That's All? Ah.... We will miss you Library Lady!

It seems like yesterday that my friend Pam invited me to join her for great, self-reliant summer activity. Yep, Betty Blogger - Web 2.0. As an IT professional and never one to turn down a chance to learn something new, I said, sure, count me in. 


Well, thank you, Pam, and you too Library Lady. I've had a great time digging around on the Web, learning about Web 2.0 technologies, and practicing the new skills I'd dug up!


I've learned a lot in the last eight weeks. Before this course, I had been sitting on the periphery of some social networking services pretty much just so that I could sound intelligent when speaking about them to students. But by completing this course, I have filled in a lot of gaps in my understanding about what Web 2.0 services have to offer and how they integrate with each other and across multiple platforms of communication.

1. After taking the Betty Blogger summer school, on a scale of 1-10 (1 being "web 2.huh?" and 10 being "web 2.guru"), how would you rate your knowledge of Web 2.0 and it's applications?
   
   Hmmm... Well, I certainly wouldn't say I was a web 2.guru by any means. That claim requires a trip to university. I would say I am now somewhere in the web 2.know range.
   
   
2. Did the Betty Blogger summer school meet your expectations?
   
   Yes, I would say it did. As a member of the staff at Gary Allan High School, I am quite familiar with the concept of self-reliant study, of course, so I had some idea of what to expect.
   
   
3. Did the Library Lady meet your expectations?
   
   Indeed. A bit of humour as a garnish to one's curriculum always helps with the digestion!
   
   
4. What was most challenging part of the Betty Blogger summer school? Why?
   
   Not sneaking ahead to the next week's lesson! And, yes, on a more serious note, I know there were hiccups in a few of the lessons as their host services grew and changed their sites leaving the instructions not quite matching what students saw when they arrived. But as our Library Lady said, this is the nature of the beast when dealing with ever-evolving technologies.
   
   
5. How successful did you find the “self-directed” learning model?
   
   Well, I guess, in light of my day job, I'd better say very successful, hadn't I? <G> !!!
   
   As mature adults, we live in an andragogical world, long since graduated from the pedagogy of a conventional classroom where a teacher held our hand through each step of life's lessons. When we want to create a new dish, we look to our cookbooks, sift through the pages until we find just the right recipe and then proceed to gather the ingredients and follow the directions in a self-directed manor. So, for the majority of adults, independent learning comes naturally.
   
   
6. If we ran this program again, would you recommend us to a friend?
   
   You bet!

It's A Library Thing

Task number 9, can you believe it already? Where the heck did the summer go?

LibraryThing... Hmmm...

Seems like a tool worth spending some time investigating. What I have looked at so far is just scratching the surface.

Once the weather turns outside ugly, though, I think I will take a closer look.

In the meantime, here is my collection so far:

My LibraryThing!

Task 8 - Really Simple!

RSS feeds have been around for a very long time. Long before the buzz word, Web 2.0 was ever uttered. In the high and far off times, one subscribed through an email client and the resultant feeds read sort of like communal email messages. Boring. No pictures apart from the ones you conjured in your head as you read along. I used to subscribe, along with my fellow Tales From the Wonderzone authors, to my editor, Julie Czerneda's newsgroup. We would share life's tidbits with each other, quite prolific at times as is the case with we writerly types. I actually miss the simplicity of it. Since then, real life has stepped in between me and my creative side, I'm afraid. I haven't given up the thought that perhaps someday I will find the time to revisit my fictional side.

Yet, I digress...

For this exercise, I have chosen to subscribe to Wet Paint's Castle Latest News feed. That way I can keep up with all the latest gossip and spoilers for the up and coming fourth season of my favourite TV show!

I then decided I should move in a more cerebral direction. I found a great feed that caters to us greenhorn Apple programmers. A so-called 'pretentious Mac snob' now myself for nearly two years, and having, as I said before, dipped my toe into the PC programming sea, I thought it time to take the plunge on the Mac side. I haven't really had a chance to look too deeply into this Mac App Storm feed, but plan to as soon as time permits.

Lastly, I added a very popular feed that showcases plugins for Adobe Photoshop image editing software. This Smashing Magazine feed is cluttered with advertising, but once you sift through that, you find some real gems! I shared this one.

Man, I miss the spell checker built into my Mac OS and browser... I am writing this on my son's PC and having to copy the text herein into MS Word to check spelling is such a hassle! Yes, and thus the justly-earned moniker above... LOL...

Task 7 - Wee Little Wikis

What dish will I bring to our family meal?
Well, in keeping with our lessons' themes, I will bring a batch of the wonderful lemon curd tarts I described in last week's lesson on the productivity tools in Google Docs.


