Technorati

Thing 14. Again I wasn't able to access everything in the Discovery Resources, the tip of the month link is no longer available. There were some interesting statistics in the State of the Blogosphere.
I had a good look around the Technorati home page but I wasn't able to do most of the Discovery Exercises. Either I'm blind or the site has been updated! I did a search for "libraries" in blogs and found some interesting library related blogs.

Delicious

Thing 13. The tutorial video was informative and helped in understanding how Delicious can be used. I noticed that the URL is different and wondered if other content may have changed. I wasn't able to access the other two resources so I searched for something similar on the internet and came across the Ultimate guide to delicious social bookmarking http://www.interactiveinsightsgroup.com/blog1/ultimate-guide-to-delicious-social-bookmarking/
I didn't go as far as opening a Delicious account but may do in the future. I can see that it could be useful for researching.

Twitter

For Thing 12 I had a look at Twitter. I went to http://twitter.com and found a Twitter guide at http://www.twitterguide.com.au/ which covers everything from how to get started and Twitter etiquette. I didn't go as far as signing up but I have a bit more of an understanding of what Twitter is all about.

Rollyo

Select Search Engine...YA BooksSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

Two weeks later...I'm still on Thing 11. I have created a searchbox (with Kim's help) hopefully linked to my search roll. This is my second attempt, the first one came up with an error 'Your HTML cannot be accepted: closing tag has no matching opening tag: A'. I changed the style to plain so will see what happens when I publish this post.
I'm trying to move on to Thing 12, halfway through the 23 Things!

Rollyo

I created a search roll for Young Adult Books with author sites and other websites aimed at teen readers. Rollyo is a great idea but it was frustratingly slow and often came up with a message 'didn't connect - too many connections'. The process of adding websites was easy.

Library Thing

I started an account with Libary Thing and added nine books. I have three collections; My library, Read but unowned and Wish list. I'm not reading a book at the moment so I couldn't add anything to the Currently reading collection. For the five books I have recently read I added tags and gave them a rating. When I went to add 'Road to Paradise' by Paullina Simons I couldn't find it in Amazon so I added Christchurch City Libraries to the search options. I had a look at other peoples reviews for books in my library and at the various groups. From 'my books' I clicked on a book cover and had a look at the recommendations. I chose four books to add to my wish list.
I would have liked to add a widget to my blog but it isn't possible.

Alien Lion

Alien Lion
Originally uploaded by Muffinlady1

I had fun in Dumpr turning my photos into different images. For this image of the lion I used 'Alien Vision'. It was easy to use and linked directly with Flickr for storing the image. I changed the image to public to be able to add it to my blog. Well that's it for playing with photos. Time to move on to Thing 10.

Flickr Search

Today I was able to find all three photos I tagged with "Nhulunbuy Community Library" when I did a search. Previously only Kim's photo came up. I can finally say that I completed Thing 7!

Thing 8 required me to look at some Flickr Mashups. I found a list of APIs that use Flickr images on http://www.flickrbits.com/. Each one had a description so I had a closer look at the ones I thought sounded interesting. One of those was WackyB Flickr Desktop Slideshow. Semi-transparent images are displayed while the computer screen can still be seen to allow the user to continue working. I imagine it would be very distracting but an interesting idea!
I had fun making a comic strip in Bubblr with photos of soft toy animals. I searched Flickr by user name and I was very pleased to see all the photos I marked as public come up. I wasn't game to hit the publish button after I had make my comic strip for fear that it would end up in the gallery!

Kid's Corner

Kid's Corner
Originally uploaded by Muffinlady1

'Thing 7' has been a bit of a challenge. I started it in June and it is now October! I came to a halt when the first photo I took of the library couldn't be found by searching. Haven't been able to find the problem, even with Kim's help. The tag is "Nhulunbuy Community Library" and it is marked public. I had another go with two different photos but they still can't be found! At least I am getting more practise uploading photos. I'm moving on to 'Thing 8' now.

Flickr

Just Hanging Around is the photo I've chosen. I found this photo under the 'Blue' tag in explore by scrolling through the photos until I came across this one. There were some amazing photos and some very unusual. This one from Immagina is a bit of fun.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/immagina/160305794/

RSS Feeds

I have just completed Thing 5 and 6, tasks related to RSS feeds. I found the Palinet tutorial a bit hard to follow as an introduction, probably because the whole thing about feeds was so totally new to me. I couldn't access the CNet RSS Introduction video for some reason. The information on Google Reader was easy to understand and it was straight forward to set up in my google account. I wasn't able to find the RSS feeder symbol on any sites I would regularly look at so most of the sites I have subscribed to were found through searching with Google Reader. It was easy to search for sites but very time consuming. I subscribed to the ABC news: Top Stories so I could get regular items sent. Have also added some library related blogs, quilting blogs and the Nhulunbuy Community Library Wicked blog. Have had some fun with this.

7 and 1/2 lifelong learning habits

I enjoyed the presentation of the lifelong learning habits. The first habit, begin with the end in mind, and the second, accept responsibility for your own learning, I would see as the easiest habits. Habit six, use technology to your advantage is something that I have to work on. It has taken me longer than it should to get through the first few Things, creating this blog was a big step for me. I am learning and I 'm keen to keep going.

First Post

This is a blog to record my progress with learning to use web 2.0 tools.
Just creating this blog as been an exercise. It took over a week for me to pluck up the courage to actually do it.