Last one out turn off the lights

Hello Everyone and this is it.
The end.
The last Blog.
No more Friday afternoons downstairs with Kathryn getting passionate about some new gadget.
No more discovering new and exciting technologies that remotely drive me a little batty.
The more astute will say that learning is a lifetime decision, and to that I will wholeheartedly agree but will I be twittering while I do it?
The only answer I have is, god I hope not.

Did I reach me goals?
Maybe broadly....but it was something we should have done regardless.
Learning new tech can be painful but doing it in a group shared the pain around well and most people found a comfortable mentor or at least someone to rage against the machine with.
IN fact, most times I saw small groups of 23 thingers, there was a sense of frustration but a hell of a lot of giggling too.
It actually struck me as well how lucky we are that Murdoch gave us the opportunity to run the program, the sheer cost of the program would have been prohibitive for many businesses let alone the prep time etc.
We are also fortunate that we have such an enthusiastic facilitator in Kathryn, many of these technologies can be dry and confusing, but as I was told many times by participants, she brings a vibrancy and a clarity to the use and understanding of these strange new worlds.
Looking back, more importantly is the fact that the above while incredibly sincere, is in fact quite a lot of sucking up for the one blog.
But will it get my a new Ipod?, sadly no.

I wasn't sure about some of the tech we used or really where they would be best used (if at all).

I'll be frank here, I can see the applications for many of these techs but many I will be waiting to see them become mainstream and then see if they actually are the best tool for the job.

Some will , some won't. The next round of Tech will be different again and discovering those will be just as much fun.

A real congratulations to those that were finding it a bit hard and have made the grade.
Well Done, grab a treat and spoil yourself a bit, you did something worthwhile here and the payoff will come later when people ask you questions and you can say things like :

"Actually I think a wiki would be better than a blog in this case"
"Yeah, you can find me on facebook"
"No, I don't know the way to playboy island but I do know you are talking about second life"
"Is that new tech like this new tech?"
"No thank you, I respectfully decline your offer to join a twitter group"

It was a pleasure to read your blogs and you weren't all white noise in the hum of the internet.

See you round the wire.

Second life

I was quite excited about second life, its new, it's happening, I can create an avatar, I can fly, I can do anything I want in a virtual environment.

Hey even Hef is there, so the place must be cool

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2007/05/playboy_does_a_.html

However, it turned out it to be fun for a while and then it wasn't really like a game.
There were adult situations, there were rules, there was interaction with other people.
In short it was like World of Warcraft without the fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Warcraft




but even the thought of meeting Hef in the grotto couldn't keep me interested


Still, information is organic.
Expectations of service evolve, grow and branch.
Should we as Librarians be on second life?
It really depends on what you think service is all about, should we be where people need our services, and if so do we need to be everywhere that people need our services?

My only answer is, well, try it, if it works and it's used then we have a benefit.

And along the way we could meet HEF!.




(Ok maybe meeting Hef is enough to keep me interested)

Until next time.

Facbook and Twitter

OK the facts:

I have a Facebook account.
I have played on Facebook for a long time.
I updated every day.
I found some friends on Facebook I hadn't talked to in a long time.
I played some games
I played some more games
I got addicted to plants and eggs
I played texas holdum poker at 2AM with US college students
I did this :)



and then I realised maybe it was time to stop.

Is facebook fun : yes
Is facebook a little addictive : yes
Is facebook a way to catch up with friends and networks: yes
Is facebook a useful tool for librarians : debateable
Do we need to know about it : yes
Should I spend a lot of time here : hell no, I got work to do

As for twitter, in the words of spike milligan.

"The boy stood on the burning deck, whence all but he had fled. Twit"

I understand the applications for twitter, but really it may work in conferences but why would you want a 140 character IM service?
To me its like taking an IM and removing all the good bits.
I do see that it's like an IM in reverse, if you want to message a lot of people all at once then I guess this would work but hmmm, really set up a conference or an IM group instead.

Hopefully, this goes the way of the laserdisk.

