Week 5: Library Thing Stuff

I set up an account and explored the Library Thing site. It was very easy to use. Books you load are matched with books in other members' libraries which could be good for social networking and getting recommendations.

The 'Gallery' function was nice, featuring the author portraits of books in your library. Author portraits happen to be a favourite of mine. Here's a good one: Banana Yoshimoto (pictured)

Unfortunately, I could not get the search widget to appear on my blog.

Week 4: Feeding time

Well that was super. I had had this RSS thing explained to me a couple times by various people, and I had nodded "I see, I see..." yet had NOT seen. I didn't get it. Now I have seen.

I can immediately see the value in subscribing to blogs. I have often found an interesting blog and saved it to my 'Favourites' folder on my browser only to find myself on a different computer and having no way of finding my way back to the blog. Never again.

I subscribed to a bunch of art and fashion blogs because I like to see the pictures. I rarely read blogs, but enjoy skimming through them. Also subscribed to this Good News site because I hate bad news, some friends' blogs and library news feeds but I guess there's little need to spell it out when it is so conveniently illustrated on my list of shared items.

Week 3: Mashing it up

I made a flicker account and uploaded some photos I had taken a couple years ago of poems made out of cigarette health warnings. Those health warnings are terrible. I would attack my flatmates packets with vivids and make them entirely new cases full of collages made out of national geographic cuttings. However, this has nothing to do with Web 2.0.

For my Web 2.0 lesson, I attempted and failed to work out how to put the photographs them on the world map using a 3rd party application. They were taken in Dundee, Scotland so that would have been pretty rad. But I managed to put one up on this blog:

A friendly colleague pointed me in the direction of a great mash ups site: Multicolr search lab




I picked some dicordant colours and got a pretty selection of images which I then attempted to paste them into my blog. Perhaps the above chaotic ramble of thumbnails is what I intended. Who would ever know?

Finally I looked at an online image generator called Letter James which I used to create the image below.

All up I found this week's lesson rather fun, thanks and see you again next week.

Week 2: The digital stage

Having already become familiar with facebook (and myspace back in 2007 when it was the hippest thing out) this week I endeavoured to take a look at bebo and linkedIn.

I signed up to linkedIn because I couldn't seem to browse any of the groups as a guest. Naturally, I automatically signed up with a psuedonym, because I don't really like to put my personal details on semi-public sites. But linkedIn is like a job seeking site / social networking site, so it really requires a real name.

I searched on google and found a comparative review that looked at some pros/cons on linkedIn and facebook. I agree that the silly applications that facebook features are a waste of time but it is really quite easy to ignore them. I use facebook solely as a means of finding out about events and contacting people I am not intimate enough with to email or text. A friend of mine (facebook friend/real friend) uses the live feed function as a 'stage' to 'perform' on. I am too shy.

Bebo seemed like even further towards the solely social side of the continuum. I found a song from a band I liked: the chromatics in the city, and I could watch the video streamed from youtube.

I think these sites work well for advertising events, and for gathering a large pool of distant more formal contacts (fans for bands, venues, institutions like the library). They rely on the digital word-of-mouth: if someone mentions it, everyone they know hears about it. Sometimes its nicer to casually glance over what other people are doing / are into, rather than be emailed or spammed about it.

Week 1: An exercise in credulity

Credulity is the man's weakness, but the child's strength.
- Charles Lamb

If this course is all about play then it seems appropriate to suspend my attitude of skepticism about the new interactive web technologies springing up everywhere like they're going out of fashion.

Perhaps it is a way of complexifying the ways in which we interact. Which is good. I like complexifying.

I consumed the podcast, signed my learning contract, made a gmail account, created a blogger identity, changed the colour of my links, posted this blog post, all with no trauma Well, perhaps signing the contract was a minor trauma. Commitment, you know.