Thursday, September 27, 2007

Still it comes....

I made a slideshow with music, copying an idea from a Central TAFE 23 Thinger - and embedded it into a post here on the blog. I'm too tired to work out whether there is a way to stop the jolly thing from playing, but every time I open the page now I hear the "chi chi chi, chi chi chi" soundtrack I added.

Driven to distraction, I have changed the date on the post so it is pushed off the front page. If you want to hear those "chi chi" sounds, you can still click through tothe Slideshow of the Library 2.0 unconference.

Sorcerer's apprentice

In an attempt to stop the slide show from loading automatically because it is embedded in the first post, I'm adding this emergency, band-aid post. Please stop.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Impressed

Gee there's some really good reflective posting going on at the moment. I'm checking the browser for libkat a couple of times a day and feeling a little sad when there is no new post. The time to check seems to be just after hometime - people seem to be winding down a bit by blogging. Nice.

I've realised that I'm going to have to go back again a subscribe to comments feeds for all the blogs if they are available. Bloglines seems to have better autodiscovery of feeds, so maybe I'll try pasting the URL into adding subscription there, then export the whole bunch into google reader. Still playing with that one.

There are varied levels of skill at all this, but overall I've been very pleasantly surprised that people are doing more sophisticated blogs than I expected. I'm writing weeks 6 and 7 today, and I feel much more confident that people will cope with it easily.

I've noticed that the 23 things are progressing from tools you can use for yourself (blogs, gmail) to tools you can use to collaborate with small groups (wikis) through to the outrageously social in later weeks. I'd like to pretend it was deliberate.

There are a small number of people who have registered who haven't started at all - and a few I know have done tasks but not marked them on the wiki. I'm wondering whether they'd appreciate a bit of help, and the best way to offer it.

Monday, September 24, 2007

My workflow with RSS

I read a lot of feeds, but most of the folk in my online network would read the same amount as me.

LOTS OF FEEDS
According to the "Trends" in my google reader, I subscribe to 230 feeds and in the last 30 days, I read 1395 items. I would guess that maybe 4 of these items per week are emailed out to someone else at work.

FOLDERS
I have about 30 feeds in my "00 I read this" folder, that are at the top of my list of feeds and I tend to watch daily. There are another 50 or so in my "01 I sorta read this" folder. I read these weekly. The rest are categorised into folders like "51 Library techie - hot " , "53 Library techie - warm" or "31 - Australian library " - they get a look in every fortnight or so.

I subscribe to blogs by people who read other blogs - by following their links, I read excerpts from more than just 30 blogs each day.

TO ME, IT'S NOT ANOTHER PLACE TO LOOK

I'm not too fussed about being notified when there is an update or having to "go" to a different place. I have so many windows open at once, that to me, all of these sites ARE already in the same spot - in my browser on the web. It doesn't feel like another place to go - just different facets of the same place.

Right now, I have 34 Firefox tabs open on my home PC and another 3 open in Internet Explorer. On my work laptop, where I'm writing this, I have 10 tabs open.

Each morning when I switch on my home PC I open up:
1. Firefox
1.1 Gmail for sirexkat
1.2 Twitter
1.3 My blog, Librariansmatter.com to check who has linked to it overnight
1.4 librariesinteract.info to check whether anyone had contributed a post that needs publishing
1.5 Sitemeter to see hits on Librariansmatter
1.6 Google reader to read my feeds
1. 7 My Facebook account
1.8 My "Remember the Milk" account so I can see my To Do list

2. Internet Explorer
2.1 Webmail for work - as it being a Microsoft product it works best in IE
2.2 Gmail account for libkat (as I can't log into two on the same browser)
2.3 Google reader for libkat

3. Thunderbird mail reader
3.1 For my "running the household" email account with my ISP

4. Outlook calender
4.1 Our central "running the household" calendar that Co-Pilot and I sync our PDAs to.


Within a few minutes I also have open:
5.1 Several posts from my reader upon which I comment
5.2 Several links that friends have thrown out on twitter
5.3 Del.icio.us that I have used to bookmark the most useful lot from 4.1 and 4.2 .

Using the ALT TAB key sequence, I give all of them my continuous partial attention.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Two otters holding hands

Well, Ruby Tuesday over at Blog 1 posted a cute animal clip, so I just couldn't resist. It's not a Lion Hug like she posted, but it is very, very cute. Keep watching, because they drop hands and then do it again....

Awwww....

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Spam filter and gmail

I just found a whole lot of emails in the spam filter for my libkat@gmail account. I thought maybe eveyone had gone all coy and wasn't emailing me their blog addresses.

Problem solved and I'll add the big bunch of blogs to the list when I go into work today.

Monday, September 17, 2007

69 Things marked off

Wow! There are smilies or dates or checks in 69 boxes on the chart already.

Some people have not emailed me their blog address, but have ticked off their blog on the chart, or entered the blog address there. I'm not sure whether they are ready to have it added to the list of participant blogs yet. Probably they are - but I'd hate to post a link to something that people don't want others to know about yet. I'll add a note about it when I send out the next two Things.

I'll also send a note out asking people who work ahead to find my "libkat" profiles rather than my real profile. Someone has already friended the Facebook libkat one, and another person has friended my real twitter account. I guess I don't mind..but it feels kind of funny.... As one of my twitter friends said last night after he found his mum and sister on Facebook - "The real world is beginning to invade Facebook and I'm not sure I like it".

If anyone is reading this, the twitter account to friend is http://twitter.com/libkat and the Facebook one is http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=642109108

I have the first workshop tomorrow. Mr9 is going into Princess Margaret to have his teeth done under a general anaesthetic, so I'm not sure I'll be 100% focussed on the task at hand. Poor kid has to be there from 10 - 6 :(

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Two blogs already !

Two people have already created their blogs, and we are only 4 days in.

Someone else was asking about how to upload an image to the sidebar. You just use the "Picture" page element on the "Page Elements" tab. Yes, it does automatically resize. To get the image from your PC, you need to use the "browse" option.

With 60+ people registered, next week is going to be very, very interesting as I am deluged by new blogs to put on the participant's blogs page and to subscribe to. I have folders ready in my email box for "blogs notified", "blogs done" etc...and have been working on tags for google reader so I can keep the feeds in some kind of sensible order.