Thing 21 - Ustream and the impact of ubiquitous video

I watched Kathryn's demo of Ustream with interest but would have liked to see the chat functionality in action. I've now registered and will have a play at home, away from the security restrictions (well, hypersensitive IT-savvy husband aside) to see how that side works.

Thing 18, 19 - Join Twitter, Tweet for a Week

The Twitter registration process was quite simple and clear - pity I was meant to tweet the week that I only had one day at work :) But I've been enjoying reading other's tweets, and also found out quite a bit more about some people's roles.
I also read something quite interesting:


Terrorist 'tweets'? US Army warns of Twitter dangers

Not that this is a new idea or unique to Twitter - as others have written, the whole point of many of these new technologies is to enable faster communication. Most technologies can be used for positive or negative results depending on the outlook of the users...

Thing 20 - Slideshare.net & YouTube.com

I wasn't sure what to search for, but was having a pang of regret at not being in the Top End, so searched for & found a short video about a section of Litchfield National Park. This shows a section near the Buley Rock Holes - a FANTASTIC swimming spot we visited regularly. This video was taken in the wet so it's not the normal sedate plunge pools but it still brought back great memories :)



I found the embedding process very simple and I have seen a number of instances that this has been a very useful way of sharing information.

Things 16-17 - Join Facebook, add Facebook friends

I've been on Facebook since Feb this year. I decided it was the best way to keep up with a friend who moved to Malawi with AVA for two years. She updates her status regularly using her mobile phone and uploads amazing photos when she is near a large town. It's also been good to keep up with a number of our interstate and overseas nephews & nieces (who range in age from 29 to 4 - not all of them on Facebook!) and all of their doings...

I currently have 37 "friends" - family, local & interstate friends, people I have worked with (some over 10 years ago) and I've just been found by a couple of high school classmates after 20+ years!
I get frustrated by people who want to send me all their wonderful invitations to play games or add pretty things, but I love the ease of ignoring them :) I'm still at a dip in & out stage - every couple of days is enough for me, but I can sometimes find myself getting a little addicted and staying on much longer than the time I have allocated myself.

I haven't yet done much playing with less social type things - I am a member of the ALIA group, and Aussie Librarians, but that's about as far as I've gotten. I'll be interested to hear how other people are using it.

Thing 14 - Flickr

I've looked at other people's images on Flickr (sometimes being amazed - as I am with Facebook - how much private information they're willing to give out about themselves) but haven't joined or contributed until now. I can see it's definite benefits in a personal setting but (like many of these tools) I could also use a different 'thing' to achieve a similar result - in my case that would be sharing images with family & friends that are interstate.
I did like Ian's work example and can see the value in something like the Cambridge Library's display with catalogue links - but would also think that it would create a huge amount of work. I do wonder at the time/value equation - although I suppose as with many emerging technologies, someone needs to put in the time & energy initially. Long term there may be huge demand and the time/value equation may swing, but until someone has done the work to allow users to get to know it, it won't happen. A case (possibly) of 'if you build it they will come!' Or not!

Thing 15

http://www.TrippyText.com - Trippy Text
http://www.MakeYourSpace.com/ - MySpace Layouts

Thing 13 part 2 - the feet!

At the Friday workshop we did a group photo of our feet - spectacular but it did surprise me how many of us were wearing 'sensible' shoes!

Thing 13 - Upload an image

This is a photo my husband took (but I uploaded to our PC at home :)) of McNaught's comet in January 2007. Lucky us only had to walk 25m across the street to get this view - so we were able to enjoy on a number of nights.

Thing 11: Social tagging and search

I did a very basic search on the term 'survivor'. I was interested to see what wildly varying results I got, and I wasn't disappointed.
Delicious, Google, Zuula and Kartoo focused on the TV series, a music group, and a clip of that name.
Murdoch Uni catalogue had only 4 titles - related to the surviving partner and their needs, and the UQ catalogue had 119 results with a smattering of fiction & non-fiction.
CiteUlike had a medical focus, and I couldn't get Connotea to work for me.
I found Kartoo quite disconcerting = I'm obviously not as visual a person as other people, although maybe if would grow on me given time :)

Thing 12 - delicious.com

I'd heard quite a lot about delicious over the last year, but it all seemed a bit too hard when I was just working with my bookmarks on my home PC. Then when I started at Murdoch I knew it would be worth checking out - so I was pleased to find it was one of the Things.

