Week 8- Mashups

Regarding mashups, I chose to look at Taggylicio.us. It is the largest tag cloud on the web. It is composed of tags from Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Delicious, and more.

I typed “gardening” into the search box and I found really cool results from Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Photobucket, and Dailymotion. This is a very cool mashup because I have all these results on one page and I can search for tags that interest me.

Week 7: Podcasting and Online Hosted Video

I searched YouTube and found many good library videos. My favorite is a funny video from a Mr. Bean episode titled “Library. It is located at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyDY0hiMZy8&feature=related

I think that YouTube is a great service and it is easy to use. I think that it is good for students who want to post videos and get feedback from users.

I see many uses for Podcasting in libraries. For example my library, The Rural Assistance Center, can use podcasting to feature different services that we provide to our users. Each week, a new podcast could highlight a specific service or feature.

Week 6: Flickr

I enjoyed using Flickr to upload my pictures. I think that this is a great service for family and friends to share photos. My family and friends are spread out all across the United States so it is great to share photos with them using Flickr.

I put some pictures of my cats and other cats on my Flickr photos page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/25751426@N02/


I found this program easy to use and easy to share with my family. I can see this concept being used in libraries to advertise and market their services. If a library has a certain celebration that they want to share, they can put photos on Flickr to share with the community.

Week 5: Web Office Tools

I love Google docs because it is so easy to share documents with my co-workers or friends for editing. I think that these web office tools will become more popular as more people realize the benefits of having a document on a shared server rather than their personal computer. I believe that these documents are safe and secure when I choose to share them with others. It is great that Google docs is free to users. I can’t imagine paying for this service from some other vendor because Google docs is so good as well as being free. I have been using Google docs for a couple of months and I have shared documents and uploaded spread sheets for my own use.

Week 4: Social Bookmarking

I have been using del.icio.us for many months and I think that it is very useful. I use three different computers so it is very useful to me to have all my bookmarks on one website. I like the feature of adding tags to my bookmarks instead of organizing bookmarks into folders which can be confusing and can waste time thinking about which folder I should use.

I decided to use del.ici.ous rather than other social bookmarking sites because it is very well known and very popular. I see a great potential to use del.icio.us as a research tool for myself and to share with my co-workers or co-presenters on a presentation. I really like the “Your Network” feature where I can easily send URL’s to a specific person.

I also like to see what other people are bookmarking. I browse the “hotlist –what's hot right now on del.icio.us” to see if there are any websites that catch my interest.

I also appreciate that in del.ici.us you can mark some bookmarks as private and “not shared.” This is useful to keep some sites private such as my Netflix queue and my gmail Inbox.

One problem with social bookmarking sites is that the servers might not always be available. This morning when I got to work and tried to open my del.icio.us website, it would not load. I was without my bookmarks and I did not have a backup so I felt completely lost. After del.icio.us came back up, I exported my list from del.iciou.us to my Firebox browser as a Backup.

I also like to use Stumble Upon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/ ). There are so many websites on the Internet- how will I ever find the good ones? I signed up for Stumble Upon and picked the categories of websites that I am interested in seeing. Then, I can rate the websites easily with a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

Week 3 Social Networking Tools- Facebook, Linkedin, and MySpace

I have been an active member of Facebook for a couple of months in order to keep in touch with my friends, family, and coworkers. I like the Facebook Newsfeed so that I can keep informed about all my friends’ updates all in one spot!

I read with interest the article titled “MySpace, Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites: Hot Today, Gone Tomorrow?”. It stated that the next feature of these sites will allow users to send photos and updates to their profile by cell phone. I must admit that I have no plans to do this when this becomes available. I don’t spend that much time on Facebook daily and I don’t plan to spend more time.

I prefer Facebook to MySpace because Facebook is more private in that you need to accept people as your friend before they can see your profile.

I also like Linkedin as a tool to network with other professionals. I created my professional page at: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/4/461/920
I think that Linkedin is more appropriate for professional contacts than Facebook or MySpace.

Week 2. My Wiki- Training RAC Information Specialists

Here is a link to my wiki which I created for training a new RAC information specialist: http://racstaff.wetpaint.com/

What is the difference between a blog and a wiki? What sorts of things might be better suited for a blog and better suited for a wiki?

A wiki is more useful than a blog for a group of people to create and edit a document. This is more efficient than 3 people always emailing the new, edited Word document to each other.

Wikis are often used as internal documentation for in-house systems and applications.