Week 7 - Thing 16 - Wikis

The subject guide wiki seems like a pretty good use of the technology, but I'm not too sure about the execution. It's a bit...busy.

Overall, these were interesting but since most of them are in their infancy, it's too early to really say whether or not they will be useful.

At this point in the 23 things I'm getting concerned about the sheer weight of web 2 material that might be rolled out into unsuspecting libraries. Obviously a lot of these gimmicks will diasappear or be integrated, but when we are dealing with a client base which contains people who struggle with concepts like "left click", I wonder what it would be like trying to get them to "go onto our website and check out the blog links in the subject guide wiki."

I don't know. This stuff is cool, but is it necessary? It would be nice if the technology could one day be merged together into one user-friendly-do-everything program, but in an age of rampant global capitalism I suspect that is a naive notion. It'll probably get more, rather than less complicated. That is unless Google achieves it's aim of global domination, and at this point I would like to be the first to welcome our new overlords and offer any assistance that a puny subject may be deemed worthy of contributing.

What was I talking about anyway?

Getting down off my soap box now.

Week 6 - Thing 15 - Perspectives

I really did read a few of those perspectives on Library 2.0. Some of them were interesting, incisive commentaries prompting deep reflections and even the occasional paradigm shift on my part. But it was two weeks ago and I can't say as I can remember them right now. I'm sorry.

Quick! Look at the monkey:

Week 6 - Thing 14 - Technorati

If you wanted to add this blog to you technorati favourites for mysterious reasons known only to yourself, you would need simply click on this here thingy:

Seems I've added a tag here too:
[SJLibrary2.0]
Click on it and you'll see a whole lot of blog entries called Week 6 Thing 14. Wheeeee!

Week 6 - Thing 13 - del.icio.us

A while ago, I decided in my well-maintained ignorance to ignore del.icio.us. What little I understood of it didn't appeal to me. By which I mean to say that I didn't like it's name.

At the same time, whenever I found a good website while I was away from my home computer, I would email the link to myself. Then when I got home it was just a simple matter of not bothering to read said email or add the interesting website to my bookmarks.

del.icio.us is good.

But I still don't like it's name.

Week 5 - Thing 12 - Web 2.0 Awards

They give out awards in a music category! I'm at work listening to music! Well... 30 seconds of music anyway. I had a look at last.fm. It's a social networking music site. If you type in a band it gives you a page of 30 second snippets (sometimes mercilessly hacked) from a wide range of their songs, plus videos, comments, groups, pictures, biographies and plenty more. Sure, 30 seconds isn't much, but I enjoyed the nostalgia. The site also suggests further listening and I found that the suggestions were generally pretty relevant. I put in Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds and it gave me pretty much my CD collection. I really need to buy some new music.

Here's one of those 30 second bits. I think they must have used a cheese grater to cut it out of the track, but it's still an excellent song.
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Deanna

Week 5 - Thing 11 - Twitter

I watched the Twitter globe for about five minutes and was surprised and appalled at how many other people are doing precisely nothing all over the world right now.

Week 5 - Thing 10 - Image Generators

I Simpsonized myself. I uploaded a photo and voila!


I think you'll agree, the likeness is incredible. Well, it's a man with a beard anyway....