Twitter May 25/10

I looked at the information about Twitter. I am sure glad that there is a limit of 140 characters that can be used. It isn't something I plan on using. I can see the fascination of it appealing to people however I wonder if it will create a generation of people that have to be connected to feel alive. They are ignoring their surroundings so much that I wonder what will happen to our culture and our planet.

Library Thing May 17/10

I went in to Library Thing. I found it very easy to navigate and it would be a wonderful site to keep track of the books you have, read or plan on reading. I liked the recommended titles because they shows a wide variety of titles to consider. I will be suggesting this website to our customers to help them keep track of their wishlist.

Online Productivity Tools May 10/10

I looked at Google Calendar and Google Docs. I definitely liked Google Docs. I liked the variety of templates, how easy they are to use and they are free to us. I do see these free online tools replacing expensive software like MS Office. I will be using Google Docs in the future.

Flickr & YouTube May 03/10

I use YouTube on a regular basis to see what I'm interested in. I find it very easy to use. I can put in a subject heading or be very specific on what I want to see.
I have looked at Flickr and I do find wonderful pictures of what I am interested in. By using a general subject heading I find a lot. I do wish that the people would put a heading or something about the picture so that it tells me went and where the picture was taken.

RSS April 26/10

I found the RSS feature interesting. I was successful in setting up my RSS feed. I used the second suggestion of our our blog masters. I think this will make information-gathering more convenient for me.

Google Universe April 19/10

I like using Google. I use the following features Web, Images, Videos, Maps and News. So when we were asked to explore it I found it very interesting.
I chose Google Books. I found it very easy to use and it gave me a lot of titles in a subject search and good information. Sometimes it was a snippet, sometimes there were reviews and sometimes the entire book was online to read.
I found the entire book online on Morgan horses published in 1857. The New York Public Libraryhas the original book. I knew about this book as it had been listed in bibliographic notes about Morgan horses.
I would definitely recommend this site to friends and colleagues. I wish that more out of print titles on many subjects were online for everyone to read or download to their computers.

Social Networking April 12/10

The two questions this week were:

1) Why do you think social networking sites are so popular? What are the main appeal factors?

OR

2) For you, is Facebook useful or a time-waster.

I have created this Facebook profile with a lot of help from my coworkers. Yes I know more now about setting up a Facebook profile and I will be able to help customers who want to set up a profile. It maybe very useful and enjoyable for a lot of people and I can see its appeal. It helps to keep some people feeling like they are a part of society and that someone cares about them. I personally don't need to know what someone is doing every minute of the day. So I would say that for me it would be a time-waster.

Wikipedia Week April 05/10

The two questions we were asked to comment on are as follows:

1) How easy or difficult was it to find articles that needed editing? Were the errors you found factual or grammar spelling?

or

2) Were you able to find a topic obscure enough that Wikipedia doesn't cover it? If so, congratulations! If you managed to publish an article, comment on the process.

I chose to answer the first question. I didn't log into Wikipedia. Most of the general information about horses in Wikipedia is so well documented that it didn't make sense to try to add more. So I deliberately picked a less known breed of horse from Siberia called the Yakut Horse. Yesterday I edited the Varieties and characteristics section. The information I added to the entry was word for word from the book "International Encyclopedia of Horse Breeds" Bonnie Hendricks(1995). Her book is listed as the 4th reference under this breed as well as many other horse breeds listed on Wikipedia.

Last night I checked on Wikipedia to see if there had been any response because they themselves have designated this breed as low importance. They did respond in a big way. First of all they deleted what I had put in and then added the opinion "Maybe, but not in Hendricks, don't add where it changes citation" in the Revision history of Yakutian horse.

So it appears that it isn't as easy to have information remain there on Wikipedia. This shows that it is being watched. I haven't decided whether I will go in again and challenge them to actually read page 443 of Bonnie Hendrick's book. Wikipedia's list of horse breeds is quite limited so far. Just to add all the horse breeds from Bonnie Hendrick's book would be a daunting task. So I would go to a book store and get a horse breed book and know more about most of the breeds in the world. There are approximately 375 known breeds.

Delicious Week March 29

The two questions being asked this week are:
What are the advantages of storing, sharing and tagging web content this way? What are the disadvantages?
OR
How comfortable are you using Best Websites, after this practice? Do you have any tips for using Best Websites on Delicious?

The advantages of storing, etc is that you know the sites that you want to use because at this time they are giving you most or all of the information that you need or want. It will make your search faster and easier to do because someone else has done the work for you.
The disadvantages are that you maybe limiting yourself to newer information because you have put a limit on what you want to look at. You must be flexible and search beyond what you are comfortable with. Don't ever assume that these sites are always going to have the newer information on them.

First Question Week of March 22-27/10

The two questions we are being asked to answer are:

1) What do you hope to learn from CPL2.0?

2) What aspect of Web 2.0 are you most intrigued (or scared) by?



I agree that I need to become more computer technology savy. However I haven't been interested in blogs or Facebook, etc. I created this blog with a lot of help from another staff member so that I can participate in this training program.