Otago2.0

Netvibe: keeping track of blogs

2009-01-06T13:53:00.004+13:00

Netvibe is a reader that provides a fun way to track many types of resources that have RSS feeds like blogs. The thing that makes this reader a fun option is because it is very easy to personalise to suit your needs. One way it does this is by having a personal and public page where the user can add new feeds to one or both.

As more information and updates are made available through tools like blogs, wikis and twitter a reader becomes vital to be able to track of all of these. Netvibe makes it easy to add the feeds from all these tools. You can then sort each of them into the tabs, on the personal or public page, depending on your needs.

Another great thing about Netvibe and the user public page - is that it is very easy to show others what resources you consider valuable by giving them the url to your public Netvibe page.

Twitter and updating others about what is happening

2008-08-19T11:33:00.004+12:00

Many of you may be familiar with RSS feeds. Another option to post updates is through twitter. Most sites are set up to allow a user to receive RSS feeds but these are very one sided, while twitter is about having the capacity to interact with what you are monitoring.

With twitter the user can reply to what has been posted, thus making it more interactive. Through the ability to follow they can also have the tweets appear in their own space. When someone is following another all their followers can see what they are monitoring. An example of using twitter to update others on what is happening can be demonstrated with Creative Commons Australia at http://twitter.com/ccAustralia.

With twitter the user can set up software on their desktop to access their twitter account. Installing software like twhirl makes monitoring those that they are following as well as updating their own tweets much easier.

The other aspect with twitter that makes it more than a match for an RSS feed is like with RSS feeds twitter can be set up as a feed into another site.

Ever wonder where YouTube videos go to die?

2008-05-29T16:33:00.005+12:00

Well, now you can check...
YouTomb is a research project by MIT Free Culture that tracks videos taken down from YouTube for alleged copyright violation. They monitor the most popular videos on YouTube for copyright-related takedowns. Any information available in the metadata is retained, including who issued the complaint and how long the video was up before takedown. The goal of the project is to identify how YouTube recognizes potential copyright violations as well as to aggregate mistakes made by the algorithm.

In the click clique?

2008-05-29T16:04:00.005+12:00

www.dontclick.it is a webspace without buttons to click on. You navigate by moving the mouse to whatever interests you... and pausing there.

Clouds in the OPAC

2008-05-12T13:27:00.006+12:00

Imagine a library catalogue record made up from two distinct sources. The first part is the bibliographic data which we already have, but below this is a tag cloud fed in from Library Thing. For those of us who are visually receptive...

Source: LibraryStream

Panadol or Prozac in the first aid box?

2008-05-12T13:25:00.004+12:00

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) Report found that most adults diagnosed with depression have full time jobs. Reporting on the relationship between Past Year Major Depressive Episode (MDE) among Full-Time Workers Aged 18 to 64 and Occupational Categories, "Education, Training and Library" ranked 6th at 8.7%.

Source: United States Department of Health and Human Services: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

Library Christmas Party Photos 2007

2008-05-06T12:04:00.004+12:00

This is an example of a link to an online photo album on picasa

Glossary of Terms

2008-05-05T19:55:00.014+12:00

A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is generated not only by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Usually, freely chosen keywords are used instead of a controlled vocabulary. Folksonomy is a portmanteau of the words folk and taxonomy, hence a folksonomy is a user generated taxonomy.

A digital mashup is a digital media file containing any or all of text, graphics, audio, video and animation drawn from pre-existing sources, to create a new derivative work.

A social network websites uses software to build online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

A tag cloud (or weighted list in visual design) is a visual depiction of user-generated tags used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag.

A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.

Retrieved from Wikipedia on 5 May 2008 in accordance with their Copyright statement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

Social networking in the workplace

2008-04-29T12:54:00.004+12:00

New Zealand Herald article: Young workers 'expect access to Facebook'

Blogger beware

2008-04-29T09:47:00.004+12:00

New Zealand Herald Article: Bad blogs get you 'dooced'

Out-Law.com article: French websites liable for story in RSS reader

In support of flexible working hours

2008-04-29T09:41:00.002+12:00

A timely article in light of the new legislation.

New Zealand Herald article: Job flexibility key to productivity and loyalty: study