G.R.O.W.

#40 Retroland

2009-03-24T14:19:00.002+11:00

What do you remember about the clothes you wore 10 years ago? - 20 years ago? - What you were watching on TV or at the movies? This site has all this and more. Retroland covers from the 1900's to the 1990's - looking at food, fashion, tv shows, movies, music, places, school days, toys and arcade games - American style.

Actually the contents of this site are a good illustraion of how American products, consumerism and lifestyle have been imported to countries around the world. A lot of the brand names and products I had heard of even if they have never been available in Australia.

It was still fun to browse through the various categories - I found quite a few old TV series I could remember watching - and quite a few more that I can remember as utter junk.

#39 Animoto

2009-03-24T12:00:00.004+11:00

I first had a play around with Animoto back in 2007 when I was just starting looking at Web 2.0 applications. I was quite impressed with it then, and it is still a great fun application to use.

When I first used it I just used images from their collection. This time I decided to upload my own images. I first tried connecting to Photobucket, but that had a few problems, so I went to Flickr, and selected the Lord of Rings set of photos I had - which actually were images from Photobucket that I had imported to Scrapblog, made into a scrapbook, and then exported to Flickr - now I'm using the same set to make a video.

I think I really need to take more photos so that I can upload them and then I'll have plenty of stuff to play around with.

#38 Comic Relief

2009-02-12T16:08:00.005+11:00

Creating your own comic is great fun, and using ToonDoo, surprisingly easy. It actually reminded me a bit of Scrapblog, where, after you have selected a background, you just drag all the different elements that you want onto your working area. You can also upload photos or pictures from the web or from your own PC.

#37 Radio Stations online

2009-02-12T13:28:00.004+11:00

Of the two options listed here, one (Pandora) was not available outside of the USA (due to licensing restrictions)- which left LastFM to explore. LastFM was very interesting. Once you have joined up, you can list some of your favourite artists and LastFM will then recommend other artists similar to those you have listed. You can leave a comment about tracks you like (or "shout" about it as LastFM calls it), and see what other people have thought about them.

There are biographies of the different artists and you can see where they are appearing if they are on tour. As well as free access you can also subscribe to LastFM which allows you to great playlists and other more advanced options.

As well as finding some of my favourite artists, I picked up a few different ones, particularly in the Celtic area. At times I found the tracks were a bit stop and start as they were playing, but it wasn't too bad. Below is a selection of the music I was listening to.

#36 Online Photo Editing

2009-02-12T11:10:00.006+11:00

With all the different photo sharing sites around, it only makes sense that someone would come up with online photo editing applications. I've checked out a couple of the featured ones in Learning 2.1 - Picnik and Splashup (which used to be Fauxto).

I was really impressed with Splashup, which is clearly aimed at a serious, professional level. The interface is clean and clear - you don't have to search through ads and gimicks to find what you want. Click on the "Jump right in" link and a new Window pops up. You can import your photos from your PC or from site like Flickr, Facebook and Photobucket. The tools you can use are familiar from other photo editing software such as Photoshop - maybe why I like it because the general operating environment is familiar.

Splashup also has "Splashup Light" a downloadable application which gives you a basic range or editing tools plus a range of easy to use fun tools. I used it to edit this photo - cropped it, resized it, altered the colour a little and then used 'Emboss' to make it look just a bit different. All done quickly and easily by clicking on the various icons.

Picnik also allowed you to access your photos from other social networking sites. Once you had uploaded your photo you could manipulate things such as colour, size, and exposure, or you could crop the photo and correct red-eye. Picnik also offered three options called "Create" - where you could add text and embellishements to your photos, "Collage" - group photos together, and "Fancy Collage" - create scrapbooks, cards etc. These all looked interesting, but when I tried them I couldn't get anything to open. I just kept on getting stuck on the loading icon.

#35 Mini Blogging

2009-02-06T16:50:00.003+11:00

Twitter and Jaiku are what is know as mini-blogs. They allow you to send short messages (around 140 characters only in some cases), basically along the lines of what you are doing this instant. They developed out of mobile phone messages. You can follow specific people to see what they are doing or commenting on, and you can link through to your blog or other social networking sites.

