Odds and Ends from Play Week

I know that Second Life already filled up my Play Week quota, but I wanted to comment on a few of the other choices we had:

iGoogle:
I switched to this Google format quite some time ago, but it really has helped in the same way Bloglines has: by grouping some of my favorite news sources into one page. Another time and click saving option that also adds a bit of giggle to your day. It is very customizable and you can pick things such as weather, "Today in
History", "Art of the Day", "Word of the Day" or, my personal favorite, "Funny Cat Photos". What more perfect element is there for librarians than cat photos?! If you're having a cloudy day, these cute cat captioned photos will do the trick!










Technorati:
I signed up for this last night and everything seemed to go well. It was kind of interesting to see my blog ranked at the bottom of almost 5 million. It sure puts the blogging impact in perspective....we may like the writing or sharing....but few to share it with in reality. I really liked the feature of listing the most popular blogs by category...just to see what everyone is reading and searching out new additions to my bloglines feed list.

Besides Technorati, I also registered a while back with Blogflux. It's a nice browsable blog directory, but with one huge drawback: as they add more blogs, they start a new alphabetical list all over again at the end of the first...very frustrating! Blogflux claims to offer a lot of services such as stats, ranking, templates, hosting....all of the same things most blogging services offer, but Blogflux is still very much in the minor leagues as they only claim to feature a little over a hundred thousand blogs in their directory.

But for you Gardeners out there:
I have stumbled across Blotanical. This directory may not have a ton of blogs yet, but the concept is great! They display the gardening locations of the bloggers complete with clickable maps and each blogger listed has a plot of their own to leave messages, list favorite plants or plant expertise. Best of all, the browsing format is so user friendly it practically begs for a cup of hot tea and scone on a cold winters day as one dreams of the gardening season. Remember, below the equator, the gardening season is reversed, so when we are snowed in, they are ranting about their latest garden failure or success. The pictures alone are worth the browse. The popular listings have screen captures and descriptions of the blogs to better help you decide what kind of gardening blog looks promising.

Blinging the Blog:
I will admit to blinging my blog from day one because I love the magic of widgets. I learned about the Library Thing widget almost at the same time Blue 2.0 began so the timing was perfect. I also added my own counters and mapping systems, but I try not to bling too much since I don't want readers overwhelmed with the selection of widget choices. I have been to some blogs that require adjusting my focus just to see the blog posts. Simple, clutter free blogs are so much easier to read.

I do like the tagging option which I added fairly early and I also visited Feedburner to add a nice large RSS button on my blog....I don't understand why this wasn't an offered feature in Blogspot. However, Google just purchased Feedburner, so I would imagine this will be a feature VERY soon!

Second Life:
Just as a wrap up on the Second Life fun had by all the past two weeks:

While poking around Library Thing with their new local registry I noticed that they do have a Second Life Group to join.

Oh, and don't forget to add the official Linden Blog to your RSS feeds since they include important updates and tips!

But the Second Life exploration should really dictate we refer to the past two weeks of Blue 2.0 as Party Weeks since, as you can see below, there are librarians aplenty dancing the afternoon away at the grand opening celebration of Cybrary Island. Touted as a "global village for information professionals", they actually offer space for free in order to "build a more "global village" atmosphere and outreach to more international communities within the library and information science professions." So far, we haven't had the time to explore much of their concept, but they sure do know how to get librarians dancing....just ask the UK Island's Blue 2.0 explorers: Goffredo, Sifriya, All of Manni's Angels (with Manni in tow) and Genevra! Those Librarians sure can move!






















Well, off to play in the snow...IF it gets here.
Have a good weekend!

Google Docland

So far, the most exciting thing about Google Docs is its freeness. I used this word hoping to trip a spell check, but I haven't found it yet. While exploring I noticed you can export the new work as an HTML document and even export to the Office suite choices. This all sounds pretty neat. I am intrigued by the "save copy as a presentation" feature, but at this point, I don't want to mess too much with my assignment. The share feature actually seems to be the most interesting since it would be more secure than an open wiki, and much easier than sending e-mails to each other. Ok, so what does the quote symbol do besides enter thin text boxes below the original paragraph? Does it include " or do you need to add these? I am thinking this is for a paper or article with a quote paragraph, but not used all that often outside of the academic realm...hmmmm. Ooohh, I also noticed the little flashing red "save" feature every few seconds...that's pretty cool since we could have a pc crash or power outage any second.... a safety feature that Word should really adopt. I hate to blog and run...but this one seems pretty simple yet very useful. I can think of several instances I could have used this with past committee assignments.

**Update: I did encounter an error in trying to publish to my blog. The pop-up box that requires you to enter your blog id and password also has a place to give the name of your blog and says that this allows the correct blog to be the post recipient. If this is not filled in Google states the program will select whichever blog it comes to first. Problem: I have more than one blog and the non-Blue 2.0 blog is listed first in my dashboard. I looked around for a place to switch the dashboard order, but couldn't find it.....so as an experiment, I allowed the Google Docs item to publish anyway. I didn't like it. The title was not in my nice bold print with designer color and my body font was not consistent with the rest of the blog posts. Being two Google items, I would have thought this process would have been more seamless. I assume it will become more seamless as time roles along, but for now Google Docs looks to be limited to group work or writing on the fly from a foreign computer.

Progress...I think

Ok, so I went back to review the actual activity "instructions" since I got a bit carried away early on. It seems I was supposed to tell everyone about my experience: I had dabbled a bit last week, but it's a fairly easy process. The only dilemma occurred when trying to decide whether I will keep this blog or trade it in for a new one at the end. I finally decided on a generic libraryish blog that may include some personal fun things as they happen. That should keep everyone on the edge of their seat! (can you smell the sarcasm?) As for work use....maybe...but in all honesty, we have so many list-servs and community portals in ILL-land that one more blog might be too much to follow. I greatly enjoyed Amanda's nickname (ILLiadgal) and could definitely relate to the venting urge caused by ILLiad. Although, I have been here long enough to have lived through Clio, so I won't vent too much. Maybe this is where the chatting will come in handy. Venting in real-time with instant response can be more rewarding.

As for the chat issue: This was considerably more difficult as I have been anti-AOL for years and they did not disappoint me with the multiple methods that this chat window appears - weird. I also encountered some of the errors others have commented about and it increased the completion time. After the trouble, I do have a chat account with AOL now, but MSN's IM has always been my preferred, so I think I will check into the Meebo thing to make things simpler.
Chow for now!

And they're off!

And so the Blue 2.0 fun begins! As I continue on what seems an eternal path of learning library lingo I felt the title of this blog was appropriate. True wisdom is hard to attain but everyday I hope the new bits of knowledge will someday accumulate into a semblance of true library wisdom - at least sometime before retirement! As the journey of learning continues, Blue 2.0 @ UK is the next stop. So far it's fun. This is not my first blog as I created a blog this summer for SLIS/LISSO (http://uklisso.blogspot.com/), but it's different making one up for yourself...kind of creepy when they want your name and hobbies for all the world to see. Yes, I know you can turn off access...but that sounds like a pain at this point in the proceedings. On to my next tasks.
Cheri