Wiki's

I have been hearing the term wiki for awhile now and of course I'm familiar with Wikipedia, but I never really understood what it meant. (BTW, I think the CommomCraft videos are so helpful at explaining things!) I totally related to the video instructor saying how complicated planning things with a group can be by email. For years our church group has been doing sign up list for meal delivery, etc. by responding to emails and it invariably turns into a complicated mess. Recently we have started to use a web page that lets us all sign up for things w/o overlapping and filling inboxes - I just never realized these web pages are wikis!

I went to the Best Practices Wiki and think it is a great idea. http://libsuccess.org/index.php?title=Main_Page I especially thought the link to the page of Continuing Ed opportunities is a great idea. It is wonderful to find so much information in one place. One other thing I noticed it that the wikis seem to be free of advertisements! It that is the case, that is nice and more user-friendly.

Library 2.0

I think the world is definitely ready for library 2.0! The world just needs to know about it! It is great that libraries are changing to update and fit in with out technology, customer driven world. Hopefully the world is paying attention. This is a wonderful way to libraries to compete with the Internet and play a major part in it. I am a librarian and honestly when I am helping my husband with his MBA research I do use library websites first! I just google web out of habit because in the past it was more difficult to go through a library website. So, it is great that once aspect of library 2.0 is making the info more accessible.

I visited http://liblogs.albany.edu/library20/, Library 2.0 - An Academic's Perspective and although after reading I realized it is not an active blog anymore, I found it to be very informative. I liked that he said that just because a "change" may not be working out as expected that doesn't mean the whole 2.0 idea is a failure. Changes take time and they may morph into something else entirely. Library user may help guide a change their feedback is invaluable.

Technorati

To me Technorati is information overload! I didn't like the layout of the site and I found it difficult to search for learning 2.0. I only saw one place to enter the keyword and I didn't get any results for learning 2.0. Did I miss the blog post and tags keyword entry blanks? Clearly this is useful to those who search for blogs often and I'm sure it is easier to navigate once you spend more time.

I tried to search for a popular blog that I check daily, but it didn't come up and I was suprised by that.

Del.icio.us

This has been my favorite of all the website organizing exercises. I think it is very useful if you are going to be doing research. My husband is working on his MBA and I usually help him with the research for his papers. I will definitely be using this for tagging research websites. In the past I have just scrolled through my bookmarks to find the saved sites - pretty time consuming.

I tried to sign up for del.icio.us, but I had trouble getting the button to show up on my browser. I guess I didn't really understand the directions or my system is not updated. I'll keep working on it.

Online gaming

I decided to try solitare and "free rice." It has been several years since I have played solitare and I have to admit I was a little rusty, but it all came back to me pretty quickly! I had to spend a little more time than I wanted downloading Java so it would work, but now I should be good to go whenever I feel like playing and zoning out for a while.

I chose the interactive game, Free Rice, for the second game. It was great to exercise my brain a little and donate to a needy cause as well. I used my brain power to donate 500 grains of rice to the hungry. I should play a little every day!

Facebook

I've had a Facebook page for several months now and I log on every few days or so or when someone requests me as a friend. It is fun, but I certainly do not know all the applications it can do. I find it somewhat uncomfortable posting things about my life for all to see, evenif they are my "friends."

Link to the "note" - http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/note.php?created&&suggest&note_id=40371074389&id=

Link to my profile - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1300911644&ref=profile

Google Talk

Last week my best librarian buddy and I used google chat while our kiddos were napping. I honestly have chatted with people maybe 10 times in the past - not too much! (I rarely text, either!). But, it was fun and very easy to use for the purpose of this exercise. I like how you do not have wait for an email response and that it happens in real time. It was easy to keep up with each other for the most part. I would prefer a phone converstation since you can talk and do other things as well. IMing keeps you tied to the computer instead of being able to fold laundry while you are communicating with someone. If you were chatting with several people at once I could see how it would be easy to mix up the conversations and unfortunately once you hit send you can't take it back!