Captain Kirk understands



Until next time

The image stuff (back from week 8)

Images

What can I say, some of this was actually familiar too me already.
With my partners family in the UK and having spent a lifetime on calls with clients saying "whats wrong with you guys, why can't I send a 20MB file through my email. I know that email was onl;y ever designed as a simple text message service but my friend, who is over at a rival internet provider and probably knows what he is doing can send it just fine" OR worse, with "Whats wrong with you guys, my friend sent me a photo of his baby and it takes forever for it to download, I know its 25MB but the kids real small ok?"
Hence, Flickr and also the kodak site:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/Welcome.jsp

Personally, In my situation I found that the older generation like kodak better and they could go to a kodak shop and have them burn a DVD or print the photos off.

but at least you don't have email the things.

Also I found www.mediafire.com a really good way to store anything and then publish it on the web. I could just then email the link to them.

Have a look it's good.

As far as images on the blog, yeah baby, its all about the eye candy.






I'll try the image generator now







The good thing about all these things is that we are by definition visual beings, anything that helps and maybe adds a bit of humor will increase the value of the message.
We should use them more and don't be afraid to make your information a bit more human.

Until next Time

Slideshare and youtube

I already love youtube as an extra tool for learning, see the previous blog for the sort of use you can do.
Imagine doing your instructions for students that way, much easier on the eye and should cut down on the amount of questions you recieve (even i'm going uh huh at this stange LOL ).

Slideshare while fun, could be used the same way I guess but I imagine that the immediate use would be offsite storage for your presentation.

Interestingly, I was searching for monkeys and came accross this on slideshare (apologies to the author)

| View | Upload your own

my apologies about the slideshow, it seems not to like it too much (hang on I'll tweet the author)

In terms of 23 things AND BEYOND! *presenters voice required*

Lastfm is way cool, try it
Meebo rocks, absoulutly the best thing to hit IM in years
mediafire is fantatstic for file storage and sharing files on the net, save it in the format you want and then publish it for a web link, toooooo easy

I also did the test :

BUGGER I got one wrong.............TWICE :)

Oh well, Gwyngie will enjoy getting them all right, (even if it takes all year).

RSS feeds and staying in touch - Special request

Staying in touch with information can be difficult at the best of times, and whilst it's handy to have a newsfeed service such as this, the problem arises knowing when new information becomes available.

In this post we will look at RSS feeds and how they can be used to keep up to date with information as it updates.

RSS feeds basically work like being sent an sms when new information becomes available.
For the more technically minded a full explanation of RSS can be found here or an excellent youtube video is available below:



You can use several ways to read the RSS feeds there are:

Google reader(essential)

and to read your google reader account you can use the following programs:

Outlook
Internet Explorer 7
Firefox
Macintosh (not Windows) programs


Google Reader


Firstly, the base for most of these methods is google reader, to do this sign up to a google email account and it's free.

Create an account for google reader here

A short video on the process and using google reader



Once you have added the feed to your google reader you can then use any of the following to keep up to date:


Outlook

An explanation of how to set up your RSS feeds in Microsoft outlook is available by clicking here.

A short instructional video is available below:


Internet Explorer 7

A short instructional video on adding RSS Feeds to IE7



Firefox

In firefox you can add a feed a few ways you can:

1) add it to the "live bookmarks" section of firefox



or

2) Install an add-on to manage it for you. This add on will create a small icon in the bottom right hand corner of Firefox displaying the number of unread RSS feeds you have.



You can install the add-on here.

Macintosh software

Mac programs are available with instructions here.

A short instructional video for Safari is available below




IN TROUBLE OR INFORMATION OVERLOAD?
Contact me on 08 9555 5555 or email me at aaron@fakeaddress.com.au

Delicious tagging and social bookmarking

I was searching for "Mendicant", no suprises really accross the board, karzoo was quite well set out but not really that easy to use.

Delicious quite frankly scares me a little, having done something similar on music sites, I get these weird tags from really creative people for music, like sexy cool greentea blow baby blow and it really just feels a little w@nky to me LOL.

I do see that you could save tags on the web, so really really cool but in most places where items can be updated you end up with standard nomeclature for naming or it gets wayyyyyyyy messy and illogical BUT hey I have been wrong before.

