SUMMERY OF WEB 2 PART 2 EXCERCISE

We have gone through 6 excercises so far and I like Box.net, FeedmyInbox and Slide share. I can upload my files to Box net for storage and download them to my computer if I need them later. This can free much of the memory of my computer. My photos are also stored in Flickr and Picasas and I can download them back to my computer if necessary. I need not buy a computer of large memory capacity in future. FeedmyInbox is a very convenient tool that we can get updated with the information we want. Because I have subscribed to the weather session of New Zealand herald, I constantly get updated weather information in my mail box. I also got updated information on the top 5 reading list from Manukau library. We should recommend our customers use this FeedmyInbox service if they are really keen in reading. Slide share is another place we can store our powerpoint files and we can find a lot of slide show resources from this website.

Taste Spotting is a good source of recipes for housewife. However, I am not so enthusiatic about it because I am not interested in cooking. EncompassCulture is good for readers advisory. The shortcoming is it is too British. It does not have the information on American authors and books which could be more popular nowsaday. We cannot blame it because this website is built by British council whose primary objective is to promote British culture. The website I like the least is Picapp because it gives you so much irrelavant information.

In summary, we have learned some new staff that we can use in our daily life and also use it to serve our customers. I enjoy doing this Web training.

CHRISTCHURCH EARTHQUAKE

It is sad to see the dreadful scene of the earthquate happened a week ago in Christchurch. It is reported about 100,000 houses are either damaged or collapsed. Miraculously there was no causualty in the earthquate. My sympathy goes to those people suffered in this natural disaster. I have come across some pictures in the earthquate. As a library worker, I am particularly sensivtive to what damages library suffered in this disaster. Above are photos of the library of University of Canterbery after the earthquate. I hope this will not ever happen to us in Auckland.

EnCompassCulture

EncompusCulture is a good source of books for Reader's advisory. It is easy to use to library staff and to customers as well. If a customer does not know what to choose to read but he or she wants something from general fiction. We can just click on General fiction icon and then there are 12 categories for customer to choose. Customer can choose one or more than one categories. Say, the cusomer wants to have a general fiction book on relationships and humour; she can choose those two icons and click go. There come a list of books matching her choice.

I feel this site is extremely British. I will recommend this site to customers who are especially interested in British and Commonwealth authors. This is also its limitation. I tried to look for Stieg Larsson, Jodi Picoult and Dan Brown. No result came out from my search. When I looked up Lee Child, only one book turned up; not the one I expected - 61 hours. I did another search on Stephenie Meyer and only one booked showed up. Twightlight saga was not there.

SLIDESHARE

I have found this in the Slideshare.net. It is really cool. I saw a lot of beautiful library pictures in the library presentations and wondered if one day I could own some of the pictures myself. It is so nice that I can now "own" these pictures.

Beautiful Libraries in the World

View more presentations from Paulo Izidoro.

The slideshare is easy to use and I am sure customer will also find it simple. I will not hesitate to recommend this site to customers if they have any good slide show to share with public. It is a very good source of slide presentations that we can make use of when we are making our own presentation.

I have recently come across a video that I would like to share with my readers. It is a magnificent video clips from BBC's "Lonely planet" DVD with a song added by a church:

http://www.andiesisle.com/creation/magnificent.html

Although it is easy to use this site, there are some inadequacy. First of all, you must have your own slide show in approprite format such as the most populare pps Powerpoint format. Second, there is no music with the slide and so it is somehow montonous.

TASTESPOTTING.COM

I have selected Japanese Hiyayakko (chilled Fresh Tofu) because it is easy to make, delicious (at least looked like) and nutritious. Tofu is well recognised as a healthy food. Its recipe is as follows:

For 4 servings:
-1 pound silken (soft) tofu, drained-3 or 4 green onions-1/4 cup dried bonito flakes-4 tsps soy sauce

This is a great site for housewife who has to feed her family with delicous food. You can save money on buying cook books as this site provides a great variety of recipes for western, Chinese, Japanese, Indian and middle east dishes. All the pictures make your mouth watery. Yes, web2 training needs not be so dry. A site like this refreshes and enlightens your mind.

I do love it!

FEEDMYINBOX

Feedmyinbox is a handy small application that feeds updates of any web to your mailbox. That is, you will receive mail notice once there is new updates of the web that you subscribe. I tried to use the "bookmarklet" but it did not work in my computer. I had to resort to the more clumsy way of opening up the website of Feedmyinbox and pasted on it the URL of the web in which I was interested. I have subscribed to Auckland library, Manukau library top five and New Zealand herald - weather.

It is any easy way to connect to customers if they subscribe to our library blog. Once the top five of the month is updated, customers will automatically receive notice of the updates and they are free to read them any time.

The site that you subscibe must have a feed, otherwise you cannot use this application. I tried to subscribe to NZ metservice but I did not succeed. It appeared that website does not have any feed :(

PicApp

A book drop off stand at the entrance to Brooklyn Public library in New York, USA

I have chosen this picture because the books return box looks very old fashioned. This picture was taken on Dec 20, 2004. Will it be the same today?

I got the above picture from PicApp. It really has thousands of photos. However, I don't quite like it because most of the photos are irrelvant to the search. I typed in "library" and expected to have hundreds of pictures on library buildings from all over the world. However, most of the photos showed up were just irrelvant to my search. I typed in "Matariki" and only 12 photos turned out. I don't really like this site as the search always came out with irrelvant photos. Besides, most of the photos are too much "American".

Of course this site could be a source of photos that we may use for making displays in the library. However, if you ask me, my first choice would be "flickr" or "Picasa" which are much more relevant to the search purpose and the quality of photos are better.