Connections made and monitored

So the last module of CCLlearn and I've chosen making and monitoring connections. This has actually been a nice way to round up on everything so it hasn't been too bad at all. Though throughout this I've been looking to make the big discovery of something new that I'm going to find that will be integral in my online life. I haven't found it yet, but perhaps it will come when I'm least expecting it.

Doing this has reinforced that I really do love some of the things that I'm already using; and that they really are some of the greatest tools out there. Of course I'm talking about RSS, iGoogle and Stumbleupon. These are all tools that I use pretty much daily at home and couldn't imagine being without them. Conveniently two of them (RSS & iGoogle) are mentioned in making and monitoring connections so I figure I can give myself a tick for this bit. One particular thing that I use to monitor my connections is a little add-on to FireFox that's called Morning Coffee. Its a really nice wee add-on that just sits in the tool bar and looks like a coffee cup. You can click on it and it will automatically launch however many tabs of sites you have set up. You can also configure it so it will launch certain sites on certain days (really useful if you know what days a site updates). I'm sure there are other tools out there like this, but this is one that I really like and get a lot out of. I also had a wee play with using my blog as an anchor. It was all OK, but not really for me. I like what I've got at the moment and I'll stick with that. I think that's what its all about really - finding the options that work for you, and lets face it, there are so many that I reckon there is something out there for everyone.

Addressing the last thing about whether iGoogle or Netvibes would be useful for a team I think it would be. I experimented with this a while ago when I was at Linwood using iGoogle. However it made Google launch a lot slower which wasn't very good and also it was a little before Web 2.0 was really main-stream so people were a little hesitant at doing much to it. If it is to work all members of a team need to be reviewing, adding and weeding feeds. That way it is meaningful for all.

So that is me done with the modules. Overall I've really enjoyed it and its been so great to be paid to play with these tools. I do wish there were a few more things to push the boundaries a little, but I think that's just me!

Lost on the cloud

As you can see its been a couple of weeks since I've posted to my blog. Life sometimes just gets in the way, Easter and strep throat took care of last week and an RDO saw me miss out on the classroom session this week. Joy joy! Oh well, now is the time to catch up.

So relections on what turned out to be an extended stay on the cloud and in week 5. The cloud stuff was all good really. I've used Google docs before and found it to be useful. Zoho writer was new to me but intuitive enough. Think I'll stick with the Google thing though - its just so easy having the one logon for so many different things. I've also used Librarything before and think that its all kinds of fabulous. Love it!

With the cloud stuff done I moved on to pass-it-on 2.0. I ended up doing a short session with a colleague on using Publisher. My colleague had a real need to use it so it made the training especially meaningful which is always great. She came away feeling a lot more confident about using it which is even better!


Well that is week 5 finally fnished, just a bit after it should have been. Onto week 6 and we are almost at the finish line. Skyping is something that I'm looking forward to. More soon...

NZ2.oh

Week 5 is here. This brings with it some more productivity, cloud computing (this is the bit I'm looking forward to the most) and NZ2.0. Not too sure what to expect from the NZ 2.0 stuff - hopefully I'll discover some new things.

I've just started looking through some of the resources linked through the CCLlearn blog. The first thing that jumps out is how out of date some of them are. Web 2.0 lives and dies with the updates and if it isn't updated regularly it dies a fast death.

So the first NZ2.0 thing I've decided to have a look at is Librarytechnz. This is a blog coming out of the National Library focused on technological and digital innovations from around the web. It appeals to my inner geek and I like having all this sort of thing in one place rather than having to hunt it out myself. And it is updated regularly. Two thumbs up.

So onto the GLAMS initiatives. There are lots of really interesting things happening here. Two which particularly stood out to me were NZMuseums which is a nice graphic site with interesting things on display. They also have a nice widget which I've added below - check it out if you're interested. The other one which really appealed was eventfinder.co.nz. This is a really nice tool to find events around the country. You can join and favourite events and even suggest events to be added. The platform seems quite similar to YouTube so its fairly intuitive. So this I think is my big discovery. I can see myself using this again and have discovered some events that look great such as this one.

The last part of NZ2.0 is looking at Matapihi and seeing what web 2.0 things might benefit the site. In my opinion I think that an RSS feed would be good so new things added can be viewed more easily. Also having a widget would increase visibility of the site. Others could add the widget to their blogs or sites.

So that's NZ2.0 in a very small nutshell. I found it to be interesting overall. It was nice to see some examples of how this technology is being used by organisations out there.

Passing on the joy

Short week for me again (I could really get used to these!), so I've had to charge through CCLlearn. This morning I 'passed it on' for the 2nd part of week 4. I decided to show the things I had discovered when doing Productivity 2, namely having a play round with Paint.net. I chose this because I thought it would be something that my colleague would enjoy and I know it was something that I liked too.

