#23 Thumbs up for Learning 2.0

I've learnt a great deal from the Learning 2.0 training programme. The single biggest lesson was blogging. Without this programme I may never have actually taken the plunge.

With the abundance of Web 2.0 options I realise I'll only have the time to use a select few of them on a regular basis: Blogger, YouTube, and RSS feeds. More occasionally I'll dip into Flickr & mashups, online image generators, Facebook and Rollyo.

Other features that I was interested in sampling but may not have time to further explore include del.icio.us, technorati and podcasts.

Overall, the programme offers an excellent introduction to the new technology. I particularly enjoyed the exercises that focussed on fun and creativity.

#22 NetLibrary

I'm very familiar with NetLibrary since I select ebook titles for Auckland City as a member of the Collection Development Team.

Ebooks definitely fill a need for titles where all the reader requires is immediate access to content. They are particularly useful when students are studying a topic such as the Treaty of Versailles at the same time and all lending copies are out on loan. A keyword search of "Versailles" retrieves 5 available NetLibrary titles.

The growth of ebooks is a significant development in library service delivery. But there are a number of issues related to them. First, some publishers are still reluctant to offer new titles in electronic format for fear of losing hardcopy sales. And secondly, ebooks don't fully exploit their electronic nature. They are often nothing more than a scanned image and don't have the live links that users have come to expect from sites such as wikipedia.

Personally, although I've browsed through dozens of ebooks, I've yet to actually read one online cover-to-cover. I suspect my experience is fairly universal.

#21 Podcasts

After browsing through a lot of boring podcasts I located a promising one: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AmateurTravelerPodcast

I added the feed to my Bloglines account and listened for a while.
This site is more than a radio station dedicated to a particular topic. Besides, travellers' tales, it has links to current news items, photos, even broadcasts of weather reports (perfect for when .

For library-related podcasts I chose Library Geeks, where "librarians, geeks, and library geeks to geek out about libraries."
http://geeks.onebiglibrary.net/feed.xml

and Libvibe
http://libvibe.blogspot.com/2007/11/libvibe-5-november-2007.html

Came across a few moderately interesting reports (such as the public library that inserts advertising material into the books it issues). But overall I'm not a big podcast fan. I'd rather watch video or skim through text.

#20 YouTube

I'm a regular user of YouTube.

It's great for sourcing videos that aren't readily available elsewhere. For example, Tony awards performances highlighting the best of Broadway haven't been screened on New Zealand television for many years and are not even available on the official Tony awards website.

Best musical 2007, Spring Awakening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgkdoIz5tmE

One of the best features of YouTube is the tantalising links bar that shows you related videos at a glance. Browsing can take you off on to all sorts of fascinating tangents.

One option for libraries is to post videos of library events/concerts on YouTube with direct links from the library catalogue. Even better, moving images on our home page could help attract fickle browsers.

#19 Google Maps

Google Maps is Web2 at its best.

Features I love:

• a variety of ways to pan in any direction: you can use the friendly hand that allows you to grasp and pull the screen image (for big moves) or you can click on the arrow icons (for more measured moves)


• the intuitive zoom tool with both a plus and minus function and a ladder scale that lets you zoom instantly from street level to outer space (faster than a speeding bullet)


• the choice of a map view, satellite photo view or a hybrid (combination of the two)


• Best of all: the My Maps feature lets you create your personal version of a map highlighting places that you choose. e.g. the location of the hotels where I'll be staying in Zurich and Berlin:


• http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&ie=UTF8&ll=47.376848,8.543673&spn=0.015984,0.038624&z=14&om=0&msid=107700956014156770666.00043efe2aac9d3f04f50

Ta Prohm

Ta Prohm (Angkor, Cambodia)

The jungle tames
the temples there.

The jungle claims
the field.

The jungle cures
all worldly care.

The jungle lures.
I yield.

# 18 Zoho agogo

1. Created an account at Zoho writer http://writer.zoho.com/index.do

2. Created test poem (Ta Prohm) using Zoho Writer. Then clicked on Switch to, selected Zoho Show (which takes quite a while to load) and created test poem (Daydream number 8567b) as a slideshow presentation (like PowerPoint) http://show.zoho.com/public/onlyme/Daydream%20number%208567b

3. Managed to export Ta Prohm from Zoho to my blog after figuring out which login and password it was asking for. The process worked, but once again I discovered extra line-breaks that I could only delete by going into html and replacing the breaks with <>. Without intending to I'm actually becoming a competent user of html! I never thought I'd see the day.

