I certainly feel that I've done something... Actually, I'm feeling pretty jaded. I was away on leave from early October till the end of November, and so have been trying to cram my 2.0 discovery journey into a short amount of time. I'm not sure that this has been the best approach, but I'm glad I have gone through the steps - and even happier that I'm finished!
I feel that I have learned a lot more about things that I wanted to know about, and more than I really wanted to know about some things - but none of it has been wasted time. And that is not something I've said about most training programmes or courses I've been through or attended.
There is a lot I will explore in more depth over the coming weeks, as this time of year is typically a lot less pressured. It's the time when I sort files, tidy up around the place (physically and metaphorically speaking), make plans and plot and scheme... Checking out new ways of thinking and doing and finding out what is out there and what others are already well up with the play on is appropriate, and I think I am more aware not only of what sorts of things to explore, but where to focus my exploring energies.
And of course, far more importantly, I will feel a lot less mystified when overhearing conversations involving people under the age of 15. Or participating in conversations (verbal or electronic) with said under 15 age group. I might even feel less of a old fogie numb brain when talking to my nieces and nephews - there's gotta be hope, right...?
Friday, December 14, 2007
#22 (week 9)
I've used netlibrary before - and it worked a lot better then than it did for me this evening. Without going into it, I'll be checking out the way it's loading for me with the Digital team... most bizarre... But seriously, I really am familiar with netlibrary, ebooks etc the way they are supposed to be. Don't care for them much myself - I prefer the paper version usually.
But the new stuff coming with downloadable audio books - that will be interesting. I've been a book-out-loud fan for years, and I'll be really interested to see what happens with Overdrive. I'm looking forward to trying it out for myself ('cause I'll have a snazzy new MP3 player to listen to my downloaded books on, while on the bus to and from work...), but also seeing whether a range of customers pick it up, or just a small techie group.
ebooks were going to be all the range, and in fact they seem to be of interest to only a small proportion of our audience as far as I've noticed. But the greater portability of the audio books - is there anyone but me that *doesn't* have an MP3 player humming away on my bus each day? Not likely - may see them bringing a whole different kind of audience in...?
But the new stuff coming with downloadable audio books - that will be interesting. I've been a book-out-loud fan for years, and I'll be really interested to see what happens with Overdrive. I'm looking forward to trying it out for myself ('cause I'll have a snazzy new MP3 player to listen to my downloaded books on, while on the bus to and from work...), but also seeing whether a range of customers pick it up, or just a small techie group.
ebooks were going to be all the range, and in fact they seem to be of interest to only a small proportion of our audience as far as I've noticed. But the greater portability of the audio books - is there anyone but me that *doesn't* have an MP3 player humming away on my bus each day? Not likely - may see them bringing a whole different kind of audience in...?
Thursday, December 13, 2007
#21 (WEEK 9)
Ah, well... Podcasts are not unknown to me in a wider world context - but they are not to be in this little Auckland City corner of the smaller world. I am not permitted to access these little gems from within AC's firewall.
I did cruise through some podcast sites, checked out the kinds of stuff on offer... and I can honestly say that I don't really feel that I'm missing out on much.
When I get home, I'll switch on that ancient technology (the CD player) and listen up to some paid for music *without* pictures...and I think I'll be alright.
I did cruise through some podcast sites, checked out the kinds of stuff on offer... and I can honestly say that I don't really feel that I'm missing out on much.
When I get home, I'll switch on that ancient technology (the CD player) and listen up to some paid for music *without* pictures...and I think I'll be alright.
#20 (week 9)
OK, this is fairly addictive stuff...
I'm vaguely horrified at how many things that I thought of were available, to say the least. A sign that the web is where all the baby boomers and us boom followers have gone...
I searched in vain for a 60s or 70s tv show that did not have at least two clips loaded. Mind you, the proportion of what's on youtube that encompasses is miniscule, but still.
