LibraryThing Week 5

I really liked Librarything. It's a great place to catalogue your books so that you can remember what you've read, check out what other people are reading, get recommendations, reviews, find similar reads and discover completely different reads. As usual, there's a huge amount of information out there, I have to train myself to be a bit selective or I could be on there for hours! So far this is the one I've enjoyed the most because it has a lot of relevance for me personally and professionally Anything that expands my knowledge of books has got to be an asset to my job, especially in the readers advisory area and in sourcing interesting reads for my housebounds and bookclubs.

Week 4 Twitter

I've never really seen the point of twitter to be honest - all those people updating their every move and thought, so a whole bunch of other people can share in it. So for me this was purely an informative exercise to see how it's done. I checked out the twitter site, made an account and signed up for a few areas that took my interest, but I most likely will not be using it. However, I can see that it is hugely popular and culturally relevant, so cannot dismiss it, simply because it's not my cup of tea. I think it does have use for businesses and organisations where effective, up to date output of information is vital, and the library would obviously fit into this category.
This is my twitter link:
http://twitter.com/bluemoonmuser
Here are two tweeters I'm following:http://twitter.com/johnkeypm

http://twitter.com/GreenPeace

Week 4 RSS feeds

I set up a news reader on google which was pretty straighforward. Initially I opted to get the offered package of a dozen or so sites so I could get to see how it worked quickly. That was interesting, although an information overload of stuff I probably didn't need to know that much about! I can see how it would be a good way to streamline all that info and cut it down to manageable amounts, but one would still have to be selective. It seems to me that this has its advantages and disadvantages. In terms of the library it obviously would be helpful to filter relevant information in areas like readers advisory, reviews, author info etc. and allow patrons to keep up with new additions to the catalogue and events at various locations. I did have some difficulty subscribing to some sites. Apparently some go automatically via Internet Explorer to be stored in the computer rather than directly onto my Google Reader, so you have to work your way round that. It seems that there is never only one way to do something, and sometimes, there seems to be no way at all!!
Here's the link to my google reader:http://www.google.com/reader/view/#overview-page

Image Generator

This was a bit of fun, but also quite a time waster. Hopefully my image comes through. they are not always easy to transfer and I'm not sure if the reason is to do with me or the computer or both! http://www.imagegenerator.net/create/magic8ball/

OK - looks like I've been successful which is good. I saved this one to "my pictures" again and then transferred it to my blog which seems to be the most effective option. Yay!

Editing Images

I found an image in Picnik and fiddled around with it using the various options. I adjusted the fuzzies, cropped it, rotated it and adjusted the colour. I can see that this would be a valuable tool for anyone wanting to edit their photos.

Mashups

I've had a look round the various apis, mashups etc and while it's always worthwhile finding out about new things, I have to say that none of them exactly intrigued me. Somehow they just don't seem to have a lot of relevance for the way I lead my life at the moment. It's good to see how creative people can be and to know that numerous options are available for me should I ever have a desire to do something like that. It amazes me that people can spend so much time doing all this and that others seem to be constantly monitoring what other people are doing and finding the time to comment on it. How do they fit in all the mundane everyday stuff of life as well as all this creative/communication activity?? Maybe I'm missing the point and once I had a real reason to use them I'd have an "aha" moment. Also, I imagine that the more one gets used to using these apps the easier it gets.

I rather liked the following apps on the Trading Card site http://http//bighugelabs.com/popart.php

http://http//bighugelabs.com/mosaic.php

I made a simple movie poster using a cute dog image from the library flickr account and must admit this was fun to do! It doesn't look great, but I imagine if I spent more time on it I could try out different things and get a better result. At this stage I'm running behind... who said this would be an hour a week? Nowhere near it. Especially for those of us who are finding parts of it a challenge. I hope I can speed up over the next few exercises...

Week Three: Flickr

Flickr is an interesting site for those who are keen on sharing their photos and keeping in touch with like minded people. I've enjoyed looking around and seeing some of the amazingly diverse images created by some talented and creative people. That being said though, I probably wouldn't be a user of it myself. still it's good to be familiar with it and learn a few skills finding my round.

I've picked an image that appealed to me for no other reason than it looks stunning
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheldonnalos/4371517647/#blogthis.

I managed to add the picture by sending it to my pics and copying it from there, but was unable to do this directly from flickr. It seemed to disappear every time I tried.