- I'm continuing to read my coworkers' blogs via my GoogleReader, and I've decided I don't really like that particular RSS feeder. I'm comparing it, I must admit, to the Friends Page on LiveJournal, which is an RSS feed that automatically appears when you friend someone. (Did you know that "friend" is now a verb as well as a noun?) The LJ one allows you to manipulate colors and a little of the presentation, which makes each person slightly more unique and easier to mentally keep apart instead of all running together like they do in GR. It also shows on the RSS page how many comments are on a post, and has a link to post a comment yourself. GR does not, and I miss those links. Oh well.
- I wrote a book review on LibraryThing, and one on iRead, just to see how they compare. iRead is much easier to write a review in -- overall a much more user-friendly interface. In LT, I had to hunt for where to write my review; it turned out you go into "edit book" and there's a box 1/2 way down the screen where you can comment. (If you'd like to read said review, the book in question is "The Queen's Bastard". My review is not complimentary.)
- I've recently started playing with a tool on flickr that has the potential to be obsession-making. When you look at your photostream, there's a tag at the top called "popular". It then shows you your most popular pictures, based on number of views, number of people who marked it a "favorite", number of comments, or a combination of the above called "interestingness". Anderson Cooper tops three of those lists; I only wish I'd got pics of Obama when he spoke at ALA last year -- I bet Obama would beat out Cooper any day! :-)
- Non-2.0-related item: About a year ago I listened to Thunderstruck, about Marconi and the wireless. When I re-read Girl of the Limberlost recently (one of my favorite books ever, and somehow very SRC appropriate I thought), I noticed (as I never noticed before) the use of the term "Marconigraph". Cool!
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Further Thoughts
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5 comments:
I just started my RSS feed in google reader a few days ago. Today I'm trying to read co-worker's posts and make comments, but I have to toggle back and forth in separate windows. Not user friendly. Maybe I'll switch to live journal.
My husband has a photo of some historic public building in Scranton, NJ that recieves dozens of hits. Very strange. . .
I already had a Goodreads account, and I can't decide if I like LibraryThing better. Once you've entered alot of books into one, it is labor intensive to switch. LibraryThing seems to be the one everyone knows.
I'm learning that multiplicity of tools is the rule: whenever someone comes out with a new service, pretty soon other folks come along with their slightly different versions.
I just wish they could all talk to one another, so we wouldn't have to (a) choose just one or (b) retype or re-enter stuff.
Sigh. I guess that's the point...to get you locked into one particular service so you spend your time there rather than at the competitors' sites.
I nearly started google reader, but just couldn't make myself do it. Just trying to add everyone to my sidebar on the blog has been most annoying.
p.s. hiding the Cheshire cat?
I don't mind the multiplicity of tools so much as I mind their misuse. For example, Libraries jumping ont he Blog bandwagon when a Billetin BOard would serve the purpose more effectively. Blogs have their place. A library or system could effectively use one to distribute updates and news to interested patrons. Using it as an internal communication tool is... well it bothers me. It offends my OCD about using tools for the jobs for which they were designed. I don't mind adapting, improvising, and overcoming but that tends to apply more to hand tools where anything can be a hammer in a pinch but very few theings can be an oxy acetelyne torch.
Don: Maybe someone will make a mint with something like Trillian for blogs -- where you can use just one program to publish in several blogs at once, and the program takes care of all the formatting and duplication automatically. Of course, then 5 dozen programs just like it would appear in the following month...
tk42: I always hide behind my Cheshire smile! :-D
Bob: You make a very good point there. It's so easy for people or organizations to start using things because they're trendy rather than actually useful or appropriate. Certain libraries have a history of that sort of behavior too -- it's techno-mania without corresponding practicality.
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