Tagging and del.icio.us

George and I have had a good look at del.icio.us and are now deciding if it's good enough to eat. The PLCMC Learning 2.0 list of del.icio.us things is long and scary and it's a bit interesting to see how people tag things, I spose. I created an account because I can see the value of being able to get at your bookmarks from anywhere and being able to share them. Just a note on the scary side again though - the Go2Web2 directory in the PLCMCL2 list had been tagged by 13,272 people all thinking that the hundreds and hundreds of logos labelling places you can go to do web 2.0-ey things was something they needed to hold on to. Places like: Vringo, Vayama, Siphs, Deezer, Bravisa, Noteske, Gyminee, Nymbler, WizLite, FooWHo - where I could share my mobile videos, solve my international travel, earn money from my own marketplace, take notes online, track my personal fitness, or have a personal baby name assistant (what would I do here? Share conversations about why I named MaryLou MaryLou?)

[And just when George was feeling a little brain-dead absorbing the myriad possibilities, and trying to imagine which of these really could improve the quality of her life (not to say some of them mightn't) the world opened up! There was MyDogSpace, the community network for dogs. Well, this is the place for us; we've landed - as the label says, you can "do it all in a very lovely community". Sigh!!!]

#12 Rolling over, lying down

I rearranged my page elements here and then Rollyo-ed again. Must be doing something wrong - it doesn't seem to work. What should I be expecting here? I thought I could search for "stuff" . . . Patient advice needed.

Rolled my own but . . .

haven't really used it yet. George and I are way behind in our explorations so have to get on to number 13. We have no time for free undirected frolicking (ie normal healthy bone-strengthening physical exercise) - it's all online explore, explore, explore . . . sigh.

The LibraryThing thing

Skipped #9 - looked at all the things I could make but haven't time or inclination right now. I have checked out LibraryThing and picked the first 12 books on one shelf - despite being a Virgo-girl-Librarian my home collection is in extremely random disorder. LibraryThing could possibly be a useful way to know all the books I have in my library - one day. Maybe Library 4.0 or Third Life will transcend time and dimensions and actually get them in order on my shelves for me without any effort on my part?

#9 - Sniffin' around

George and I reckon that the all-time ultimate list of library and librarian blogs would have to be John Hubbard's LISWiki site - it lists hundreds! And a quick sniff suggests we would rather have a good romp at the park than read many of them - thinking out loud might not have worldwide appeal. Anyway, LISWiki highlights the ones that have a Google PageRank of 7 or more but I don't get it - the ones where I find the reflections and comments useful aren't highlighted.

My favourites - in no particular order - are:
blyberg.net
David Lee King
Stephens' Lighthouse
Information Wants to be Free
and The Other Librarian - the guy who writes this has a really good post called We Asked for 2.0 Libraries and We Got 2.0 Librarians. This is well worth a read - important that we have some exposure to the "stuff" out there, so we can assess what's worth having.

And try The Annoyed Librarian on a bad 2.0 day, when you already have a huge load of stuff to do. (I can only get this done at home and each thing takes me at least an hour to really explore; someone else said they can do it in quiet moments on desk - not a bad idea!)

And if I had more time, what I'd like to do as an exercise is look at 20 libraries which have posted blogs on their websites and see just how much their communities are engaging with them. Presumably the "being where the users are" concept can be tested - if they are talking to us (ie commenting on, or engaging online in some way with a library blog), then the exercise is worth it. If they aren't, shouldn't we be asking questions?

RSS feeds and library blogs

Had already subscribed to a feed or two. Have now added Dilbert and Information Wants to be Free - I came across the Library Success wiki some time ago and found it very useful. Created by the same librarian as this blog. And finally, will I ever be free of information?

Floored George following #7

Yep! You can really see just how floored George (known to most as Georgina) was after the #7 experience - off her food as well. I'm actually quite concerned for her - wonder if there's a blog on dog depression. Maybe I'll check it out in the next exercise - could be real possibilities there. . . anything called a Feed can't be all bad. Chin up, George! (You see, poor George has had a sheltered life really - still hasn't recovered from her first www upset ie. the Google discovery that she belongs to a species officially called "canis vulgaris'. She was off her shredded best beef for days)

#7 dog in fog

This is one dog in the (blog) fog . . . and nothing at all to do with Polish beer.

Something technology-related? Hmmm. . . how about a few fun facts from Technorati, the site originally set up to 'blogwatch'. Here I learnt that there are now about 70 million blogs, appearing at the rate of about 120,000 a day. And there are splogs, the parasites of the blogosphere, appearing much more during the holidays (when the kids are bored and need something to do?). The Japanese seem to be blog-crazy, with 37% of all blogs being in Japanese, followed by English, Chinese and Italian. And I can usefully add that Farsi is number 10.

And then, at the page on popular blogs we have the "most linked to" and the "most favourited". Us blog dogs love the potential of the English language, but George and I were floored to discover that one of the most favourited was a cat blog (#13) - and more highly ranked than Dilbert. Seriously floored! (Any day now, you can meet my friend George). Just so much "stuff"!

Mosaic mashup

Done. . .finally!
Not without angst though - 3 attempts before I got the hang of how to make appropriate attributions to the photographers. My favourite title is no. 12 Downtown Church with Zooming Cab - has that 'je ne sais quoi' ring!

1. Pre Rup portal, 2. First Class, 3. Trogir, 4. 30 - 6342, 5. Church Doors Closed, 6. welcome..., 7. can i live here?, 8. Upper East Side Apartment, 9. red doors galore, 10. Untitled, 11. Untitled, 12. Downtown Church with Zooming Cab, 13. Downtown Church, 14. two, 15. The Doors of Hope, 16. Four door saints

Still Flickr-ing

Exploration = travel for the purpose of discovery (so say multiple Google dictionary options). I have discovered that there is a lot to discover - lots of poorly-lit byways, laneways and alleys to go down and get lost in. So I'm still Flickr-ing . . . but thing #6 is a long way from thing #23. I had better get to mashing something up.

#5 Flickr exploration no.1

On Flickr, discovered a few quick things.
1. Dogs Rule! (bigger than cats, elephants, horses and other species). Even so, I haven't joined a Flickr dog group. I have enough friends for now.
2. Striatic, the bowler-hat-wearing technical editor of How to use Flickr and a FlickrCentral Moderator, needs to bone up on his geography just a tad. Inviting all new Flickr-ers to go on a world tour using geographical tags, he provides several travel options by continent, citing two Downunder locations that new travellers might want to visit - Melbourne and Cambridge! Then again, maybe that was Cambridge, Tasmania.
3. I could create a Flickr account so I did. It has one photo - my best friend George in reclining position.

***dogboy***

Self-portrait here is meant to be in my profile... doggone it! Could I see how to get it there? Followed instructions, fetched something from cybersomewhere, got excited, wagged my tail heaps, teetered on edge of achievement as I hit that "publish" button . . . had to have some Smackos to recover from the disappointment!!
Any hot tips on how to get my fetching features into my profile?? (Will even take advice from cats)