Podcasting

This "activity" seemed less useful to me than many others on Web 2.0. Not because I dislike podcasting, but the activity itself didn't involve much of anything. Thankfully, I've already downloaded and listened to quite a few podcasts in the past - otherwise I probably still wouldn't really know what was going on with them.

While none of the library-related podcasts really caught my attention, I do think that 'casts are very useful and entertaining. For myself, I regularly listen to "The Signal" - a Firefly podcast - and two 'casts related to Dragon*Con. The first is just for fun, but the other two have also provided me with valuable information about going to such a large convention and how to make the most of my trip. While I enjoy a well put together website, there are many things that come across much better when listened to than when read. Music for instance, as well as interviews. Often, when reading an interview, the person loses much of their vivacity and uniqueness that are easily apparent in an audio or video podcast.

A New Place for Filk

Now this is cool. I love to listen to music, but my genre (filk) isn't exactly anything I'll likely be hearing on the radio anytime soon. I pretty much just have to go to conventions and stock up in the dealers' room - buying cds I've never heard, but have faith they'll be good. I'm often quite satisfied, but there have been times I regretted my purchases. Here, though, are places where I can listen - for free - to stuff before I buy. And they even have more than a few filk artists.

So far, Last.fm is my favorite music site. I like how intuitive it is with tags and tabs dividing up all sorts of juicy information. Not only music, I also found videos of one of my favorite performers (Heather Alexander) and links to many other filkers. Even ones I've never heard of!

Excuse me while I grin in geeker joy. I can't wait to explore this site further.

As far as connecting this with libraries, I know I love to listen to music while I read and it would be cool to have suggested songs to go with certain books - like making our own soundtracks. For instance instead of a page about a performer, you could have one for a book or character and list songs different people connect to it.

Docs: not just from Microsoft anymore

I gotta admit it: This is kinda cool.

Now I feel like I have a new toy - though I'm not sure what to do with it.

As a writer and someone who deals with multiple drafts of the same document, I admit it would be nice to have a central location that would store drafts without me having to wonder which version I'm looking at. What I'm less sure of, however, is if I like the idea of my "stuff" being somewhere in the ether instead of the relative safety of my own harddrive.

I also don't currently have anyone I want to collaborate with - but my lack of any kind of social life is not the issue here. In theory, google docs would definately make collaborations easier. As the 100+ back emails in each of my multiple accounts will tell you: I easily get bogged down in piles of emails bearing attachments and quickly lose count of what I've read, what I want to do with it, and finding the energy to care. I may have to spend some more time playing..er..learning about google docs.

Spiffy

TV Reviews

Guess all that book learning was good for something after all.

Aside from discovering the erudite nature of this journal, I also opted to play around a bit. After a few rounds of 'wordshoot' I managed to get myself on the high score list. Granted, it was for the "easy" level, but hey, a high score is a high score darn it. That's a game I might be returning to - likely when I should be doing something productive. Yahoo Answers was also an interesting venture as I found questions on just about any topic I could conceive of - including more than a few that I could answer with some level of confidence. Much fun, indeed.

Wiki Wiki Everywhere

Wikis are a technology that I'm vaguely familiar with - at least what they are in general. I understood that anyone can contribute to a wiki, though I didn't understand quite how that worked. After reading some of the articles and playing around a bit, I think I get it a little better. The possibilities of wikis seems pretty impressive: by enabling anyone to modify pages, you open your site up to an unlimited supply of collective intelligence. Wiki sites also become very welcoming and an inviting place to share ideas and expertise.

The downside, of course, is that anyone can modify the pages. Anyone including people who think they know about a topic but in reality know nothing and spammers or hackers who delight in making every visit to the website a nightmare. I've visited wikis several times - especially wikipedia - and have been pretty impressed with what I've seen. Unfortunately, I also have to continually take anything on such pages with a grain of salt. Information I find on Wikipedia is fine if all I'm looking for is surface value, but if I ever need to be sure of something, I may start at Wikipedia, but feel that I must verify anything I find from a source whose validity is less suspect. I still remember a fellow student in one of my classes who used Wikipedia as his main source for his presentation and was appalled to discover that not only were there many uncorroborated opinions, but blatently wrong facts as well.

One answer to this problem that I see is used in some of the other Wikis I've visited. Instead of allowing anyone to post, you must somehow prove that you know about a subject before you are cleared to edit a page. Either that, or having learned moderators who observe new content and keep innacurate information out.

LibraryThing: Animal, Vegitable, or Mineral

Here's the URL for my profile on LibraryThing.

http://www.librarything.com/profile/honor_harrington

I chose LibraryThing over Goodreads mainly because I already have a Goodreads account and was curious to see how the two sites differed. One of the main differences that I see is that LibraryThing charges users if they want to list more than a certain number of books on their account. Maybe I'm just cheap, but this idea doesn't appeal to me at all and doesn't really promote the Library feel. I do, however, like the fact that you can get recommendations based on what books are on your list.

I also like, in theory, the ability to find other users who like the same books as you do and start conversations. I love to discuss and critique novels, though normally I like to do so with people I'm already comfortable with. Starting conversations with random strangers is still not high on my list - which is probably why I've been so reticent about so many of the parts of this 2.0 project.

Still..if you really want to talk to people about something, books make better subjects than most, and these sites just might encourage people to read more.

Technicalities and Technorati

Maybe I'm just being dense, but I don't quite see how technorati is so much different from all the other blog searches available. It does seem to go to more lengths to organize the blogosphere into easily digestible chunks, but how useful is that, really? I guess if I were to base the value of a blog on how popular it was, technorati could be helpful. But what goes into determining if a blog is popular or not? I'm assuming it has to do with how many people visit the blog and possibly give it some kind of rating. But how do I know that their visiting a blog or their rating of it provides an accurate portrayal of how usefull a blog is? As has been mentioned several times throughout this web 2.0 program, anyone can create a blog and say pretty much anything they want. Though I know absolutely nothing about the topics, I could create a blog espousing various and sundry theories about quantum mechanics or the best way to rid your backyard of moles, and if I made my blog interesting and/or attractive enough, I could theoretically attract many visitors and become quite popular. That still doesn't mean, however, that I have any clue about what I'm writing.

Instead of monitoring a blog's popularity, I would be more interested in a blog search that attempted to organize blogs based on their usefullness and accuracy. Assuming such a thing is possible, of course.