Zoho Show is a great tool for presenting short poems as a slideshow where you can choose the time delay. In this case I chose a leisurely 3 seconds.

#17 Building sandcastles in the PBwiki sandbox

1. Logged in to PBwiki and added favourite movies http://acllearn.pbwiki.com/Favourite%20Movies
and music
http://acllearn.pbwiki.com/Favourite+Music

For the music titles I also included a direct link to their entries in our library catalogue.

http://acllearn.pbwiki.com/Favourite+Music

2. At first I accidentally created new pages (only me top movies & only me top movies) instead of adding to the existing favourite pages. I struggled to delete these pages. When I entered edit mode, I could delete the content but not the page itself. Finally, I discovered a live grey link in the Page Information section that allowed me to delete the pages (after making sure I really wanted to): "Really? This will irretrievably delete this page and its revisions.
YES, REALLY." I was touched by the wiki's concern that I might accidentally consign valuable data to oblivion.

It's fun to add favourites. But to be honest, for movies I'll still continue to use aggregated sites like metacritic.com and rottentomatoes.com.

#16 Wiki picnic (an ant's view)

1. Consulted several library-related wikis. Didn't find any particularly inspiring. Libraries often try to tackle a huge task by starting from scratch with their own wiki (e.g. the St. Joseph County Public Library's subject guide) instead of pooling knowledge on the web to create one comprehensive source.

Wikis are a classic example of the beauty of Web2 and of its problems. It's great to have individual and group participation, but if their contributions are scattered all over the web, how will browers ever find specific gems of information? How can anyone ever keep up with the proliferation of new wikis. What is missing is a sense of overall organisation. Dare I say cataloguing?

2. The "booklover" wikis often duplicate what's being done on amazon.com etc. Perhaps all these library wikis would be better as a subset of an established wiki such as wikipedia.

To my mind the best use of library wikis is for the promotion of local content: "[libraries making] themselves a physical hub of the community". But even here there is room for some organisation.

#15 Library 2.0

One of the key issues facing libraries is that we are very quick at adopting new technology but unfortunately very slow at adapting our performance measures accordingly. We still primarily measure our success in terms of the old-fashioned book library.

The Learning 2.0 program is an important step in the transformation of the library mindset. The incentive of a prize is a good motivation for individuals , but perhaps what we really need is a commitment from management to make this training an essential part of working in a library.
This would entail regularly setting aside blocks of time for staff to progress with their learning.

Perhaps Web2 work should be one of our official objectives, to be rewarded in the performance aappraisal process rather than an optional add-on luxury. Blogging as a compulsory duty rather than a guilty pleasure, anyone?

Beyond Web2 lies the tantalising prospect of Web3D: full virtual interactivity with resources. Bring it on.

# Technorati party

Subscribed to Technorati, again using my blog name and password (So many passwords, so little memory!)

Compared keyword searching in Blog posts, tags and directory. Searching by tags definitely retrieves a more focussed range of results. I still yearn for some way to do a combined-tag search or for some form of sophisticated filters or limiting. Increasingly, I want fewer, more targeted results. Searching blogs is fine for people with the time to explore at leisure, but I'll probably stick to old faithful Google for information searching.

I find I'm not really interested in browsing the blogs of complete strangers. The whole global social networking thing is a bit impersonal for me. I'm old-fashioned enough to want to see who I'm talking to.

Interesting Technorati features:
The Watchlist, to save typing favourite searches.
http://www.technorati.com/pop/ The top searches give you a smattering of what's hot in popular culture.

#13 Delicious

First, the good news: the Delicious site can finally be found by searching for delicous.com without those infuriating dots (I always had to check whether I put them in the right place.)

A good summary of recent developments on the site is at:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/delicious-drops-the-dots-adds-new-features-screenshots/5600/

Watched the YouTube video: Social Bookmarking in Plain English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66lV7GOcNU

Subscribed to Delicious using my blog login and added My delicious and Post to Delicious to my links toolbar. Searched a few favourite keywords and retrieved a few sites that were new to me.

I like the idea of being able to organise and sort my bookmarks. But the use of keyword "tags" is a fairly crude way of achieving that goal. I'd prefer some sort of hierarchical approach. I doubt if a proliferation of democratically-equal tags will solve the problem of a proliferation of bookmarks.

Given the constraints on my time, I'll probably use delicious to alert me to new sites and not bother to add tags.

#12 Rollyover in the clover

Subscribed to Rollyo, created a Theatre searchroll and added the URLs of my favourite sites.

http://www.rollyo.com/onlyme/theatre/

Tried out the search engine and was impressed with the results in comparison with comparable Google searches. You get a more focussed set of results with far fewer unwanted hits.

