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

Slideshows, screencasting and digital storytelling

I was aware of slideshow websites, i thought the Michael Stephens keynote presentation was fantastic & without a site like this i would never have got to see it. The best part of this week was the screencasting, this was something i was not aware of and can see this being very useful, especially for training purposes. Things like online tutorials for customers on use of catalogue & online databases, also staff training. The only issue was it seemed like for most of these sites you needed latest version of flash, which we do not have at moment, so would have to investigate if we can still create them with older versions of the software.

Nings

I have to say i loved the Mosman Readers ning - very impressive site!!! I think the advantages of a ning is you can have a number of different things - blogs, forums, photos, videos - all togther in one spot which would make it much easier to manage.

Twitter

I have certainly heard of twitter, but thought of it more for personal use, it was very interesting to see how libraries are using this technology. I can see it is a very useful tool to get out information about events happening at the library. I have now signed up for a twitter account and added a link to my blog, i found the site very easy to use and found some interesting people to follow!!!

Evaluation

I had never used Google alerts before, i think this could be a very useful tool and i will definitely be using this in my both my personal & work life.
Survey monkey is a great site, creates good basic surverys and the site is very easy to navigate.

I have signed up to feedburner but I'm not sure how useful it will be on a personal blog, probably better for business websites

Delicious

Have had to skip Twitter for now, I was able to sign up but that's it - no access at work!!

So had a look at Delicious - the library has its own Delicious account which I occasionally use. I have now signed myself up and added a few bookmarks, I also added Gosford Library to my network which is great as i can now access all the fantastic sites they already have on their Delicious page. I also managed to link to my twitter account & put linkroll on my blog. I found delicious quite easy to use and found some really interesting articles by searching Library2.0 tags.

Welcome to Learning 2.1 - the journey continues

Have just started this new course, I learnt lots in the last course and am looking forward to checking out new technologies such as Twitter which i haven't used yet.

I have not done anything on this blog since the last course. But have been using a blog for a bookclub i am in, which has been good since we can't always get together to discuss the book!

I think my favourite blog would be Awful Library books, it is always good for a laugh!!

I had look at some of the third party blogger templates out there, some of them are absolutely stunning and FREE, unfortunately no downloading allowed at work :)