I just cannot see the point in these - they would have to be one of the biggest time wasters around!

#34 Good Health Online

2009-02-06T15:36:00.003+11:00

Today I have been having a look at online dieting sites - Fitday and Nutridiary. The basic idea behind both sites is that you can keep a track of what foods you eat and what activity you do, and the site will then calculate the amount of calories you have eaten and burned off. Obviously the more information you enter the better the feedback you get will be.

I tried entering what I had eaten for a day and then activity for the day. At times I found it a bit slow, possibly because I was having to look for all the different items I wanted to enter. In the end thought it was interesting to go and look at the overview and see how calories consumed matched up with calories burned, and what the average percentages of fat and protein etc were like.

#33 Online Art

2009-01-28T16:25:00.005+11:00

Online art or time wasters - I'm not sure which is the best description. I'd come across Mr. Picassohead before when looking at Image Generators back in October 2007. The picture I created then is still on the site, and I've done another one to add to it.

String Spin is quite fascinating and a lot harder than it would appear to get something that looks good.

#32 Online File Storage

2009-01-28T14:09:00.005+11:00

By the time I got around to playing with this particular Web 2.1 thing, the featured service, Omnidrive, was no more. However I tried out the other option which was Box.net, and which seems to offer most of the range of sevices that were mentioned for Omnidrive.

With Box.net, I liked the clean looking interface and how you could get a good look at the options available without having to first register. Registering was easy and then creating a folder and uploading files was really straight forward. Opening and editing a file with Zoho was also easy, although I had a few problems trying to insert a picture. When I opened the file again Word, the image wasn't quite where I expect it to be. The ability to share the Book review I created is nice.

I'm not sure I would use it as a permanent means of storing files (and the free 1Gb account probably wouldn't get you very far), but as a means of having files available when you were traveling or collaborating with other people, it could be very useful.

#31 - Get Organised with Online Calendars

2009-01-23T15:39:00.005+11:00

I've had a look at the three suggested sites - Plaxo, Remember The Milk and Jotlet. At the most basic level these are online calendar sites which allow you to enter daily appointments and maintain a task list. You then have a range of options. You can export your calendars/task lists to a handheld device, share them with other people (your family and friends or work colleagues), and get reminders. Plaxo allows you to connect with other people on the Internet and share content that you have created, and synchronise your Outlook calendar with the Plaxo one.

I have to admit I didn't see the point of bothering with any of these for personal use. However, an online calendar would be great for collaboration for groups spread across a wide area.

#30 LOLcats

2009-01-21T11:54:00.005+11:00

I've been a fan of I Can Has Cheezburger for quite a while since I came across it during a class on blogs. It's always entertaining to have a quick browse to see what the latest entries are. Also, despite all the advertising on the site, it's usually quick to load.

A couple of my favourite pictures are:

more animals

more animals
and this one - which isn't cats - but I couldn't resist!

more animals

#29 Scrapblog

2009-01-21T10:39:00.004+11:00

I am seriously addicted to Scrapblog . You can spend hours finding and arranging backgrounds and stickers. An initial scrapbook is really easy to setup, and then you can just keep on adding and adding to it. This is my example based on illustrations and photos from the Lord of the Rings books and movie. The images I used were the ones I found when using Photobucket, which I linked through to Scapblog.

I've also shared the scrapblog on both Flickr and Photobucket, which was really easy to do.

#28 Magazine Covers and Image Generators

2009-01-19T15:11:00.004+11:00

This is a bit of fun and games. I didn't have a digital photo handy, so I used the generic "create your own magazine cover" from Big Huge Labs. This linked to Flickr so that you could then just select a photo from your Flickr album to use.

The generic cover allowed you to create your own title, lists of contents, taglines etc. You could select the colours for text and layout, although the layout options were quite limited. Anyway here is my finished magazine cover, featuring a photo of a quilt I have made.