Added the searchroll as a page element in my blog template, according it a prominent position at the top left. I'll probably use it for specific targeted searches and stick with Google or YouTube for exploratory forays.

#11 Library Thing

I spent several good years of my life as a senior cataloguer and have the scars to prove it. So I was interested in the facility for mere mortals to catalogue their own books. The Library Thing provides for fairly basic cataloguing and is perfectly simple to use. The most appealing feature allows users to add individual tags and reviews.

I added 5 titles and reviews to my "library":

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/onlylittleoldme

One interesting aspect to this whole Web2 revolution is the vast proliferation of the same essential information with multitudes of variations in a completely unregulated environment. Hopefully, at some stage in the near future people will realise that sometimes less is more and they'll start working more cooperatively as with Wikipedia.

Helpful garment label

My epitaph

Finally!

road sign

road sign, originally uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/people/12493276@N02/.

#10 Image generators

Had heaps of fun making a variety of hopefully witty images:

First, an evocative road sign, using http://www.customroadsign.com/menu.php


Using http://www.getyourownstar.com/menu.php I gave Mozart a well-deserved star on Hollywood's walk of fame.

Then I created an epitaph for my tombstone, using http://www.tombstonebuilder.com/index.php (This one is deadly serious.)

Next I created a helpful garment label, using http://yourgen.com/other/fire

I saved the images to my photos, then to flickr, then to my blog.

#9 Library-related feeds

Viewed the technorati tutorial. Searching technorati and feedster by tags is a good way to locate feeds that have current information about specific topics. But using common keywords often results in too many results to process.

Added the Christchurch City Libraries new nonfiction feeds to my Bloglines. This worktool will help me to select new titles for our library.

Added a "News for Libraries" feed from the National Library.

Joined the Topix community. (My usual web name had already been used. So I had to use a variation. The multiplity of logins and passwords has the potential for becoming difficult to keep track of.)

Most of the Topix topics focus on popular culture. We're certainly a long way from Library of Congress subject headings here.

Realising that I will never actually have the time to view all my Bloglines feeds, I perpetrated a severe cull. Now my list is more manageable.

I'm interested in the issue of a consistent icon for feeds. Please check the following broken link: http://sjlibrarylearning2.blogspot.com/www.feedicons.com
"Page not found."

#7 My favourite tech related thing

Online financial management has simplified the way I manage my money. With an ASB Fastnet login I can easily switch funds from my high-interest FastSaver account to my Streamline account in time to pay off my monthly VISA Gold bill.

I enjoy the convenience of paying cash for virtually all everyday purchases. Nearly all my regular bills are paid by direct debit from my Streamline account. A quick look at my online balances shows me how much I have spent each month without having to keep a personal record myself.

I recently used the one-off Bill payment feature to pay a bill over $500 online. This entailed registering for Netcode and having a unique number sent to my mobile phone so that it was clearly me and no one else making the payment. I liked this added level of security.

I also have online access to view the progress of my superannuation funds in the New Zealand Retirement Trust.

For my 8-week overseas trip next June-July I'm prebooking my accommodation, tours and entertainment online, taking advantage of the high NZ dollar. When I'm overseas I'll be monitoring my funds online and using my VISA card for most transactions, thereby avoiding the need for changing too much cash. This will be a big help, because on my travels I'll be dealing with US dollars, Mexican pesos, Pound sterling, Danish kroner, Euros, Jordanian dinars, Indian rupees, Thai baht and Singapore dollars.

While planning my trip, I used the Star Alliance online mileage calculator. This allowed me to select my own itinerary and preferred flight times within a set mileage limit for the round-the-world fare. This wonderful tool is problably my second favourite online techy thing.

P.s. Added a comment to Nefertari's cat blog:
only me said...
My favourite cat quote is: "Managing people is like herding cats."

Bloglines

#7 Following the palinet tutorial http://www.palinet.org/rss/toti/tsstutorial.htm, I subscribed to Bloglines and selected a range of feeds that I'm interested in.

While searching for feeds I came across this cool explanation of hotkeys:

Hotkeys: j - next article k - previous article m - collapse/expand left pane s - next sub f - next folder A - read all n - toggle keep new o - open article O - open article in background r - refresh left pane

I'll definitely be using "m" from now on to hide that pesky lefthand window.

Watched the Cnet.com and YouTube videos on RSS.

I tried to add a Feeds page element to my Blog template, but a message came up saying the URL was invalid.

