23rd Thing

Yey!!!! I finished this programme!! :)

I can't believe it!!

Actually, I learnt quite a lot. For example, though I've heard of blogging, and even read a few of those, I had never blogged, so it was good that we had a chance of doing this, that way, not only are we up to date with what the new tools and techology we have out there in the wonderful world of www, but we also actually know and can participate in what they are talking about!

It was good. I enjoyed it. But boy, am I glad that's over!

Ebooks

This is one that I was already familiar with. I had a look at the website of Project Gutenburg and looked at what kind of titles they had available. I chose to look for Alice in Wonderland (no reason whatsoever, it just happened to pop in my head when I started typing on the catalogue search box). They did have it availabe and it was possible to read the whole book, chapter by chapter online. It is a really good idea, specially if you were not able to go down to your local library to borrow it out, or if it was one of those books that are almost impossible to purchase.

Podcast

This was quite good too. I had a quick look at it and one of the podcast sites that I found was one called "Books on the night stand" http://www.booksonthenightstand.com/. This was fascinating because they would have a topic and then everyone can respond to it. One of their recent topics was non fiction books, and I quote "Today, it's all true, as we look at several works of nonfiction that are so good, we recommend them to people who normally read fiction." One of the non-fiction books that I liked was Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, it was one of those tear-jerkers, but it was worth it. I would definately have a look at this website/podcasts that they have from now on!

YouTube

This is really handy for looking for anything that's been posted in video format. One of the fun things is looking for funny advertisements thats being shown around the world or even catching up on your favourite soap that you missed while on holiday.

The jetman video is one that I liked. This is a synopsis of that video that I pulled out from another webpage http://www.flixxy.com/jet-man: On June 24th, 2004 Yves Rossy drops out of the Pilatus airplane at an altitude of 4000m over the Yverdon airfield. Before pulling on the little lever that controls the opening of his wings, Yves lets himself glide for a couple seconds and at the altitude of 2500m, he starts the ignition of the engines and waits 30 seconds for them to be able to stabilize. Once they are steady, he can finally speed up the engines and suddenly the dream comes true. He manages a horizontal flight at 1600m from the ground for more than 4 minutes, at a speed of 100 knots in formation with the Pilatus airplane. You can watch his flight from YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-66AcTo9TU - but as usual, this site is blocked on our staff pcs :( I liked it, because it means that individual/personal jet powered travel is possible in the future. If this was added in the library website, we can put it under the heading "anything is possible!"

Web 2.0 tools

This was a fun excercise. We were encouraged to have a look at the web 2.0 awards nominees and have a gander at the different websites. It was outrageous, there were some really good ones and ones that I didn't like very much. But one of my favourites has got to be the award-winner food site i'm cooked www.imcooked.com It was awesome, you search for a recipe (or if you're feeling uninspired, have a looked at the most recently viewed and give those recipes a shot), click on it and a video of how to cook the food would play. These videos are made and posted by people like us and not only gives them their 15 minutes of fame, but also shares with us their wonderful food recipes and how to make them.

This kind of application can be applied to the library, by say, making a video on how to use the My Info page on our website, they click, watch it, and then use the knowledge learnt and give the My Info a go.

Zoho

So I played around wtih Zoho. Since I can't do a lot of things with this in a staff or learn.net computer, I'm just going to copy and paste what I did on the zoho writer. By the way, it was so much fun playing with it, wonder why I've never heard of it before?! I must have been living under a rock!! :)

Here's what I did at Zoho:

Okay, I've signed in with yet another new web tool that I have never heard of before and this zoho writer actually looks good. Most of the symbols are familiar to those I've encountered before in microsoft word, so its not a totally unfamiliar teritory for me. Some of the symbols I haven't seen before, so I might have a play with that later.

Yeah...I wonder what the oemga Ω symbol does, I'm going to click and check it out. Oh hey!! Its where all the special symbols and character are kept, cool!!!

Ok, enough fun with this, I must publish a blog about it.

Thing 17

Wow! All I can say is that I am very impressed with Auckland City Libraries bebo page. It is amazing. Why can't Manukau have that sort of thing. I mean, if that is the way that the teenagers and those even younger are connecting with each other, then it only makes sense that we (library) do this too, to not only keep up with them, but also to connect with them. Heck, they might even decide that the library is a cool place and even visit the place from time to time! Not bad eh?!

Double wow for Hennepin County Library, they've got a facebook account and you can also access their library catalogue from there. That's innovative. That is so cool.