#27 Photobucket

2009-01-19T14:24:00.004+11:00

Photobucket has a similar concept to Flickr, but the contents are quite different. Flickr is very much focused on photos only while with Photobucket the photos seem to come very much second (although this may have been because I was searching for book related images and so was getting book covers and drawings).

It was interesting to see the amount of duplication of images that came up. You could really see where different people had taken and image and put it in their albums, or used it as the basis for another image. I had a play around with the slideshow and put together a collection of Degas' ballet drawings. The option to select a theme for the slideshow just adds that little bit extra to the presentation.

#26 Widgets (YourMinis)

2009-01-15T15:17:00.007+11:00

YourMinis is a site that allows you to access widgets (small interactive programs or bits of code that you can put on your website, blog or desktop. Some access other programs, others are just fun or cute). YourMinis also allows you to create and upload your own widgets.

My first impression of this was that it was a total waste of time. After looking around the site I still had the same opinion (maybe because I didn't want any widgets that allowed me to access YouTube, or the weather or various calendars). Possibly if you were interested in creating your own widgets this site could be more interesting, but I think it has a very limited range of widgets available compared to other sites.

The discovery excercise for this thing features a section of the YourMinis site which they no longer support, which didn't help the exercise. I ended up going to the Gadget section of this blog (under layout) and scrolling through the thousands of gadgets available. I added "Astronomy Picture of the Day" as that looked interesting, and didn't have any attached advertising like a lot of them did.

Then I did a general search for widgets on the web and tried out the Yahoo, Apple and Widgetbox sites. All of these had thousands of widgets to try out, it was easy to see previews and it was easy to download a widget or add it to your Blog (or your Facebook account if you wanted to). I added an animated cat that will follow your mouse pointer around.

At Widgetbox I played around with a new feature called "My Widget Gallery" which allows you to create a list of your favourite widgets and add it to a webpage. click on the Widgetbox icon to open the popup.

Custom Gallerygreat free widgetsWidgetbox

#25 Newsletters (LetterPop)

2009-01-15T15:00:00.001+11:00

LetterPop is really a fun thing to play with. The vast array of different templates for the newsletter means that you can find something to suit what you are trying to do quite easily, and putting a newsletter together is really straight forward. Not to say that it is without issues (minor). The template I chose to use had quite a small text box on the front page, and I had to change my font size to get what I had typed to display. It would have been useful if I could have resized the box just a bit.

I linked to Flickr so that I could access the photos I had there, and that was really straight foward. If you were just going to upload your photos the limit of 25 for a free account (especially if you were going to be using LetterPop on a regular basis) would be a problem, but using Flickr by-passed that issue. My finished product looks pretty good for a few minutes work!

I like the idea of using LetterPop as a training tool. You can get a really fantastic looking result without a lot of experience.

#24 - File conversion

2008-12-11T14:13:00.002+11:00

Online file conversion from Zamzar (for free for files up to 100MB and then various monthly prices) is certainly a great idea. Especially for those people who create files on various PCs with various programs and then get caught with needing the one file created in a program that isn't on the PC you are currently using! I tried converting a YouTube file - the converting part was easy and quick - downloading the converted file was slow!

I've already recommended this site to another staff member who had a user come in and not be able to open a file from their disc. I can see this being a really practical tool to have bookmarked.

#23 - Is this the end? ...

2007-11-21T13:49:00.000+11:00

I'm finally at No. 23 - and it's time to look back at what I've found over the last month or so. Nothing was startingly new - I'd heard about all of the different items, but for most of them I'd thought "not for me" or "sometime in the future". Well the future arrived and I tried out all of them.

Will I continue with all of them? No, finding the time to keep up with all of the different Web 2.0 things I have explored would be hard (unless you don't have a life outside the Internet), but I'm going to stay with the blog and bloglines. You Tube and Flickr will probably get the occasional checkout, and I'm planning on uploading more photos. For the rest of them - I know they are there now, and what they can do. As we plan different library events and happenings I can say "Let's use a wiki for this"or "Get some photos and we'll put them on Flickr".

