Del.icio.us : Week 6 / Thing 13

I've been working with Del.icio.us for a few days and I think I finally have a basic understanding of its purpose and how it works.

I can see the value of using this site for bookmarking, in the similar way that Rollyo is used, but with less work. I set up my own login and I like how you can just type in your URL (http://del.icio.us/allnewtechie), and boom! you're there. No password necessary, etc.

Maybe this site would be useful if one is exploring a topic and wanted to see what other people think are interesting sites related to your topic. This would be good for 'lite' research, but not for any topic one would need to explore in depth.

Rollyo: Week 5 / Thing 12

I'm not sure I understand the ultimate benefit of Rollyo--you find websites on a specific topic that you can do searches within? Why waste time loading in all these websites into a searchroll? Just use Google!

But here's a link to a searchroll I made up:
http://rollyo.com/allnewtechie/shopping_for_organic_food

LibraryThing: Week 5 / Thing 11

I thought the LibraryThing website was very interesting. It's always fascinating to see what books are recommended for certain titles. I found it a great way to explore additional aspects of a topic or to find new authors.

The following are other interesting aspects of LibraryThing to me:
- you can join one of the many different book groups. I joined Reading Globally Fiction.
- that I can have my own RSS feed of my books or my reviews.
- that you can automatically find out the Chicago, APA, etc. citations of any book in the catalog.

This is my online library.

The New Online Me: Week 5 / Thing 10

I created my new image in

Meez.com

Yahoo Avatar (yahoo. wouldn't let me export it) , and

Simpsonizeme.com

My Library Blogs/Feeds: Week 4 / Thing 9

The library-related blogs I signed up for are:

caffeinatedlibrarian.blogspot.com/ ( The Caffeinated Librarian--very very funny blog!)
http://lii.org (the Librarian's Internet Index: New this Week)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/library/feed/msgs.xml?ggroup=library (Library Google Group)
-- I haven't explored this one a lot, but it seems like a networking place for international librarians).
http://www.merlin.lib.md.us (MD's Merlin)
http://plablog.org/feed/ (official blog of the Public Library Association)
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com (the Shifted Librarian)
--I haven't explored this one a lot, but I found a hilarious essay on "Why You Should Fall to Your Knees and Worship a Librarian". ( http://librarianavengers.org/?page_id=3 )
and http://www.unshelved.com (the very funny Unshelved library comic strip).
--I discovered this comic about a year ago and I love the characters Mel & Dewey the most.

Merlin & his Feeds: Week 4 / Thing 9

When I explored Merlin I found a lot of interesting links on online training, library blogs, and avatars. I'm definitely going to come back to start using the online training. It's good to know this site exists and is regularly updated.

In addition, I actually created 2 new pictures of myself--one on meez.com and another at yahoo.com. I'm hoping to post them to this blog soon.
http://www.meez.com/allnewtechie
(Note: It seems like the yahoo.com avatar can only be viewed within yahoo.com)

Regarding the feed websites--going backwards--I had the most success with technorati.com because came up with good results for my searches, in particular on politics. I also liked how it had a large paragraph list of topics on the right side for me to click. I found a great video demonstration of how the iPhone works here and learned there were 106 results for iPhone videos.

I think syndic8.com is the worst--none of my search topics even came up with results. I liked how topix.com makes you look via your town and then saves your town for next time you open their website. I found a good article in the Washington Post about DC libraries using topix.com. I know where to go if I want gossip on any place I visit.

Feedster.com was okay--it gave basic results for the topics I searched for.

My RSS Adventure: Week 4 / Thing 8

I’ve been working with this RSS exercise for about a week. First I explored a few of the tutorials, then I set up my own account. Then I was off!

I never knew this feature existed, but I can see how it can be useful to many people. If you can get the latest news on special topics sent right away to one website—what a timesaver. The Bloglines site was a little confusing in how one can search for RSSs. But in the end I signed up for about 20 feeds—it was a lot of fun to explore all the topics out there. At least now I’ll know what that little orange/white box means.

I signed up for RSSs on food, news, libraries, money, and technology. I don’t see how libraries as a whole can take advantages of RSS, but definitely individual librarians can use it as a tool to keep updated on issues.