Week 8 blog post

I am writing this blog post in Zoho writer. It looks pretty intuitive so we'll just have to see how I do. I just tried to add the calendar I created in the Generators exercise but it opened a new page so I didn't get it to go on this page. Oh well, I'm really not willing to put in the time to figure it out.

For the second part of the exercise I browsed the award winning web sites and settled on Yelp. It allows you to find places and services of interest in a particular city. I used restaurants in Spokane and found some reviews. There weren't very many, the highest number of reveiws for any restaurant was 11, but if the site catches on it could be useful. I think it would be useful for another city, especially if you had your mobile with wireless and could pull up a review right from the sidewalk if you were trying to decide whether to go in or not.

Week 7

Wikis are a great tool and I think we will find more and more uses for them. I added a couple of posts to the Favorites Wiki but I always like such a variety of things that I have a hard time committing to a favorite. I can't identify a favorite web site since the only sites I use on a regular basis are travel sites, ticket sites, etc. I use the web at home all the time for research but usually look at new sites.

Week 6

I have played around with the exercises very briefly for week 6 because I already use del.icio.us all the time. It works really well if you have your own computer and you install the buttons on your toolbar. It couldn't be easier to keep lots of sites "bookmarked" and I use it far more than I ever used the "favorites" just because you don't have to organize them, just tag them. I think del.icio.us is very user friendly.

Image Generators revisited

It's the very end of 2007 so I am fooling around with the Library 2.0 exercises and I did a couple of new image generators. I love my little cube with pics of my dog and I also did a couple of months of a calendar. These generators are tons of fun and may even have some practical application for work, but even if they don't I will definitely use them for personal fun. I can already see invitations and such being generated.

Reading Update

While on vacation I finished Run by Anne Patchett. Here is the jacket blurb:

"Since their mother's death, Tip and Teddy Doyle have been raised by their loving, possessive, and ambitious father. As the former mayor of Boston, Bernard Doyle wants to see his sons in politics, a dream the boys have never shared. But when an argument in a blinding New England snowstorm inadvertently causes an accident that involves a stranger and her child, all Bernard Doyle cares about is his ability to keep his children - all his children - safe." "Set over a period of twenty-four hours, Run takes us from the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard to a home for retired Catholic priests in downtown Boston. It shows us how worlds of privilege and poverty can coexist only blocks apart from each other, and how family can include people you've never even met. Ann Patchett illustrates the humanity that connects disparate lives, weaving several stories into one narrative. Run is ultimately a novel about secrets, duty, responsibility, and the lengths we will go to protect our children."--BOOK JACKET.

I really enjoy her writing and the story drew me in with the very real characters. I'd recommend this one to anyone who likes character-driven novels. The plot wasn't as riveting as her previous novel, Bel Canto, but the characters were better.

Week 5: Generators

This is my second attempt to format this post so that it isn't a big mess. My first try put a blank box where the picture should have been because I tried to link to the really long URL. Then I went ahead and saved it in my pictures and it worked on the first post. I can't really figure out how to edit out an image, though, so I'm starting all over and saved the old one as a draft. So let's see how this one looks...

I was also successful at making a picture cube of Wylie which is available for public viewing on my desk. During this exercise I discovered that my gluestick was all dried out but that it could be resurrected by using scissors to cut off the old dried-out glue, uncovering useable glue.

Week 4

I had already set up a Bloglines account back when I attended a workshop about Web 2.0 but I never visited it even though I had feeds I was interested in reading. I added a few feeds to it today and deleted one that I had previously subscribed to and I didn't find it too difficult. I doubt that I will be a real avid user, though. I get plenty of information from all sorts of sources that I don't have time to read, so I don't think I will regularly check out a new source of information that I don't have time to read.

In the second part of this exercise we were familiarizing ourselves with rss feed search tools. I thought it was interesting to know they are out there, but I just glanced at them and am not spending any more time with them right now. I will use the more basic method of looking for feeds when I am really interested in a page. I do use delicious.com already and like that very much for keeping track of sites I want to go back to.