Sigh. Favourite episodes of Bewitched, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (OK, I was young, and therefore my Richard Dean Anderson addiction is completely understandable). And most importantly, one of my all time favourite episodes of (the real) Star Trek - go on, don't tell me you've never seen or heard of *that* episode... The trouble with tribbles! So, here is one of my favourite scenes from this, one of the more vivid and long-lived memories from my childhood...
Super giggle, and sigh...
I don't know what I'd do exactly with YouTube in a library context, but clips of events, teasers of upcoming stuff, a tour of Central's mysterious stacks, a bookbinding demo, a look at some of our rare and great treasures, story-time of the week... it's all too addictive - I'm going to delete the link, and forget I ever saw it...
I'm vaguely horrified at how many things that I thought of were available, to say the least. A sign that the web is where all the baby boomers and us boom followers have gone...
I searched in vain for a 60s or 70s tv show that did not have at least two clips loaded. Mind you, the proportion of what's on youtube that encompasses is miniscule, but still.
Sigh. Favourite episodes of Bewitched, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (OK, I was young, and therefore my Richard Dean Anderson addiction is completely understandable). And most importantly, one of my all time favourite episodes of (the real) Star Trek - go on, don't tell me you've never seen or heard of *that* episode... The trouble with tribbles! So, here is one of my favourite scenes from this, one of the more vivid and long-lived memories from my childhood...
Super giggle, and sigh...
I don't know what I'd do exactly with YouTube in a library context, but clips of events, teasers of upcoming stuff, a tour of Central's mysterious stacks, a bookbinding demo, a look at some of our rare and great treasures, story-time of the week... it's all too addictive - I'm going to delete the link, and forget I ever saw it...
#19 (week 8)
Interestingly enough, I think this illustrated to me some of the major differences between what someone who needs internets sites vs someone who wants sites look for...
I checked out about a dozen award winners in several categories, and was struck with how little I liked the majority of them. Actually, that is why I checked so many out (the last half dozen or so I really just dipped into, homepage plus a few other pages only) - because the first ones I went to I thought were pretty awful. It's taken a while, but I felt I had to know if it was just one or two, or if I was really so out of touch with what apparently rates as top of the line for most people - or at least for the judges for these awards.
All the sites I looked at seemed to be visually cramped &/or crowded, excessively stuffed with rather unnecessary visual pollution or items which were good only for slowing down page access, like pictures, data-dense wallpaper, huge blocks of complex images... And quite a few of them were into noise pollution as well. The award site itself was a prime example of the sort of stuff I don't appreciate. Takes up to 30 seconds to load, and when I just now went back into it to see if the download speed had improved since an hour ago when I first looked, it took 45 seconds. That's just the first, main page. It would probably time out if I were on the dial up at home. And yes, lots of people do still have dial up - or what Telecom mis-names as broadband.
Which is not to say that the functionality of some was not attractive, where I was sufficiently motivated to wait around for pages to load. Which wasn't often. And I even visit some of them occasionally (biblio.com quite often, realtravel.com & reddit.com sometimes) so know what they do etc.
I guess the thing is, I use the internet to access information on behalf of others for large chunks of my day - and those others are paying for the service that I provide - or the services I access for them, most available via the internet. So I don't want bells and whistles, pretty pictures that tell me nothing and slow things down - I want clean, clear pages with quick navigation, access to a site map and effective site-search box, and the option of printing pages quickly and cleanly where required. Medal winners don't offer these (for my work) basics, in the main, if this site is any indication.
I think an ideal world would have a websites etc of all kinds with a kind of toggle mechanism - click here for the 'just the information' display, and click here for 'bells, whistles, fru-fru etc' display.
*That* would make for more happy campers...
I checked out about a dozen award winners in several categories, and was struck with how little I liked the majority of them. Actually, that is why I checked so many out (the last half dozen or so I really just dipped into, homepage plus a few other pages only) - because the first ones I went to I thought were pretty awful. It's taken a while, but I felt I had to know if it was just one or two, or if I was really so out of touch with what apparently rates as top of the line for most people - or at least for the judges for these awards.
