A slight change of focus

Ok, so now the 23 things are all completed I thought I'd re-purpose this as a professional reading blog. It is going to be useful to have a place to document things which I think are interesting or informative for my professional life. The first of these is a blog post I came across about the notion of Trust and social media. It pointed out (and I agree) that in the socially networked up world anyone can claim to be anything without any real merit. This might result in institutions which are traditionally seen as totallt "trustworthy" having their images tarnished.

Linked Data

I thought the TED talk on this subject was really interesting and I thinked the whole "linked data" concept is great. There is something similar happening on sites such as Ancestry where the site tells you what people in your network researching a specific forbear have been up to. It also alerts you when a new person saves a record to their tree that you have on yours, meaning a new possible contact!! Not that I am addicted to genealogy 2.0 or anything.

A web 2.0 experience

Well I have had a very web2.0 week this week. First of all there was the hijinx of the first Second Life meeting with a few other Library Staff. Then I got an interesting email from an online guide site "Schmap" saying they had shortlisted a pic I took of Hampton Court palace a few yers ago fro inclusion in their next guide. From what I gather they just look at flickr pics and draw the photos from their guide from there. My first thought was "this is sooooo a scam, I can't take photos" then I did a bit of research and realised it quite probably wasn't. Thanks to the editing tools in Flickr my pic looks quite reasonable and a much better shot of the actual palace that the one they currently use, so we wil have to see. The third thing was a VERY stupidly let Kate watch "Kipper the Dog" on youtube on my laptop to get her away from the hot stuff in the kitchen, also it is HILARIOUS heraing her sing along with the song. Sadly that meant I got to watch the episode "Kipper goes on Holiday" four times. She would jump up and hit enter on the laptop to restart it - and looked so pleased that she did it herself I just went with it. I am SURE the narrator is from Little Briatin!!

FB, IM and Skype

Well I use all three every day, so I had encountered most of the stuff from this week. Many of my rellies are on facebook too so it is nice to be able to keep tabs on what they are up to, see pictures and chat. The latest recruit is my younger brother, and I find that a really good way of contacting him. In terms of IM I use Skype as most of the overseas people I end up chatting to are on that too - then we can easily switch to a video conversation circumstances permitting. I sometimes use Gmail's chatbox thing and I use MSN on occasion, but not very often now. It is kinda fun to use Skype to see overseas friends rooms and cats and the fact it has built in IM is really useful, especially if there is a sleeping pre-schooler in the next room.

Social Bookmarking/Cataloguing

I fear that I am a little bit over enthused about this subject and I must say this 23 things has done nothing to make me less enthused. Now I am a total zealot, whereas before I was just quite keen :) I think that the social bookmarking thing has real potential in a library setting as a dumping ground for useful links for specfic assignments or courses. You could tag them with the assignment name, keywords or course code and then just send the URL of that set of links to the students asking for help. I think both Delicious and Diigo would work for this, the latter possibly being better for several people collaborating in a group each with their own account. I have well over 200 bookmarks saved in my Delicious account so the whole tagging and social bookmarking thing works well for me, and certainly much more useful that having locally stored bookmarks. Something about seeing who else bookmarked what you did and what else they have saved appeals to the nosy part of my personality.

I really enjoyed playing with Librarything again too - it is something I would tend to dip in and out of rather than use daily like Delicious but it is still pretty cool.

Today's improvements

Got inspired to add my Librarything Library and my Delicious links to my blog. Feel free to add me as a friend on either site :)

Here a feed there a feed - there is just so much to read

MLG does RSS E.I.E.I.O.

I have used both Google Reader and Bloglines. I use the former myself but that is because I am in Google for other things frequently anyway. As the post title suggests there is no shortage of places to find RSS feeds to subscribe to. The real trick is not overloading yourself or learning to cope if (and let's face it when) you do. Inititally RSS aggregators were touted as the answer to information overload. In fact they have the potential to bring about even worse overload and much more information than any one person can ever consume. It is so very easy to subscribe at the press of a button and it means you keep up to date with that site and do not run the risk of forgetting about it and thus missing important stuff.

There are a number of ways to combat this problem that plagues us all. Some people suggest regularly culling your feeds, others suggest just reading the most recent posts until you get sick of it and making the rest as "read". Others still, think you should not get hung up on it at all - so it all depends on your point of view. I think I'm pretty much somewhere between not worrying and read the recent/interesting ones and mark the rest as read.

In terms of how the aggregators stack up I think both have their own merits. I kinda like how you can see the top 200 feeds in Bloglines although then you really risk serious info overload. Reader is good in that you can star your fave posts, and it has good shortcut keys!! Google gears lets you read the 2000 most recent posts off-line too, though I personally do not need this feature I have heard others find it very useful. Also with Bloglines if you click on the name of a feed it marks them all as read, so then you have to scroll through them all to catch the news. Google Reader you have to scroll through individual posts but it you really think you will not read the older stuff you an elect to mark it as read.

I tried Bloglines Beta today and I must say having the ability to drag and drop your fave feeds into a start page is kinda cool. Then you can see the first few posts of several feeds at once. I did not play too long so hopefully there is the ability to add other pages too. It has a nice overall look and feel too. I fear that in the end I am an awful awful person who is lured in by fun toys and shiny new things. Sigh!!!

hampton court palace

hampton court palace, originally uploaded by emma.pooley.

Ok so it is not Hever but it is still related to the Tudor theme. Cardinal Wolsey owned this at one stage but Henry VIII got it when Wolsey fell from grace. There we go - a history lesson for the day :) Handily its in the London Travel zone so I could get there and back easily on the train for a relatively cheap price. It is absolutely incredible inside and well worth a visit.

Flicking through the family tree

This week it is "play with Flickr" time!! I've had quite a lot of fun looking up locations that tie in with my family tree. This week I am obsessed by the Merton Abbey Mills which were used by William Morris (who got them from my 3x grt grandfather). I have uploaded a few things but the vast majority of my photos are of my niece Kate and I think only a very select group would feel particularly inclined to see 1000 photos of her. The plan tonight is to go on my desktop and see if I can find my pics of Stratford-upon-Avon or Hever castle (more inkeeping with the Tudor thing too). Then I'll do a picture perfect post :)

I just LOVE tag galaxy - it is such a funky way of choosing the images to view and the spinning globe is endlessly entertaining.

This Blog

This blog is my "23 things" blog at a mysterious location in the South Pacific. I do actually have another blog, but much as with writing diaries as a school girl my blogging is somewhat sporadic! Hopefully this programe will give me the rev up I need to become world famous on the blog-o-sphere!! I kinda like shiny new toys so I have used some web 2.0 things before but the real value in this exercise is the sharing of knowledge and experiences. I suspect that there is some stuff I might be able to teach and there is certainly a great deal I can learn from others!! I have already developed a new obessesion with twitter and the things have barely started!!!!!!!!!

Ok, so who am I?? In case no one has connected by lovely tudor avatar with my ning-self I'm Em!! I love to dabble in web 2.0 stuff and am a bit inclined to get unnecessarily excited about things. I have been known to hum various melodic tunes under my breath in my workplace and skip about. I've been here in this mysterious location for 4 and a half years and alive for one score and one dozen years (that's 32 years for sensible folks).

This is just a quickie post to get the ball rolling so to speak.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee