Late entry

Well, its coming up to Melbourne Cup time, and juts like that I've got a late entry to my Blog. hopefully people won't scratch it, only themselves.

Just came across another article about social networking, on the web that is, in the newspaper The West Australian. Find it at http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=429863

Seems to mention that in the second half of 2007 we Australians have increased our social networking and chat site usage by 37% over the first half, and that Faceboook is getting increased traffic and may overtake MySpace. However MySpace controllers claim the stats can be misleading, with Facebook traffic being only short timespan stuff.

Things rings bells, I think I've seen/heard an argument like this before. Yes! On the 4 corners programme about 2nd Life, detractors claim that although there are huge numbers of registered users of Second Life, the number of active users is actually only a small percentage of those.

So statistics can be manilpulated, but social networking has certainly got the companies behind the Faces ( pun intended) trying to protect their patches.

Not about Mashups

O.k., I'm diverting again off the scheduled part of the 23 things programme, and going backwards slightly.

I was checking out an article from the 'LibraryLink of the Day' I subscribe to via email, http://www.cio.com/article/141650 and came across a link to a very good article about Wikis and Blogs, http://www.cio.com/article/122701/ABC_An_Introduction_to_Blogs_and_Wikis_in_the_Business_World/1

It covers qute well topics such as what are Wikis and Blogs, what benefits they have for businesses, and the types of techology and terminology used. Check it out, as it also gives some ideas of how some businesses have used these particular communication tools.

I'm back onto the normal 23 Things trail. So you might have noticed that I have a nice new picture on my page, courtesy of the late and very great Charles M Schulz.
Its using the blogger add a page element functionality to add a picture. A bit basic as resizing the picture option would have been really handy. Someone let me know if it is, as I couldn't see anything other than shrink to fit, which was useless.

I'll go away and have another look at Flickr and Mashups next...

A breather from Wiki's

Well, while I build up my stamina to attack those Wiki's again let me present a picture to you all from a library colleague. Many of us may have encountered a similar start to the day.

Picture this. You wake in the morning, its slightly dark in the bedroom. After your morning ablutions you stumble back to the wardrobe to get dressed. Groping in the semi darkness you feel for your shoes, or in this case you knee length boots. Your put them on, thankful that the hard part of the morning is over, make sure the dog,cat,budgie whatever is out for the day then head off to work to your nice cosy academic library.

Tottering up the ramp to the library door you feel a little off balance, is the day going to be as good as you thought it was or is it some inner ear affliction you think affecting your demeanour.

Once inside it hits you, and all your library colleagues, that although you have a similar pair of boots at home to the ones you are currently wearing, its only because you are wearing noticeably odd boots. O.k., time to go home and start the day again with matching boots.

Thanks Julie for starting our day off so well. LOL.

Flickr - the sharing site not the dolphin

Well, my first tentative forey into the Flickr world. Looks a good way of avaoding those embarrasing hard drive failures and subsequent loss of your precious family photos. Also lets me see some of my old memroies thought other peoples eyes, without having to go there in person.

Take this photo for instance, http://www.flickr.com/photos/brinkstock/1319999103/in/set-72157600951138233/ its fro my old homoe town in England. It shows the old Saxon Crosses, purported to have been erected in 653AD, and now surrounded by some loveley old drinking holes. Of course its a nice sunny day, but my memory is a bit vague on how many sunny days we used to get.

I'll check out some more of this Flickr business shortly, with its boiled potato Mashups etc.

Wiki mania???

So I had to follow instructions to get into the ECU Library Learnig 2.0 wiki thingy so I could post a comment, or even edit a wiki page.
Firstly let me say the instructions were not self evident, and a little hard to follow with a couple of steps left out. For instance putting in the search terms into the search box, but there were 3 search boxes on the page in close proximity to each other, so which one???

I tried, and actually had enrolled but didn't even realise I was, until a helpful librarian showed me that I actually was. Maybe its because I had the Sampson and Delilah syndrome today, a haircut that is.

I can see that a wiki can be a useful tool both for providing information to students, and for them to easily respond to that information or post suggestions back concerning library issues. Yes, it still does rely upon the student going to the page, but it will hang off the library webpages so could be easily accessible whilst they do other library related stuff.

RSS feeds yet again

well, having now setup the RSS feed from a database, a particular journal title, I can see that this can be useful for a researcher or someone interested in a particular topic or magaxine, or anything for that matter that will allow this feed to occur.

My biggest concern would be the need to login to somwhere, in this case Bloglines or my Blog itself, to look at these feeds. also, I have to setup the feed for those things I wish to receive. Would a student actually do this, if we wished to set up something whereby we post information of relevance, or at least what WE thought was of relevance, and wanted the student to take notice of.

If there was one single portal to receive all these disparate collections of information, library notices, feeds from databases, email from lecturers...oh, am I talking about Blackboard. Its just what as student said to me yesterday, they wanted their University email account to be more readily accessible, with their other information currently on Blackboard, without needing to navagate into one are of Blackboard then backout to then navigate into another area.

Can I see RSS feeds engaging students? Well yes, I do, but only if the techo's can give them one unified, easily navigated portal. How hard can that be, we seem to be throwing all these supposed great web2.0 functions at people, but we have to zip here and zip there to use them, and creat mutliple passwords and usernames that we end up forgetting who we really are!