#17 & #18 Web 2.0 Conclusion

Interesting to learn about various sites for blogging, searching blogs, photo and video sharing.
However there was really not the time in a working day to spend on the amount of content provided in this course.
Perhaps it would be better to present this as a weekly series of seminars over a certain period that people can attend voluntarily or in the 9-10am time slot. Then people can go away and work on further exercises when time permits or that are of interest. That would be a far more realistic goal, providing a much more useful outcome.

#15 & #16 YouTube etc

Had a look at YouTube. A good video sharing site. Successfully loaded a video into my blog! Yippee!
Familiar with ITunes.

#12, #13 & #14 Tools & Technology.

Looked at the page on Zoho Writer.
Use technology everyday and agree there is too much emphasis on technology at present, but it will swing back or balance out eventually.
Enjoyed exploring the 'Yelp' site as a way of discovering more about a city or possible travel destination.

#10 & #11 Flickr

Very good image sharing site. Some really beaut pics.

This is a favourite image - a great shot of early morning mist through the trees.

Good to see the other uses of Flickr images on third party Flickr applications.

#8 & #9 Tagging, Deli.icio.us & Technorati.

Could not get into this exercise at all.
Maybe it is information overload, but I could not see the usefulness of tagging bookmarks or what benefit such an exercise would be in research.
Also, the Deli.icio.us website has a very uninspiring presentation, that does not encourage one to explore further.

#6 & #7 RSS

Seems to be a way of linking websites regularly visited and receiving updates from those sites. It certainly saves the time and effort involved in doing the same search or repeating a search for a website.
It would be very useful in libraries & for personal browsing. But there are privacy issues that are not really addressed, in the monitoring of how information is being directed and used. Did not create a Google reader account using blog username and password, as they are not connected to a Google email account.
Tried some of the search tools to find feeds. 'Feedster' was very easy to use and encompassed news, blogs and podcasts. 'Topix' was more confusing - it's cluttered homepage didn't help. 'Google Blog Search' was very straightforward to use with just a topic name entered, but limited only to blogs.

#4 & #5 Wikis

Had a look at all the Discovery exercises on Wikis. Most very useful and interesting. But how reliable? Wikis play around so much with fact and fiction. Tried unsuccessfully to add material to PB Wiki Sandbox.