That I think has been the biggest learning experience from this process, knowing how the different Web 2.0 things work, and thinking about how I could use them in a library setting.

Where to from here ? - there's still lots more Web 2.0 things to explore and discover - now that I've started, I'm not going to stop! It's a big universe out there!

#22 - Audio eBooks

2007-11-19T17:24:00.000+11:00

I've had a play around with the audio ebooks from Project Gutenberg, both the ones with computer generated voices and the human read ones. The ones which had people reading them were far better than the computer voices, which seemed to drop words and made you really concentrate on listening. I listened to "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" which was good (apart from a slight American accent!). I was just clicking on each individual file to open and play it which was quite a slow way, and rather disjointed as the story came in 3 files. It would have been better to download all the files and then play them.

Having used Tumble Talking books and Tumblebooks, it was interesting to look at other ways of making audio books available online.

#21 Podcasts

2007-11-19T12:51:00.000+11:00

I tried using both Podcast.net and Podcastalley.com . I felt in both cases that their genre lists were quite broad and the lists of items you got back was too big to scroll and find something interesting. It was easier to locate things searching for a specific topic, but you still got a lot of suggestions that had very remote associations with your topic. As with lots of other web based stuff - many of the podcasts were no longer current, or people had put up a couple but not maintained the site.

I found an Irish and Celtic Music Podcast which appears to be updated on a regular basis. I also had a look/listen to Midnight Fantastique, a site dedicated to genre books - reviews, writing tips, author interviews, etc.

When looking at library based podcasts there were quite a few to explore, ranging from news and events to library training. One of the most obvious ones to look at was the SirsiDynix Institute, a forum for professional development.

Podcasting special events at the library could be something to consider, especially for libraries where it is difficult to arrange author visits at all branches. Storytime is another obvious choice (once you sort out the copyright implications!).

# 20 - YouTube

2007-11-15T12:22:00.000+11:00

YouTube is full of the weird and wonderful. At times the quality of the videos really does leave a lot to be desired (ditto the content) - although some were quite good. After looking at some of the different vidoes it was also clear that some people had no idea what the word "copyright" means.

The two videos that I have found are a promotional one from an Irish Dance School:

and, following the Irish Dance theme, one that has been taken and remixed from an American advertisment.

#19 Web 2.0 Awards

2007-11-12T12:34:00.000+11:00

There were so many wonderful sites here it was difficult to know where to look first. I thought I'd try the music sites (as I seemed to have done a lot with pictures and various text based sites), however the Number 1 on the list (Pandora) popped up with a little message to the effect that due to licensing conditions it was no longer available outside the USA. So I went to No. 2 - Last.FM. This is a site that allows you to listen to and create play lists of your favourite music tracks. They provide information about bands, tracks, allows you to make comments about them, and find out what others are listening to - plus lots more.

I found the best place to go to first was the Help section which gave you some idea of what they were doing and what you could do.

#18 Web Based Applications - Published from Zoho

2007-11-08T13:07:00.001+11:00

The Tunnels / Michelle Gagnon

An old, abandoned tunnel system lies beneath a prestigious New England college, and it has become a rite of passage for the students to make a least one late night visit to them. However, in Michelle Gagnon's first thriller, the tunnels have also become the gruesome stalking ground for a serial killer.

Following a party, the bodies of the two female students are found mutilated and oddly positioned in the dark labyrinth beneath the school - odd pagan symbols and pictures painted on the walls behind them in the blood of previous victims. FBI Special Agents Kelly Jones and Roger Morrow team up to start the investigation - were the girls targeted because of their fathers, a Greek shipping magnate and a UN diplomat, or were they just unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Also involved in the investigation is Jake Riley, ex-FBI agent and now a security officer for Dmitri Christou, father of one of the murdered girls. Jones initially sees Riley as an impediment to the investigation, but as more bodies are found all three of them need to work together to solve the case. Gradually it becomes apparent that the killer is taunting Kelly, daring her to follow him down a dangerous path from which only one can emerge.

