Annie’s Blog

And so I have reached the end of my Web 2.0 adventure, and here I am, writing yet another reflection post!

I must admit things were different this time round. It was refreshing to have weekly assignments set out for us in this course. In my previous courses there weren’t really any specific blog related subjects or activities, it was used more as a learning and reflection portal. This time having the weekly assignments meant that I went out and immersed myself in Web 2.0 with some sort of guidance, and then used my blog as a place to discuss and reflect. I also found that having the set work for the week meant that I went out and actually engaged and reflected, gave examples and so forth. Rather than just occasionally posting an offhand comment on what was happening in the course. I’ve never really been an avid blogger, and really didn’t enjoy the blog element in my previous degree. Perhaps this time around I was more aware, and had some experience in the course content and the applications we were using, or perhaps because there was more structure to the course content I was better able to engage with it. I certainly enjoyed it more this time, that’s for sure!

I believe that my interaction with my blog was reasonably in depth and persistant, and I managed to update regularly, which was a huge failing in the past. I enjoyed learning about various Web 2.0 applications that were briefly talked about in the Media course, but never really gone into indepth, or discussed in anyway. This time we were invited not only to research and interact with the different Web 2.0 applications available, but we had to think about how they could be useful in an information management sense, and how we could utilize them as resources in our future careers. My previous course felt more as though it were based along the lines of “Here’s something cool, go and check it out.” And that was pretty much the extent of it. We were never really invited to think about the possibilites that these applications might hold for the future of any sort of industry, not even the media industry.

I could probably have improved on my communication, using my blog to comment on other peoples posts, but I must say I have to blame that on not being a terribly social person in real life. Face to face can be daunting enough, but commenting via the internet has never really been my thing. I have a Facebook account, and rarely ever post on my friends walls, and they are people I know quite well in real life, so I guess I was never really going to be keen on commenting on strangers, or almost strangest posts  and view points. I don’t feel I have the confidence or the right to comment on other peoples opinions, even if I agree, so this aspect of social networking and blogging has always been an issue for me. I’m more than happy to discuss peoples blog posts or comments in person, but I really can’t seem to do it over the web, which I find interesting.

I guess my execution and persistance were quite good, especially considering my previous record as a reflective blogger. I really had trouble updating and maintaining my blog in the past, because I wasn’t prodded into action so much. Also I do most of my reflection and consideration of a topic or project in my head, and so don’t necessarily need to nut it out in some sort of physical form, be it a journal or a blog. This means it’s always been a bit of a struggle for me to put my thoughts into words somehow, because it isn’t a natural part of my thinking process or problem solving strategies. I also found that having prior exposure to almost all of the applications we were interacting with, with the exception of Twitter and mashups, helped me to engage and reflect on what I was researching. Because a great deal of it wasn’t new for me, I was really able to focus on my personal reactions to the various software, and the way that it could be utilised in the industry, rather than trying to figure out what it was, and then what it could do. My previous experience certainly helped in this field.

Overall I think I was quite successful with the Web 2.0 application, and I’m really very proud of the progress I have made in regards to regular posts and interaction, perhaps with the exception of the time I was sans internet. I think I could have and probably should have made more of an effort in regards to commenting on other peoples blogs. I was engaging with them and reading, but had trouble bringing myself to comment in any way, so this is something I need to work on in the future. I guess I’m taking it one step at a time. The first step was to blog regularly and make posting part of my natural research and reflective process, now it’s time to work on the social networking and user interaction side of things.

Above is a google map that I just created as a little guide to some of the spots in my home town that are relevant to me in some way. I’ve listed my best friends house, my childhood home, my mothers house and my schools. I actually quite enjoyed making this little map. I can’t say I would have done it for fun had it not been part of the assessment for this course, but none the less it was quite enjoyable. I’m not exactly sure when I would ever utilize this new found skill, but it’s handy to know that should I ever need to create or edit a google map in some way I am able to! It would be a good accompanyment to a travel blog or for keeping friends and family updated about places you have seen and visited if you were overseas.

