At first I didn’t think I would find rollyo very useful. I’ve had a look at what some of the other staff here have done but it’s all knitting and cooking and things that don’t interest me a bit. I’m happy to search using google, sure I have my favourite websites that I like to use, but I don’t feel the need to combine them into one searchable engine.
That is until I had a look at some of the searchrolls that are on the explore searchrolls page. I saw a search for guitar tablature and then realised that this is a useful tool. I have many different sites in a folder in my favourites on my home computer that I often have to search one at a time when looking for the chords to a particular song. This searchroll would be useful to me! I had a quick try of it but found it’s missing some of the sites that I use regularly so I could make an even better one!!
I registered with rollyo and clicked on create searchroll. I copied the sites from the search I had just looked at but there were only 6 websites included in that search. I added some of my own and ended up with 17 sites. I think if I search for a song using Rollyo and I don’t find it, then at least I’ve saved a lot of time by not having to type it into each of the sites separately.
I can see how this tool would be useful in libraries. You could have searches for different subjects, or aimed at different user groups. At the moment we have a useful links link on the library website. This could easily be replaced by rollyo search boxes that include all the sites we currently have listed in each of the categories. The employment category search box could include all the major job sites in one (eg. My Career, Seek, jobsearch.gov.au, etc.)
Did I use too many links in this blog?
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
#11 The LibraryThing Thingy
I liked LibraryThing. It was easy to use and understand. I started by adding some of my favourite books and series and could easily spend a lot of time adding a lot more, which I may do later. At first I didn't really see the point of it. If I wanted to see what I had in my library I can check my shelf, everything is in order there and easy to find. Though after some playing around I decided that there was more to LibraryThing than just adding books. I quite liked the LibrarySuggester and the UnSuggester was interesting but a bit random. I think I'd like the Suggesters a bit more when I have more things in my library.
I already use a similar thing to the LibraryThing on my facebook page (Visual Library) which includes books that I'd like to read. It would be nice if there was a way on LibraryThing... I just realised I could probably add 'read' and 'unread' tags but I imagine that would take a lot of time. I'm not sure if LibraryThing will be something I continue to use in the future. I added random books from my library onto my blog. Not too random at the moment as I only have books from two authors in my library at the moment. I also added a search box to search my library on my blog. I had to adjust the size a little as it went off the page at first, but it's fitting nicely now.
While on LibraryThing I joined the group Librarians Who LibraryThing which looked like it had a lot of interesting topics and discussions. I'm sure when I have more time I will have a look at a few and possibly subscribe to the rss feeds that are available (am loving bloglines by the way!)
It would be nice to have a MusicLibraryThing. I do have a last.fm account which is great but to have my own music library online would be interesting. Is there a site that does that? If anyone that reads this knows - please comment.
I already use a similar thing to the LibraryThing on my facebook page (Visual Library) which includes books that I'd like to read. It would be nice if there was a way on LibraryThing... I just realised I could probably add 'read' and 'unread' tags but I imagine that would take a lot of time. I'm not sure if LibraryThing will be something I continue to use in the future. I added random books from my library onto my blog. Not too random at the moment as I only have books from two authors in my library at the moment. I also added a search box to search my library on my blog. I had to adjust the size a little as it went off the page at first, but it's fitting nicely now.
While on LibraryThing I joined the group Librarians Who LibraryThing which looked like it had a lot of interesting topics and discussions. I'm sure when I have more time I will have a look at a few and possibly subscribe to the rss feeds that are available (am loving bloglines by the way!)
It would be nice to have a MusicLibraryThing. I do have a last.fm account which is great but to have my own music library online would be interesting. Is there a site that does that? If anyone that reads this knows - please comment.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
#10 Generating images and wasting time.
I've spent a little time today working on task #10 playing with online image generators. I've found some good ones, but there are also some stupid ones. I liked the graffiti one above which was done at LetterJames Image Presonalisation. The picture below that was done at Church Sign Generators. I thought this was a good one to do, especially after seeing Chasers War on Everything last night do similar signs of their own.
Another one I looked at but didn't like was the Christmas Disaster Generator. That one was really just a waste of time. The Will Ferrell Movie Generator looked interesting but that got boring very quickly. It's amazing how many are out there and it would be very easy to spend a
lot of time playing on them. While looking at the Generator Blog I only made it down to "d" before stopping. There are just so many! The crossword generator looks fun (I've been known to make crosswords by hand in the past). I think I will actually use that one in the future.