Gagnon has created a tense and atmospheric thriller, with strong, likeable main characters who draw you into their world as they battle to locate the killer before it becomes too late.

Above is the book review I created using Zoho Writer. It was a very easy process. Zoho provides all the standard formating tools you would expect in a Word Processor program, plus a few extras such as the ability to add Emoticons. Publishing it to the blog was straight forward, as was exporting it as a Word document.

#17 PBWiki

2007-11-05T13:18:00.000+11:00

I've added my blog to the Learning 2.0 Wiki Sandbox . I did feel that it wasn't quite as straight forward as it could have been, as it took a bit of fiddling around to get the title of the blog to display, and not just the URL. But now it's in there, and I also added the Library name/logo as other libraries have done.

#16 Wikis

2007-10-31T17:08:00.000+11:00

Like many other people I've used Wikipedia and never really though about how it was put together, or even why it was called "Wikipedia". Now that I've had a look at Wikis in general, Wikepedia looks much more impressive. Some of the other Wikis I looked at seemed rather pointless at first, especially if I entered the site on a page where there was little or no content. I think Wikis would possibly need a bit more upfront development than say something like a blog, where you can put a post or two, a few pictures and you are off and running. Although Wiki's can be created and added to by many people, I think an underlying structure needs to be enforced to keep them from getting to out of control.

#15 Web 2.0, Library 2.0

2007-10-31T16:58:00.000+11:00

The comments from the writers in the eOCLC Next Space newsletter made for fascinating and thought provoking reading. Are we now even closer to the day when the "Library" and print books disappear forever? Rick Anderson makes comments about decreases in circulation rates and justifying the buildup of "just in case" print collections. Although this issue has been raised many times before, Web 2.0, Library 2.0 may be starting to provide the resouces and structures to make this possible, particularly in the academic areas.

#14 Technorati

2007-10-25T12:19:00.000+10:00

I've joined Technorati and claimed my blog (my rank is 4266703 - I doubt if it will be getting much higher than that!) Now I'm going to look at adding tags to my posts.

#13 Del.icio.us

2007-10-24T17:08:00.000+10:00

My first thought after first looking at this site was that there was just too much information and links, and wasn't it just duplicating my favourites list online. However, after setting up an account and putting a couple of URLs in, I've found one of the reasons why it's so popular - finding out who else has the same URLs bookmarked that you do. Once you do that you can then go and see what else they have bookmarked, and maybe learn a little about them and their interests.

#12 Rollyo

2007-10-23T12:40:00.000+10:00

Rollyo is very easy to get started with. I was registered and had a couple of searchrolls created in a matter of minutes. I think Rollyo could be really good for setting up limited searches for kids doing school projects - put together a range of good sites on the topic of choice, add the link to your web page and the kids are still doing their research, but you know that the sites they are going to will give them appropriate information.

The Searchrolls I created are Aussie Craft Suppliers and Fantasy & Sci-Fi Books.

#11 Library Thing

2007-10-19T17:06:00.000+10:00

I've started a Library Thing account and put a few books up. I think I'll list the ISBNs of a few books I have and then search for them - just putting in author or title tends to get quite a long list of items. Once I've got a reasonable list of books in it will be interesting to see how many other people have similar lists.

#10 Image Generators

2007-10-18T17:22:00.001+10:00

This was great fun. There are piles of different ones to chose from - some just gave you random images that you couldn't do much with, while others let you created graphics and small movies.

Two I really enjoyed were the Bob Dylan Message Creator, and

Mr Picasso Head. With Mr Picasso Head you can view the completed art works online via this link.

#9 - News Feeds

2007-10-18T12:56:00.000+10:00

I've been trying out Feedster and Technorati to locate some more feeds to add to my Bloglines account. I found that you needed to be quite precise in what types of search terms you are looked for, and even then a lot of the results they present weren't anything like what I was looking for, although I was interested to see that I got the Royal South Street Society's blog (of results) when I was looking for Classical Ballet Companies.