In regards to mashups, I was a little confused where to start. I really had no idea where to look, so of course I resorted to the trusty old google search, and just typed it into google. I think it was the third link down that mentioned mash ups and API, so I clicked on it and it took to me a site called Programmable Web which allows you to search widgets and mashups by category. I clicked on social and found a few different mashups that I thought were pretty cool.

22 Books

“The primary goal of this site is to collect book lists. Lists of author’s books, award lists, books you want to read, etc. etc. Future plans for the site include the ability to blog your lists, share lists with friends, and much more.” – (James Avery – 22 Books)

This mashup has alot of similarities to LibraryThing, in that it invites users to share information about their book collections, and comment on books and authors. Programmable Web lists the API’s for this particular mashup application as Amazon Ecommerce.

“What was formerly the ECS – eCommerce Service – has been renamed the Amazon Associates Web Service. Through this API developers can retrieve product information. The API exposes Amazon’s product data and e-commerce functionality. This allows developers, web site publishers and others to leverage the data that Amazon uses to power its own business, and potentially make money as an Amazon affiliate. Both REST and SOAP APIs are provided, this profile is for the REST API.” (Amazon eCommerce API Profile – Programmable Web)

And as an example of everything I hate about the internet, Web 2.0, social networking and the like, I found this mashup, which uses Twitters API to regularly update you with Twitter users who have recently used some form of swear word in a post. Cursebird constantly updates so that you can see who’s swearing right now, as we speak. Or blog. It also has a graph at the top of the screen to tell you the most popular swear words and how much their usage has risen or dropped recently. I can’t think of anything more ridiculous really. I mean I’ve already ranted about Twitter, and as if it wasn’t a big enough waste of time already to provide people with microblog posts about what you’re doing every second of the day, someone has now created a tool that lets you see the ways that people are swearing, all over the world, at every second of the day. Sometimes the internet is a great resource and a fantastic research tool. Other times it just shows you how ridiculous and immature a large portion of the human race really is. I guess applications like this have one purpose, and that’s to provide an eye opening experience of how people are wasting their skills and time! (My friend just pointed  out to me that perhaps it could be utilized as sort of drinking game, based on the percentage of a swear word going up or down…)

I haven’t been posting much lately because I am eagerly awaiting the reconnection of my internet after moving house. I know I could have logged on at uni and done some posting, but I prefer to blog in the comfort of my own home.

It’s actually amazing how much harder my life has become now that I don’t have the internet. I guess you realize how important it is to your life until it’s taken away, particularly because I spend a great deal of my leisure time in MMORPG’s (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), mainly World of Warcraft.

In regards to week 5′s topic on videos and photos, I like to think that I have a fair bit of experience with uploading or embedding video into webpages and my blog. The fact that I was given access to the University server space for my last course made this much easier, and many of the videos that have appeared in my blog throughout its brief history have been hosted in this server space and then embedded into the post coding. Now that this blog is no longer hosted through my server space at RMIT, I can’t upload or embed my own videos, so I’ve been linking to them through sites like YouTube and Vimeo.

Long ago in my last course I signed up and made a FlickR account, as part of investigation and research. I never used it again. I don’t have alot of photo’s, and I’m not terribly keen on sharing the few that I do have with strangers. I don’t even like putting photos up in Facebook, and will often remove tags from myself that others have placed.

Having said that, much like MySpace is a fantastic tool for unsigned bands to get out there and get heard, FlickR is a great place for budding photographers and artists to share and comment on each others works, and possibly make it to the big time. It’s also useful for projects or if you’re interested in a particular area and would like some sort of visual, but I have to admit that personally I don’t have a great deal of interest in it, certainly not to share my own images.

Today’s lecture was about Hypertext and HTML coding, which I’ve already covered in my previous tertiary history. Hypertext was covered in the first year of Applied Communication (Media), but I don’t believe that it was explained terribly well. We were then required to muddle our way through the concepts and use HTML to create our own hypertext essays, you can find exploration one here and exploration two two here. All of the HTML coding for these sites was done by hand using a html text editor, not dreamweaver. I also created the layout and coding for this site, as part of my final year assessment. (Please note that the last site on the implementation of digital radio is designed to be viewed on a screen larger than the standard PC dimensions, and so it may not display to full capacity)

The explination offered today was far more thorough and straight forward, or perhaps it is simply that I have more experience in the area and understand the concepts, where as previously I had never been exposed to hypertext or HTML coding, except as an unknowing user.