So I guess next I will be having a look at the library thing. I probably won't get a chance to do that today because I should finish some work. I have a customer who wants to know the history of a brick that she has - yes, a brick. So I better get onto that. I will hopefully be back soon to write a quick blog about the Librarians. It's had some mixed reactions here at our library.
Friday, October 26, 2007
#9 Finding rss feeds.
Since I’ve already added my 10 rss feeds to my blog I don’t really need to search for any new feeds but I thought I’d have a quick look at the searching tools in the exercise. Overall I didn’t really like them.
I found ‘topix’ completely useless. It pretends to have some sort of Australian focus by opening on an Australian version of a home page but when you search by post code, which it says you can do on this first page, it finds all American results. I really didn’t like this tool at all. If I was interested in the fact that the Red Sox had won game 2 then this would be the site for me, but I just didn’t like it at all.
Google blogs was ok, it wasn’t too difficult to find my own blog, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to find others to look for. And it was easy to use and straight forward which I liked… unlike technorati. I had a quick look at this and just found the site too cluttered and not really user friendly. I think we look at this again later on in the program so I’ll give it more of a go then.
Feedster initially looked straight forward and easy to use but I found that the text under each search result would run off the end of the page. I’m not sure if that’s an error with internet explorer or if it’s a problem with the site. But I would probably use this site again if I was looking for a particular blog or podcast.
I had already found all my rss feeds before attempting this task and I found them quite easily through google. Perhaps google blogs may have been a little easier, but I think using feedster, topix or technorati would have just slowed me down. Overall I think the easiest way is to just look for the rss symbol on sites you visit and add them if you think it’s necessary. If I start searching too much then I could end up with too many feeds and I don’t want to waste too much time reading every single thing from every site that I’m interested in, then I might just stop using bloglines altogether. I already added two more rss feeds today when I come across a blog about the librarians tv show. I think that’s the best way to find feeds, or if I’m recommended a feed from other people, I don’t need to search and add my own.
I found ‘topix’ completely useless. It pretends to have some sort of Australian focus by opening on an Australian version of a home page but when you search by post code, which it says you can do on this first page, it finds all American results. I really didn’t like this tool at all. If I was interested in the fact that the Red Sox had won game 2 then this would be the site for me, but I just didn’t like it at all.
Google blogs was ok, it wasn’t too difficult to find my own blog, and it wouldn’t be too difficult to find others to look for. And it was easy to use and straight forward which I liked… unlike technorati. I had a quick look at this and just found the site too cluttered and not really user friendly. I think we look at this again later on in the program so I’ll give it more of a go then.
Feedster initially looked straight forward and easy to use but I found that the text under each search result would run off the end of the page. I’m not sure if that’s an error with internet explorer or if it’s a problem with the site. But I would probably use this site again if I was looking for a particular blog or podcast.
I had already found all my rss feeds before attempting this task and I found them quite easily through google. Perhaps google blogs may have been a little easier, but I think using feedster, topix or technorati would have just slowed me down. Overall I think the easiest way is to just look for the rss symbol on sites you visit and add them if you think it’s necessary. If I start searching too much then I could end up with too many feeds and I don’t want to waste too much time reading every single thing from every site that I’m interested in, then I might just stop using bloglines altogether. I already added two more rss feeds today when I come across a blog about the librarians tv show. I think that’s the best way to find feeds, or if I’m recommended a feed from other people, I don’t need to search and add my own.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
#8 Feeding my bloglines account rss
October has been a busy month. It may only have 31 days but it somehow managed to have at least 6 weeks. This month there was:
Carer’s week
Mental Health Awareness week
Worksafe week
Anti-Poverty week
Children’s week
Senior’s week
And also the Northern Notes Writers Festival.
And World Osteoporosis day and World Teachers Day. How do I know about all these weeks? Because I’m the one that has to stick up all the posters promoting them, and there’s not enough room at this library for that many posters!
Anyway, I finally got around to creating a bloglines account and finding ten feeds to subscribe to. I’ve posted a link to my rss feeds on my blog so feel free to have a look at those if you have the time. Since I signed up to them yesterday I’ve found that the ABC breaking news feed has fed me 138 new news stories so I’m not sure how long I will keep that subscription going, although it is good to have a quick browse through the headlines. The other feeds havn’t really had any new posts yet but I do think the rss feeds will be handy to look at all the sites I’m interested in in one place. I think it would be handy for the library to set up rss feeds that customers could subscribe to to let them know when their reservations are in. Emails seem to work fine at the moment, but as rss becomes more popular, I think it could be a good option. Also with library news and events. It could be very handy.
