Week 4-Tastespotting!

When I saw this week's exercise, I thought, Yummo, another site to add to my favourite-food-sites folder! And what a SITE for sore eyes too! :) The first thing that jumped up at me was the photo gallery. Two thumbs up from me...  Visual potluck is truly an appropriate name for this site! It's probably one of the most visually appealling food sites I have seen in recent times...

I like how they describe themselves:

Founded in January 2007 on the idea that we eat first with our eyes, TasteSpotting is our obsessive, compulsive collection of eye-catching images that link to something deliciously interesting on the other side. Think of TasteSpotting as a highly visual potluck of recipes, references, experiences, stories, articles, products, and anything else that inspires exquisite taste.

A photo which caught my eye (so hard to choose!!) was one with mushrooms in it, which are one of my all time favourite food. Turns out they are having a Musroom masters Tournament of Taste, where readers get to vote on their favourite mushroom recipe, submitted by foodie bloggers worldwide.

 I voted for the mushroom empanatas and can't wait to go home and try it out!! Yummmmmm....

Alas I didnt' heed Tosca's dire warning - eat before you proceed! And I am thus experiencing increased gastric secretions which make the 30 min wait for lunch all the more painful!

Thanks for this fun foray into food... :) And who knows, it could be useful to customers too! Like the other day when a customer and I were discussing the different ways of cooking salmon! I could direct her to this website in future!

Bon Apetit...

Wk 3- Feed My Inbox

When I approached this week's tutorial, Thoreau's (I think it's by him!) oft quoted phrase "simplify, simplify" came to mind... I have RSS feeds and I subscribe to some blogs and sites by signing up, but this is easy and streamlines the whole process, without having to enter my details automatically.

Yes I would recommend this to customers as it's simple and easy to use. One can bookmark FeedMy Inbox so that adding feeds can be done with a simple touch of the button, although I wonder how that would work for public or our workroom computers?? If so, it would be great to track interesting library sites and blogs... The free subscription gives you 5 feeds, which I think is enough for most people. I struggle with information overload as it is!!

My only fear now is that should I subscribe to even MORE stuff, it will be all that much harder to clear out my inbox!! (might start with the emails from 2 years ago!!! :P)

Week 2 PicApp

So.... I am still waiting for the PicApp application to look for my rather obscure keyword search... Umm, maybe I should try something more "normal" like "cat"...So when I type "cats" most of the images are cat scans! :P The first animal photo I encounter is that of a close up of a cat's mite infested ear! .. Go figure!

I finally found an image that I like... It's of 2 friends hanging out at the library. 

It is interesting to read the About Us bit of the PiccApp website...And I quote:

Picapp is all about more opportunities and choices:
Where You-- the publisher get access to millions of premium, legal images, updated by the minute and can use them in your posts- for free!
Where You-- content owner enjoys this innovative yet monitored distribution channel to reach new users and increase revenue
Where You-- advertiser reaches targeted, well segmented audience and access to premium ad inventory
A true Win-Win.

It could be a great resource for Manukau libraries to draw on for our websites and blogs and stuff. And to attract a specific customer base, cos the photos supposed to have "the right meta-data to assist search engines index the images and your posts better".
 
 If you are looking for something basic and simple, it is that, just a copy and paste type of thing. One frustrating thing is that I can't format it the way I want, can't do text wrapping on Blogger. Maybe if I was using Wordpress I would have more freedom with photo placement etc? I also had trouble with browsing the site, it was going rather slowly and subsequent pages of pix refused to load, which made me tempted to give up altogether!!

So it was a bit of a mixed bag for me... I lik the free and legal aspects of it, but I lament that the formatting options are limited (maybe it's just my blog?) and that the site tendeth towards lethargy! (sooooooooo sloooooooooww!) So am not sure I will recommend it to that many people to be honest!

"Box" it!

Box is cool... I like it. I like how we can not only share but also work on documents as a team, how simple and easy it is to use. I also like the OpenBox Applications that allow me to share my files easily, by Facebook, gmail etc.

I have just created a folder and invited 3 colleagues to contribute to planning for an upcoming Library week event! Let's see how that goes!!

The only thing I am wary about is the security of my files, although if you opt for the paying subscriptions, system security is higher.

And yes I would promote this to customers, cos many of them ask about saving their files, and we usually say email the doc to yourself! Cos it's 100% portability (assuming internet access is available!)


I would rate Box 8 out of 10!

Summary of Web 2.0

This has been a good exercise, as I am a rather incidental stumble-onto-it learner when it comes to the Web and IT stuff, and it has been good having to go through the structured exercises, exploring some things deeper, learning new information and reflecting on how these things impact our work, or orgnisation and our lives.

Looking forward to the next round!

Facebooked

I started using FB about 2 years ago, and would consider myself a heavy user. Having many family and friends overseas was the main reason why I chose to link up. It has been awesome how we can stay in touch in fun, frivolous and fabulous ways, from virtual pokes, to sending flowers to private messaging. I would highly recommend it to anyone wanting to do social networking. I do set my security settings quite high, and I do have a list of limited profile friends... cos I don't want every other acquaintance of mine to be privy to what I am up to.

And yes I have joined the Manukau Libraries page and do (from time to time!) read Tosca's posts! I think FB is a great way to share information and generate interest, as you have overlapping networks and someone who finds a post interesting will share it with their networks and eventually you do get a lot of coverage. I think it's quite cool how it happens.

I have also joined the Singapore public library page, as it was my first home and, along with sensible parents,  responsible for this incurable desire to read and read and read... !

Most of our customers are of the Bebo or Myspace fraternity, but more are starting to use FB. So havn't really had any asking about it, more about whether accessing it is free or not! Well I do sell the benefits of FB that way as opposed to a gold coin for Bebo! :)

Some of my pet peeves about FB are the endless requests to join people in saving the world, or tending their garden, or signing up for cause after endless cause. I find the latter quite annoyiing as I feel if you really wanted to stand up for something, you should be doing more than just clicking a button and adding your name to a list. Having said that, I have been highly informed, educated humoured and moved by many of the posts, links, quotes and status updates  and that I receive.

So I hope FB will stay around for a long time to come...

Music music music!!

Hey hey hey... so here we are at one of my favourite topics!

I use different MP3 sites from time to time. Mostly I search by song, so I end up with whichever site that has the song I want.

I chose Amiestreet and when I went to the site, I encountered my first problem. The brower is not "Modern" enough, so the message that pops up says! So IE 6 is ancient already... hmmm maybe I should hv done this one at home on my Mozilla Firefox!

Anyway... I thought the site was easy enough to navigate and use. I think the net savvy customers we have at our branch would have no problem with it. Only frustration was how SLOW it was, but it was prob due to the browser not being "modern" enough! Will explore it more at home...
Just had a thought which Tosca n co might already have thought of! Can we put these links in the Favourites of the Learnnet web browsers? :)