Exercise #23

When I first heard about this Web 2.0 programme I very much doubted my ability to do it. However as we were guided through I found my confidence increasing with the completion of each exercise. A few times I needed help from friends at work to clarify something I didn't understand. I found that sometimes there is a simpler way of doing things rather than my roundabout way. My general computer skills have improved too, lots of copying and pasting.
What about all the new terminology! I had never heard of some of this stuff. Publishing a post?? Embedding a video??
The internet is so vast and we have touched only a tiny part of it. It's valuable to know about these sites, although I won't be using most of them again. It was fun using the creative sites and posting pictures, slideshows etc to my blog. I enjoyed Project Gutenberg, Library Thing and the Web 2.0 finalists where I found Mangolanguages. I didn't like RSS feeds or Rollyo.

Exercise #22

I think it would be a good idea for a library to build a presence on a social networking site but it would need to serve a useful purpose.
The library's Facebook or Myspace page should be an extension of the library website with links to relevant items such as the catalogue, booklists, research tools, calendar of events etc.
It would be important to encourage feedback from patrons, asking for suggestions on what books they'd like the library to order, what programmes they'd like to see in the library, asking their opinions and giving them a voice in the future of their library.

Exercise #21

I explored these three social networking sites with the help of my kids, because I didn't want to register on them myself. They all agree that Facebook is the best one, followed by Bebo, although to me the pages looked too busy and cluttered with all their added-on enhancements. I liked Bebo, it seemed simpler to navigate. However Bebo is smaller and quite local, whereas Facebook is worldwide and is the site that most people are on. Occasionally I do check up on my kids overseas on Facebook. Myspace is the site that all the bands have their page on, so is popular with music lovers who want to send messages to their favourite artists, check out upcoming gigs etc.
I thought Rotorua Public Library's page on Bebo was great, very colourful and vibrant. I want to checkout the library next time I'm there. Their young patrons had left nice comments too.

Exercise #20

The title I searched for on the eBook site is Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Librivox had two entries, one was a work still in progress. You can download the whole book on to your computer, subscribe in iTunes, or listen to a podcast. There is also a link to the Gutenberg e-text. The same title on Project Gutenberg had five entries, three in English, one French and one Dutch, in print ready to read online for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You can also download for free. Google Book Search was excellent, yielding umpteen entries in different languages, and at different levels. Most had pictures of the cover, book details, and links to bookshops and libraries. The first entry had the full readable text, while others had only snippets. Reading my books online is not for me, but as a try-before-you-buy option, these sites would be very useful.

Exercise #19

Of the podcast directories listed I found Podnova and PodcastAlley reasonably easy to search. Under Podnova I found some American library vidcasts of lectures to the library community. Under PodcastAlley I found History according to Bob, which tells fascinating stories of history's people, places and cultures. I pulled this feed to my Bloglines account.
I also searched under iTunes for comedy and found a vidcast by John Cleese, but I couldn't get it across to my Bloglines.
Another interesting exercise, which took a lot of time, and was a bit frustrating. I don't think I will use this much.

Exercise #18

This was the first time I had actually signed in to Youtube myself. Previously I had watched video clips that my kids wanted me to look at. What a huge range of videos, but I'm not sure why, in the case of Morecambe and Wise anyway, there are so many clips of the same scene. I had trouble embedding my video until a very kind colleague showed me how to do it. It's really quite simple once you know what you're doing. The instructions we were given are confusing and put me on the wrong track.I was trying to do it a more complicated way which wasn't working.
I think the library videos are a bit of fun which might appeal to those who are already library users, but as a marketing tool they're "too cheesy", according to my 18 year old.

