Take Back Parliament Flashmob 10/05/10 FAIR VOTES NOW!

I was at this demo in London yesterday, and it was bizarre to discuss the appropriate twitter hashtag with a woman next to me, only to then see her icon and post right above mine in the #takeitback stream. We agreed to follow each other. As you do. Strange days indeed. Fair Votes Now!

One Last Thing

I've certainly enjoyed being part of the 23 Things programme as a presenter! It was great fun to read the blogs, view the photos, and follow the tweets, thanks everyone for your enthusiastic participation.

I'll leave you with a few memorable quotes from 23 Things:


"I have never thrown a sheep at at anyone"

-- Alison Prince on 23 Things Oxford A Prince's Progress


ZCZC 121219Z RSL 17 #ox23 TECH SERVICES CONFIRM J RADIOCARBON SENT TO DARKSTORE BY ACCIDENT STOP PLACATE READER WITH FREE ILL NNNN 12:19 PM Mar 12th via web

-- tweet from Konnie Bunny (@kboxf23)


"Thanks to a mouse malfunction I almost located the photo in Norway."

Alison Felstead on Leda Neatfossil's 23 Things

Here's a picture of my delicious bookmarks from my iGoogle page. I used one of the two iGoogle gadgets called My del.icio.us... it is quite basic, useful I suppose if you want to have your current bookmarks close to hand, but there are delicious plugins for browsers that give you much more functionality, like all your bookmarks grouped by tag in a sidebar etc.

One Thing Left! This has been great fun. Going to take a short break before writing my final wrap-up post.

(photo)streampunk

I added the flickr photostream gadget to my Blogger blog some time ago, so in the interest of fairness I'm going to pick a different gadget to add and write about.

Well that was quite entertaining. I added a gadget that tells you what foods are in season in different parts of the US. Apparently, Nothing is currently in season in Massachusetts, where I used to live. Good thing I moved to the UK then :-)

ThinkFree.ThinkSlow?

My initial enthusiasm for ThinkFree Office has been slightly dented by the slow performance I've experienced in the word processor this morning. I typed two lines of text - screen updating was sluggish at first but then improved. When I tried to select the two lines of text, I found it quite difficult - I triple-clicked the top line and selected it, but then couldn't get any reaction when I tried to select the second line as well. The entire interface seemed to have frozen. Now that I've just returned to it, the performance is much better, and I was able to drag and select what I wanted with no problems. Perhaps these are temporary glitches. Onward.

The font selection is quite impressive, I've used some of them as well as some colors. I decided to add some clip art. This necessitated the installation of some files and everything slowed down again. Even writing this blog post became impossible. But finally, my four-leaf clover appeared in the document, and I imagine that in future, it won't take so long.

Above is the result of my experimentation.

What are Google Docs when they're at home?

Useful! The most recent use I've made of a shared google document is a recipe spreadsheet, so that my partner and I can easily refer to our favourite dinner recipes, and make additions or corrections whenever we think of it. There is a column for cookbook, page, vegetarian or not, and whether other people (less enamored of The Spicy) would be able to eat it. Prior to that, we used a spreadsheet to calculate whether the car scrappage scheme made any sense for us, and allowed us to compare the costs of different vehicles and look at the same figures from different locations as we discussed it.

These are not earth-shattering feats, but it is surprising how making access simple can encourage you to update a document whereas otherwise you might never get around to it.

Portmanteau

Just beginning this Wikipedia thing has been entertaining - while reading the page about Wikipedia itself, I followed the "portmanteau" link and learned all sorts of fascinating things about the use of that term for a new word made by combining two others. We can thank Lewis Carroll for this usage - he borrowed the concept of a two-compartment suitcase to describe such created words.

And the fun continues, here is a great cartoon about wikipedia. Everybody loves to laugh at wikipedia, until their assignment is due.

Wiki work

I visited the Oxford Web 2.0 wiki and had a look at the Law Library page under Case Studies. I was happy to find a little bit of work to do - our page had no mention our Facebook presence, so I added an entry for it with a link to the actual page. I need to return and add some information about how we use Facebook, but it's a start.

I will admit here to being a bit of a wiki sceptic - the concept is great, getting everyone to participate and contribute to a central repository of knowledge, but I find that in practice, if you don't have a very focused and energetic group of contributors, wikis can sort of languish, never reaching their full potential.

That said, I love wikipedia, with the obvious caveats about accuracy. If you are just looking for a general idea about something, with a high probability of input from someone who knows what they're talking about, wikipedia is your friend. I imagine that if you are a high profile, controversial public figure, wikipedia might seem like your worst enemy.

