Emails, Blogs, RSS Feeds, oh my!

There is a tale by Aesop about a conversation between a fox and a cat (somewhere between the growls and the hissing). The fox was bragging about having over a hundred ways of escaping his enemies, but the cat had only one: climbing a tree. Suddenly they heard the baying of a pack of hounds. Up the tree went the cat while the fox began to muse over the possible actions he could take: should I run down the stream to lose my scent, nah too cold today; what about over the hill and through the narrow culvert, a bit messy and I just licked my coat clean; I could pad around this tree and place my scent on the trunk so they will notice cat up above and get distracted while I make my get-away... By the time he decided on his plan of escape the hounds were on top of him. The cat watching from his safe perch purred out: "Better one safe way than a hundred on which you cannot reckon." http://aesopfables.com/

This tale keeps popping up in my mind (like the annoying Microsoft Word paperclip) as I learn a new Web 2.0 function. So many ways to communicate but which is the better one for the type of information you wish to broadcast? And what about copyright issues? Have I been naughty in displaying the images I have captured from the internet onto this blog, or am I reprieved by displaying the URL from which the image was found? [the image for this post came from http://www.squidoo.com/thefoxandthecat]

If I have a message or want to share an article, I can send an email to the particular people I have in mind. A blog could share this information to more people than I would have thought necessary, which could be good or a whopsie moment. My husband said that setting up a New Books blog with RSS feed would be useful, but it would only be useful if people subscribe to it which will require some advertising. Should we publish the same information in many varied Web 2.0 ways, or tailor the web 2.0 to the information?

If you wondered how to access the original blog-site

So the Google Reader provides us a list of the blogs we have subscribed to and in the main page we can see the latest blog entries; but what if you want to go to a particular blog's homepage.

When you click on a particular blog in your navigation panel on the left side of Google reader, a new window with the latest blogs pops-up. At the top of this window is the title of the blog followed by >>. Click on the >> and call out with an authoriative voice "Open sesame" and the blog's homepage opens up.

Thang 6

First of all I noticed on the Google reader that all my following links are RSS feeds. But of course ya Do Do!

After this brief moment of awakening I went through a flurry of subscriptions so my Desert Island Blogs are:

• 23 Things (not much choice there but an easier way to find it now)
• Information Literacy meets Library 2.0 (a blog to supplement a book with the same title by Peter Godwin)
• Information Literacy Weblog (blogs on IL from around the world)
• Physics and Maths info@ Imperial College London Library (a library my husband uses and raves about so good to see what their up to)
• Channel 4 News
• Pew Center on Global Climate Change (so far I've listed my classical music of blogs)
• Hegehogs without Borders (now for the pop music fun. These intrepid hedgehogs, Jessica & Tim, began their world travels in 2005 starting with Argentina. I wonder of Gosia's(Techno-Babe of the RSL) travel plans were inspired by these footloose twosomes.)