Thang 22: We're almost there

That was fairly easy and it made me want to remove some gadgets and rearrange them. Since I had added Channel 4 news to my feed I really didn't need the three other news feed so that is where my Delicious went to. My facebook box is now working since I created an account, but I don't like the Whats on your mind? since you can only see what you are typing for the first line. For some reason there is no scrolling capability so if you type in more than one line you just have to hope it looks alright (like writing on paper without looking).

I've changed my theme from snow covered mountains to misty spring, but the weather in Scotland makes me feel I should return to the snowy mounts!

Thang 21: Been there done it

Thanks to Penny I already added on the Flickr Photostream gadget a few weeks ago. One problem I encountered was no pictures showing up; then we realised that my privacy permissions were too strick. Once I changed the permission to public viewing for some of my pictures up they popped on my Blog (bottom left-hand side).

I hadn't noticed the Feature, Most Popular and More Gadget options to the left. Instead I just typed in what I was looking for in the search window. So even when you've been-there-and-done-it you still learn something new.

I've also added a counter, but its been counting more my viewing of my own blog than others. I would like to change it but cannot for the life of me remember how I found the last site of free counters, especially since it had a nice discreet butterfly counters.

Thang 20: Not so free ThinkFree

Well, I was able to do the same article in a similar format on both Google Docs and ThinkFree. I was even able to download the essays as PDF onto my desktop with both; however,
ThinkFree could be a bit or a lot slower than Google Docs, in particular the fact that it has to open another window for editing the text and downloading the Java script.

You do get about the same amount of storage: 1 GB. However, another downer about ThinkFree is it ain't free. What you get is a 30 day free trial, but eventually you will have to pay. This I gathered from the FAQ's in Thinkfree Help.

http://help.thinkfree.com/views/jsp/user/help_center/contents/userFaqView.jsp

Thang 19: even more!

Here is my questionaire on Hot-desking (an issue close to my heart): do you want it or do you don't? A nifty little program which has already given me one result in the automatically generated spreadsheet. I also provided a power-point presentation about the issues around Hot-desking to help my survey victims develop their opinions. Again the presentation program was very easy to work out with enough variety of background them to serve its purpose. I went for very loud as you can see below:

My favourite of the hot-desking styles. It matches my favourite position when reading:

Thang 19: Privacy or Patriotism

Google Docs was quite easy to use and I was able to edit other people's documents with no problemos. I can see its use for collaborative work though I would eventually store the final work on my own computer and use WORD for the final touches. My main reason is privacy protection as my short essay explains on "Google and the Patriot Act" done on Google Doc:

Two years ago Simon Avery wrote an article in the Globe and Mail about the dangers of the U.S. Patriot Act skulking about the internet jungle:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/article675014.ece

The article begins with some worries expressed by members of a Canadian university that had signed up to Google's Cloud Service (which only took 30 days to set up and was for free versus investing $1 million for another commercial product that would have taken months to establish). You may wonder why these professors were against a freebie which offered the latest in software capabilites to their students. The problem was the country that Google Inc. is based in: the United States of America.

Part of the war against terrorism was the creation of the Patriot Act which made it easy for the U.S. government to snoop on it's citizens for security reasons. This was to exist for only a limited time, but has been extended since it reached it expiration date. The latest extension was just this February 2010 [ http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0301/Obama-signs-Patriot-Act-extension-without-reforms ].

"Using their new powers under the Patriot Act, U.S. intelligence officials can scan documents, pick out certain words and create profiles of the authors - a frightening challenge to academic freedom" is a quote from one of the Canadian academics. "For instance, a researcher with a Middle Eastern name, researching anthrax or nuclear energy, might find himself denied entry to the United States without ever knowing why."

Apparently Google has gone to court over just this issue: "The firm cites a court case it fought in 2006 against attempts by the U.S. Justice Department to subpoena customer search records." It may be a comfort to know that Google is fighting for our privacy, but scary to know that the U.S. government does see Google as a prime source of information with a great search engine to assist in their security scans. Google was not willing to reveal how frequently they receive such demands from the government to access customers' files and whether the Patriot Act had invoked against them.

For more information go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act

Thang 18, or Fight! Fight! Fight!

Although I don't have my Firefox open up on the Wikipedia Homepage like my husband does, I do find myself going there first for an answer. It is tricky trying to balance the ease of getting an answer (I'm amazed at how comprehensive it is) and accuracy. When writing an essay I will start with wikipedia for ideas and possible references, but I'll never quote and/or reference a wikipedia entry for fear that it would denigrate the quality of my work.

I've never looked at the history tab so I looked up something rather controversial: climate change and noticed that there had been an act of vandalism:" 16:06, 15 January 2010 ClueBot (talk | contribs) m (33,995 bytes) (Reverting possible vandalism by Jamesb1995 to version by Closedmouth. False positive? Report it. Thanks, ClueBot. (524884) (Bot))"

What could this act of vandalism have been? I clicked on the Jamesb1995 hyperlink and found:
(←Created page with ' == FART ZONE == Vandalize this page! [http://www.cooljunkofdoom.piczo.com CLICK!]') followed by:
‎ (←Replaced content with 'FART!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!') See below:

This vandalism seems to have happened quite frequently so that:
"This article has been placed on article probation. Editors making disruptive edits may be blocked temporarily from editing the encyclopedia, or subject to other administrative remedies, according to standards that may be higher than elsewhere on Wikipedia. Please see Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation for full information and to review the decision." Democratisation of knowledge has its limits.

So are wikis a good way for a dispersed group to virtually get together and create documents such as library use guides; or would members with obessive-compusive tendencies drive the rest mad, Mad, MAD with frequent alterations?

