And so to all a very joyful and safe Christmas.

• How could you draw on what you have learned in 23 Things to help you in your work?

From my point of view, it was not a particularly useful exercise because I have already browsed these tools and many other besides and chosen what works for me. I didn’t find anything new in the 23 Things.

I can on the other hand see how the exercise would be useful for someone with little or no experience with the internet.  I spent a goodly amount of time reading the material that you referenced and playing with the toys, but there was nothing there that if I was not already using it – that I felt I had to instantly go and download or use.

• How could the library use the technologies featured in 23 Things to improve its service?

The best use of the new technologies is as a form of communication. Lecturers and departments write blog and wonder why nobody reads them or participates. Our students I think are into instant gratification – send a SMS or similar and you will get an instant and probably unintelligable response but a response never the less.

I study with a bunch of 19 -20 year olds and one of the topics we covered was the difference between age groups. There are differences but to assume that every 20 year old you come across is going to want the same thing is a gross generalisation. This is a mistake that sadly too many people and committees make.

I am also working with a group of late teens on a mentoring project and these and my fellow students are not so very different to me when I was their age (maybe less respectful, more noisy, more promiscuous, less attentive etc.) Sound just like my folks now don’t I?

Anyway I t seems to me that we are trying to fit everybody into the same shaped mould and not everyone fits. Same goes for web 2.0. There are some good quality tools out there but equally there is a lot that are not.

I never thought that SMS to students would be very valuable – but I have since had a serious rethink – given my recent experience.  A lot of information could be transmitted this way and be more likely to be read than an email to their student email account.

Sharing bookmarks and a library community is also a great idea and if you could integrate with the wider library community – it might even be better.

• How do you think the 23 Things program could be improved in the future?

Let people find and recommend resources, tools ect that they think could make a difference. Incorporate or add these into any future 23 Things.

• Do you think you’ll keep blogging or keep using any of the other tools you learned about?

I shall keep this blog live until Christmas I guess and then I will delete it. I have not added anything of value to the bloggersphere so I don’t want to keep it. I may well repurpose this blog though, and add it to my growing list of existing blogs.

As for the tools yes, there are one or two things that I have been reminded about that I will probably go back and investigate further.

• We hope that you have enjoyed the 23 Things, and that you have found at least one useful tool that you didn’t know about before.

I think the 23 things was a good idea especially for those who have had little exposure – putting time limit on it was good too because it gave people a deadline to work towards. I of course missed it. Hope I’m not staring a trend here. So having completed each of the 23 things I am now entitled to get a gold star.

I’d also like to point out that item 19 – put a picture of your pet on Wiki – please refer to my post   Elephant Stamp 19 which is where I posted a sketch of my ex-cat Molly.

Also note  The penultimate post for 23 things. that fullfills 23 Things number 22. And course the effort today that complete the exercise.

I did have fun and got mucho distracted. Back to workagain.

It is called “Love is a Thief”. The music is by Ian Bland and performed by Ian Bland and the Lamington Drive Orchestra. Fellow student Hoi Ling and her boyfriend Rudolf tried desperately not to laugh during the heart rending bits. Filmed by yours truly, editing and post production also by me with assitance from my padawan learner Hoi Ling.

This was my first attempt with Adobe After Effects and I found it a complete hoot. Loved every minute of it. So without further chatter, here it is : “Love Is A Theif”

Enough of the twitters and onto Instant Messaging and VOIP.  Recently I needed to contact Telstra (yeh, yeh, slit my wrists now) on behalf of my parents.  After several attempts to talk to a human being by phone, I battled my way through their system only to left on hold listening to a voice describing a bunch of services that I would never be able to find out about because nobody at Telstra actually would talk to me.

As a last resort I used the instant messaging service provided n their website. Preparing for another lengthy wait I was connected to a service operator after a short wait. My typing is not fast and neither it transpired was his. There followed a protracted exchange which I though was resonabley successful if you don’t count the interminable stretches between question and response. The problem of translating my father’s explanation of the problem into something that I could easily type. No mean feat. So a month later with the arrival of the next Telstra bill I discovered that the exercise had been for naught. That’s right; nothing had changed.

I’ve looked at Meebo a few times and yep it is convenient but again if I wanted instant messaging I wwould have it by now.

So I had a look at the google messaging and lo nobody was home. Just like picking up the telephone or sending an email. It is another methd of communication but at the speed I type it is not a workable option.

Skype on the other hand is something I have dabbled in, mainly because it saves money. This makes it a tool worth using. I set up an account for my father a couple of years back so that he could talk to his friends overseas.

I’ve also got it on my laptop – but the inbuilt video camera in the laptop has ceased working – so it is sound only. I don’t use it very often though – perhaps when I have my laptop repaired – or upgrade it – I’m looking at another notebook or subnotebook size.  Currently I have a small Sony Vaio which is small, light, runs for hours on one charge and lets me use photoshop on it.

So that fullfills 23 Things number 22 and gives my my penultimate elehant stamp. Thanks.

Molly thumbnail

Yep I have indeed uploaded my pet picture on the VUlibrary wiki. It is a drawing of my previous moggie. Her name is Molly. Click on the picure to link to the Wiki.

Wikis are useful, but you would not use them as a source of primary information. I have made use of information from Wikis (most particularly Wikipedia) many times. My Duggup blog devoted to the review of music often requires me to follow up on band information. It is rare for nothing to exist about a band or musician except for a Wiki entry, usually it is the other way around.

Take everything you read with a grain or two of the proverbial and you are unlikely to go wrong.

I have used this service quite a few times and it is wonderful. Now all we need to do is to get more libraries involved.

Going to be briefer – running out of time.

I can see the value of looking at other people’s bookmarks to see if they have found resources that I may have missed and thanks for that, I will be spending some time over the Christmas break investigating that aspect of del.icio.us.

I tend to use my RSS feeds for just this kind of thing and have been directed to some fantastic design sites and resources, including fonts, typography and related subjects which are my passion. But I can say that through del.icio.us I found an excellent article called 10 Examples of Beautiful CSS Typography and how they did it… which I had not come across before and the website was a new one for me too. Very happy indeed.

1 more elephant bagged and 4 to go!

Thanks elephant stamper.

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.

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.

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.

Cream of the Jest

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.