#13 Tagging, folksonomies & social bookmarking in del.icio.us

Oh dear, busyness and illness has caused me to fall behind a bit, but I am determined to push on!
I confess that initially I thought that Del.icio.us would be one of the tools that I would not find very interesting but to my surprise I think it could be one of the most useful yet! There have been so many times when I have found, or been directed to, a web site that I thought could be useful but have never had a solution as to how I could remember the site and access it easily in the future, regardless of where I am... well here it is! I've signed up for a Del.icio.us account and although I have only just begun to add my bookmarks, I can assure you that this will be one that I will be coming back to again and again. I've also added a MyDel.icio.us tag roll to my blog - see below.

# 12 Rollyo

I've had a look around Rollyo. I think this tool will be very useful. At work I (attempt to!) maintain some bibliotherapy lists for kids. Rollyo will help target my searching to relevant sites, thereby enabling me to search more effectively and efficiently and so helping me to keep my lists updated - a job for work - but for now (at home) I've just created a quick searchroll on a topic that has greatly interested me for many years - Australian children's literature, I've added another searchroll on recipes and added my searchroll to my blog.

# 11 The Librarything

This tool is lots of fun, and useful too!
I've signed up to Librarything, catalogued some books, written a reveiw, joined a group and linked my library to my blog! I would love to see this tool used for our 'Recent arrivals' link on our catalogue.
Also, did you notice the new header on my blog? I used the image generator 'Blog Header' to create the image. I've done a little rearranging of the layout too.

Another fun image generator

Another fun image generator is the Captioner. It is just a little frustrating that you cannot change the size of the speech bubble.
Here is a photo I took of a puppet show at a church camp I went to on the weekend.

# 10 Image generators

I am having fun playing with the image generators. One of my favourites is Mosaic maker. Here are a couple of mosaics I created from photos I took while on holiday recently in the Tarra Bulga National Park, South Gippsland, Victoria, Australia.

#9 Finding feeds

I've finally succeeded in making my blogroll public - that was tricky! (see links)

I've explored the search tools listed and added a weather alert to my bloglines account. Don't want to add too many more as I am starting to feel overwhelmed! but it's good to be aware of how to locate feeds. Personally, I liked Feedster best as it searches more than just blogs.

#8 Make life "really simple" with RSS & a newsreader

It's taken me a while to get my head around this newsreader stuff but I think I am getting the idea. I have set up a bloglines account and have subscribed to several feeds - news, comics, blogs and book related stuff. I am looking forward to being able to keep up with the updates to these sites and can see how the newsreader will make this much simpler and more time efficient.

Now I'm attempting to 'share' my feeds by creating a public link to them. I am really not sure how this works but here goes... Try clicking on this link

Well, obviously life is not that simple... my blogroll doesn't seem to work. HELP!

I can't figure it out - it's back to work tomorrow, so I'll have to worry it another day!

Finally figured it out - blogroll now public! (Click on link above.)

#7 Blog about technology

My first experience with technology was when I was teaching in 1987. We had one computer in the school and that was on loan. Each class had a turn to have the computer in their room for a day. I can’t remember what the program on the computer was called, but there was a little ‘turtle’ and we had to give it directions so that it would draw shapes for us. We, ie. me and my grade 2, 3 and 4 students, were very excited when we managed to draw a square, or even better a triangle, and if we were really clever, we could get it to draw a circle! We had fun, but no one would have guessed that in just a decade or so many of us would have personal computers in our homes and that they would become part of our daily lives.

My next major encounter with technology was when I enrolled to do post graduate studies in librarianship via distance education. After spending a decade at home with babies and young children, this was a major learning curve! I had little or no experience with computers and suddenly I was expected to ‘log on’ to get details for my studies, search and reserve items from a library that was miles away, request journal articles, participate in discussion forums, email lecturers, join professional listservs etc. etc. Every little step was a challenge, often fraught with frustration.

Now I’m on the 2.0 journey. This time round it is mostly fun, rather than terrifying. I am no longer afraid of technology, but rather curious and even excited! Having teenagers helps, as they have introduced me to new technologies such as MySpace and YouTube. I am already 'in love' with Flickr and use it extensively, but I am also keen to learn how new technologies can apply to my work situation.

#6 More Flickr fun

2006_01_08 Great Ocean Road 24 12 Apostles framed
Originally uploaded by Christine 86

I love the memry mashup and the Flickr Colour Pickr. Would love to try Mappr but have not been able to access it all day. Has anyone else had any luck?
I used another Flickr tool called Framer on this image of the great Victorian icon.

#5 Flickr

2006_09_25 Halls Gap - Flowering gum
Originally uploaded by Christine 86

This is a beautiful flowing gum, taken in Halls Gap last year. I have 'blogged' it from my flickr account.

I LOVE Flickr! This is where I fell off the wagon in my first attempt to complete the 23 things. I fell in love with flickr and spent so much time exploring it that I got left behind.

I love to be able to share my photos with my family and friends and in the past clogged up their email boxes with photos that I thought they must see. At first I had reservations about the usefulness of flickr because I am not comfortable putting photos of people on the internet for anybody to view, and initially I thought that if I made them private the only way for family and friends to see them would be for them to sign up to flickr as well - which is fine if they want to, but not everyone wants to.

Now I have discovered Guest Passes. I create a 'set' of the photos I want to share and then create a link to those photos using the guest pass. I can then email the link to anyone I want to see the photos - only people who are sent the link can view them and they can only see the photos in that particular set, so it maintains privacy. The link remains 'live' for as long as I want . When I think everyone has finished looking at them and saving any they want, then I 'expire' the link. It's wonderful!

Back on the journey

Hi team,

I'm back on the journey again, having fallen by the wayside last time I attempted the 23 things but this time I have my sights set on finishing! Time is still the big issue, and time at work is impossible! So now that I am on holidays I am catching up with my 2.0 learning. It's great to have some fellow Moreland travellers.

Now I know you'll have no trouble guessing who I am - yes, it's a boring name for my blog, but hey, creativity has never been my forte!

Here are my guesses for who's who in the Moreland blogs... I'd say Hollysnow Supercat is Sue - welcome on board Sue!, Technology is Bridgette, she's always finding something interesting on the Internet - I love the Mashup Memry (a bit addictive though!) and LeeForest must be Fran, good to have you as a fellow traveller! Am I right?

I confess I cheated a bit because I looked up the staff tracking log to see who had created a blog so far and these were the only 3 to have started! So, come on Rosemary C, Rosemary R, JR and Anne, time to get moving. And as for Karen, you should be leading the way... you're the expert!

I decided I should do something new to my blog this time, since I created it last time, so I have added an image to my profile - which I found very tricky!!! The image is a clipart of a librarian, which for me illustrates the busyness of a typical day at work (and my life in general!) and the need to be able to juggle several things at once! Perhaps some of you might relate!?!