Friday, July 4, 2008

good stuff overload

Too much! One of the effects of this course is that I'm reading waaay more online than I ever did before, and coming across new ideas at a much faster rate. Coupled with the fact that I've got three months left before maternity leave, it's leaving me with an urgent sense of shrinking time to maybe start putting some of these ideas into practice.

This blog seems like a useful place to park ideas I want to come back to, whether or not it does actually provide an archive I'm going to check back on.

Today's contribution to the pool of too much:

An article about ways in which libraries are using Twitter, which is a website where people can post teeny tiny posts as frequently as they can stand to do it, giving updates on where they are and what they're doing. Or, as Twitter describes itself:

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?"

The article links to a site called TwitterLit, which describes it's mission in this way:

"It's a site that serves up literary teasers twice daily. At 5:00 AM and 5:00PM Eastern Time I post the first line of a book, without the author's name or book title, but with a link to Amazon so readers can see what book the line is from. Why? Because it's fun! The posts are also available for subscription via RSS, Twitter, and email."

It also has a widget for adding to your blog, so that the first lines display on your blog's sidebar... but sadly both the flash and javascript versions don't seem to work on our staff PCs. I've added the RSS of the UK version to Bloglines, but I'd like to see if I can get the widget working, if only on the Learn.nets or at home.

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