The session went really well. I had organised some images to play around with so we spent some time manipulating them, adding text, erasing bits and generally just messing with them. My colleague really enjoyed having a chance to play with something like this and gave me some really nice feedback about the session.

All in all week 4 was pretty enjoyable. I feel like I've learnt something new which is great.

Week 4 - Pass on the productivity

Into week 4 we go. Themes for this week is Pass it on and Productivity 2. All fun and games. I've organised my 'pass it on' person and I'll complete this later in the week so that means I've kicked off with Productivity 2. Its all about the fun stuff that you find on our free computers - basically anything to do with sound, video or images.

I was able to chug through a lot of this because I've worked on our free computers a lot both with customers and colleagues. The fun really started when i got to the optional tasks - particularly the one where you get to manipulate images. I've just started playing around with this at home so I really enjoyed having the chance to do this during work time. Good stuff! Paint.net was the application that worked best for me. Quite intuitive but also had good online help which is always a plus.

So this blog post gives me the final tick for the productivity module which is great. I'm really pleased to get this one finished. Onto Pass it on. I'm intending to do a quick run through with my person on paint.net because I think it's something that she will really enjoy and will perhaps be useful in the future. Fun fun

Week 3 Done!

So here ends week 3 for me. I've got the next two days off as annual leave (yay!) so I've had to motor through it a bit.

I've found this week to be interesting, but I felt as if I haven't learnt as much this week. Neither of the topics were particularly new to me and I didn't really discover anything ground breaking. Well I guess that's wrong - I discovered that I need to be ultra aware of what information is out there about me because of Ning. Oh well you live and learn as they say.

The Discovery module didn't give me as many new things as I had hoped for, although it reaffirmed my love for Stumbleupon and I did like playing around with Searchbots.

Onto week 4...its all going by so fast.

Week 3 - InfoConnect Discovery

Onto the 2nd part of week 3 which entails discovery. I love discovering things so I choose this thinking it would be just the thing for me. And I was right. As soon as I saw that Stumbleupon was one of the tasks I knew I was onto a winner.

If you haven't tried Stumbleupon you simply must give it a go. It is a great way to discover new and interesting sites. When you join you can download a toolbar (can't do this on a work machine though) where you can add sites you like or you can just 'stumble'. When you click the stumble button you will be taken to a random website that is picked from categories that you choose when you join. So you've got a pretty good chance that you're going to like where you go. If you really like it you can click the thumbs up in the toolbar which means it gets stored to your favourites within stumbleupon. Even though we can't donwload the toolbar the Stumbleupon website is really functional and will give you an excellent idea of how it all works.

I've been using Stumbleupon for a few years now and just yesterday I added my 65th discovery - this means I'm the first person to add this to Stumbleupon. Its so widely used that its really hard to find things that haven't already been added so its kind of nice being the first to add things. One of my discoveries has had over 200,000 different people view it on my suggestion - pretty cool huh! Below is one of my discoveries - beautiful horse sculpture made out of driftwood.

Not Ning

So as per the week 3 instructions I went and joined Ning. I'm usually pretty careful about what information I put onto the web and Ning was no different. I use an alias (jnnysmth303) and don't put up my correct birth date. Call me paranoid but I want a little control about what is out there. I only put up full information for the things that are significant to me. So imagine my surprise when I went to edit my profile and found that Ning had changed the data that I had entered on the sign-up form. It had my full name and date of birth, both of which I hadn't entered when I joined. Yeah, sure there was probably something about this in their terms of service, but I still find this an invasion of privacy.

I've deactivated my account and I won't be joining again. Its a shame really because it looked like a nice tool. i think I had enough of a play with it to find out what it was all about. Oh well. Lesson learned - you can't be too careful out there...

Social networking

Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. I'm a regular reader but I don't regularly contribute anything, other than 'liking' a particular image or post. I've found Facebook to be a bit narcissistic with lots of attention seeking and often not a lot of content. Sometimes this is slightly amusing but more often than not it is just plain annoying and its something I can live without.

Twitter seems to be much the same. It took me a long time to work out the point of Twitter because I really don't care what some random celebrity had for breakfast. When I discovered the Tweets from NLNZ - National Library of NZ I finally got what Twitter was all about (or what it should be about IMHO). Everyday they tweet about a favourite thing found in the archives - usually an image or some dodgy advertising from back in the day. Its pretty good really.

Overall I think that social networking is something that's here to stay. I can't really see myself embracing it completely though. Its a nice way to keep up with what people are doing but I can't imagine myself posting regularly.

Playing with gadgets

Widgets & gadgets done! I've been playing round a bit with gadgets through Google. I tried adding a couple of things to my blog which was OK. I found a very pretty fish tank which looked nice, only it added minutes to my page loading time so I deleted it pronto.

I also had a go at making my own widget through DigitalNZ. i found this to be really fiddly and not terribly intuitive. It took a lot of playing around to get it working. I've put it on my blog so if you want to have a play just go for it. It links into CCL's image databases.