Rather engaging...

As a frequent Twitter user I've engaged in quite a few "conversations" using the various options - @username, DM username, RT etc. I think it takes some practice to use these features well, and I'm not sure I've quite cracked it yet. Sometimes I find that when replying to someone I follow, my follow-up tweet is incomprehensible to my followers, who did not see the original tweet. Yet it would be cumbersome to provide the original tweet there too, and would go over 140 characters.

Sometimes I wonder about the optimal tweet volume. Periodically I begin following someone only to unfollow them the next day because they are tweeting too much, and filling up my stream. Maybe if you follow huge number of people this is less noticeable. Institutions seem particularly guilty of this, they may have multiple people tweeting on one account, and are probably under some pressure to promote items (like articles in a newspaper), and it can get tiresome.

Fun with Forms

Here is a silly little Google form.

Beating a hasty reTweet

I finally got to use my favourite Twitter joke for the title of this post. I have been "on the Twitter" for quite a while now - yes, at first I did wonder if it was a bit pointless, and did post too much about what I was about to eat and the current weather conditions. Over time, however, I've had fun using replies, retweets and direct messages, and following some well-known people who are living rather public lives via their Twitter feed, which I find quite generous and surprising of them. The author Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) uses the medium really well, and has attracted so many followers that he often links to a site in a tweet only to have the server crash spectacularly (this phenomenon now has its own hashtag, #neilwebfail).

The missing LinkedIn

I'll admit it - I've had a LinkedIn account for some time but have not used it much. I had a general impression that it was quite corporate, and much more serious than Facebook. However, because of 23 Things, I've gone back to the site, and seen that it is not all grey pin-stripes. However, it still can't offer anything as diverting as Cafe World. But I digress...

Being connected to a large network of contacts has many advantages - especially, I imagine, for a freelancer who needs to find prospective clients and provide trusted recommendations. And of course if one were looking for a job it would be a real asset.

I keep having to remind myself that Web 2.0 sites don't stand still, but change over time, adding features and shifting focus. Something that was initially underwhelming can become incredibly useful. And vice versa, a once promising site can be taken over by celebrity gossip and advertising (yes Technorati, I am talking to you.)

Libraries on Facebook

I decided to have a look at how some other libraries are using Facebook, so searched facebook "Pages" for "libraries". I was attracted by the magnolia flower icon of the Smithsonian Libraries in Washington D.C., so decided to visit their page. Because the Smithsonian Libraries consist of 20 individual libraries, they have a wealth of varied material to draw upon, and it looks as if they are good at keeping their page active by frequent posts that link their collections to current events. OK they may stretch it a little at times - National Noodle Month? But a nice example of this was their wall post about the new octopus at the National Zoo (which is also part of the Smithsonian) illustrated by a beautiful print of mollusks, and with a link to the zoo's octopus cam. I have to say that I quickly got drawn into the the Smithsonian's photostream on Flickr by following links from their wall posts.

Such a large group of libraries has many public events, so the Events tab in Facebook is a great place to inform their readers/Fans about them.

The Info tab was used well, it had a very good clear description of what the Smithsonian Libraries are, a bit about their history and current endeavours.

I will be going back to visit more library Facebook pages; I was very impressed by this one.

YouTube if you want to...

I've been exploring Channels on YouTube, and have found one I quite like called Future Shorts. This is not, as you might think, about London Fashion Week, but rather a wide range of short films. There are many animated ones, and I can see that I will be spending some quality viewing time here.

P's in a Pod Cast

I'm a big consumer of podcasts, but early on I settled early on one way of subscribing to them (iTunes) and haven't really explored other options or sites. I had a look at PodCast Alley, and browsed the Technology section. In the end I decided to try a featured podcast, called Lab Rats. I had to cut and paste the URL into Google Reader to subscribe, but it worked first time. I never really thought of subscribing to a podcast in Google Reader, but why not? There is a better chance that I will see new episodes there, since I visit Google Reader daily, whereas I use iTunes less frequently.

I am now looking forward to watching a geeky episode about USB 3.0.

Networking

I've added some other libraries to my network on delicious, and in the process realized what went wrong when I tried this recently and had trouble. I had clicked on a little Add to your network link, but did not see that I had to click on OK to confirm the addition. Sorted.

I'm enjoying exploring the links in my new expanded network - I am sure I'll be bookmarking some of the sites to visit again. The Language Centre Library provided a link to a site of helpful phrases in a variety of languages, so I could now ask someone if they like bagpipes, in Breton. As you do...

Mmmm, delicious.

