Week 8, #19 -- Web-based Applications

I played around with some of the Zoho applications, and created the document below. It's nice, and I like having the icons for action button, but I really miss the Help feature of MS Word.

Zoho practice document

This is Pretty Cool

 

This is pretty cool, and I did not realize that this was available.  However, I am having some trouble with it.  I really like some aspects of the toolbar, because having an icon for many of the actions is nice.  I miss the Help feature of MS Word, however!  I typed one document and somehow changed the title heading style, and I could not change it back. 

 

It is fun _{and I learn} from ^{playing around with it.}

 

I love the ease of changing colors!

 

---

1. And adding horizontal rules
   1. And changing spacing
      • And adding page breaks
        •  And bullets

 

But, there is not as much variety in some aspects, such as font, outline choices, bullet choices, etc.  Also, I tried to spell check my document and was told that it was unable to do it and to try back later. 

 

This would be nice for someone who does not have access to MS Word, however.

Technorati Tags     ihcpl,23Things

Week 8, #18: Social Networking

I looked around some of the social networking sites, and I registered with Facebook and with Ning. I tried unsuccessfully to locate people that I knew in library school and high school. Too bad. :(

I like Ning better than some of the other networks, because it allows me to join a group based on my interests. I found several ferret social networks; however some of them consisted of a group of one: the creator.

I don't often sit at the computer just for entertainment, and I still think that I would prefer to use the telephone to chat with someone.

Week 7, #16 & 17-- Wikis and Technology

Week 7, #16 -- Wikis
Our library actually has a wiki for internal use. We can use it to let one another know about situations, class projects, current displays, etc. that are going on in our library. This is just another avenue for communication besides e-mail. The drawback is that it is only as good as the members who remember to post to it!


Week 7, #17 -- Technology
As my son was working on a research paper for his English class, I was thinking of how much easier, in one sense, research and preparation are today. I was one of the fortunate ones, because I had an electric typewriter in college. In addition, my professors frequently allowed us to use erasable bond paper, so that we weren't forced to retype a sheet or paint it with White-Out if we made a typing error. How much easier it is today, however, to type your paper, change the font size, erase entire paragraphs, have your spelling checked, block your type, and even automatically have your footnotes placed at the bottom of a page.

Does he need a resource? With a few clicks of the computer he has access to electronic books and journal articles on his topic. No more pouring through volume after volume of paper indexes. However, citations have become more onerous.

Changing subjects: One of my favorite technology candies is downloading audio books from eBranch onto my MP3 player! I love this!!!

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.