Week 6, #15 -- Perspectives on Web 2.0

I believe that the most significant improvements are those that Web 2.0 can bring to library services, such as using an open WorldCat, providing graphical means of searching by place, or using collective tags to make items more easily searchable. The harnessing of collective intelligence is a tool that will help libraries as well as their users.

Week 6, #14 -- Technorati

I spent some time in Technorati and found that a keyword search in posts (972), tags (672), and directory (775) yielded different results. This is not surprising, since people tag different ways and frequently may not tag at all. I searched through favorites, and I searched for blogs on hummingbirds and Rockport, Texas, since that is a topic that is of interest to me. I found 4. I elected not to claim my current blog. Perhaps in the future I may create a blog on hummingbirds and claim that one.

Week 6 -- #13, Tagging with del.icio.us

I created a del.icio.us account last year, and really haven't used it. Today, as I was working on this assignment, I attended a library program presented by one of our geography profs that really slammed home the power of tagging. He showed us a film clip about Photosynth, a new technology that takes images from the internet, analyzes their similarities, and seams them together to create a 3D visual representation of places. You can view the clip at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/129. The tagging issue is important, because the program relies on tags, such as those assigned to images in Flickr, to identify the images that it uses. Also, I like the fact that I can create a Favorites list that is accessible to me from any computer! I just moved my Outlook favorites list to del.icio.us.