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.

Thing #6 - Part 2 - "Trading Card Challenge"


Saturday, October 6, 2007

Thing #6 - More Flickr Fun


Bodi Gets Warholized!
Originally uploaded by DayLateDollarShort
Had a look around at the different Flickr toys available, love the motivational posters, will be using those for purposes other than Learning 2.0 due to the content such a toy inspired!

For Learning 2.0.....Bodi Gets Warholized! This was uploaded from the fd' Flickr Toys site to Flickr and then from Flickr to the blog.

Will be visiting these sites again when I get the chance - the results won't be posted to a Learning 2.0 blog though!

Thing #5 - The flickr thing....

Edit Note: Not sure why the picture in this post is showing up with a red cross, if you click on where the picture should be, it will show you the image on the flickr website.





Meet Bodi....


He is a dork.


He likes to play ball by his rules (throw it once, then chase him around the backyard to try get it off him again - no sharing allowed).


Normally a quiet dog (when not in guard dog mode), he does give lectures if he has been left behind. He will stick his face out between the vertical blind shutters and fog up the window to see who it is, the lecture starts before the door's been opened!


He always wants to be let outside for a whizz when you want to go to bed - his timing for that is always spot on.


Sometimes it all gets too much for him and he's just got to run around in really fast circles trying to bite his tail, he did that after the photo was taken - guess the excitement of it all was too much for him.

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

Ok, Thing #5......

The picture was taken by mobile phone, loaded onto the computer and then uploaded to flickr, and then to the blog from there.

Thing #4 - Registering...

Turns out it helps when registering, to send the blog address not your email address - brilliant start, what else can be said to get 50 - 100 words out of that?

Hmmm.....

Pass.

Onto the flicker thing, that part looks like fun.