Week 8: Thing 15 - Technorati

When I first heard about Technorati, it sounded pretty cool. Being able to search for things that had just been published seconds before? Nifty! However, I'm not so excited about it now. The downside of searching everything on the net seems to be that it loads slowly. By this I mean it's taking a good 10-15 seconds to load anytime I click on anything. Which is pretty slow for high speed internet.

I also tried searching Technorati and then Google and Google Blog Search. Google and Google Blog Search came up with results faster, and the results better matched what I was searching for. Although Technorati did come up with some good blogs.

Week 8: Thing 14: del.icio.us

I have never heard of del.icio.us before. I did have fun playing on it though. To see how it differs from a regular search engine, I did a search for cupcakes (I like cupcakes). de.icio.us came up with different cupcake recipes, a blog devoted entirely to discussing cupcakes (complete with yummy looking pictures), and a clothing line called Johnny Cupcakes. Then I searched Yahoo for the same. The first listing is for a wikipedia entry on cupcakes, then several bakeries, and a few recipes.

In this instance, del.icio.us was more helpful, if I'm searching for cupcakes, it's more likely that I want to make them rather than buy them. And they had more recipes right off the bat (including one for Maple Bacon Cupcakes.

I had no trouble with the tags, mostly they were for ingredients or a city for a bakery. All in all, this seems like a pretty nice way to keep track of bookmarks, and to keep them organized.

I wasn't sure how this could be used for libraries (other than having patrons use it), until I looked at some of the library pages listed in the 23 Things. Libraries could use this to keep track of articles or webpages that pertain to library news (either for them, or other libraries around the nation), or helpful webistes, or local businesses, etc. Then they could post a link to their del.icio.us page on their website. That way, they won't have to go through and organize the links and post them all on their own website, they can just add new ones when they want to and use tags so that people can use them to find the link they want.

This could be useful as a research assistance tool. If someone wanted information a certain topic they could search for tags with it. Not all internet resources are accurate though, so I wouldn't really trust this as a research tool.

Week 7: Thing 13 - LibraryThing

I had never heard of LibraryThing until now. I love it! I've always wanted to catalog my books, and this makes it so easy. I can easily see how this would come in handy for small libraries to use as their catalog. I also like how I can look at my books and then see other people who have them and read their reviews. Then use the tags to find similar books that I would enjoy.

I think my favorite part is the virtual bookshelf though, I love seeing the covers of books that I like. It makes me want to read them all over again.

Here is my virtual library (with just the five books from this activity so far):
April's Virtual Library

Week 7: Thing 12 - Image Generator

I spent some time playing with the Image Generators and had a lot of fun! I can see how many of these can be used in a library, to decorate bulletin boards, displays, or for activites and workshops.

I spent the most time playing on The Generator Blog . I like the generators that let you edit peoples appearances, like piZap or Yearbook Yourself.

I also had a lot of fun making my own brands of soda, my own tapes, and making sparkly text. Here is an example of what I made with Glowtxt:



I think this kind of thing would come in handy for websites. Maybe not the main library website, but if there was a special section for Teen Advisory Boards. I know some libraries have bulletin boards for their TABs, this could be an online space for them. They could decorate it with fun text, and use the generators to create pictures of things like their own sodas to represent them online.

Edit: I went back and made an avatar on the Meez website and posted it to the sidebar here!