Week 6 -- Tag You're It!

I have to say I don't really get the big deal about tagging. Whenever I try to search Technorati or other sites that use tags I get a lot of irrelevant results. Plus, it's a lot of work to tag bookmarks in del.icio.us and anything else that uses tags -- as much as I like LibraryThing, the tagging is cumbersome. As far as del.icio.us goes, I don't really get it. Since I started using the Internet in 1994 or so, I never really used bookmarks very much. I just never really needed them -- I remember most of the sites that I use a lot. I made a del.icio.us account a while ago, when I started hearing about it so much, but I really don't use it. I see the possibility of del.icio.us for research, but I think it's overkill for just everyday use -- at least my everyday use.

Week 5 -- Play!!!!!

Well, there were things I liked and things I didn't like this week. The most entertaining first! Here is my M&M avatar from their image generator! She's Queen Buttercup, Space Pilot.

I don't know how much she looks like a space pilot, but there you go. Doesn't really look that much like me -- but I decided to make a whole other alter ego! I found the M&Ms site from the Generator Blog -- which has so many fun sites on it I can't wait to try out! I liked that blog a lot because it was very easy to use -- just scroll through -- and had many entertaining pictures!

Overall, both LibraryThing and Rollyo were very useful and fun! At first, I wasn't sure about LibraryThing -- how useful is just making a list of books going to be -- but then when I started tagging and using the Suggestions option, I found that I really liked it -- again, almost too much info out there! My only complaint about it is that each edition of a book is a separate entry. I know that for actual library catalogs this is necessary, and I could see it for some non-fiction titles in LibraryThing, but for popular fiction etc., I think that making the paperback and hardcover titles separate from each other separates tags and info too much and it would be smoother to have them as one record.

Rollyo was very easy to use and fun. I created a Crafty Girl Sites search of some of my favorite craft sites and searched for a technique that I have been trying to learn. Just last night at home, I was searching each individual site for this technique, so when I saw Rollyo this morning, I thought "this is what I needed last night!" The results were somewhat spotty -- there's no advanced search option so I assume it's just searching for all of my terms, but no exact phrase etc... I also wonder how Rollyo ranks the results -- is it by relevance? Plus, there are sponsored link results that show up in the middle of the list which are kind of annoying, but I guess they have to make money somehow.

Week 4 -- Bloglines (and lines and lines and lines)

There might be too many RSS feeds out there to subscribe to -- I had to stop myself before I became overwhelmed. I was really looking forward to this week, because I kept hearing about RSS, and I kind of understood it, but never really understood how to make it work for me. An aggregator like Bloglines makes it very easy for me (although still overwhelming). I found it very easy to use Bloglines and subscribe to new feeds, especially once I figured out how to optimize my searching. I also used their directory when I was first searching for feeds, which I liked for certain subjects. I subscribed to a few library feeds -- my favorite is Pop Goes the Library, which has lots of programming ideas, and I also like Library Garden, which has a big variety of library-related news, articles etc. I also subscribed to a couple of PLCMC's Reader's Club review feeds, as well as the NY Times Book Review. Plus Salon.com, Slate.com, Slashdot, Wired -- the list goes on and on! I'll never have time to read all of this!

More Week 3 -- Flickr Me!

Stampy
Originally uploaded by corarose

Here's another photo I played around with last night at home. This is from my Chicago trip (these are my favorite buildings in the world). I noticed while taking the Flickr tour that there is a 3rd party that makes real postage stamps from your photos. Might have to get some of those...

Week 3 -- Flickr Me!

Witch Monthly
Originally uploaded by corarose

I had a great time playing around with Flickr for Week 3! I found it really easy to upload photos. At home last night, I uploaded all of my pics from a trip to Chicago I made recently. I loved all of the mashups and Flickr tools, especially Retrievr, where you make a little simple sketch and it finds photos to match. I really wanted to try Mappr, which sounds like it would be right up my alley, but there's something going on with it, it wouldn't link. I made this magazine cover from one of the tools in FD's Flickr Toys (the pic is from a Harry Potter event we had last month at the library). Am I not glamourous? The best Witch of the Year ever! Flickr's Blog This tool makes it really easy to add photos to my blog -- the formatting turns out much better than uploading them through Blogger's tool.

Week 1 -- Changing My Habits?

So I just finished Week 1 of the Web 2.0 Challenge, listened to the podcasts and completed a Learning Contract. The podcasts gave me no trouble at all -- the hardest part was finding headphones (they were hiding in unmarked boxes)! The Learning Contract really helped me focus my reasons for accepting this challenge in the first place and identifying obstacles. I think it'll be a good thing to revisit from time to time.

I also moved on to Week 2 and set up a new blog. I've been blogging for the library for a couple of years now, but this is the first blog I've done on my own personal thoughts and progress. Hopefully it goes well!