After an initial glitch (which was my fault) I found the set-up very simple and the different methods of tagging quite easy - although I can see that I already want to modify some of the tags that were imported. And I'm guessing that to make them useful setting up more of the tag bundles would be a good idea.

After adding Kate to my network I found my husband and added him also. I need to explore the social side a little more as at this stage I'm simply seeing delicious as a way to share my bookmarks at home and work. But I do think that (given time to explore) it will be much more than this.

My test Google doc

I decided to play a bit with formatting to see what I could do...

---

The trials and joys of interstate family!

Most of my family (biological and in-laws) live interstate. My husband grew up in Victoria and spent a year in Western Australia before moving to South Australia to study. This is also where he met me (a native South Aussie) and we married. But I always knew S.A. wouldn't keep him happy for long - and we moved to the Northern Territory a few years after we married. We loved the lifestyle there (and one of my sisters also lived nearby) but the weather eventually wore us down and we moved to a new opportunity (close to one of Shayne's brothers) in W.A.

Living a long way away from most of our family (Shayne has five married siblings complete with their families, and a Mum in the eastern states, and I have two married siblings complete with their families, and both parents in SA) wasn't really a problem until our cherubs came along. It was just a good excuse to have a decent holiday every few years...
But now, we realise how hard it is to keep our children in touch with their grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, when they only see them every couple of years, and we also miss advice and babysitting close by!

However, on the plus side:

• any visit to family is an adventure, and we almost never outstay our welcome!
  
• when the grandparents have come to stay, the children get some pretty full on attention.
  
• we don't have much friction within the family over unsolicited advice, and we get on fantastically with our in-laws.
• we've learnt lots of new technological tools to help keep in touch - Shayne's Mum is one of the most technologically connected 75 year-olds I know! We have a family website where we blog and post photos www.beachmob.org/family (password protected) and there is a fair bit of skyping and some video conferencing that happens. And watching Shayne and his siblings sit around together at a table, with half a dozen laptops between them, chatting almost as much online as in person, is something to be seen :)

So, like most situations, there are positives and negatives about where we live. Just wonder if my feelings about this will change when BB3 arrives!

New baby is due end of April 2009 -Judith Beach 11/14/08 12:19 PM

Well done! -Margaret Solosy 11/14/08 12:25 PM

Google Docs - what a good idea

I had a bit of fun with this - and will post my document in later...

I decided to play around a little with the formatting to see what it could do, and was pretty impressed with the range of functionality - it's certainly not as rich in formatting options as Word (for example) but for producing a useful, workable, collaborative document, it seems great.
And I think that it's key use could be in collaborative efforts - particularly when people working together use different platforms or software. It's close enough to Word with it's shortcuts that most people who are comfortable with that software could just pick it up & run with it.

I don't think I would use it for work documents as there are those lingering issues of management of organisational records, security and access (if the unthinkable happens & Google went into receivership for example).

But in general, I like it...

Firefox and Extensions

This week's things (7 & 8) are not completely new to me, in that we have a couple of extensions on our home version of Firefox. BUT I didn't add them - just used them, without really realising what they were and how many options are out there. I've spent quite a lot of time looking at this week's things, mainly at home ( :)) - I've installed a Harley Davidson theme (didn't work very well for me - too bulky), a black one (found sections hard to read), Walnut for Firefox (I can cope with it but it is a bit distracting) and finally settled on a boring but usable one!

Details of my things below:

Add a theme - I finally chose Microfox for Firefox

Add an extension - I added a couple - ChromaTabs Plus 2.1 (I like the idea of seeing at a glance the originator of different websites - didnt work very well with the walnut theme but is fine with my current one) and Mouse Gestures Redox (we use something like this at home and I'd gotten used to it :)) I'm also thinking of installing Foxsaver to have a nice screensaver of photos of my kids :) Just need to find out if it uses too many PC resources...

