23 things

What a mixture of reactions - from enjoyment to frustration when I couldn't get something to work!

Probably the most time-consuming frustration was the fonts in my blog. I still have at least two blog postings (Things 8 and 23) where something has upset the default, and try as I might - even with help from an expert colleague - I can't get them back to what they should be.

I most enjoyed working with my photos - I can see lots of uses for that, though not all strictly work related! I think the geo tagging could be very handy for keeping track of photos.

Creating forms was a useful thing too, once I worked out how to manipulate some aspects of them.

Overall, doing 23 things has increased my confidence in using these tools, and in experimenting. Some bits have got to the stage of muddling themselves all up in my head again, but I've printed off a file of all the exercises (easier to do the tasks that way), and I'll certainly keep that for future reference, as I'm sure I will want to use these new skills in the days and weeks to come.

Widgets

I've played around with these, adding my photostream, a welcome and an event. I wasn't too impressed with Newsreel so removed it again. I have also re-arranged the gadgets on my blog.

I tried adding my del.ic.ious bookmarks to my iGoogle page, as per instructions, but found it slowed up the loading of the page to such an extent that I removed it. Just to make sure that this was really the culprit, I put it back and the same thing happened, so it's definitely had its chance and has been removed for good.

I wasn't very impressed with the editor's picks. Perhaps I'm just not "normal" when it comes to what I want!

I searched library-related things. My impression was that we had access to a lot of those already through other routes. I'm sure that e.g. easy access to certain catalogues would be useful to some people.

However, in the course of my searching I found a very useful gadget for birthday reminders! Since I'm the world's worst for not remembering until the day after it definitely got added to my iGoogle. I'll see if it helps!

ThinkFree Office

This is, indeed, more functional than Google Docs, but I did find it had some very slow moments - which may or may not have had anything to do with the product itself.

Mostly it was very easy and comfortable to use - although I found it irritating that I couldn't get rid of the paragraph marks even when formatting was nominally hidden.

I liked the difference between justified and distributed. In Word, if you have enough characters on the line and ask for it to be justified, it distributes the text anyway, so this is an improvement.

I tried doing a note and thought it was going to be really good, but couldn't make it perform as well as I hoped. For example, trying the newsletter format, I inserted a picture and then found that I couldn't find a way to resize it. Presumably you have to do that before inserting it, but that's rather cumbersome.

When went to select a template for a note, I got the message that "ThinkFree Note does not fully support your web browser. Firefox or Internet Explorer 7 is recommended". I don't know if this made any difference.

Not sure whether I like this better than Google Docs. There is not a lot in it, and for some purposes I prefer, for example, the wider choice of fonts. If it's always slow, I think I would get annoyed with it.

Google Docs

I've really enjoyed playing with this and can see lots of potential use - although I think I would be extremely cautious when deciding which files to create in Google Docs. I certainly would not risk anything at all confidential.

I found the document bit really easy to use. Forms proved more of a challenge.

One thing I have found is that the template gives you 2 question slots. If you send something out with only one question without deleting the other slot, it appears in your form as "Sample question", which looks awfully silly!

Also we have found that you need to untick the box labelled "Include form in email", which by default is ticked. The form does not look good in the email! But the link works fine.

I found it very difficult to find how to edit the form. When you click on what you think is the form, it takes you into the response spreadsheet. Eventually you discover that if you click on the "Form" tag at the top of the spreadsheet, it gives you lots of options, including one to edit the form, but this is not at all obvious.

Presentations are alright, but, as has been pointed out, somewhat limited in functionality. I didn't try to do a lot but the first thing that struck me was the limited number of scripts available.

I also downloaded a file, which worked, but lost a bit of its formatting. I had to make adjustments to compensate for that.

I have added Google Docs as a gadget and it's really useful because you can show all your documents from there, or you can create a new one without having to go into a separate Google Docs page.

Overall this gets my seal of approval, albeit with some reservations.

Wikipedia

I have often found myself referred to Wikipedia articles when doing Google searches. I tend to take what I read there with a pinch of salt, but I do find them useful to get a starting point. For instance, when we went to Poland last summer, I got a good general view of Lublin from Wikipedia. I looked at other sites too, but as a lot of them were in Polish, Wikipedia was quite useful!

Again, I haven't tried editing anything. My excuse is that I've done my learning curve this week with things like The Secrets of Search: website metadata and writing for spiders!

Wikis

I haven't come across "wikifarms" other than Wikipedia before, but I like the look of some of these - much more fun than Wikipedia. However, I couldn't think of anything particular to edit, so although I played around a bit with them, I made no changes.

Twitter

I wasn't convinced about this to start with, but I think it's growing on me. I am beginning to see how it might be useful for pointing people towards information you want them to look at in more detail. I thought 140 characters might be too few to be useful but it's surprising what you can get in.

I couldn't work out why my #ox23 tagged tweets were not showing when I searched the tag, although when I clicked on the tag from my home page it took me to the correct place. I then found that it was because I had ticked the privacy button in my account.

Phil Bradley's article that was recommended by Ed Smithson made a good case for spending all the time it is taking me to take all this Web 2.0 stuff on board. I'm glad I'm doing it. I just hope I can remember it when I need it! I'm just reaching the stage where things are muddling themselves up in my brain, but I know it will be ok if I persist.

LinkedIn

I have mixed views on this site. At one level it is good, but it seems too inflexible. For example, it gives you no freedom to enter information about your workplace so that it displays sensibly. You are forced to add an industry and then given a list of industries with no option to add something that makes sense for your situation, so what is shown on your profile is misleading or just displays in a silly way. To be fair, I think I have at some point stumbled across one page where you had the option to suggest a new industry, but I have really searched hard for it and can't find it again. If anybody can advise, that would be very helpful.

Also, education seems to appear only in alphabetical order of "schools" whereas it would probably make more sense if you could put it in order of significance.

I can see that the site could perhaps be useful for people wanting notification of jobs, but of course, it depends whether employers that you are interested in are part of the network....

Using Facebook in the library

We have been using Facebook in the library for a while now. A lot of my friends in different professions cannot believe that we use it at work. Indeed, where my husband works it is totally banned, and I can see why, but certainly in the library world it seems to be a useful tool for communicating with readers. If Facebook is where people look, then that is where we need to have a presence.

Apart from being able to put up announcements about what is going on in the library, we have sometimes been able to contact readers who have left Oxford - sometimes they respond! We can also on occasions find out useful information about the reader.

We get some feedback from the readers which suggests that Facebook is a handy tool for making them aware of our existence and our activities.

YouTube

Good - something which is quick and easy to do, and I can tick off on my list. I am catching up! But still one week behind as I have no more time this week.

Podcasts

Once I had found out how to untick "mute" on my computer, I could listen to the items I picked up yesterday. Good news. Shame my headphone lead is too short - but perhaps it's better as I won't be tempted to listen when I shouldn't!

Social bookmarking and tagging

I've managed to do this one fairly quickly. I'm not sure how much use I will make of Delicious, but I do need to know how to work with it as we use it here in the Library. However, my work does not often bring me in direct contact with it, so I hope I'll remember what I've learnt.

Delicious

I'm interested to read that I'm not the only one having problems signing in to my account. I've resorted to asking it to stay signed in. Possibly it's because we've created so many new accounts that we are getting them muddled....

I'm really not on top of this at the moment because I had a very busy week starting 15th, only got one of my "things" done and didn't get it written up, then was away all last week. I'm on catch-up now, and everything is consequently getting a bit muddled in my senile brain, but I'm going to try and concentrate NOW.....