Week 7 - Podcasts and Online Hosted Video

Well, this was a disappointing week for me. Everything needed to be done at home, and even then, some things didn't work as planned. I have already been subscribing to podcasts, so this wasn't new for me., but I knew nothing about Podcast Alley or podcast.net. They were both a little overwhelming, but I'm glad to know they exist. I was unable to get Odeo to work from work or home.

YouTube has lots of interesting things on it - I've been on that site before, but it's getting more and more difficult to find the "good stuff" when there's so much duplication as well as "uninteresting" material posted.

I decided to create my own video and post it to my facebook account. But, it was 2 minutes and 1 second, which made it 1 second too long to post. I then tried to post a YouTube video to my blog, as a separate page element. But, it didn't seem to allow for a URL. When I typed in the keywords of the YouTube video, it found 4 separate versions, and posted all four. I was unable to delete 3 of them. So, I found another video and added that. The only way I was able to post my own video (from my camera), was to post it as a blog entry. It seems like there should have been a better way... Also, when I showed my husband the YouTube video I posted, he asked if it violated copyright, since it's a video of a live performance. Well, whose responsible for that? The person who posted to YouTube, or me?

So, all in all, I have more questions than answers this week. But, YouTube is blocked at work, as is most audio streaming - at least for now. So, I think I don't have to worry about this technology at this time.

My Garden Video

Week 6 - Flickr

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Originally uploaded by ad158

I am writing this within flickr, and, hopefully, it will post to my blog, along with a picture of Snow in April. Until this assignment, I had been sharing pictures through Kodak's Easy Share site, which came with my Kodak camera. But, I think this will be better, and easier to manage. I see lots of possibilities for personal use. Not sure about professional use - at least not yet.

Week 5 - Web Office Tools

I'm going to see if I can write my post in googledocs and post it to my blog. This is an experiment based on the optional exercise. [Note: this didn't work - I had to cut/paste to get this here...]

This week happens to be a week I've had the least amount of time to devote to this class, which is too bad, because I see lots of potential for this product. I had not even heard of googledocs before, so, this week was totally new and I love the concept. How many times have you read committee meeting minutes and you read the section that has to do with something you said, and you think, "Boy, did they get this wrong - this isn't what I said at all." Well, with googledocs, drafts of minutes could be posted for all participants to see and edit prior to it becoming the official documentation. This would save so many future hassles with amending minutes, revised copies, etc...

I don't do much with spreadsheets or slides, so, I devoted less time to this, and haven't had the chance to really compare googledocs to the other web office products, yet, but, hope to be able to spend some weekend time looking through this and looking at more features of the google products.

Is this the future of all software products? I think not in its current format - but, it's getting closer. I found the "comparison" feature cumbersome. I'd like a better way to see what others have done to my document - maybe colors, or fonts, or something other than lots of crossed-out lines. Bryan suggested you need a constant internet connection. While I don't know if this is true, this would be a shortcoming if if is true, although I suppose one could work off-line and then upload a document into googledocs from another product, such as Word. But, this, of course, means you have to buy more programs...

Very interesting concepts and I've enjoyed playing with this. One additional problem I encountered is that some colleagues invited me to share their documents, but, my work email and my googledocs email aren't the same, and I couldn't figure out how to get into their documents, even though I was invited. Again, because I didn't have much time this week, perhaps I would have figured it out with more time, but, for now, that didn't work well.

Week 4 - Del.icio.us

I have had a del.icio.us account since before this class started. I like having all my favorites handy, no matter what computer I am working at. I am still a bit uncomfortable using it, though, and haven't totally figured out the best way to navigate around the site - like how to combine 2 tags, or how to only see sites if they have been updated since I last visited. Del.icio.us is partially blocked at work, so it's hard to evaluate its potential professional use when I can't really use it when I'm working. (I can open my account, but I can't tag anything new.) I also don't have tons of sites tagged, yet, so I still find myself pulling down the "favorites" from within my browser more often than opening del.icio.us and looking at how I organized things, and then opening what I need. As a cataloger at heart, though, I actually am looking forward to that "rainy day" when I can totally organize everything I have and systematically tag, link to new items, and evaluate how others have tagged similar sites.


I tried looking at other people's links, in order to populate my site, but wasn't overwhelmed with what I was finding. I'm not sure I see potential library applications (for our users) yet, but certainly see using this as a way to personally become better educated and to find relevant sites about personal or professional topics of interest, or to help find resources to better answer a reference question.


I am thrilled to finally be able to spend the time to learn these 2.0 tools. I am glad this course has given me the opportunity to do this.