I've had a delicious account for some time but admit to not paying enough attention to it beyond periodically having a huge clearout of tags I no longer need. It was a pleasant surprise to see that delicious now has the domain name delicious.com so one no longer needs to type in the trickier del.icio.us. I tagged the bookmark for my blog with ox23 and then searched on that tag to see what other participants had been saving - a neat way to organize all the bookmarks associated with an event, I hadn't thought of using tagging this way before.

I have been trying out the Google Chrome browser recently, but it doesn't yet have full-featured delicious tools like those for IE and Firefox, and this is a real if temporary drawback. I have gotten used to having my tag bundles across the top of my browser so that I can easily select the "media" bundle to check newspapers etc. I'm sure the tools will be along soon, but it made me realize how much I've come to rely on delicious.

Fun with picnik

Decided to make a Wallander valentine (a day late I know) and add it to the group pool. I put a big red bow on the Mariagatan sign, surrounded it with a red vignette, and then added some creative commons licence stickers for good measure.

Flickering

Slightly embarassing to admit - I changed my flickr screen name last week and broke the link to the flickr widget on my blog. Easily remedied however, I just had to edit the widget settings with the right flickr name and my photos were back. I've been enjoying seeing all the photos added to the group pool and also the creative Picnik work! Today I added a few more of my photos, some of Ystad, Sweden for any Kurt Wallander fans out there.

More features than you can shake a stick at

I've just enabled the feature that lets you easily send an RSS feed item to Facebook, twitter or delicious from within Google Reader. The mind boggles.

More fun with Google Reader

I decided to see what other feeds Google Reader might suggest for me based on my current reading habits. Once I got over the fact that one of them was "Cute Overload", I enjoyed checking out my new subscriptions, including Gizmodo. It is very geeky.

I then went to check out my Shared Items page, which I had never looked at before. I set it to use the Ninja theme, and made it visible to everyone. There was an easy click-button way to add a Shared Items gadget to my blog, so I did.

Google Reader and subscribing to the 23 Things Blog

I love Google Reader and use it every day. Sometimes I wish it had a more visually exciting interface, but in general, it brings me the RSS feeds I follow and allows me to organize them into folders, so I am a happy user. I never knew about the N and P shortcuts to use while reading a feed, and this will be extremely useful!

Above is a screen grab of my tag cloud from my Google Reader Trends, as you can see, the word "fun" is quite substantial, probably thanks to Boing Boing and Icanhascheezeburger. I am pleasantly surprised to see that "food" is rather small.

Making the rounds

I'm making my way around all the 23 Things participants blogs and leaving comments - There are so many that I'm only about halfway through the list, which is fantastic. It is interesting to see the different approaches that people are taking, some using the blog as a resource for a group endeavour, others taking the opportunity to share their interests with us (Devoured by Vegans I'm looking at you :-) I would write more here but I'd better get back to my commenting...

One Thing leads to another...

It's been great fun to visit the numerous 23 Things blogs now populating the sidebar. Who knew it would be so interesting to sneak a peek at people's iGoogle pages - someone found Frogger! I need to check out the game gadgets again, clearly. Next I 'm going to do some commenting, I find with my other blog that it's really fun when you get a conversation going in comments. Once I was wondering what a tree in our back garden was, and posted a photo of it to my blog asking if anyone knew - soon I had an answer: Australian Wattle, FWIW.

In terms of what I hope to get out of the 23 Things programme, I'm interested in getting new ideas for how to use Web 2.0 tools. I've experimented with a bunch of them, but would like to become a more regular blogger, for instance. I use flickr, but want to upload more photos and organize them in a coherent way. I think that seeing what other people do will provide some inspiration. I'm also hoping to become more familiar with other parts of OULS, which is already happening as I read the participant blogs. I'm leading some of the upcoming Things, and am looking forward to making discoveries about the topics as I prepare. I am quite amazed at the capabilities of some of the free image editing tools, for instance.

Onward!

First day of 23 Things!

I get a little bit of a headstart as I have had a Google ID for some time. I've customized my google page and it is where I always start when I open my browser. I am going to experiment with some different gadgets though. I also love the iGoogle themes that change the top of the page throughout the day, right now I am using the fox with a Japanese teahouse, the night image is one of my favorites.

Have now added a currency converter, headlines from Scientific American, a BBC Radio gadget, and a gadget that lets you search amazon.co.uk from your iGoogle page.

"23 Things" Begins Soon

Greetings - this is the blog that will be dedicated to the upcoming 23 Things Web 2.0 Program at Oxford University Library Services - I am happy to be involved, and will be responsible for Weeks 4, 10 and 11, covering online image sharing and editing, Office 2.0 and Widgets.