Week 4 Rss Task 9

October 31st

This week we're looking at newsfeeds

I started with Bloglines using the search term ‘cats’. However I soon discovered that it picks up both relevant and irrelevant sites with the world ‘cats’ in it presumbly because it is searching in all fields. This is like using a search engine on the Internet and needs to be further refined. I had the same problem with Feedster. Topix.net wasn’t much help either however I did like its one year memory of results (which can be helpful if you’re looking for something that was in the news months ago). I didn’t think much of the layout of Syndic8. Random headlines, ramdom feeds, approved feeds, where do you start.

I was interested in the fact that each search tool produced different results. No one blog was to be found searching with another search tool. However this may be due to the generic and simple nature of my search term and reflects my lack of experience searching blogs. But having said that I often find multiple entries for sites in different search engines when looking for websites.

And I havn't even mentioned cats since week one. Hopefully the photo sharing technology we're going to look at in coming weeks will change that.

Week 4 RSS Task 8

October 31st

So here we are again...

This week its RSS. The advantage to RSS is that by using XML you don't have to know all the opening and closing tags that you'd use to create a HTML based webpage. Creating links to images and sites now becomes incredibly easy (providing the links remain up to date). Could we use this at Yarra Plenty? This could be the means of providing up to date information but there are also issues about content appropriateness.

Week 3: photos and images

Well it's week three already...

Webmonkey < http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/06/08/
index4a_page3.html?tw=commentary > is worth having a look at. It has 10 examples of Flickr mashups including ‘Spell with Flickr’, with which you can spell out a message with photographs of letters and numbers, and a guessing game called ‘Fastr’.

Trading card maker < http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php > looks pretty interesting. It allows you to paste images onto trading cards. You can even add images from sites as long as you have the URL and an active link. Of course you’d have to watch out for copyright or annoying someone whose image you use.

See ya next week

Monday, October 21, 2006

Week 2: blogging

Well, this is my second posting. I'm finally starting to get the hang of this stuff.

It seems this technology could have some important uses for library staff. I noticed on the staff intranet that some staff are proposing setting up a shared account for each branch or for different subject areas such as children's literature. Sounds good.

Bye for now

Week one: why my cat is the best

Week one and the fun has just began...

Kitkat lives with my parents in a retirement village in Bundoora (yes even cats have to retire). He is white with ginger/brown covering on his back and extremities (paws, back, head, tail, nose).