I think that once set up an RSS feed would be useful, but its going to be really time consuming to actually get it set up, and you still have to remember to go into it and actually look at what is there.

I did find a couple of book review sites that I quite liked - Stephanie's confessions of a book-a-holic and SciFiChick.

#8 - RSS feeds

2007-10-16T13:55:00.000+10:00

I've just joined Bloglines and I'm waiting for the confirmation email to arrive so that I can activate the account - which it just has. I have done the obvious and subscribed to the Bookworm feeds for a start, plus a couple of news ones. There seems to be quite a few options for customising the RSS feeds, which will take a while to sort out.

I'v added a few more feeds to my starting list. Copying and pasting the URL is the easiest way of added. I tried the "Easy Subscribe Bookmarklet" which promises to allow you to subscribe with just a click, but it didn't work the first time, possibly because I had saved it inside another folder in Favourites. When I moved it just under Favourites it worked well.

Now I just need to remember to go and check my Blogline account on a regular basis.

#7 Technology

2007-10-16T12:41:00.000+10:00

I've just been playing on Flickr (again) and uploaded some more photos. A few weeks ago I would never have thought that I would be bothered doing this, but it's fascinating to go in and see how many other people have looked at your photos (but no comments yet!).

This type of technology is just another example of how much we have changed over the past couple of decades. When I first started working in libraries, the first library I was with still had a card catalogue, and were just starting to change over to an automated system. At that stage it was a major undertaking. Now, the computers, online databases and catalogues etc, are just another tool, and we expect new and wonderful machines and services as a matter of course.

However, we shouldn't forget that, for a lot of people, all the computer and technology stuff we take for granted is a major challenge, and it isn't just in the over 60 age group. We need to be aware of, and sympathetic to their issues. Maybe introducing them to some of these great fun resources from Web 2.0 will start them on the technology highway!

Week 3: #6 More Flickr Fun

2007-10-05T12:14:00.000+10:00

This time I've been trying out some of the myriad options for customising photos. You could really spend at long time with all this stuff. This one was the cartoon style caption for photos from this link http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/captioner.php, and I've also tried making a mosaic of images from Flickr using Montager http://www.deviousgelatin.com/montager/image.php .

Week 3: Photos - Villandry: the formal garden

2007-10-02T08:48:00.001+10:00

Villandry: the formal garden, originally uploaded by Brian Ritchie.

I'm currently looking at re-designing my garden and like the idea of something quite formal. I had a look at some of the garden photos on Flickr and found this on of Villandry and the formal garden. Nice, but a bit large for a normal size garden.

#5 Discover Flickr

2007-10-01T14:44:00.000+10:00

Although I had looked at Flickr before, I hadn't really thought about putting my own photos up. (I rarely show them to people locally let alone the whole world!) But considering that you can be somewhat anonymouse about who you are (as long as you don't put something up with your own face in it!) it isn't that scary.

Signing up to Flickr was very straightforward and easy (although I now have a Google account, a Yahoo account ...) and uploading the photos was also straighforward. Putting the tags on took a couple of goes as the first time I put semi-colons between each word, which didn't seem to be necessary, so I went back and changed that. I only put a couple of tags on each photo, but I think more might be better (but not the 75 you can use!). I also organised the photos I took into a couple of sets.

I can now see why it is so addictive. I'm already thinking about what other photos I can find to upload. The digital camera may be getting carried around with me for a while!

Week 2: Blogging

2007-09-20T10:45:00.000+10:00

I've set up my blog, and as promised it was quick and easy, and would have been even more so if I hadn't immediately wanted to start personalising it by changing the font, text colour & size, adding a picture to the header, etc. But once I went looking it was quite easy to do all that as well.

The hardest part is probably going to be remembering to add regular post (and thinking of something to post about!

Week 1: Introduction

2007-09-20T10:31:00.000+10:00

Blogs, RSS feeds, tagging, Flickr, Wikis - it's a whole new world (and language!). It's also a great opportunity to discover a range of new techniques and tips for keeping up to date with the latest and greatest in Web technologies.