Exercise #17

For this adventure I went to the shortlist of the winning websites in the Web 2.0 Awards. Under the Education category I chose Mango Languages, which gained second place. Here is the link: www.mangolanguages.com
This is a very good place to go to learn a foreign language at your own pace and in a fun and interactive way. At present 12 languages are available using a combination of written text and audio clips. The lessons are presented in a series of slides, which you control, so for example, if you need to hear a word or phrase spoken again you just click the back arrow.
You can view the first lesson without logging in, but to use the whole course you do need to
register. This is very quick and easy, and free too.
I think this site would be a valuable online learning resource for travellers and would grow in popularity and usefulness as it expands and adds more languages. Great fun!

Exercise #16

Zoho Writer
This online word processor would be very useful, once I've tried more documents to really understand all the features it offers. One thing I couldn't for the life of me figure out was how to make a landscape document. After trying every button I gave up and had to do a portrait. The same thing happened with Google Docs, it was very frustrating. If anyone knows the trick, please let me know! Anyway I created this poster and found it easy to publish to my blog. Somewhere in cyberspace on its way to the blog the word- spacing went a bit wonky and bits and pieces re-arranged themselves so I must have gone a bit wrong somewhere, but I'm quite pleased with the result.

NZ Book Month

                           DISCOVER

                       NEW ZEALAND

                            WRITING
                                                             
                                                         NZ BOOK MONTH
              
                   SEPTEMBER
                          2008   

                               

Exercise #15

Well, I don't know that I like this Rollyo place. It seems a more roundabout way of getting to where you want to go. I suppose people who do a lot of internet searching would use it, but I can't see it being of any use to me. It's a bit confusing, but maybe I've missed the point altogether!
Here is the link to my searchroll: http://rollyo.com/gdine55/

In the past two weeks the winter flu bugs and tummy bugs have hit our netball girls hard. The previous two games were played with only 5 players - they lost both games. There are only 3 more games to be played so here's hoping the team is at full strength again and ready to play, maybe for a win.

Exercise #14

Library Thing is like a great big library book club. You can keep a reading history, connect with others who have read your books, read reviews and write your own, join a group and search other members' libraries. Also other members recommend books to you based on the titles in your library, which is wonderful. You can be connected to local bookstores, libraries and book festivals and take advantage of the author visits that they host.
The website is very user-friendly and easy to navigate. Here is the link to my page:
http://www.librarything.com/profile/gdine55

Exercise #13

I created this word cloud at wordle, which I found quite easy to use. The tricky thing was copying and pasting to my blog. I found it very frustrating and time-consuming, but after trying every way I knew it suddenly worked. I don't know how I did it! Here is the link: http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/131203/garden

Exercise #12

After exploring the wet paint wiki, I added a favourite holiday destination, which was very easy to do. When adding my blog to the favourite blogs, it took me a while to figure out the link business, but I finally did it.
For those who are passionate about something and want to share their ideas with like-minded people, these wikis would be perfect.

Exercise #11

I have studied the information about wikis, which I didn't fully understand before. Now I see it's sort of one step up from a blog. Whereas a blog is focused on just one person, a wiki lets everyone get involved. Readers can not only post a comment, but can actually edit, add to and completely change the look of the page if they so wish. This works brilliantly as a centralised email system as shown in the excellent slide show on Youtube which explains how a wiki works.
A library wiki is useful for readers' advisory and as an expansion of the rating system which we already have, whereby patrons submit book reviews for other patrons to read. I liked the book lovers wiki developed by the Princeton Public Library. I have suggested for purchase by NSL a book which is reviewed in that wiki, so very handy for keeping up-to-date with recent publications.

Exercise #10

Library 2.0

The core message in the perspectives about Library 2.0 is that libraries must stay relevant and up-to-date, as they always have done, or risk being left behind and becoming redundant. Now, however, we are seeing dramatic change in the delivery and sharing of information, using technology which is rapidly developing. Libraries must keep up or even strive to be one step ahead so they are ready to serve their community.
Dr Wendy Schultz looks further into the future and talks about Library 3.0 and even Library 4.0. It all sounds very exciting and quite mind-boggling, but I hope we will still retain the personal customer interaction that we have today.