Then I tried another approach: adding the URL as a Link page element. This time the URL was accepted. So I now have easy access to my Bloglines feeds at the top of my homepage above my Blog archive.

Fun times!

Fun times!

#6 (continued). Used the Captioner tool in http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ to spice up our group photo.

Doomed planet

#6 Studied http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/ and decided to create a spoof movie poster. Selected photo, text, fonts, colours etc. I had heaps of fun with this wonderful tool. I wonder about the possible problems associated with this technology in the future. Issues of copyright and intellectual property spring to mind. With the explosion of feedability, will it be possible to monitor let alone police this area?

Teotihuacan - "the place where men become gods" (pt. 2)

Teotihuacan - "the place where men become gods" (pt. 2), originally uploaded by addicted Eyes.

test

#5 (continued). Added link to GoogleEarth aerial view of Teotihuacan. http://maps.google.com/maps?t=k&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=19.698213,-98.843951&spn=0.006212,0.007789&z=17&om=1

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Im feeling slighted. The "Remember me" function on Blogger never remembers who I am.

#5 Explored Flickr. The Mediamazine tutorial was particularly useful. Sent test post from flickr to my blog. Set up automatic uploading by email to my blog. tall48delve2blog@photos.flickr.com. Located photo of Teotihuacan and used "blog this" to send it to my blog.

#4 Set up myspace site. But I was shocked to see the site automatically assigned a Zodiac sign to me, based on the birthdate I supplied. As an amateur astronomer with a deep respect for the scientific study of the sky I was deeply offended by myspace's misguided promotion of astrological nonsense. Harrumph!!!

Had trouble inserting line breaks after images. Consulted Blogger Help Discussion Group. Solved problem by entering Html and inserting < b r >

#3 Renamed blog. Selected scribe template. Registered on ACL - Learning 2.0 Tracking Sheet.

Experimented with adding images to the text of The Young Lion. Searched Google images. Copied and pasted URLs.

The Young Lion

Excavations at the Château de Vincennes

Prophecies of Nostradamus

A certain manuscript, purportedly from the sixteenth century, has been discovered during excavations in the grounds of the Château de Vincennes in Paris.
French authorities claim it provides a rational explanation for a mystery that has been a thorn in the side of science for hundreds of years, namely one of the so-called prophecies of Nostradamus.
He wrote about a thousand predictions, mostly couched in cryptic language open to an infinite number of interpretations. But one of them is such a precise, detailed and accurate account of an event which took place four years after it was written that even sceptics have had to acknowledge that at the very least it was an amazing coincidence.
The undisputed facts are as follows. In 1555 Nostradamus published several hundred quatrains and the one that caught everybody’s imagination right from the start was the thirty-fifth:

“The young lion will defeat the old one
In a field of battle by single combat.
In a cage of gold he will put his eye out,
Two wounds in one, then he will die a cruel death.”

This was understood to be a premonition of how the King, Henri II, would die. (His emblem was a lion.) The Queen, Catherine de Médicis, tried to dissuade her husband from jousting. But on the tenth of July 1559 he insisted on competing in a tournament and riding against Gabriel de Montgomery, Captain of the Scottish Guard, a man seven years his junior. As they clashed, a splinter from Montgomery’s lance went through the King’s golden helmet and entered his head somewhere in the region of his eyes. He lingered in horrendous pain for ten days before dying of his injury.
Nothing in that paragraph is open to question. There were too many witnesses. It happened.
And ever since then the prophecy has been an embarrassment for reasonable people. There’s something profoundly disturbing about such a lucky guess coming true. Defying odds of more than a billion to one, a clairvoyant actually got it right! Common sense has never been able to recover from this humiliating blow.
Until now, that is. Archaeology to the rescue à la Indiana Jones.
Although the Vincennes document has no trace of any signature or date, historians at the Sorbonne have been quick to identify it as the last testament of Gabriel de Montgomery.
According to the crème de la crème of French scholarship (and I’ve never seen such an impressive array of letters after names in my life), we can heave a huge collective sigh of relief and bask in the knowledge that the future can’t be foretold after all. “Even economists may relax, since ironically it’s only in a world where fortune-telling can’t influence the stock exchange that their projections have any validity.”