This is however quite cool:



well, I also may just be a little rushed and not given it enough lovin'.

Only time will tell

Google docs and PBwiki

Ok, up front I need to say this.

I am completely prejudiced against google docs.

I worked in an office where we had the open office/star office as the basic software package.

It made my life hell.

In fact the excel spreadsheet couldn't even add up at one stage.
It was a bad experience, not because we were on the cutting edge but because the boss was effectively cheap.

This is how my return to Microsoft Office felt:




Google docs however, was a more pleasant experience and I can see where you would use it, BUT not enough to swear myself from the dark side AND not comfortable enough with the idea of the document *suddenly* going public through one of the contributors experiencing a PEBKAC
moment.

I do truly believe that the google documents concept is where it's all going eventually, but like any new tech it will meet some resistance.

PbWiki was ok, but i'll be honest I rushed it a bit and I think I would need to see it better used than the blog like/website like thing that I made up.

Anyone with a good example, (other than the holy grail of free information Wikipedia), please let me know.

avatar made

Meez was really giving me a headache so I found a Simpsons avatar creator, much more limited but there you go.

Just when you thought it was safe

Hi everyone, just when I thought it was ok to just post a youtube video instead of a blog, I see kathryn's email. :(

So here we are, a quick tutorial on RSS feeds and top see someone in a budget RSS feed costume:



but check out my second last post for outlook functionality and reader.

As far as learning new stuff from my rss postings this month, not a lot.

Definitely a feeling of community after reading the lighthouse blog

Definitely a feeling of fear of upgrade after finding out about USB 3

and a genuine feeling that change is challenging after reading a few blogs this week.

Do yourself a favor and check out the video at Black and White
and try to keep awake. Informative but my god the delivery :)

And as always something to mull over:

For those having a little trouble this week :)

Week two - This time it's hyperlinked

Week two has swung around and here I am, late for my 23 things meeting and blogging from the office instead.
As far as this weeks tasks go (feeling a little BB there) I delved into the world of RSS feeds and came back surprised.
Back in my pseudo tech days I really felt they were the property of the slashdot crowd, a main line for the netscape crowd, you know the guys that know how much RAM a given process takes etc.
To my surprise, they have evolved a great deal and I can see the functionality for a lot of people.
The biggest questions I have seen so far this week are along the lines of :
Ok, so I subscribed but do I have to go to google reader to do get the info?

In answer Kathryn has had some great responses, with options to install in igoogle, outlook and some 3rd party readers.

I myself have found the google reader add on in firefox a help, but it does add a little pressure when I see the little counter slowly rise.

I have made it a personal goal to read everyone's blog weekly and offer my two cents to the equations (after all I have never been accused of being a wallflower)..... so ultimately you will probably see me post to your blog at some point.

The other question I hear is the same that I have, ok I'm hooked in to the info but where do I find the time?

It's easy to subscribe but harder to digest.

And the choice, do I read something interesting from the lighthouse blog, from the networking blog or just play a game of spider solitaire when I have a few minutes :)
Even better read a little webcomic :

userfriendly

pearls before swine

dinosaur comics

So is it really a question of tech or procrastination?
I guess thats one of my obstacles to overcome with the 23 things.

Course, if you have some spare time on your hands, you could always do something constructive :

Giant tetris

Until next week

Betamax BETAMAX!

As we begin the long road away from the forces of darkness towards the chaotic worlds of open source and the new frontier, we should pause and remember the past a little.

The joyous days of command line interfaces, our faces bathed in the pale green glow of monochromatic screens, struggling to remember the 1043 shortcuts required to just get your email in pine.

The slow roar of frustration as the system allowed you to alter it's own operating system causing our old friend the blue screen of death.

Having to code your own programs just for a little solitaire action in the afternoon.

The whispers of the techno savvy, talking slash dot and the baud rates of different modems.

Now, the penguin is ascending and open source is not a dirty word.
23 things, many new thing, many things we may not be able to do without later, some will go the way of the dodo and some we will fight to death to keep.

It's a new exciting time, however in the back of my head a little voice screams : BETAMAX! BETAMAX! BETAMAX!.