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.

Box.net

It is nice to come back to my territory with the starting of Web 2.0 part 2. I have played around the Box net for a few hours. I uploaded a folder containing all the funny stuff that my friends sent to me on the net. Size of my folder is 12.2mb and it took almost half an hour to upload.

This cloud application is very useful as we can store all our files there and have access to them from anywhere. We can invite collaborator who are authorised to edit any of our files. Besides, we can create our own web documents that he can then be accessed from any computer. If customer using our learn net wants to store his documents or any files just created but does not have his storage device, we can recommend him to open an account at Box. net and store his files there. He can then download them back to his storage device later on.

CLOUD COMPUTING - BOOK REVIEW

The Rough Guide to Cloud Computing by Peter Buckley


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have been wondering what cloud computing is. This small book gives me a rough idea of what this term means. This book introduces many web based applications that every one can make use of. They are sorted in different categories like office applications, imaging, audios, social networking applications and many others. This book is particular valuable to those people new to nowadays web-based computer world.

View all my reviews >>

2ND WEB.2.0 TRAINING

I like this kind of self discovery training as we can take our time to do the required excercise. One may spend a couple of hours in doing a particular excercise, browsing in detail all the suggested websites; while another one may spend just minutes doing the same excercise. This is up to one's choice. I like the 1st training more as the content of which is richer and less "formal". Personally, I don't like to do all these excercises at work place as they are too many distractions. People coming and going, telephone rings, people eating next to you .... I would like to have a quiet place to do my "homework".

It is some time hard to answer the questions how the topic is related to our job. This will of course force us to think about it. In the end, if we know more of the web 2.0, we are empowered to serve customer better. When customers are using Facebook and Twitter and need help, we are more confident to render the necessary assistance.

FACEBOOK

I created my account with Facebook in my last Web 2.0 training and so I don't have to do it again. I invited my co-worker Killy to be my friend and now waiting for her acceptance. Manukau Libraries Facebook is located and I have added a fan photo to it.I posted comments to the two discussion topics in Manukau Libraries Facebbok on May 30 and 31.

I visited New York Public library Facebook incidentally and found its updates are screaming for help. Its funding is to be cut by 37 million, which means possibly 10 branches could be closed, opening days could be reduced from 6 to 4 days and there would be cuts in programmes for kids/adults and job search services. It is suggesting voters to write to elected officials to deter the cut and make donation to the library as well. I am happy that I am not working in New York Public library.

I don't like Facebook personally because I am not keen to make friends through this so called social networking site. There is recently a news that many Facebook users organised themselves to withdraw from Facebook at the same time. The personal information in the Facebook can be unduely utilised by the third party. However, it could be a very good tool for libraries to connect to their readers. Libraries can make use of Facebook to keep their readers informed of their acitivities. The facebook can be linked to U-tube so the readers would be able to see what happened to the libraries lately. For instance, the recent refurbishment of Pakuranga library could be uploaded to U-tube so that interested readers could see the prograss of the refurbishment in visually. Of course, photos can also be uploaded to Facebook to show the latest library's activities. Because it is easy to use, I will recommend customers to visit Manukau libraries Facebook and become a fan.

MUSIC FILES AND MP3

I have spent a lot of time hanging around the music sites suggested by the exercise. Sometimes I just got lost. I do not like Amazone MP3 store because the number of free downloads is very limited. I have finally chosen Amiestreet.com. It provides 9 genres(each possibly with serveral sub-genres)of music rather then overwhelming around 50 genres in some other sites. I love its simplicity. The music site is easy to use and you can listen first before you download. You will have access to all the free music by selecting free in the price range. All downloads here are legal so all customers can use it without supervision. I have been to GoMusicNow.com which is a music download site but not for free. A music downloader is to be downloaded before you can download any music from this site. It is so not as convenient as AmieStreet.com that you can go straight to download any music you like.

GOODREADS

The Goodreads.com is a wonderful site where you can keep records of the books that you read. You can write reviews on books and read other people's comments on the same book. You can even create you own book montage on your own blog. It is a good source of Readers'advice as customers can be shown all the books written by the same author and the book comments written by other people. This will help customers choose what they are interested. Customer can even comment on other people's comments or join the book clubs if they want. No doubt I will proomote GoodReads the customer given all these goodness.

I have added Goodreads to my blog under the title "MY BOOKS". Interestd vistiors can have a look at the books I have read.

TWITTER

I registered with Twitter some time ago but did not really used it until now. It is easy to use and could be very useful to marketing people. You can twit publicly so that every one follows you will get your message or you can send a direct message to any one of the followers. If a company can attract customers to be its followers, all the new product updates can be sent to the Twitter and these updates will subsequently appear on the followers' screen once they are in Twitter. The same is true to the libraries if they want to annonce or promote certain events/activities to their customers. The lastest example is Pakuranga library's refurbishment. All the followers can simply read or even see (with photos) the progress of the renovation in the Twitter . The twitter is effective and economical, but its success depends on how many customers are connected (to the twitter). Perhaps we may encourage customers to use Twitter and also suggest them follow Manukau library. Twitter can be used in workroom but I feel it is less effective as face to face communication is more important in a working environment.

ZAMZAR.COM

This on-line file format conversion site is really useful. I think most of the computer users have had the unpleasant experiences of unable to open a file sent to you by a friend. You do not know what to do in such circumstances. Zamzar provides a perfection solution. The conversion process is simple. I converted a Word document and a jpg format to pdf and gif formats. Almost instantly, I received the email notice and the jobs were done. Amazing! However, when I tried to convert an audio format of MP3 to Wav and MP4. It failed with a message saying "internal problem". The next day, I received a message from Zamzar saying this has been drawn to the attention of their technical people.

When doing the conversion, you cannot covert different formats at the same time. You have to do separately for each different format. Of course, you can convert serveral files of the same format at a time.

This website is so useful and simple that I have no hesitation to recommend it to Learn net customers when facing the file conversion problem.

It is nice to be back to my blog again and use it for the new web 2.0 training.

Same as last time, I expect to know more about lastest web 2.0 development and acquire new skills for better customer services.

According to Plymouth library, a library can use a blog for the following purposes:

Marketing: Promote Library events and programs, list new movies, books and links to their reviews.
Community Information: collect and post local news and events
News: Keep patrons informed of new collections, building expansions, new personnel – “telling our story”
Homework Alerts: Have a central place for student to check to find out about resources to help with current assignments.

A customer might expect to see the library lastest and forthcoming events/acitvities, new books/DVDs/CDs lists in the library, community news, librarian's thoughts and responses to the current news and even advices for parenting and suggestions for homework and assignment. The blog must be easy reading with rather short entries, updated on regular basis with personal, informal writing style.