You can judge for yourself in a minute when I reproduce the manuscript in full. But first I’d like to state that I personally believe it’s a forgery. The paper may be hundreds of years old, as the tests show. But whoever wrote on it seems to have been familiar with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which was written at least a good twenty-five years after Montgomery’s death in 1574.
(He came to a nasty end, by the way. The King on his deathbed had decreed that his opponent should not be punished for what was clearly an accident. But fifteen years later Montgomery was arrested for leading a Protestant revolt and Queen Catherine at last had the satisfaction of watching his head being chopped off.)
Professor Julien Michaud, a bastion of academic fair play, concedes the manuscript includes a sentence that appears in Macbeth. However, he reminds us that Montgomery had recently returned from England, where he could have borrowed from the same oral tradition as Shakespeare.
“For all we know,” the Professor writes, “the Double, double quotation may have been a stock witchcraft phrase. Or dare I mention another possibility? What if Shakespeare stole the line from Montgomery? As a precocious lad in the early 1570s young William may have crept into an alehouse and overheard the French captain venting his scorn for the supernatural. Who knows what other choice expressions coined by Montgomery were recycled decades later in one of Shakespeare’s plays? To be or not to be? perhaps. Though I very much doubt if my English colleagues will accept such an aspersion.”
Michaud’s desperate clutching at straws makes me even more suspicious about the manuscript’s authenticity. Many people obviously want it to be genuine.
To avoid any litigation, let me make it clear that I am not suggesting the archaeologists or the historians planted the evidence. I merely wonder if they have been taken in by an elaborate hoax.
But you be the judge. The translation is by the Sorbonne crew. Meticulously accurate of course, but rather tending towards overdramatisation, particularly in the use of archaic vocabulary when modern equivalents are available. Why turn “cheval” into “steed” instead of “horse”? I can only assume it’s an attempt to enhance the flavour of the yarn.

The narrative begins abruptly without any preamble.

Honour is all. If death come to me this night, I stand before God, His servant ever. Let not Error—in all its infamy—sit upon my grave and make a mockery of a life so devoted to Truth. Into whomsoever’s hands this may fall—take it and hide it away until such time as may favour its revelations. Albeit the Queen Mother herself stands as guarantor of my safety, I place no faith in her assurances. I would strap on my cuirass in readiness, were this night not so confounded hot. Some will say I tempt fate. Verily, I know well what the astrologer has said will befall me—

“He who in a fight with weapons
Will have conquered one greater than he,
At night in bed six will attack him.
Naked without armour he will suddenly be surprised.”

But should your prediction come to pass—unholy Maistre Nostredame—it will not be due to any skill at sorcery on your part. The Queen Mother too has read your lines. Does she not hang on your every word? She will make sure your prophecy is fulfilled. How many men will she send to do me mischief? Five? Seven? I wager there will be six. I would stake my life on it—as indeed I do. So what credit to you, Astrologer? Moreover, your last word is wrong. When they come for me, I shall not be surprised. I listen for their footsteps. Twelve feet cannot be altogether silent. And yet—for all my patience—there remains one thing that I shall ever regret. To my shame, I am once more adding to your reputation as a canny Soothsayer. How proud you must be of your power over weak minds. Thousands pay homage to you as you chant your incantations—Double, double, toil and trouble! All too well do I know how your spells can enchant. I remember that day in the lists fifteen years ago. Twice His Majesty and I had crossed lances without either unseating the other. I begged him to call a halt. But he was determined for another bout. My heart pounded beneath my breastplate. Your accursed words rang in my ears—“The young lion shall vanquish the old.” I shuddered with horror at the thought of spilling such Royal blood. The clarion called me to the charge—the crowd urged me on—my steed champed at the bit—its hooves hammered the same patch of ground, smothering the air with dust. But still I held back. Then His Majesty raised his shield, commanding me to advance. I had no choice but to obey. As I lowered my lance I repeated to myself over and over again—“Aim anywhere but at his eyes, aim anywhere but at his eyes.” I jabbed my spurs into my steed’s flanks and we hurtled into the fray. “Anywhere but at his eyes, anywhere but at his eyes.” I surrendered myself to my skill—to my years of training. “But at his eyes, but at his eyes.” Mine were wide open. “At his eyes, his eyes.” Then it was done—the fatal blow. No demon guided my lance. No prophecy. Only the perversity of my own expertise hitting exactly what I was striving to miss! Tell me, Astrologer. Have you never in some narrow passageway approached someone coming in the opposite direction and spite of every effort to avoid him—or mayhap indeed because of that—collided with him all the same? Such a fate was mine. I almost wonder if there be not some flaw in the design of the human brain. A heretical thought, I fear—one that I dare not breathe aloud to a soul whilst I live. But that may not be very long. I hear the floorboards creaking outside my door. Pardon me while I welcome my

#4 Social networking. Viewed myspace, facebook, bebo

#1 Read intro
#2 Set up blog