#16 Podcasts, Smodcasts

Running out of January here so might have to use my time effectively by writing my post while I wait forever for the podcast I'm downloading to download. Although there are lots of podcasts out there it still isn't that easy a thing to search for. I searched podcast alley and podcast.net but you kind of have to browse the subject lists to see if there is something there that takes your fancy. Podcasts are great for lectures or talks when you already know what you are looking for and where to find it, say one of the talks given at the state library but less specific searching tends to mean you end up browsing which is time consuming. Long download times are very tedious as are numerous messages to install software. I guess if you have itunes installed on your broadband computer at home it could be more fun.Of course music is still the obvious domain of the podcast and for this it is brilliant. Well, finished my post and that stupid podcast about library news I was downloading still isn't done so bad luck podcast exercise, another time perhaps - click!

#15 Youtube

Why youtube is good - I have seen many photos of this installation in mags etc but didn't think much of it til I saw this on youtube:

It's Olafur Eliasson's Weather project at Tate Modern in London. Isn't it beautiful?
Downside of youtube? Waiting forever for the video to load but maybe that's just a work network thing.

#14 Discovering more Web 2.0 tools

Had a look through the web awards. Checked out Wetpaint wiki site as it scored ahead of pbwiki which I had played with earlier. The templates seem more attractive and the interface a bit more intuitive but it was sooooo slooowwww!I had another browse through the site which looked just as attractive today but it was still slow to load pages. I thought that would be a massive turn off for people if you wanted them to visit often and add lots of fresh content. Got sick of waiting so I had a look at the ominously named "Fun" category of the awards. There I found One Sentence: true stories told in one sentence. It was indeed fun, and witty and interesting. I felt the judges were a bit harsh only giving it one star for usefulness. I can imagine having something similar for a library site where users could write one sentence book reviews. Users could rate the review or the book or both!

#13 - blog on tech

I'm starting to lose count of the number of things I've subscribed to. It's very convenient to have access to lots of info aggregating tools and other applications on the web but you can end up with an awful lot of passwords and logins. After a while it's tempting to use the same one over and over again but that might not be a great idea.
There is a constant tradeoff between convenience and privacy and/or security. If you want to participate fully in the web 2.0 culture the pressure to forego certain rights or expectations increases steadily. For example you have to not mind too much who is accessing your content - pictures, posts, info. That's the whole point - it's a porous dynamic resource that is shared. It helps to have a trusting, optimistic nature. If you do, the rewards can be huge - extensive, vibrant online communities, a cornucopia of content and opportunities, and it's all free! These huge multibillion dollar websites just want you to join in and enjoy yourself. If you are concerned you can always read everything in full, turn up the privacy settings to the max, say no to all the unsolicited emails, not take unusual comments too seriously and never give your real name, but it gets to be a lot of work and the fun can drain away a bit.
There is also the question of personal investment. How much time and effort are you prepared to commit to your online life? It is certainly time consuming if nothing else and life is short. If you are going to pour hour after hour of your life into this environment it had better be important to you and in that sense, as lived experience, the virtual does become real.
Then there is the question of who is looking after your virtual world? I think the queen of darkness raised the question of all these .com's becoming the dubious custodians and owners of this vast archive of human experience, memory, culture and trivia. Who's storing all these exabytes and for how long? What happens when they collapse or just become passe? No matter, I'm sure we all have backup copies and print versions...

#12 Web-based applications - not just for desktops

I do like Zoho even though it probably takes more than one visit to master it completely. The posting to your blog option is great and gives you so much more control over the layout of your posts. It did a few odd things with my test post though. It converted a smiley button to the word "laugh!" which made me feel like I was suddenly reading a script with some heavy handing acting prompts. Also I have a background colour on my blog ie charming vellumesque beige,and it dropped out to white where I pasted existing text from Zoho's welcome page. I guess you gradually learn these various quirks as you edit more entries.

intro to zoho

I know its a bit slack but maybe I'll see if I can post a chunk of this to my blog. After all zoho articulates it all so well!
It all seems very wonderful I must say. I wonder at which point, after you have become totally dependent on this online productivity app do you suddenly run out of storage space? I noticed with Zoho show you only get 10mb so not too many big pix inyour presentation.

Can't get the tags thing to work - zoho is convinced the word "test" contains special characters, which is not permitted. Well I guess we're all special characters in some way so too bad zoho! Get over yourself!

Welcome to Zoho Writer

Your Word Processor on the Web

Thanks for signing up with Zoho Writer!

Zoho Writer is the word processor designed for you, the next generation web citizen. Built using AJAX technology, it's fast and revolutionizes the way you work with documents. Having all your documents online (and offline too! we'll get back to that later!!), you have access to them from any computer, at home or at work. And no more emailing them back-and-forth to your colleagues, clients or friends for review, thanks to its instant collaboration, inline commenting and chat facilities.

It will take a lot more than this short welcome document to list all of Zoho Writer's features and hence a chosen few of the Zoho Writer's functionalities below :

Formatting Options:

Bold, italicize, underline, set back ground color & color your words, link to a web page,Set margins, use cool smileys and do much more. Use the same keyboard shortcuts as with any other word processing application for accessing these functions.

No Searching Within Menus:

Most functions are available at a click, thanks to the friendly toolbar. And for the super user in you, a few extra features are accessible with just an extra click.

Polaroid series #1

Polaroid series #1, originally uploaded by mister bend.

Lovely view of the Cathedral at Mount Buffalo, Victoria, by mister bend (but you can call me mister). One could spend a lot of time roaming round flickr. It's easy to find lots of things but then it gets harder to find something in particular, or to go back and find something again if you were silly enough not to tag/fav/bookmark it the first time. I stumbled on this image the first time I searched for images of this popular family holiday destination. then went surfing for a little while on another tangent and next time I searched for Mount Buffalo I got completely different results and rather more prosaic. I found that Mtbuffalo, mtbuffalo, mt buffalo, Mt Buffalo, mount buffalo....all produce different results and there were rather a lot of them - shows the drawback of making up your own tags. Still, it is a wonderful resource for finding and sharing images.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.