Exercise #9

I have been looking at Technorati and have found it quite staggering how many bloggers there are, and how huge the blogosphere is. I think this site is reasonably easy to search for what you want.
Searching for Web 2.0, as the exercise asked us to, yielded interesting results like this: Blog posts 119, 133; Blogs 15,875. Both Blogs and Posts had 10 related tags, all with thousands of entries. The actual Web.2.0 tag yielded 32,171 hits. When I entered Web 2.0 into the Blog directory there were loads of pages of hits, but no actual number of results was given. The same goes for searches under Photos and Videos - plenty of hits, but no specific number. I wonder why.
I don't know if I'll use Technorati when this programme is over, but as a starting point for searching blogs it would be very useful.

Exercise #8

I have taken a look at delicious, in particular the bookmarked site http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/index.xml
which has absolutely amazing photos from the Olympics opening ceremony. It's quite interesting to see how many people have bookmarked a site and how many have left notes.
Delicious is another way of sharing your favourite sites with the community and is an easy way to see what other people find interesting.
Also this is the first time I have created a link and it's worked!

Rotorua, Lake Rotoehu 002

Rotorua, Lake Rotoehu 002, originally uploaded by Rickbecroft2008.

Cloudy day at the lake, good for fishing.

Exercise #7

I found this exercise a little confusing - too much information perhaps. I seemed to be darting from one site to another trying to establish which feeds I wanted to subscribe to. I found the easiest way was to copy the URL of the site in to the subscribe box. As to how useful this will be, well to be honest I don't think I will be using Bloglines much at all. However for people who like to get all their information from the internet, having your own page of personalised sites would undoubtedly be very time-saving.

Moonlight Daffodils

Moonlight Daffodils, originally uploaded by Jim-AR.

I thought this was an unusual picture of daffodils at nighttime - and I actually quite enjoy looking at Flickr and sending pictures to my blog.

Second game

The team's second game followed the same pattern as the first - a loss of 14-3. The opposition were much better and faster getting the ball down to their goal. Our spirits are high though and we're all looking forward to next week's game.

Exercise #6

Hi Everyone,
After making it this far through the programme I have decided that blogging etc is for those lucky people with a lot of spare time! However doing the tasks has revealed a whole new world of technological wizardry that is mind-boggling. There are so many things you can do - isn't technology great!

Exercise #5

sunset2, originally uploaded by gdine55.

I created this montage of sunset photos, after lots of trials and tribulations making it the right size!

First Game

The team kicked off this term's games with a loss of 18-4. However they played very well against a more aggressive, disciplined team. Better luck next week, girls!

On a brighter note, as you can see, I finally managed to attach a photo from Flickr to this blog. I was ably assisted by kind friends at work, who patiently explained things to me. I was stumbling over creating a new Yahoo account, but once that was established I was away. Thanks girls. Now for the next exercise...

Exercise #4

Lake Rotoehu, Rotorua, originally uploaded by magdalenka.cz.

One of my favourite places for a holiday

Help

I'm becoming very frustrated trying to transfer a photo from Flickr to this blog. After trying countless times, following the instructions, setting up a Flickr account etc, I just can't seem to find the 'Blog this' button which is supposed to be above the photo.
Alternatively, when I try to do it the other way round and enter the URL that doesn't jolly well work either! Aaaahhh!
What am I doing wrong?
This is the link? to the photo http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=rotoehu&w=8738426%40N03 or is it the URL?

Setting this thing up

I managed to get this far, but I'm having trouble attaching a photo that's not too big. This is very time consuming!

Introduction

This is going to be a running record of my daughter's netball team's games this season. The girls are in Year 5 at primary school and are aged 9 or 10. Last term they played eight grading games, winning six and losing 2. This term they have been put in grade 4 so we'll see how they get on, starting with their first game next week.