I’m guessing that this time next week there will probably be a lot of blog posts going around about the new ABC show The Librarians so I think I’ll try and get my opinion in early – I don’t think it looks as good as everyone is expecting. I hope I’m wrong, but the ads I’ve seen so far just don’t look funny. We’ll see next week.
Carer’s week
Mental Health Awareness week
Worksafe week
Anti-Poverty week
Children’s week
Senior’s week
And also the Northern Notes Writers Festival.
And World Osteoporosis day and World Teachers Day. How do I know about all these weeks? Because I’m the one that has to stick up all the posters promoting them, and there’s not enough room at this library for that many posters!
Anyway, I finally got around to creating a bloglines account and finding ten feeds to subscribe to. I’ve posted a link to my rss feeds on my blog so feel free to have a look at those if you have the time. Since I signed up to them yesterday I’ve found that the ABC breaking news feed has fed me 138 new news stories so I’m not sure how long I will keep that subscription going, although it is good to have a quick browse through the headlines. The other feeds havn’t really had any new posts yet but I do think the rss feeds will be handy to look at all the sites I’m interested in in one place. I think it would be handy for the library to set up rss feeds that customers could subscribe to to let them know when their reservations are in. Emails seem to work fine at the moment, but as rss becomes more popular, I think it could be a good option. Also with library news and events. It could be very handy.
I’m guessing that this time next week there will probably be a lot of blog posts going around about the new ABC show The Librarians so I think I’ll try and get my opinion in early – I don’t think it looks as good as everyone is expecting. I hope I’m wrong, but the ads I’ve seen so far just don’t look funny. We’ll see next week.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
#7 A blog about technology by Glenn 2.0
Technology has changed so much during my lifetime. One aspect of technology that is interesting is the fact that human interaction is possible in so many different ways now, or, it could be seen as human isolation. So much can be done without seeing or speaking with another person. Social lives can be lived through a computer screen, where you talk to people by typing on a keyboard or looking through a web camera.
Last week there was even another new technology innovation which I found on my desk – bookmarks promoting ‘the national public toilet map’ – Now people don’t even have to speak to each other to ask a simple question to find the nearest toilet! They can just go on an internet and find it themselves. Soon people will have no need to speak to each other at all!! I find that even I communicate more with some people over online communication than actually speaking to them.
When I take an internet class here at the library I sometimes find it difficult to explain the internet to the customers that are learning to use it for the first time. Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend it myself! It really is amazing what can be found with the internet. I try to explain to the customers I teach that basically anything that you can think of is available on the internet… though usually they’re just happy when I show them that you can find the local bus timetable or the cinema session times. But when I mention that you could also find the local session times for a cinema on the other side of the world just as quickly, it opens their eyes to the possibilities of the internet. One customer got excited and ended up taking virtual tours through museums in France.
It will be interesting to see how technology advances from here. It is progressing so fast that when I’m an old man I’m sure I’ll be clueless about many things that the kids use as part of their daily lives. I’m already looking forward to Learning 3.0
Last week there was even another new technology innovation which I found on my desk – bookmarks promoting ‘the national public toilet map’ – Now people don’t even have to speak to each other to ask a simple question to find the nearest toilet! They can just go on an internet and find it themselves. Soon people will have no need to speak to each other at all!! I find that even I communicate more with some people over online communication than actually speaking to them.
When I take an internet class here at the library I sometimes find it difficult to explain the internet to the customers that are learning to use it for the first time. Sometimes it’s hard to comprehend it myself! It really is amazing what can be found with the internet. I try to explain to the customers I teach that basically anything that you can think of is available on the internet… though usually they’re just happy when I show them that you can find the local bus timetable or the cinema session times. But when I mention that you could also find the local session times for a cinema on the other side of the world just as quickly, it opens their eyes to the possibilities of the internet. One customer got excited and ended up taking virtual tours through museums in France.
It will be interesting to see how technology advances from here. It is progressing so fast that when I’m an old man I’m sure I’ll be clueless about many things that the kids use as part of their daily lives. I’m already looking forward to Learning 3.0
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
My library trading card
It's been a while but i finally got my photos up onto flickr and have been able to play with some mashups. I've looked at a few, and some look a little useless and timewasting, but i thought the trading card one was interesting. I created this card very easily and quickly. It would be good if the other staff did it too so we could collect the whole Darebin Libraries set!! I don't generally look like this at work though... maybe I should have picked a better photo?? I don't even look like this at home either. I just decided to have a bit of fun while shaving off my beard. Anyway, to see more photos you can go to my flickr site at http://www.flickr.com/photos/glenngreening/ I'll be back soon to blog about technology!
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