Then it was onto experimenting with gadgets in iGoogle. If you've read any of my other posts you'll probably already know that I'm a fan of iGoogle and use it regularly. I set myself the goal of finding a gadget that was actually useful and looked good too. And I succeeded! See the screen shot below - I found a birthday gadget where you can see how many days it is to each birthday, have a small present planning list for everyone and the like. Its very cool and I think it might just stay on my pages. Fun fun.


So that is week 2 done. I enjoyed it a lot and found some new and interesting things to play with. I particularly like Google Reader and think I will keep on using this. Next week brings on social networking and info connect discovery which I'm particularly looking forward to. More on that next week!

Gidget Gadget Widget Wozzit?

Started doing my reading for the section on gadgets and widgets and at the end of my reading I was still a little confused about the difference between them. So with a little further investigation I found that a widget is a piece of reusable code that can be used on almost any website, whereas a gadget is proprietary and can only be used on certain sites. Confusing huh?!

I've used gadgets a little through iGoogle and found them to be mostly fun things like having a pet that you can feed or pat - fun for a couple of days. They don't usually last too long on my screen - that's some valuable real estate!

Now its time to have a play with some gadgets on my blog. Have a look and a play if appropriate. Next post will be about what gadgets I like. Exciting stuff...

RSS & Podcasts - The Verdict

The last part of the RSS & podcast section is reflecting on what I've been looking at. With RSS you've pretty much been preaching to the converted. I love RSS and use it daily at home. I find it such an easy way to keep up with my favourite sites and see when updates happen. It just saves time having to visit lots of different sites. Its particularly good for sites that update randomly.

I think I'm going to stick with iGoogle as my reader though. Perhaps its just because I'm used to it but I think its a great product. Even though I'm going to stick with iGoogle I have been really impressed with Google reader. I think it would be a good tool to use at work, especially as there are lots of good feeds out there appropriate for libraries. I particularly liked the ones from the New York Times with book reviews and bestseller lists.

Podcasts - like them but I never seem to have enough time to listen to them regularly. They also seem to come and go and the ones I really like never update often enough. I liked that I could have them all coming in through Google reader. This was a very easy function to use and would be useful if only I had more time to listen to them!

Well RSS & podcasts are done. As they are both things I already use and know about I wasn't sure how much I'd learn but I learnt some really good tips and different ways of doing things. Most enjoyable!

RSS 2.0

So here I am making my 2nd blog post about RSS feeds. This time I've looked at searching for feeds. This is something I haven't really done before - I've just kind of stumbled on the sites and added the feeds. Using the search tools I've realised that I've been missing some really awesome sites which I probably wouldn't have found any other way.

There were 3 blog searching tools mentioned in our training notes and I gave all 3 a go. I really liked the Technorati search tool. It was nice and straight forward to use and I got a pretty good idea of what the blog was about before I had to click on the link. It was also great that I had the option to search either by post or blog. I didn't like the other 2 very much. With them it seemed that I had to explore a lot further before I could find out what the blog was actually about.

Still loving Google reader. I really like how it automatically loads pages as you scroll down. Less clicking is always good! It reminds me a lot of an add on I have for Firefox at home called AutoPager (a must have if you use Firefox).

More to come....

Edit: So having another search on Technorati I found this fabulous blog post that I just have to share - check it out

Week 2: RSS, Podcasts, Gadgets and Widgets

All set to go with week 2 of CCL Learn. So far so good. I'm really enjoying everything. I've just started the RSS stuff which is always fun. RSS is something that I use every day at home although I usually use iGoogle as my reader. I've had a play with both of the readers suggested and I think I'm going to go with google reader. I like that it has everything all on one page. I did play with Bloglines too and, using their suggestions, found some new feeds which I think I'll keep up with.

I like that you can use both sites to access podcasts. Itunes has always been my go-to application for podcasts but it often feels like they take forever to download. Google reader seemed to load them really fast which i like!

So now its time to discover some new feeds to add. Hopefully I should find some good things out there. More to come...

Cake Wrecks

So I just added one of my favourite blogs to My Blog List. It is cake wrecks. If you haven't heard of it before it is definitely worth a look. Often very funny. Believe it or not the cake to the left is supposed to be Curious George. Good stuff huh?!?

Sunday is the best though - Sunday posts are called Sunday Sweets where it looks at some of the best decorating around.

Posting no.1

Well here I go. First time posting to my own blog. Wouldn't have a clue how long I've had this blog either - just never used it because I've never had a reason to do so. So I had a play around with templates and found some real nice fancy ones here: http://btemplates.com/. So many to choose from, I could have spent ages choosing. However I just picked the first one that I liked and went with it. Knowing me though it is going to change a bit until I find the perfect one.

So what to expect from this blog? I think it's going to be an mix of things that take my eye...images, sites, sounds, video and the like. Perhaps I'll even post some pictures of my projects. A little bit of me out there on the interweb. Lots of fun!