The dark side of the web

Luckily i haven't had too many problems with malware or spyware - I keep my internet security up to date, don't open any e-mails from people i don't know and don't use any of the downloading sites, e.g. Limewire any longer as it is not worth the risk.

Recently my bank has informed customers of scammers using fake e-mails to customers trying to gather bank details - as they said banks would never ask customers to reveal their details in this manner. This is a problem with this technology unfortunately there are some people in community, those new to internet, elderly etc who are not aware of scams & are easily taken advantage of.

Mashups revisited

I really enjoyed this week, so many fantastic mashups too little time. I think its great sites like Twitter actively encourage people to use their site for mashups & provide info on how to create one. I loved the Libworm site & how it was arranged by subject, i have added this one to my i-google page.

I also found the crimreports site fascinating - could not believe the amount of detail available & have sent this link to quite a lot of my friends.

I did a bit searching as well to see what other sites are out there here are my 2 favourites

http://coffeeseeker.com

Being a coffee addict i love this one, uses google maps to find a coffee place near you!

http://woozor.com/

Uses Google Maps & weather.com to provide 10 day forecast for anywhere in the world.

Instant communication

I have used ICQ & Facebook's IM system and find it a great, cheap way to keep in touch with family & friends. I can see IM being very useful for reference queries - i looked at Topeka & Shawnee library's site & it was fantastic. Certainly one thing i had not thought of was that we would have to support all the major IM players - Topeka had Yahoo, MSN, Google, AOL which would probably be sufficient.

I wasn't to sure how useful skype would be, not sure customers would take up this service, i did a bit of digging and found this article from Ohio University Libraries website http://libraryvoice.com/tag/skype - they found not many users took up skype option they much preferred to IM reference queries.

If we are to use these technologies for reference work we will need to be very clear & precise in the way we respond to questions, it is very easy to be misunderstood!!!

I would love to be using some of these technologies at our library but our IT restrictions would make it very difficult!!!!

More with google docs

I found this week really interesting & learnt some great new tips for using google docs. My favourite site was 100 great google docs tips & have bookmarked it for future reference. Here are a few of the tips i will definitely by using:
* recover old revisions, how fantastic to be able to go back to previous versions of your dcuments
* working offline - very handy when you don't have an internet connection or your connection is unreliable...thanks Vodafone :)
* save as different file types e.g. html - no need to use file converter you can just change type when saving document
* ability to sync with office documents

Getting organized : customised home pages and Google tools

I found I-google very easy to use - simple to set up & add feeds or gadgets. I added the LISNews feed & just in last week have read some interesting articles that i probably would not have seen otherwise. I found some really cool gadgets by just browsing - there is one that allows you access hotmail account though i-google, which is great as it means i don't have to log into my g-mail & hotmail accounts separately, can access both from i-google. I also checked out Ping - it looked like a good site for those who use a variety of social networking tools to be able to manage them all & update everything at the one time.

Event Management

I have used Google calender for private use & found it to be very easy to use. We have recently started to use Eventbrite at work for booking our school holiday programs & seminars. It has been fantastic, previously we used a spreadsheet which meant only one person could have it open at a time & customers could not book themselves, now it saves a lot of time as we have a link on our website & customers can book from home.

Productivity : more ways with rss

I haven't been using my RSS reader (google reader) very much but during this week i have found quite a few new interesting feeds so hopefully i will usse it more often now. I had a look at Feed My Inbox 7 have set it up and it works well, i don't have a lot of feeds at this stage so it is manageable to get them sent to my e-mail & i am more likely to read them. I thought the Reminder Feed (send reminders to RSS reader)was a fantastic idea and somthing i will definitely be using as my memory is terrible :)

I also thought Spoken Text site was amazing, I think students & teachers would be able to make great use of this site to convert their papers to audio to listen to, or share with others