, I am trying with Flickr, and it is becoming more user-friendly. However, there seems to be a waiting period and I quote: (see their FAQ on tags)
"When you sign up for Flickr, your new account is marked as "pending," until Flickr administrators review it to make sure you aren't posting offensive images or junk downloaded from the Web. When your account is pending, your photos won't show up in public photo lists, like Everyone's Photos, or pages that show all photos tagged with a specific tag".
So it's not as 'instant' as all that and I must be patient. Will let you know how I get on...

The fun part ... Old style photos...

This was fun, but randomly selecting photos didn't always work out... people in sunglasses look just wierd in 'old style photos'.
Here's an attempt. I used http://labs.wanokoto.jp/olds.

Bookshelf below!

Now this was fun... partly because I found LibraryThing frustrating because it was so s..l..o..w... (I have just been there again and it said it's experiencing overload... I am not surprised.)
But, I belong to Facebook, and I have tried out two bookshelf applications. I like Visual Bookshelf... and look! I can enter the books I have read there, on Facebook, and they update to a window in my dear old Blog! I don't have to everything twice...
And to enter them on Visual Bookshelf I just have to paste in the title from an exported version of my reading history, and click on a cover that matches the one I read, mark it already read... I can then go to a list of my books and rate them if I wish....
So that was a relief.
Mind you, if LibraryThing gets a little easier to manage, I can import books from it into Visual Bookshelf...
and then - after all of that, I found an [old] blog called The Official Lair of Daniela. There are posts to this comment of course, with more comparisons... so have fun if you have the time...

Rollyo... roll yer own...

Well, it took a while, but I think I have got an idea of what happens with this search engine now. Some of it could be really useful, especially if you wish to tailor your own searches and then let people benefit from them I tried to put together the sites I have used with my family tree searchings... Try it, if it works!
I must admit, I don't know how much I would use this, as I tend to have only a few sites I go to, and I think that I prefer the rss feeds and my own blog for keeping my useful information up to date...
(Much later!) I have also added a Rollyo search bar to the bottom of Sissi's place...

Wordle Fun

October...

Bloglines?

Well, let's hope this is what is required:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/floccinauci
Like my friend Chinese Annie, I hope you like what I have chosen so far...

Time ... Inconsequential Trivialities.

... I feel a little like Leo Sayer ... anyone remember him?
from "The Show Must Go On"
"I’ve wasted time
Wasted, wasted, oh so much time."
Not that it really is a waste - it's great learning a little of what a lot of people know already, but it just takes a lot of time. One gets caught up with Inconsequential Trivialities. (And you thought IT stood for Information Technology!)

LIKES
I am impressed with the Bloglines. I like seeing what I am interested in all coming together. How to make it work for others as well as myself.

NOT SURE ABOUT
I went wandering into Picasa through a link which said "see all your pictures on Picasa..." or similar, and got trapped, or so I felt. Any blog pictures land up there, and I am unsure of how to delete these 'albums'. Oh well! Lost in the ether capacious!

Lightning!

From Metvuw: A lightning bolt taken from Tony's lounge window facing north during the storm on the 25 June 2008. Taken from George Point Road in Onerahi, Whangarei looking north. Persistence pays as he stayed up till 02:30 to get this image.

Poetry Day...

...and in light of the fact that we are heading into poetry day...
this reminds me of all those Latin tenses...


HOW I BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS FROM AIX TO GHENT (OR VICE VERSA)
RJ Yeatman & W C Sellar

I sprang to the rollocks and Jorrocks and me
And I galloped, you galloped, we galloped all three...
Not a word to each other; we kept changing place,
Neck to neck, back to front, ear to ear, face to face;
And we yelled once or twice, when we heard a clock chime,
'Would you kindly oblige us, Is that the right time?'
As I galloped, you galloped, we galloped, ye galloped they too have galloped; let us trot.

I unsaddled the saddled, unbuckled the bit,
Unshackled the bridle (the thing didn't fit)
And ungalloped, ungalloped, ungalloped,ungalloped a bit.
Then I cast off my bluff-coat, let my bowler hat fall,
Took off both my boots and my trousers and all -
Drank off my stirrup-cup, felt a bit tight,
And unbridled the saddle, it still wasn't right.

Then all I remember is, things reeling round
As I sat with my head 'twixt my knees on the ground -
For imagine my shame when asked what I meant
And I had to confess that I'd been, gone and went
And forgotten the news I was bringing to Ghent,
Though I'd galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped and galloped
And galloped and galloped and galloped. (Had I not would I have been galloped?)

ENVOI
So, I sprang to a taxi and shouted 'To Aix!'
And he blew on his horn and he threw off his brakes,
And all the way back till my money was spent
We rattled and rattled and rattled and rattled and rattled
And rattled and rattled -
And eventually sent a telegram.