All the sites I looked at seemed to be visually cramped &/or crowded, excessively stuffed with rather unnecessary visual pollution or items which were good only for slowing down page access, like pictures, data-dense wallpaper, huge blocks of complex images... And quite a few of them were into noise pollution as well. The award site itself was a prime example of the sort of stuff I don't appreciate. Takes up to 30 seconds to load, and when I just now went back into it to see if the download speed had improved since an hour ago when I first looked, it took 45 seconds. That's just the first, main page. It would probably time out if I were on the dial up at home. And yes, lots of people do still have dial up - or what Telecom mis-names as broadband.
Which is not to say that the functionality of some was not attractive, where I was sufficiently motivated to wait around for pages to load. Which wasn't often. And I even visit some of them occasionally (biblio.com quite often, realtravel.com & reddit.com sometimes) so know what they do etc.
I guess the thing is, I use the internet to access information on behalf of others for large chunks of my day - and those others are paying for the service that I provide - or the services I access for them, most available via the internet. So I don't want bells and whistles, pretty pictures that tell me nothing and slow things down - I want clean, clear pages with quick navigation, access to a site map and effective site-search box, and the option of printing pages quickly and cleanly where required. Medal winners don't offer these (for my work) basics, in the main, if this site is any indication.
I think an ideal world would have a websites etc of all kinds with a kind of toggle mechanism - click here for the 'just the information' display, and click here for 'bells, whistles, fru-fru etc' display.
*That* would make for more happy campers...
#18 (week 8)
Sigh.
I think the real potential of, and potentially enjoying, the site was significantly reduced by internet access speed.
I have my own (work PC based) word/excel etc moderately customised, and would probably want to do quite a lot of customisation of the offered basic templates on Zoho to make it attractive to me to use on anything like a regular basis, but... The grind of the wheels working when any sort of formatting command was used makes me feel that middle of the afternoon is not a good time to try personalising my stuff on Zoho... I may dip back in early one morning, or late in the evening when the central city has emptied out and the internet speeds up.
I like the concept of the availability of the applications wherever one is, and emailing a link to zoho for all to access rather than emailing material, but I'm thinking about whether this would be a better, worse, or just different way to work with shared files, compared to using wiki-functionality, or inhouse, storing of files on a shared drive, with tracking turned on...
I did browse through other bits of the stuff about features, but didn't recognise things that I have used or immediately thought 'wow' about - so will take some time to work through what these things might offer me later on.
Hmm, stuff to ponder at some stage...
I think the real potential of, and potentially enjoying, the site was significantly reduced by internet access speed.
I have my own (work PC based) word/excel etc moderately customised, and would probably want to do quite a lot of customisation of the offered basic templates on Zoho to make it attractive to me to use on anything like a regular basis, but... The grind of the wheels working when any sort of formatting command was used makes me feel that middle of the afternoon is not a good time to try personalising my stuff on Zoho... I may dip back in early one morning, or late in the evening when the central city has emptied out and the internet speeds up.
I like the concept of the availability of the applications wherever one is, and emailing a link to zoho for all to access rather than emailing material, but I'm thinking about whether this would be a better, worse, or just different way to work with shared files, compared to using wiki-functionality, or inhouse, storing of files on a shared drive, with tracking turned on...
I did browse through other bits of the stuff about features, but didn't recognise things that I have used or immediately thought 'wow' about - so will take some time to work through what these things might offer me later on.
Hmm, stuff to ponder at some stage...
#17 (week 7)
OK, that was painless enough, and just like I remembered from previous journeys into wiki-dom.
I know more than perhaps I truly want to about the favourite aspects of my co-workers lives, and their choices re colour/font/etc with their blog address was also interesting... But communities, communities of interest...
I know more than perhaps I truly want to about the favourite aspects of my co-workers lives, and their choices re colour/font/etc with their blog address was also interesting... But communities, communities of interest...
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