I can’t even begin to count the amount of rants I’ve had about sites like Facebook and MySpace during my time as host and author of this blog. It seemed that my last course in Media was obsessed with social networking software, but actually failed to ever come up with decent arguments as to why it is ‘the way of the future’ or how it might effect the way that industries are run in the future. We never spent anytime in discussion about why it is so popular, what sort of socio-economic changes, with the introduction of the web and the focus on new technology that seems to drive us now days, have lead to this phenomenon, and where it might lead in the future.

I originally refused to ever get a MySpace or Facebook account. I still loathe MySpace with a passion that is beyond belief, after seeing the ways that it was normally used for blatant and gross self promotion. I think it’s a fantastic tool for bands and artists to get their work out there and seen, but when you’re just a normal person, trying to tell the world how cool and individual you are by joining a mass produced website, and then listing the same interests as anyone else, I’m sorry but I’m pretty sure I hate you.

I was never going to get a Facebook account either, until some genius in a group in Integrated Media during the second year of my Bachelor Degree decided that we should use it as a group discussion forum in regards to a project we were doing on SecondLife. So I joined. Unfortunately then various friends and family members found me, and I felt obliged to accept them as friends. I still have my Facebook account, as it does serve some sort of useful purpose in my life as it stands at the moment. My brother and his wife teach English in China, and I only see them in person once every couple of years, so it has been useful in keeping each other updated about our ever day lives. It also helps me keep in contact with my friends back home in the country, as I rarely have the time or money to travel back, and it allows us to stay informed and in touch. Having said that I don’t mind using the phone every now and again to have a proper conversation with them either. I think Facebook is a fantastic tool for keeping in contact with a large and fairly spread out friendship group. It is the people who have lists of so called ‘friends’ a mile long, many of whom they barely even know, that drive me  up the wall. I also don’t get into this applications business much. I mean if you want to play Scrabble cross continents with people you barely know, or see how many people you can recruit to your ever growing Vampire Army, go nuts. But I’ll just keep my nice basic, boring layout thank you very much. I’ve never changed my Facebook profile picture, and I’ve only got 30 something friends, and that’s the way I’m going to keep it. (Every now and again I even go on a massive culling spree and get rid of people I haven’t talked to in 2 or 3 months…)

I’m not entirely sure there is much call for these kind of sites in a professional context. I suppose libraries could create pages and allow other users to become friends. The libraries page could then work as a type of forum, where people can post their comments on the wall, or visit the profile to get regular updates about what is happening at the library and the services that it provides. Similarly the library itself can use the Events tool to create invitations for those in the Friend list, creating an easy way to let users know the upcoming events hosted in the library and the related details. But surely a website, which is no longer uncommon for facilities to run, is just as useful? If someone is a regular customer of the library and has comments or feedback, isn’t it just as easy to do it in person next time they visit? Call me a traditionalist, but I mean we were given mouths for a reason, why not communicate the old fashioned way? Just because someone created an application that makes socialising the lazy mans sport, do we have to sit at home staring at a screen instead of face-to-face contact? Why is it that I feel since the introduction of these sites, it’s like everyone has suddenly contracted Anthrax, and there’s no possible way we could be within 500m of each other?

Oops, look at that. Another rant about social software, maybe I should start a category just for that!

I did some research into podcasts and RSS feeds last week, but after my massive rant in the last post I kind of forgot to get around to writing about them.

So podcasts. I learnt about these in my last course, but never really got into them. I’ve looked at the software, and am quite capable of making my own, even considered making one or two of my radio pieces available, but decided against it. You can listen to a show reel of some of my radio pieces at this link, I don’t believe I ever got around to posting any of the full versions in this blog.