How was my PBWorks experience? 
Alright, I suppose, although I was a bit confused as to what killer kittens has to do with our family picnic menu!


Was it easy to use?
Yes, I think it was fairly straight forward. I think the embedded video in the instructions was really helpful.


Do I have any need for my own wiki?
Not that I can think of right at the moment, but, hey!, Never say never!

Betty Blogger - Task 6 - Lemon Memories

The following is a link to a published Google Doc I wrote remembering the days when my Grandmother and I would make lemon curd tarts. I needed to change the permissions on this document as, by default, it was created as being accessible only to me, as per the settings in my Google account. I have shared this document as public so anyone can read it. I also made the link to open in a new window so you don't loose this one:

Lemon Memories

Or, you can read the document in the following embedded frame.

Please note that to accomplish this, the embedded code copied from the share window in Google Docs was pasted, not to the Compose tab in this blog's edit window but to the Edit HTML tab. Otherwise, the copied code syntax appears in the blog as plain text, not as an embedded frame.

I have also coded an adjustment to the width of the frame as Blogger's default is far too narrow for a full page document. It leaves one scrolling back and forth as well as up and down to read it! Not cool...




Enjoy!

Betty Blog - Lesson 5 - Picasa

• If I were honest, I would have to admit, that in a fundamental sense of the word 'art', I couldn't pass off a stick person as human to save my own life. That is why, for folks like myself, digital art is a godsend. Put a pencil in our hand and we will make you a grocery list, put a computer in our hands and even we can produce something worth sharing beyond a shopping cart.

The advent of digital imagery has changed the way we think of photography on many levels, not the least of which, as our Library Lady has taught us, is that it has opened up the possibility of sharing our photographs electronically, instantly, and with the entire world. The geek in me, however, is compelled to note that storing your photos in web albums is also a means of backing up those precious, irreplaceable memories and instances of your creative genius! It not only replicates the files stored on your local computer, but it stores them remotely so that in the event your computer meets with some sort of mishap, be it theft, breakdown, or---God forbid---flood, fire, or earthquake, your images are away from harm  safely out there in the "cloud". If disaster should strike, you can recover your images from your web albums as simply as downloading them to that shiny new laptop insurance has bought. Of course, this would never be our sole backup method. We all back our personal data up on some sort of removable media at home as well, right? Because we can't have little Sarah take her first step a second time, now can we?

One such place to share and store your digital media is, of course, Google's Picasa. As Library Lady has noted, it is not the only such service out there, but it is one of the most trusted and one of the most popular. 

As I'm certain most folks do, I often turn to Google's image search to find digital artwork to augment projects I'm working on. But, oddly enough, when for this lesson the matter of subject was left unabated, I must admit I had no idea what to search for! As it was, I ended up going around and around in circles until I happened to stumble upon this gem:

This handsome fella was among the photos in an album of Greg Picot's, snapped in Kingsbrae Gardens, New Brunswick. Thus, it stands to reason that he should be tagged with keywords, such as:

• 
  
• Alpaca
• Kingsbrae Gardens
• New Brunswick
• St. Andrews

I went ahead and created a Picasa profile for myself, more or less for the experience of it. In keeping with the lessons learned last week, I restricted the amount of personal information I shared. I populated it with a half a dozen pictures of my two dogs, Katie and Darcy. Check it out if you'd like:

Beverley Meincke's Picasa album

As for whether or not I will continue to use Picasa once our course is complete; I don't honestly know. As a Mac user, as I have mentioned before, I am a subscriber to Apple's MobileMe which is host to a similar service, one that I have found more convenient simply because of its association with MobileMe's other features that I use on a daily basis. 

Not to mention the fact that, iCloud, MobileMe's successor, lies in wait just around the corner for its release this fall and promises to make the sharing and storing of digital media even faster and easier! Not just for us pretentious Mac snobs, either! <G>

Oh Where. Oh Where Has Our Library Gone?

Well, this week's lesson is Twitter, something I have been a part of for awhile now. I fought against it almost as long as I fought against Facebook, but I caved and created an account when it became the only way I could get in on free iPhone apps from this one particular publisher that would only allow those who tweeted about them to download their games! Great games, too... If you're as big a geek as I am, check them out @taptaptap.


Anywho,
The first task in our lesson was to search for and follow the Burlington Public Library. Not sure what I am missing, but I have, as I said in my tweet, searched up, down, left, right, and sideways and can find public libraries in every Burlington on earth...apart from the one I live in. I can readily find the Oakville Public Library too, and a Halton Library system in the UK, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress. Etc... However, I can find no hint of our Library Lady's home sweet home.


Perhaps I will drop in one day and see what I'm doing wrong. But for now...

