Sleepy time

Cat photo, courtesy of "mnmcrisp", Flickr user

Tamicio does del.icio.us

The aspect of Del.icio.us I found most interesting and cool was the 'Tag Cloud' . When I searched for all the popular tags that people use the most in Del.icio.us, a bunch of words form a "cloud" shape, with the most popular words (tags) appearing in larger font than less popular tags. To a large extent, popular tags in Del.icio.us are related to technology and computing (there are also many leisure related tags too, such as travel, shopping, photography and music) . I tried to add "Library 2.0" as a tag for my own blog but Del.icio.us did not accept it, as typed, because the tag field will accept one word, although I suspect it may have worked with Library_2.0 (?) I tagged the ETG blog and noted that 4 other people had also tagged us. When I tagged my own blog, I simply added "library" as a tag. "Library" appears in the [popularity ranked] 'tag cloud' but it is in smallish letters (not tagged quite often as a term like Web2.0 or Google, which appear in larger fonts in the cloud).

I like the idea that Del.icio.us is a alternative way to bookmark sites, and that I can access them from another computer. There is a way to bring all your Mozilla Firefox bookmarked pages over to Del.icio.us but I have not attempted that yet. I found myself looking at (popular) tagged sites just to see how many other people had also tagged the same site: if it was over 5,000, I would have a look to see what all the fuss was about!

Flickr is really cool too. I clicked to see the display of "all time most popular tags" and viewed what looked like an arrangement of words in a cloud! hmmm. Here I clicked on the tag for cat and found some really awesome cat photos. In Flickr's popular tag grouping, the tags with the largest font were family, friends, party, vacation and wedding (all things that people like to take lots of photos of!)


Tam

Wiki experimentation

I found PBWiki and Wetpaint equally friendly to navigate, add pages to, edit, etc. I encountered some difficulty directing my new page to just the 'right' place on the navigation bar (in the Wetpaint wiki) but I asked for some direction from an expert and soon my page was located below the heading 'McMaster' (Thanks, Mark!)

The basic structure of a wiki is very similar to that of the blogging sites/tools we've worked with so far, so it wasn't a giant leap to start to use a wiki. (I think that the DigitalReferenceShelf wiki will come in handy when I start my shifts next week on the Research Help Desk.)

Generally speaking, I can see why wiki makes an ideal collaborative tool for learning, sharing and disseminating information expediently.

On a darker note, Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist and digital visionary wrote a very interesting article about Wikipedia ~ that most famous wiki of all ~ for Edge: the third culture:

Digital Maoism: the hazards of the new online collectivism

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/lanier06/lanier06_index.html


Tam

Library 2.0 and RSS Feeds

Earlier this week, I started using Google Reader. I've added 7 RSS feeds. Four are library specific, 2 news related (CBC and the Globe and Mail), and one that doesn't quite fit into a Library category or a news category (Michael Geist).

"Blogroll, please"...

[The] Emerging Technologies Group (a la McMaster University libraries)
Blogwithoutalibrary (Amanda, the leader of our Library 2.0 learning initiatives here at McMaster)
The Shifted Librarian (a Librarian named Jenny, who posts like a true expert and visionary on new technologies affecting libraries today)
TametheWeb (Michael Stephens)
Michael Geist (a really smart guy who knows a lot about Internet and copyright law. I heard him speak on a panel at OLA last month)
CBC (top stories)
The Globe and Mail

• I'm still quite fond of the subscriptions I have that come directly to my email inbox, such as "Library News". Since it is delivered to my inbox daily, I see it immediately, scan the headlines and decide whether to go deeper to read articles that interest me. I'm not as likely to keep returning regularly to "Google Reader", but I could always strive to make it a new habit!

Yay!

• I have discovered how to add a link to Google Reader to my blog (on the right side bar)! Now that I know how to add links, I will have to think of a few more to add. I also inserted a picture of a black jaguar: one of my favourite animals. (Scooper is the most favoured animal of all: she is resting at home curled up in her quilt, with the electric blanket left on low for extra warmth).

Tam