Thing 14 - technorati again

In looking at technorati again, I still am not totally impressed with this technology option. I tried the different searches as we were told to do, and did not return many different results. The tagging in technorati also seemed normal to all other tagging options I have been in contact with. Overall, still not impressed with this tool.

Maybe my apathy to this web tool is tied to my disinterest in most blogs. A select few interest me for their content or scope or for the authority of the author(s), but I do not spend enough time online reading blogs or trying to find blogs to read, that technorati would be of much use to me. However, if one was into reading different blogs or into working on keeping up with that kind of news, this would be a good tool to use.

Not yummy but at least it's useful: Delicious, Thing 13

I browsed through Delicious and was intrigued by the capabilities of such a tool. I especially was drawn in by the beelerspace comment about how similar delicious was to gmail with its flat hierarchy. I love how flat hierarchy works as well, as I am able to quickly move from idea to idea, from piece of information to piece of information without continually switching folders or frames or whatever might be organizing all the little pieces. And with clouds of tags to quickly glance over, I see many different similar topics which I hadn't thought of before, kind of like the search tactic used by library patrons to look for similar books on the shelf around the book they found in the catalog. Overall, a useful tool to remember for the future!

Originally skeptical -- Thing 12

Originally I was skeptical of what use rollyo would be to me or to others I know. So I put together a quick compilation of the searches I do online every once in a while. And after I put together the rollyo of searches I was surprised at how convient the search engine really was. Instead of searching each recipe site individually, I can now search them all together for whatever elusive random recipe I might need. So I will concede, this IS quite a resource!


http://rollyo.com/svan3/definitive_recipes/

Shelving on librarything - Thing 11

First off I should say that I was quite disappointed with the searching capabilities on librarything. I guess I have turned into too much of an information professional and love too much the ability to refine searches and hone in on what I actually want. With librarything all I can search is title or author separately, definitely not in conjunction with each other, a quite annoying way for me to try to find the obscure or random or even popular titles I wanted to add to my library shelf. If anyone found a better way to search the sight, please do share!

Other than that aspect, I found librarything a really fun tool and program to play around with. I can see how others call it addicting, once I started adding the obligatory five books to my shelf, I kept thinking of other favorite books I really wanted to add and tag, and of some books I recently read or want to read in the future. I think I have heard people talking of using their librarything account as the resource to help keep track of books they want to read next?

I searched for a way to link my catalog to my blog. But I couldn't find anything in the time length I had. So I'll just paste in the html code and see what shows up in the post....

Thing 10 - Wordle

I love the way that Wordle looks. Huge words and different colors all randomly placed together in a haphazard but understandable way. Here I did a poem called The Roads by C. S. Lewis. The wordle picture doesn't quite do the poem justice in my opinion - not enough feeling and emotion - just the blunt words. But it still does evoke some of the artistry of the poem.

Thing 9

I decided to compare and contrast the three listed blog search engines for the Thing 9 assignment. I did a very basic search of the term "cataloging". What I found:

Technorati -- Any results I got from this search engine were more "popular" or in effect, useless posts which had the word cataloging randomly in them. None seemed to relate to the library. which is not totally surprising given the general keyword I used for searching, but still, I expected something at least remotely resembling a useful blog. This also has a very busy layout and set of advertisements. However, the descriptions or first lines were very helpful to telling what would or would not be useful to me.

Syndic8 -- I found a couple blogs here which I actually may find useful in my cataloging class. The layout was very basic and I could see myself maybe even using this search screen when needing blogs. However, it would be more useful to have some sort of extra description or information to use to analyse the results instead of just the blog name or url.

Topix -- similar to technorati. It would be good for finding popular sites or blogs but not for searching for specific or specialized blogs.

Maybe I am just too used to indepth database searching which makes these search engines much lower key than I would find initially useful. However, they seem a good start to finding blogs online. And since I was unaware that they even existed, it's a good resource to store away for future use.

Accomplishment is a sweet victory: Thing 8

I finally got my bloglines account functional which was an encouraging accomplishment for my day. I like the ideas of the chance to look at only the information interesting to me. And I already use RSS feeds from various subjects I am researching for my classes and for different blogs I follow of friends and family. Both option save me a lot of time of clicking through various webpages to see if any changes have come up. It's kind of like our library hold system where I tell people multiple times not to keep coming it to see if their hold is in. "We'll CALL you when it comes in", I tell them. Of course this is a huge way for them to save time.

An attempt at Thing 8

I've spent the last half hour trying to get registered for bloglines but it won't let me get past the first page. A little bored with this "thing". So I picked out the feeds I WOULD register for if I could actually get an account but...

I am such an impatient person with slow computers and slow connections.

...

Checking for progress yet again ... Nope. Still nothing going on on the bloglines site...

Thing 7

I know I take my knowledge of technology, as limited as it might be, for granted. The ease with which I type, and use my laptop's touch pad, not to mention how I toggle easily through multiple screens and windows at the same time is actually a skill which not everyone has. It all seems effortless to me to be so comfortable with windows and powerpoint, even to understand how to set up this blog and not be intimidated by the concept of posting or commenting. But that's because I do it all the time and I have been doing it for many years by now. Each day I always find myself trying out some new concept of technology, or skimming through some new piece of information or engaging in a learning moment. My attitude has always been to jump into things and learn as I go and this obviously comes in handing in the world of rapidly changing mediums, options and updated technology. So is new technology good? Quite. And the attempt to help others understand how to use it as well? Crucial.