So I found a couple of free podcasts using the Itunes store on my Mac. The beauty of having a mac means that you have almost all of these kind of applications and software at your fingertips when you buy the computer, so locating and subscribing to free podcasts is as simple as opening Itunes, clicking on the podcast tab in the right hand bar and logging into the Itunes store. From there you can search through hundreds of free podcasts until you find ones that you like.

I found a podcast called Cool Tools for Library 2.0, and thought that it might be highly relevant to the course, and interesting to boot. I’m afraid I’m only right on one of those. Whilst it’s a good little podcast that draws your attention to new and useful web 2.0 applications that could be relevant to an Information Managment practicioner, I’m afraid it is fairly poorly produced, and a little amateur. The narrator’s voice is slow and boring, and she is quite clearly reading off a script. Also, the piece is only short, just over four minutes or so, and yet the first 20 seconds at least is taken up with theme music. The cross fade from music to narration is poorly done as well, with the last of the music actually drowning out the first few sentences of the podcast. But apart from that I guess it’s ok.

Cool Tools for Library 2.0

I also subscribed to another free podcast called believe it or not, Free Library Podcast. I didn’t listen to the entire episode I must admit, as it was an hour long, but this podcast is recorded at the Library of Philadelphia, and is often a recording of talks or lectures they have hosted, or authors talking about their publications.

I also edited the wiki in class today. I have a small amount of HTML coding knowledge and decided that I would attempt to embed a video from YouTube, which I successfully managed to do! It took me a couple of attempts, but I got it up there and working in the end. I have previously embedded the same video in my blog, about two posts back, because I thought it was a cute and simple explanation of the way that Web 2.0 works. Hopefully others will agree with me. I also decided that embedding it in the editable version of the course wiki would mean that students had a better chance at viewing it, rather than if I just left it in my blog.

So I started my post grad this week at RMIT. I’ve missed a few classes due to ill health, but unlike the Applied Communication degree I’ve just completed, the lecturers in this course seem to make good and regular use of the Learning Hub and Blackboard facilities, so I’ve been able to keep up to date and on top of homework. Which brings us to this blog post.

As part of Document Management 1, we are required to set up a blog and explore its options and functions. Lucky for me I already have this baby up and running, and some experience in reflection through blogging. One of our major assesment pieces for the subject is to navigate our way through what’s called Web 2.0 Adventure.

Week by week we work our way through various tasks involving Web 2.0 programs that could be utilzed to enhance the information management field, whether it be for the provider or the client. Examples of these programs include:

• Blogs
• Wiki’s
• RSS feeds
• Podcasts
• Social Networking

And so forth. I have brushed briefly on all of these in some way over the course over my previous degree in Media, so I don’t feel too daunted by the tasks that lie ahead. However what is new, is the approach that I must now adopt towards these programs. Previously I was exploring the ins and outs of this software, what it entailed, what was its purpose, how did it work, why did it work, what was it’s target audience, what was it that this program provided for that particular audience. Whilst all of this is still an important consideration when approaching it from and Information Management angle, it’s now time to take that one step further and consider how Web 2.0 and what it offers can be utilized to benefit those working in the Information field. How can these applications make it easier and faster for us to locate and evaluate the information we seek? How can we as future proffesionals find ways of providing the highest level of information retreavel and can these applications help.

This is also being covered in the subject Information Centre Management, and my particular topic of research is blogs, so there will be more up here on blogs and how they might be utilized by the information management community.

In regards to the blogs we were required to look at as part of this weeks task, I’m quite drawn to LibrarianInBlack.

It has a simple theme and layout, so it’s easily navigated. The side bar is not too crowded with widgets and applications, but they do give it a little more life and interest, rather than a plain slab of text. The articles are short and susinct, but remain relative and interesting, and provide you with links to the appropriate information. This site acts more as a portal to the information, rather than acting as provider in itself. It cuts out the middle man of having to trawl through the web yourself for interesting titbits about the industry and what’s happening. There isn’t a great deal of personal reflection about the author’s role in the industry, or the effects that certain applications are having, and this is just a further indication that it works well as a portal for others check up on and navigate their way through, rather than a personal or information based blog