Thang 17: Co-training of Lankester Reading Room Staff - Web 2: Oxford libraries

Co-training of Lankester Reading Room Staff - Web 2: Oxford libraries

Yippe Kai Yay! I managed to create a wiki-page on the C&RD Board. Above is the link. It was fairly simple to do just following Jane's instructions. The biggest difficulty was overcoming my fear that I was going to do something so terribly wrong that the whole C&RD Board would implode; but it didn't. Phew!

Thang 16

So here is my twitter home page. I managed to give it a little personal touch. You might be able to see that I am following 6 tweeters and am being followed by 4 (which is actually 3 since I stopped following someone). I'm tweeting and @ing and I did a retweet from the Economist (however it wouldn't let me direct the retweet to #ox23, only to my followers I think, so I copied it and then tweeted it to ox23). I even did a Direct Message, but I won't say to whom ;-)
Below are some of my entries onto #ox23:
I was trying to setup a gadget on my blog that would allow people to tweet from my blog (including me), but none of the gadgets offered seem to work and one left my username and password up on the screen for all to see! Tsk, tsk, tsk! So I'll leave that option for now.

Thang 15

Picture taken by Jaro Nemcok

By golly, gee, oh my! What a palaver to come up with a username acceptable to Twitter! I looked to Wikipedia for inspiration which is why I have such a strange username. Anthracothorax is a genus of hummingbirds locally called Mangos. Anyway, I survived to post my first tweet: Anthracothorax Oxford 23 things that reach out to others: daffodils shudder.

Haiku works very well with Twitter though it under uses the 140 character allocation. Limericks would be better but I'm not so clever.

At first it was hard to find people to follow since many in ox23 haven't started the Twitter project, so I tried a couple of outsiders and they were a chatty pair. Too chatty! So I dropped them and connected with a couple libraries from the Web 2.o directory. Eventually I had some asking to follow me so I could then follow them. Quid pro quo.

Thang 14 : NOT ANOTHER ACCOUNT!!!!

Explore http://learn.linkedin.com/ and sign up for LinkedIn

Another account to sign-up for and maintain. Another USERNAME and PASSWORD to remember. ANOTHER PROFILE TO CREATE. AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!
I feel a hot-flush coming on. I can't do it! I just can't do it!

So, instead, I just perused what LinkedIn had to say about itself and for me the page that bested summed up what LinkIn is really all about is below:

Just recently I read in the Economist that LinkedIn is quite popular amongst the professionals in looking for new jobs or headhunting personnel so I suppose in these hard-times one should Log-in, Blog-on and Tweet-out.

As librarians it may be a way of comparing notes with other librarians around the world (at least the ones who type in English even in American): what problems they are facing; what successes they have experienced; what new demands are being made of them. You could also check if a planned change of procedures had been implemented elsewhere and how it had succeeded or failed. Mainly, though, LinkedIn is a tool for professionals to develop their jobs and to make their abilities known to potential employers. It isn't a means of outreach to their clients.

Facebook, on the otherhand, is meant to be an informal and creative e-space conducive to chats on all sorts of topics. In some ways, our libraries are a bit too formal with their Facebooks, or they don't have the time to try and generate discussions amongst their fans and then glean information from the debates. It should be left relaxed, a wee bit subversive, carefree and fun to attract our readers. Leave the high-brow stuff for the official websites.

Thang 13

http://www.badgers.org.uk/brocks-world/taxid02.jpg

Wow! What a fight last night; two badgers in a noisey and vicious tussle. It may have been a male badger trying to force himself on a female, but she wasn't taking it. He would have been more successful if he used Facebook. He could have posted photos of his cosy den and share stories on favourite hunting grounds for snails and sweet corn. He could have revealed his sensitive side with poems about new moon nights with the hooting of the barn owl echoing through the whispering trees and how he dreams of romping through the fields with his cubs. And she might have said: Darling, where have you been all my nocturnal nights. Ahhhhh.

http://www.dmcphoto.com/Badgers_B.JPG

Looking over the Facebooks of some Oxford U libraries made me wonder why they didn't combine all their Twitter, Blogs, LibraryThing, Delicious, Webpages on Facebook; a one-stop shop for information. You could have a tab for each one along with a Discussion forum tab. Some are missing a trick in a lack of stories about the library and more photos. How about some library history? Tom Kirtly cartoons? I was wondering why 200 Peruvians wanted to become fans of the Education Library. Did it give them access to information which they couldn't do via the internet? Did they hope to discuss issues with professors and student at Education Studies in the Discussion tab of ESL's Facebook? There is an interesting story brewing here.

I'm now creating my own Facebook. It's been painful since I was expecting it to be like Blogger.

Go, go, go AstroBoy

One of the biggest problem with YouTube is you can't get off it. I was trolling through memory lane until 1 am this morning looking at old cartoon clips like AstroBoy. It was one of my favorite cartoon when a wee lass and then we moved into a different TV region that didn't receive the transmissions of the channel that hosted AstroBoy. My heart was broken (at least for a little while). I didn't know it was a Japanese creation. No wonder the characters' mouths moved out of synch with their voices.

Anyway, it brought back memories of other Japanese cartoons that were shown from time to time. One was the White Serpent but there was another more beautiful animated film from either the 1960's or 50's which I couldn't find. Any Japanese Anime fans out there? What I remember was the story of a young boy and his sister who may have become orphans or sold to a wealthy family as servants. The girl became very depressed and the last you see of her is walking towards a lake where you presumed she drowned and then from the lake rose a swan or geese that represented her spirit. The young boy went in search of his sister and went through various adventures. Does this ring a bell?