Add the 23 things toolbar - done

Download Zotero and LibX - done

Add some resources to your Zotero Library. Try to include something from the Library Catalogue, a database and a website such as Google Scholar. - done

Choose one of the extensions covered in Things 7 and 8 and write a blog entry on whether you would use it and why.

I've been using the 23 things toolbar to keep in touch with other participants blogs and the RSS feed of the 23 Things blog. I also like the ease of which I can get to the 'things' It's great but I figure longer term I'll be using the LibX toolbar more consistently.

RSS Feeds and gastro

Well, it's been an interesting week to say the least. Two children sick, then a rather amazing bout of gastro myself, and trying to keep life functioning at the same time. The children are now back to about 110% which is lovely for them but a bit trying for me :)

But, a bright spot today when I hid myself in the office and worked through this week's Thing - subscribing to feeds.

I've subscribed to a few different feeds - a couple of professional ones, some individual's personal blogs, and my sister-in-law's travel and family blog (just back from Europe & Thailand lucky thing :)).

One that I've been particularly interested in subscribing to is called LifeHack - I've had a few posts forwarded to me in the past, and I've found them really quite useful. Different authors give their views on topics such as productivity, lifestyle, management, money, and technology. Their 'about page' states:
"The phrase describes any hacks, tips and tricks that get things done quickly by automating, increase productivity and organizing."

I figure anything that helps me in this area is worth spending a couple of minutes reading, especially when it comes 'to my doorstep'.

I like to blog...

Up until now my blogging has been very basic - a family website (access restricted by password) which I use more to update interstate and overseas relatives about the goings on in our family - more specifically my kid's lives, and to save filling up their inboxes with stacks of photos.

It's going to be interesting with this blog to consider how 'outside' people might react to my musings, and to see if that impacts on my honesty and how I express myself :)

So far I think I'm going to let myself chat away and hope that no-one really feels all that excited about reading/judging - hey, we're all in the same boat. I do wonder sometimes how some bloggers that I've read on the net decide what to share - they seem so open and honest - sometimes to the point (it seems to me) where they open themselves up to a dangerous situation. Hmm little off the point now!

It's now Friday afternoon and I have completed week 1. Yeah!

23 Things - first musing!

I'm really looking forward to this program. After four years out of the library world (apart from trying to keep pace a little through personal reading and elists in between changing nappies & bandaging knees) I am really looking forward to having a chance to learn some of the key technologies that are coming forward and being used in our library world.

I've always enjoyed learning new things, but find the amount of 'things' out there at the moment a bit overwhelming. So to have had someone select some good examples of emerging technologies is making it all seem much more do-able.

From the video:

Which habit of lifelong learners is easiest and which is hardest for me?
Hardest would be habit 7 - teaching/mentoring others - partly because although I enjoy sharing information with others, I don't always feel best qualified to do so (it's such a big responsibility) and partly because at this point in time I don't work closely enough for long enough with other people who have less skills in this area than I do :)

Easiest - habit 2 - accept responsibility for my own learning. In my last 5 working years (ignoring the four year hiatus) I started 7 different jobs (lots of contract work in Darwin :)). These were generally in quite different workplaces with different systems, software and different political environments (including local government, state government, university and non-profit). I didn't always get a handover with previous staff but I found it a real challenge to learn as much as I could and to become as productive as possible in as short a time as possible. I suppose I just like learning new things :)

My goals for the 23 Things?
Generally, a greater understanding of some of the new and emerging technologies, how they can be used, and how they may/will impact on our service delivery now and in the future.
Specifically, I am interested in learning more about Twitter, del.icio.us, Flicker and Second Life - these are the things that I hear people talking about but I don't feel like I 'have a handle' on at all.

What I need in my learning toolkit to achieve these goals?
Thankfully, I know that many of these things are available already.

• Good net access (more of an issue at home potentially)
• Digital camera
• Headphones and microphone
• Time - an issue for everyone, but working 10 hours a week I expect to be doing some of this at home so that I can really explore and understand