I have (we)blogged iGoogle for 23 things on Nov 23rd

By my count, as of today I should have an elephant to number 16. This will be the next one I do.

Thanks elephant stamper.

The next few things – ah Google.

Someone asked jokingly if Google were trying to take over the world. Well, um, yes, of course they are. Mind you because they are doing it via the Internet and it is free (except for advertising) they aren’t being swamped with lawsuits the way Microsoft was when they tried the same thing.

Mind you the fact that Micrsoft held you to ransome and required your firstborn or a pound of flesh in exchange for the privilage of using their software has nothing to do with it. So they are heading towards the virtual desktop paradigm as well. May the best um, company win.

I love to get information, news, video, software, images, opinions, entertainment, work, ect, over the Internet, but my inherent distrust for something I can neither bite nor touch means that I may well have accounts with services of this nature (i do have a google docs account and a Box.net account because you never know when the storage may come in handy.)

Anyway I got a little sidetracked. Google maps are wonderful and I use them in preference to just about anything else (with the exception of the Melway I have in my car at all times.) A friend of mine in Denmark showed me the little village he and his family live in via google maps. His house is next to a small wood and surrounded by farmland. just lovely. I could see his house and garden and could imagine him standing in the garden waving to me.

I in turn showed him my house sitting on the edge of an old disused quarry slowly being turned into residential allotments.  Mind blowing is the detail when you look at street level and realise the there is your driveway. Getting just a little intrusive. Big Brother is watching kind of thing and I don’t mean that asanine tv show either.

Like this picture of 220 Ingles Street which is the address of the Australian Academy of Design in Port Melbourne. Thatch’s where I study graphic design.

Australian Academy of Design

So finally we are on to the Google research tools. Anything that makes searching for source material easier is a good idea. For researchers, Scholar used in conjunction with other research tools can provide a quick way to find recent articles on given topics. It’s easy to see if there are online sources and of course the saving of citations makes bibliographic referencing faster and less painless.

If I were inclined to use Google docs some of the collaborative tools it provides are very good. I like the fact that they try new theings (though I’m not really keen on being their guinea pig). In the past I have tried the odd advertised Google tool that have subsequently mysteriously disappeared.

The best thing about google is that it is free and the ads are relatively inobtrusive when compared with yahoo for example.

Surely I have earned another three elephants with this post.

Thing 12 MySpace and Facebook

Some time back a musician and poet friend wanted a website to support his soon to be released album. This is the site I made and maintain for him: http://ianbland.com.au/ . he wanted a MySpace site to match it and this is what I did: http://www.myspace.com/ianblanddrifter. I have a couple of other sites, but they are to be finished one day, I promise – so I think it is safe to say that I know my way around MySpace.

Additionally my husband and I have a music related blog called Duggup at http://duggup.com.au/. I regularly troll the music there and have even interviewed acts I have found on MySpace for Duggup having an identity of Duggup for the purpose.

MyFace, well that’s another kettle of fish. I investigated social networks pretty comprehensively (well the most popular ones anyway) including FaceBook. I didn’t like FaceBook because it’s a closed community. If you are not a member you can’t enter. MySpace allows you to search and access people without logging i (see my previous entry), unless they specifically have restricted access. So
while the elephant stamp is for establishing a Facebook identity. I’m sorry I’m not prepared to facebook – so how about one for MySpace instead??? Hmmmm?

Meanwhile here is “I’m not going back” by Ian Bland and the Lamington Drive Orchestra to entertain while you consider.

Library Thing

Cream of the Jest

Grudgingly I can see the point of a community here. I came to the radical realisation while talking to my other half about the 23 Things exercises that I absolutely don’t trust the Internet. While I live a good part of my life in the Internet cloud – I don’t trust it as far as I can spit (and believe me – that’s not very far).

Perhaps it is the fault of my reading habits (I have been a science fiction fan since I was able to read) One of my favourite writers still remains the now sadly departed John Brunner. His books and in particular, the 1975 pre-cyberpunk “Shockwave Rider” taught me to be paranoid about data, all data.

Add to the mix a husband in the IT game with a more than healthy respect for data security and you end up with a person -me- who doesn’t trust the cloud. The internet is the best possible sandbox, but you need to careful that someone hasn’t planted a sharp for unwary players.

Now I’m not suggesting that the Library Thing is dangerous after all they only require a username and a password. They do book reviews too. I used to review mostly horror and fantasy (mainly because real science fiction was out of fashion at the time) for the real world science fiction community and I loved getting review copies in trade paperback (my favourite) or hardback.

So here is my “Library Thing” Thang http://www.librarything.com/catalog/pretentette where I added the book that I am currently reading called The Cream of the Jest by James Branch Cabell originally written in 1917 and classed as Adult Fantasy.