Task 14 - Technorati

I must be particularly cranky today but I HATE the flashing and intrusive adverts on every page of Technorati.

Had a browse of the top 100 blogs including Boing Boing, but really don't think this site is for me.

I did the required searches of tags etc but was so frustrated by the ads that I had to exit.

Task 13 - del.icio.us

I created a delicious account last year after I attended a Web 2.0 conference at the State Library but had forgotten about it. I rediscovered some interesting sites such as "Remember the milk", 'PogoFrog" (a medical search engine) and a few other gems.

I like the tagging options, and prefer the cloud to the list (and I thought I was so unimaginative!).

I guess the most frustrating thing is that you need to do your search in delicious and it isn't the best search engine. But I have discovered a fascinating site called Blurb which allows you to create your own book and have it printed (for a cost of course). Looks great.

Task 12 LibriVox

How cool! I have subscribed to 2 books via iTunes and they are there waiting for me. I haven't listened to the items yet, but this is great.
It wasn't difficult at all, and I'm looking forward to listening.

Task 11 - GoogleBooks

I also like this site. I can see that it would be good to keep track of my favourite authors. The list keeps growing. The reviews and related books are also quite handy. I have created my own library, but would prefer that there was an option to make it private.

As far as fulltext books, I opened the Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, but must admit it doesn't do much for me.

Task 10 - Library Thing

I really like this site. I have heard people talk about it before, but never investigated it. I love all of the detail you can access so easily. And I especially like how little information you need to provide about yourself. My Library Thing page is here.

Task 9 Library RSS feeds

I don't know if it is just that it is Friday afternoon, but I can't imagine I would ever be interested in most of the stuff that I have been browsing. Who has time to look at all of this??
Technorati was "experiencing technical problems" (and I'm not sorry!)

The news feeds are good, but I read the newspaper, so have seen many of the stories.

Strangely, the most interesting item I have read recently about Web 2.0 was about libraries using Twitter for messages to clients and this came via my email.

I now need to eat my words! We have subscribed to some news feeds searching for very specific topics so we can add these to our Branch Library blog - a very useful thing.

Task 8 Bloglines

I have created a Bloglines account and subscribed to some RSS feeds. I have done this previously on my iGoogle page, but never bother to look at them. I just find that it is one more thing to look at in the day and I always seem to have other things to fill up my time.

The link to my bloglines account is here.

Task 7 - Blogs and comments

I am delighted to say that I have received some comments - thank you kind bloggers!

I've also posted some comments, it was a little strange at first, but quite a nice experience.

Some time ago I came across this great blog from the University at Buffalo Health Sciences Library, and I think it's a great example of a professional blog. It incorporates all sorts of elements: news, resources, personalised reference support. Could we try and do something similar at UQ?