Not so Del.icio.us, Rockin' Technorati, and My Library Thing

It took me awhile to catch onto RSS feeds, but after awhile I saw the point. Sadly, I can't say the same for Del.icio.us. I think my main glitch is that I barely use bookmarks as it is, so the idea of gathering them all in one handy, searchable place isn't that exciting to me. I can see how it would be useful for someone who needed to collect resources on a particular topic and refer back to them (maybe someone writing a book or constantly answering questions about a specific subject). In general, it seems more efficient to broaden one's search with Google or narrow it by using a specific site.

Technorati is a great resource for searching blogs, and for getting your blog more attention. I think it works far better than searching Blogger, and I was easily able to find things I'd written, as well as things written by people I know. Rock on, Technorati!

The first thing I thought when I looked at Library Thing is, "That's a good way to get your books stolen." I mean, think about it, you say you have some hard-to-find book that someone's been coveting, they figure out who you are, and boom! you come home one day to find your windows broken and your bookshelves cleaned out. Here's another awesome idea - let's catalog our electronic equipment online where everyone can see it!

Okay, so I'm a little paranoid, but I didn't let that stop me. I started cataloging books and I couldn't stop. Pretty soon my required 5 had turned into 28, and I still want to keep tagging away. I'm not sure how useful this is to the average person, but it would be great for people who enjoy lending/borrowing books, and it's great for those moments at the used bookstore when you've found a book by a favorite author and you can't quite remember if you already have it. The trouble is, you'd also have to have internet access, but these days we can get online just about anywhere.

I also managed to put a my Library Thing widget into my Blog (right above the archives and my profile), but if you need a quick link, here it is:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=learningblog

Me and MySpace

I've never seen the appeal of MySpace, since it seems easy enough to keep in touch with friends via email, phone, etc. Besides, who needs one more account to monitor? But then I signed up, and I got to pick a SONG to go with my profile! Honestly, I could spend the whole rest of my life just picking and changing songs. I went with "Freedom" by George Michael, even though my favorite song of his is actually "Father Figure". I figured that was just asking for trouble - lots of messages saying, "I'll be your Father Figure." Ick! If you watch enough episodes of Dateline's "To Catch a Predator", everything starts taking on different connotations, but it was interesting thinking out my profile. There are so many ways to go wrong and for kids to innocently put out information without realizing who it might attract.

The other exciting thing about MySpace is that it has FAMOUS PEOPLE on it. I found Bono, Drew Barrymore, Sylvester Stallone, and even Al Pacino, but I had my suspicions about the legitimacy of his page...I don't know, it kind of looks like a fan would have set it up pretending to be him. It would be so easy to pretend to be someone you're not - scary!

The other big breakthrough with this assignment (aside from friending KCLS 27 Things) was that I found my long lost former best friend while I was poking through Friendster as part of Monday's exercise. We became friends in kindergarten, but grew apart after college, and I was never able to reconnect. I knew there had been some severe depression, mental illness, use of medication, but never got a straight answer. Last time I saw her mom, she said my friend was "doing what she needs to do." Huh? How cryptic is that? So, after years of confusion - I cracked the case on Friendster. The Artist Formerly Known As My Best Friend is a self-proclaimed "loser" whose hobbies include "sleeping, procrastinating, watching crappy TV, and making soap." All of her "friends" made comments about smoking with her. Ohhhh! That explains a great deal of vague thinking and randomly dilated pupils. I can't believe I missed all the signs, but then again, she always was secretive, and I had no indication she ever went out of her room - much less to buy pot. So, the moral of the story is that sometimes you can use these social networking sites to figure out who you no longer need to network with. Cathartic, eh?

Finding Feeds - Assignment #8

Am I crazy, or are blogs one of the freakiest, most impossible things you could possibly search for? I've had trouble even when I knew the name of the blog or the blog entry, and didn't have much more luck using these search engines. Happily, the blog I have always written for, Moviepie Musings, showed up right away on Google Blog Search. Phew! At least we're real!

