Thursday, December 6, 2007

Thing #14 - The Technorati Thing

More fancy-schmancy icons to add to the blog!

Checked out the "popular" page on Technorati, had a quick browse at the listed top 100 favourite blogs...didn't recognise most of the names in the top searches (probably porn or sport!)

Was rapt to see "The Dark Knight" as being the second most popular movie, just wait until it gets released in 2008, number 1 all the way!

Most of the favorites seemed to be based on technology and money-making blogs. In the top 50 favorite blogs, did not see one celebrity name mentioned. Assuming from the search results that most Technorati users are looking for specific people/things rather than just browsing.

Re: Searching for Learning 2.0 on Technorati....12,248 blogs were found just by using the search box, only 849 were found in the blog directory. Guess most people are not doing the optional part of registering their blog with Technorati, not a surprising result.

Thing #13 - The del.icio.us Thing

A handy resource for reference use in that the most popular sites are most likely to be the most reliable (you'd hope!). Either everyone using and tagging that site for future use, are all right or all wrong about it!.

Reading the comments of other users that have saved the link, answers a lot of "what's that?!" questions too. I am all trusting in Librarians not wanting to misinform the greater population, where they tag, I will follow!

Using del.icio.us, at a more personal level, it is good for organsing all your favourite websites. Grouping related sites together on the same page. The comments and descriptions that you put in for each saved link, are handy to remind yourself why that link was saved in the first place!

In addition, you can take those favourite links/sites with you to any PC that has internet access rather than using the age old add 'favourites' and 'bookmark' buttons to the one computer you have saved them on to begin with.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Thing #12 - The Roll your own search engine with Rollyo Thing

Will hopefully get the chance to revisit this site another time to check out all the options.

For the purpose of this exercise, I just followed the steps outlined in the Learning 2.0 instructions. If there were no instructions to this one, I think that the naviagation in creating a Rollyo search engine would have been alot harder.

Transfering from that site and pasting a Rollyo to the blog was again the same as adding an online generator (Thing #10).

This is definately one of those 'trial and error' kind of sites if it's the first time you have been there and didn't have a list of instructions to follow.

Thing #11 - The All About LibraryThing, Thing...

Arrrrgggghhhhh! Had been trying for awhile to add page elements but I kept getting redirected to the bloggers homepage. Was able to edit current page elements but not allowed to add anything! Turns out pop-up windows from this site had to be allowed - just added this in case anyone else comes across the same issue! Opps.


The LibraryThing feature was easy to navigate around, add books to and create widgets for the blog.

Very much the same as creating online generators and pasting the code to an added page element. If you can get through Thing #10 of the Learning 2.0 program (and have pop up windows allowed from this site!), this exercise is pretty old hand.

A handy little jigga for those wanting to share their book preferences to the world of blogdom and to socialise with bookreaders around the globe.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Thing #10 - The Playing with Genorators Thing...

Checked out quite a few of these and whilst it takes awhile for some of these sites to load up on dial up, the end results are well worth it in putting together a blog-spectacular with little to none know-how, that looks like you know it all ('ey?).

Overall, online generators are a way of making your page look more professional/fun (depending on the look you're going for) with little effort.

For the generators used on this blog, it was just a matter of clicking on a button that read "Get HTML code" after filling in an online form of options and then adding as page elements to the blog.

Here are some of the stand out generators that were used on this blog:

Dancing Text
http://www.fancygens.com/pag_productd_id_27_p_DanceTextGenerator.html

Let there be fish!http://www.fancygens.com/pag_productd_id_29_p_AquariumGenerator.html

Tellin' Times
http://www.fancygens.com/pag_productd_id_25_p_ClockGenerator.html

Friday, October 19, 2007

Things #8 and #9 - The RSS & Newsreaders Thing

RSS, XML, RSS Feeders, Newsreader accounts....never heard of any of that until reaching this part of the Learning 2.0 program. Was beginning to dread doing this step of the program with all the new jargon and signing up to yet another account, it all seemed pretty daunting...until I went ahead (with a lets get this step over with attitude) and did it. Turned out to be pretty addictive once getting the basic jist of it and before realising it, was into doing Thing #9 and LIKING it! (Yes I'm a geek).

RSS/XML feeds are a handy lil' invention for those of us on dial up, your favorite sites that are RSS enabled can be put into the one internet account for text based summaries on anything that has been updated, rather than opening webpage after webpage and waiting for all the graphics (mostly adverts) to load. That lot of hoo-har will hopefully make more sense if you have heard of this before, or have done this step, if not, believe all the hype about this being something that will save time when surfing the net and trying to keep up to date with your favorite sites.

Found both the C:Net and the Palinet "Feed Me..." video clips along with the Using Bloglines Tutorial really helpful as an introduction to it all.

Something to consider: If your Bloglines username is your email address, as it was for me, on the Bloglines site go to: Home - My Account - Blog Settings to create a username (I used the same username as this blog), otherwise your email address will show up in the URL - could end up revealing your identity and giving out your email address.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Thing #7 - Technology...A hunting we will go

Bluetooth Dongle...


The bluetooth dongle is a small piece of technology (that comes with it's own software) that allows transfer of data to/from my mobile phone to/from the computer.


First bluetooth technology experience was recently at a Kodak photo kiosk. I knew the mobile phone could 1. take pictures and 2. had something called bluetooth on the menu options, that was all.


With much help from the shop assistant, I was shown how to get photos off the mobile phone and transfered to the kiosk using bluetooth technology. (It was to get the pictures that were on the phone printed off at 50c a copy to put in a photo album). From phone to album - impressive! Unfortunately to keep going that way, it was going to be expensive!


Using Google, I set out to find a way that was more convenient (and cheaper!) to do this, did a search using both bluetooth and mobile phone and after pages of results, decided to check out this bluetooth dongle thing that kept coming up in the results.


Wikipedia was a great help also:


Bluetooth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth


Dongle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dongle


If searching for technology in this fashion with intent to purchase, use Ebay, retail and manufacturer sites to scout out the prices.


The result? Ended up getting a bluetooth dongle as a gift and now I don't know what I would do without it!


Still don't know much about this gadget, other than setting up both the phone and computer to 'read' each other through the dongle (once it is plugged into the computer) and the software, along with mouse clicking does the rest!


Now if only I could remember where I last put it.