Week 9 - 23

Well, I never thought I would finish it - at some stages the thought of having to create another account on yet another site was enough to make me scream. But have discovered lots of websites that I didn't know existed, some of which I loved like flickr and some of which i hated e.g. syndic8. Have also found out things like blogging, exporting videos or photo's is much easier than I thought and more fun (when it works).

At the very least I will now know what some of our customers are talking about even thought I won't be able to contribute much - which is more than I could do before.

Week 9 - 22

Have never really looked at the e-book collection the library has and was surprised to discover all the student resources it has - specifically the cliff notes. Will have to remember this the next time a student asks about them.

When you search I like the list of related topics that comes up so you can look at them as well, and how you can rank the search e.g newest first.

Interesting to see some children's books in the collection, but did not see anything I really wanted to read. Would prefer to get away from a computer screen when reading for enjoyment.

Week 9 -21

Podcasts - I found this initially confusing as I couldn't think of anything to search for, but eventually just had a look around podcast.net and podcastalley.com. I found podcastalley easier to use and particularly liked the short summaries of what the podcasts were about when you double clicked on the titles - helped make a decision about whether you wanted to go any further. There was a large number of book review sites, and was interested to see that quite a few public libraries have podcasts - maybe the way of the future.

Week 9 - 20

You tube - brilliant idea and like most sites it's what you make of it. I like the way it can give exposure to things you would never see or hear otherwise from creative people. The sites organisation is relatively easy to follow. It's amazing to think that so many (or so few) people watch the same video you do.

Problems however with the slow speed of downloading the clips - and the way they load and play for approx 20 seconds and then stop which leads to massive impatience - it was easier to do something else and then replay the video clip when it finished loading.

Had fun checking out some of the suggested You Tube videos - liked the library dominoes one - especially some of the comments, and Conan the librarian (I have Conan wish moments).

Eventually found a video with music by a band I like Antony and the Johnsons to add to my blog. Hard to choose.

Week 8 -19

I chose Zillow - just because I liked the name. It's an American real estate site. It's layout is very clear with lots of white space and it is easy to navigate around, with pop up explanations if you need them. Has discussion boards about lots of different topics users can contribute to and estimates of house values.

They have nifty little features like zoom in maps, comparison graphs, historical trends, "make me move" etc. Also the usual annoying things like ads - but you can easily ignore them if you want to.

It also allows you to see how the other half live as you gaze at houses that cost $39,500,000.

Application in a library setting? Not really - unless you have a customer who is moving to the U.S. and then it has great info. However good for curiosity value - which is part of a libraries service.

Week 8 - 18

Have decided to try and export my document to my blog, while trying out some of the features. Underline,coloured words,different background colours, - a lot of the features are very ms wordy, but they give you a much bigger choice for a blog. Also seems to be easier to use then ms word or maybe it is just familiarity with the icons etc that make it seem that way.

I had no idea things like zoho or googledocs existed on the internet so it has been a real learning experience - I can see how things like tags could be really useful in finding and sorting documents.

Week 7 - 17

Was surprised I was nervous editing the page - am quite happy editing and messing around with my own pages - but the responsibility of changing a page that I hadn't created and others use seemed to put more pressure on - but it was so easy.. so all that anxiety for no reason! Always interesting to see what other people are in to.