Thing #12: Online applications



"share your ideas" by Britta Bohlinger taken from flickr



For thing #12 we've been asked to use Google docs for sharing documents.I've already been using google docs for a while with lesser or greater success depending on the task. The academic liaison team have their own profile pages created in google docs which I've been using to share and direct people to presentations, documents and delicious tags - I was pleasantly surprised at how easily it copes with powerpoint presentations - both uploading and displaying them.
I've also been using spreadsheets in google docs to share our list of books for deletion in preparation for our library refurbishment and to track the progress of the project. Where I think google docs becomes more problematic is when you are writing directly into to google docs (e.g. a word document), it can be incredibly slow and frustrating to respond - the solution seems to write in word and cut and paste or upload again into google docs.
So sharing is good - working directly in google docs is not so good.
Who knows what Alfresco will prove to be like and whether it will replace google docs?

"Thing 11" Technorati

I'm publishing my claim code 4VPZ58NYP2ZK so that Technorati can verify the blog. How would you do this in a more front-facting library blog? (wouldn't it look a bit odd?) presumably you can't break it up in any way.

I'm not sure how much I can now change my Technorati account. I'm not sure that I wanted to add the music blog - but now I'm not sure if I can do it retrospectively. I guess I'll have to explore this further.
In Technorati I wasn't sure which categories to pick to register this blog to as I didn't think anything was especially appropriate - I think I was slightly random in my choice.
It wasn't difficult to do but I was a bit uncertain of the process and where to go -perhaps it was a terminology problem for me.
It seems to be very US based - perhaps it's not yet common practice in the UK to link to it.

This morning I was thinking about the idea of authority in Technorati and how this reflects what we teach in information literacy and to some extent the idea of value in bibliometrics -  borrowing from a traditional academic model and showing the value of those concepts in terms of information retrieval.
However I'm not sure it's authoratative in terms of content - Technorati only measures the linkage rather than the original content. Technorati authority seems to be a measure of like-mindedness,opinion and quantity. Quantity rather than quality?

Thing 10 - tagging and folksonomies -Delicious

It's taken a bit of time but I'm quite getting into Delicious - thanks to Ellie's help and suggestions.

Once I'd got over the usuual hurdle of my Yahoo password not working and having to reset it again I've created a set of bookmarks that I sent to the group I ran a workshop with last week. I've posted them onto my profile page for their subject. These tags included some of the URLs that I couldn't find on our own web pages . I'm not sure if the students are Delicious users but it was worth trying.

I've put a RSS feed of these tags into the 23 things blog.

I've noticed that I am bookmarking more URLS with the intention of adding them to my Delicious account.

I've also logged into my Delicious account and looked at other tags - I think I may set up an RSS feed into my music blog.I like the randomness of it.

Could we use Delicious to give useful URLs to researchers?

Thing 9... continued

Ok I'm blind - I've already got a search engine powered by google in my blog - why would I want two....?
(I thought it was a bit familiar)
I guess with Rollyo we can be specific about what we want to be searched (as in my test)

"Thing 9 - create your own search engine"

Using Rollyo to create my own seearch engine was really easy. You don't even have to sign in  - although I did create yet another account as I wasn't convinced that my first attempt had worked because I couldn't "see" it.

My immediate thought was to create a search engine for my musicblog, but I thought I would try it out on my 23 things blog first.
It seems to be yet another way that we can put our blogs "out there" as the search engine and personal profiles that you can create can be made visible. I liked the fact that it's easy to go back into and add or change sites and that you don't have to put too much personal information in if you don't want to.

I didn't make this search engine publically visible for this test as I wasn't sure what that might mean and I didn't ask  permission from people to include their blogs. So it is just for me, to help me find things.

I'm not sure which words it is picking up- when testing it, I think it is being selective, However "thing" seems to work!

Thing 8 - Library thing

I' ve been using library thing to show new books for music on my music blog. it was a really simple thing to do and I've been updating the lists quite regularly. The widget works really well and it's  nice visual for the blog (not sure how "legal" the cover images are though?)

I've now added some of the fiction that I can remember reading in the last six months . There were others but if I can't remember them now, why would I bother putting them in Library Thing?
Perhaps I could use it for books I've read and given away, or even books I want to give away?

To divide the books up as I'm not sure I want to show the music students what I've been reading ... or maybe I should?,  I've put my books into a folder. That was easy, but it's a shame that the names are pre-set. I've also played around with making sure that my books have the right cover images (important for me as that's how I remember them and I do judge a book by its cover....!)

I think the recommendations are interesting but no more useful than amazon - I haven't shared my list with other library thing users yet.

Frustrated with wordle....

I've really gone off wordle now - you can't search for wordles that you have created even when you know what you called them. I've had to switch to firefox as explorer is struggling with Java. I've recreated it twice. I've saved it in a word document. I've tried to do a screen dump screen and I still can't import my wordle..... arghhhh!!!!! help me.......
Last time I used it I had to switch to a mac and save the image as a JPEG.
If I do this again my words may be changing.....!


thanks Kevin - it worked after a lot of faffing....