Thursday, September 18, 2008

Wiki wiki

I now know two words in Hawaiian, aloha (Hello) and wiki (Quickly). Though I think that the on-line, everyone contributing to it encyclopedia meaning of the word is already the dominent meaning. This quote from why wiki works describes and ideal and expresses it well.

"A wiki is a body of writing that a community is willing to know and maintain. That community has every right to be cautiously selective in what it will groom. This particular wiki has been blessed with thoughtful, diligent, diverse and open-minded volunteers, who have invested years learning what works here and what doesn't. When volunteers tire and depart, others take their place. I remain amazed that this works without mechanically enforced authority. Possibly it works because there is no mechanically enforced authority. " -- WardCunningham

I would find a wiki on indexing useful, perhaps one by the rowans group (North Shore, Rodney and Waitakere libraries indexing local newspapers. the difficulty being having the time to contribute to it as well as doing the actual indexing.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Technorati

8,420 posts, 939 blogs on learning 2.0! This is not a site that I would come back to. The popularity contest side of it (number people who have marked it as 'fave') does not appeal at all.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

everyone becomes a cataloguer!

Del.icio.us COULD be a great way to cut out lots of irrelevant stuff on the internet. I like the idea of being able to use other people's tags to find sites that somebody else has found really valuable. Of course lots of detours and diversions occur too. I can see myself using this site in the future.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Excercise 7

Better late than never! Finally got a handle on RSS. I've got a couple of Librarian type sites which I'm not sure are really valuable. They seem really computer focused and all are so far American oreintated, but it is early days yet, they might get more interesting. I'm also getting feeds from NY Times the Scotsman and BBC. I've specified Science/Nature catergories. I read 'Unshelved' on my ordinary email, I'll keep it that way because it gives me an incentive to open and read my emails. I liked Topix.net best, Syndic8.com was a wordy mess.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

New technology

20th Century technology seemed to be all about saving time and energy. People didn't have to spend hours up to their elbows in sudsy water, or filing catalogue, issue cards for hours on end, or labourisly handwriting everything. This century's technlogy seems to be designed to fill up our time. Hours could be spent making clever pictures and organising them. How many people indexed their photoalbums in the old days?

Exercise 4 and 5

To connect representative photos of North Shore suburbs to a maps of the North Shore seemed a worthwhile and interesting excercise. But I can't pull a map up using Mappr. Next tried Montager to gather pictures of kakapo (a favourite bird). I added them to my favourites, but when I checked favourites the cupboard was bare! so if you have seen hald a dozen kakapo running round, please send them to me. ( now retrieved from the pc's desktop) Here's a photo of Hoki (a well-known kakapo) http://www.flickr.com/photos/mollivan_laura/131278173/I've now gathered several Kakapo on FAVE in Flickr but couldn't manipulate them into a mosaic.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Between friends and aquaintances

What do you call those people that you see regularly (weekly or monthly), that you find easy to talk to and enjoyable to listen to but you think it a bit presumptuous to call them friends. They are people that though you are glad to see them, you have never invited them home or even eaten a meal with them. If you work with them you can call them workmates or colleagues but what about the others...

Thursday, July 24, 2008

New discoveries

I'm very glad of tech-savvy colleagues who are willing to show me what is obvious to them but obscure to me. Hopefully this will become easier with practice. Why are they called posts? Can't think of a better name though.

Greetings!

Brand new experience for me, writing a blog!