• What do I think of Twitter?
  I think it has the potential to be of great value, but also to be a grand waste of time. Unfortunately, the grand waste of time has a nasty habit of eclipsing the great value. When one follows any number of people, the instances of what so-and-so had for lunch tend to far outnumber tweets of any real meaning. Sure, it's great fun to see that your favourite television personality has an interest in common with yourself, but, in the grander scheme of things, so what?
  
• Do you have concerns about social networking?
  Yes. Not so much for myself, as my level of education on the subject has directed me as to how to take precautions to protect personal information, but this is not the case for an alarmingly large number of young people who hop onto the social networking bandwagon on the heels of their peers with all the confidence in the world that they are immune from any potential harm. The authors of the websites set things up to keep users safe, right? NOT!
  
• Will you continue to use Twitter after the Betty Blogger program?
  Well, sure! As long as there are more free apps to be had for it <G>.

Betty Blogger Task 3 - Tagging

I would just like to begin by noting that, contrary to what the folks at Diigo would have users believe, the concept of synchronizing bookmarks across multiple devices and platforms is nothing new. Services such as MobileMe have offered this capability for years, allowing subscribers to synchronize bookmarks, email, personal data files, and contacts across any number of Macs, PCs and even mobile devices. This data is stored in "the cloud" making it available from anywhere. So, you see, the sharing of bookmarks is not new to Web 2.0 technologies!

That off my chest, I have added the Wet Paint Castle Spoilers page to my bookmarks as I am a great fan of the television show. Who couldn't love fellow Canuck, Nathion Fillion, or the cute a button host of the Wet Paint Entertainment video blogs, Jager Weatherby? I tagged this bookmark with Castle and Spoilers. Very imaginative, I know.

I tried to tag Gary Allan High School's homepage, garyallan.ca, however, the page is created in frames and the Diigo Add Bookmark window comes up truncated within the page's banner, making navigating it impossible. <sigh>

I also bookmarked the Apple Homepage and tagged it, Apple and Mac. Again, very imaginative, I know, but I was eager to get to the Mac App Store and download the new Mac OS Lion that was released today!!! I should add the tag, Wahoo!!!

Will I continue to use the Diigo service once this course is complete? Not really sure yet. I'm not overly excited about it yet, but really haven't given it a fair shake yet, either, so I'll reserve judgement on that for now...

Streaming - Betty Blogger Task Two

And we thought that Star Trek replicators were nothing but science fiction:

Hah!

Check out this 3D printer developed by a company in the UK and you might not be so sure...

I don't think a day goes by that I don't visit YouTube for something, whether it's to follow a link sent to me in an email or just to catch up on a guest spot one of my favourite personalities made on a late night talk show that I missed. Sure, there are some, "what the heck?" things out there and some, "bet he regretted that once he sobered up" things like this:

But then again, believe it or not, this last clip went almost instantly viral and has now been seen over 28 million times!!!

And streaming makes this so easy. First of all, the technology is fast enough to, as its name suggests, keep media playing with little or no interruption, and is available on just about any Internet connected device out there, heck, including some refrigerators! Seriously... The number of devices such as digital cameras and smartphones that offer built-in software that allows users to upload media immediately after recording it right from the device is growing exponentially. That, in itself, is a pretty good indication of the faith hardware manufactures have its longevity. Second, as there is no need to download an item in its entirety before it can be viewed, there is no need to consume large amounts of local disk space in order to store items downloaded for viewing. This is especially significant in the case of digital video files that can, particularly if they are offered in high definition, take up gigabytes of it in no time!

And then there is the benefit of "instant gratification". No need to wait until the entire item is downloaded, you can begin watching, or enjoying the viewing experience along with friends or family, on the spot. With the prevalence of wireless technologies... any spot!

Enjoy a clip so much you might want to come back to it again later? No problem. Just ask your device to "bookmark" it. Chances are pretty good, it will still be there when you get back to it.

All in all, I would say streaming is a technology that's here to stay. I know I'm hooked!

I would say on a scale of 1 to 10 my knowledge of Web 2.0 technologies is at 6.5.

The term is attributed to Tim O'Reilly escalating it into general use at his 2004 O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference, not so much as a second generation of World Wide Web hardware infrastructures as its version-numbersentric name would suggest, but as a new communication age 'genre' if you will, comprised of web applications designed to see that information sharing on the Internet is more user driven, even to the level of content development, in contrast to past Web technologies that have seen users as purely spectators. The term Web 2.0 represents cumulative growth in software development and user participation.

Web 2.0 technologies include everything from AJAX applications to blogs, tags, RSS, Podcasts, and social networking phenomenons such as Facebook.

Some of these applications I have participated in, others I look forward to this course giving me a chance to do so!