I had almost no luck searching by topic in terms of finding something new that would interest me. I tried searching things like "Library" or "Censorship" or "Entertainment" and kept coming to random references in strangers' blogs. (I still don't really understand reading blogs written by regular people that you don't know.) I did find one amusing reference to Eva Longoria being
2 1/2 feet tall (hee hee!). But that wasn't very useful.

In the end, I added feeds to Moviepie Musings, Cyndi Lauper's blog, Librarian.net, and Librarybytes.net to my Bloglines account. Google Blog Search gets a gold star, but I thought the other search tools were stinky.

RSS Feed - Assignment #4

Okay, I'm glad to read that this will be one of the most difficult assignments, because it didn't come quite as easily as the others. I hope I have subscribed to everything I was supposed to. So far I have 10 feeds on Bloglines. The one site I check for news every day is IMDB, and I could find no information about an RSS feed to them. This seems odd, since they update every day, and are in every other way a completely hip and happenin' site. Instead, I added KIRO 7 Entertainment News, and two feeds from People.com (this seemed like a good idea, because my friend is on there all day and she always knows everything first). I signed up for Top Headlines and Celebrity Photos from them.

I added four feeds from co-workers (Val, Peggi, Mary Kay, and Diana), and will add more as I recognize the owners on the list of participants. Then I added KCLS Learning 2.0 (of course), and chose BBC News as my required feed.

I like how this allows you to group all of the sites you follow in one place - it makes it so much easier to check in on everybody and see what they're up to!

Question of the Day

I've been blogging for awhile on my own, but I've never been brave enough to add a picture. Now that I know how it's done, I'm still hesitant. How do we know what images are acceptable to use and which are protected by copyright? It always seems like the images up for grabs are generic shots of landscapes and barns, but what if you wanted to write a little blog entry about how much you love Al Pacino (just as a totally random example, of course)? Surely there's a picture on the web that could be used for illustrative purposes. How can we be sure that no one will come after us for using an image?

Mashin' it Up on Flickr

Am I crazy, or was the Mash-Up assignment not up on Monday? I was all proud of myself for registering assignment #2, and then I found this. Oh no! Don't let me be the kid who turns in half-done homework! The horror! The horror! I think I only had a small coronary before my co-worker assured me that she hadn't seen the Mash-Up project until Tuesday either.

Here goes:

As you can see, I spelled BLOG with Flickr. Cool, huh? It took me awhile to figure out how to put the letters into this entry (you have to spell backward), and even now they keep moving around on me...especially that rascally "G". Still, I can see how this feature might come in handy. I also like how you can click on the letter to get different styles. Fun!

The Montagr was less awesome, and didn't really look like anything when I was done. It kept turning my searches into landscapes, so the mosaics just looked like really ugly quilts.

I saw lots of pretty pictures using the Color Picker. Somehow I imagine Ty Pennington using this feature to decorate a room on Extreme Makeover Home Edition. He'd probably find a way to turn the results into actual wallpaper: "Look! Everything is lime green! It's the lime green room! Lime green for everyone!"

The Retrievr is one of the freakiest things I've ever seen, but I could waste hours making random sketches and seeing what they bring up. I found the most amazingly gorgeous pink leaf thing I've ever seen, but I can't get the picture to upload into this blog. I tried five times, so I give up. Seriously, it was lovely.

Next I made a trading card out of a picture of my friend's dog. I wanted to put it right here:

X

but blogger kept sticking it at the top. I couldn't figure out how to fix that, but I bet it's possible.

Finally I took a look at Flickr Sodoku. It was all icky hamsters, and Sodoku wears me out anyway. I think it's because I have no left brain.

Anyway, I think that's it. I wish I could figure out how to make this space properly when it publishes.

Fun With Flickr

I know, I know, to the untrained eye, it would appear that I did not scour Flickr for just the right picture. However, getting this image posted was no small feat, and after looking at everything from dogs to ducklings, I decided it would be easier to write about the view from my window. Yes, this the glorious view from Answer Line, and those are the cranes that will kill us, should they ever decide to fall. That's the field where I used to bake in the sun on breaks, and that's the corner where a dumpy old office building used to sit. These days the construction makes going outside less than appealing - between the noise and the dust, tanning on the playfield has really lost its luster. When the building is up, it will probably blot out the sun entirely!