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.
Showing posts with label bloglines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bloglines. Show all posts
Friday, July 4, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
some finds from rss
Just pulling in my rss lines to see what's biting, and found a couple of articles to think about later on... in my copious spare time...
'Make your own headlines' includes a comparison chart of various big rss reader sites, which compares features of Bloglines and others.
What I Learned Today has a write-up on a talk about combining rss and javascript to create dynamic subject pages on your library website - the article also contains a link to the presentation itself, along with tools, slides and handouts. I love the way library people love to share information. "Why not use some of the tools mentioned to create a dynamic page that pulls news, journal updates, and new books from RSS feeds?" Sounds pretty cool. I'm sure we could think of some use for those kind of tools.
We got some great news today - there's an eLGAR project looking at adding LibraryThing tags into the OPAC, which didn't go ahead earlier on account of the tags being unscoped (and the catalogue being scoped), which lead to the situation where anything interesting you clicked on was likely held by Auckland or North Shore, but not usually by Manukau. Well, they've recreated the trial on the test server, in a scoped version, so anything you see should be held by us. Yay! For those who don't get to see the trial, what this means is that when you do a search on the catalogue, a little cloud of 'tags' appear in the right-hand sidebar of the screen next to each title you look at - these tags might, for example, be things like 'mystery', 'cat-lovers', 'funny story', 'ceramics'... any way that regular people have chosen to describe a particular book, basically. The idea being that it's kind of like people off the street have catalogued your book's subjects, using language non-cataloguers might use. You can then click on any of those tags to see what else we've got that falls into that category. I'll put up a screenshot tomorrow so you can see what it might look like.
'Make your own headlines' includes a comparison chart of various big rss reader sites, which compares features of Bloglines and others.
What I Learned Today has a write-up on a talk about combining rss and javascript to create dynamic subject pages on your library website - the article also contains a link to the presentation itself, along with tools, slides and handouts. I love the way library people love to share information. "Why not use some of the tools mentioned to create a dynamic page that pulls news, journal updates, and new books from RSS feeds?" Sounds pretty cool. I'm sure we could think of some use for those kind of tools.
We got some great news today - there's an eLGAR project looking at adding LibraryThing tags into the OPAC, which didn't go ahead earlier on account of the tags being unscoped (and the catalogue being scoped), which lead to the situation where anything interesting you clicked on was likely held by Auckland or North Shore, but not usually by Manukau. Well, they've recreated the trial on the test server, in a scoped version, so anything you see should be held by us. Yay! For those who don't get to see the trial, what this means is that when you do a search on the catalogue, a little cloud of 'tags' appear in the right-hand sidebar of the screen next to each title you look at - these tags might, for example, be things like 'mystery', 'cat-lovers', 'funny story', 'ceramics'... any way that regular people have chosen to describe a particular book, basically. The idea being that it's kind of like people off the street have catalogued your book's subjects, using language non-cataloguers might use. You can then click on any of those tags to see what else we've got that falls into that category. I'll put up a screenshot tomorrow so you can see what it might look like.
Monday, June 30, 2008
putting the toys away
Just started to browse through the new blogs cropping up as the course is about to start, and I love the way Top Cat's feeds on Bloglines are tucked away in folders... appeals to the inner tidyness freak in me. Much nicer than a scatter of feeds all the way down the page. Also liked the idea of adding coursemates' blogs, too.
All of the image/text generator sites seem to work okay on the Learn.nets. I'd like to have a hunt around to see what else is out there.
All of the image/text generator sites seem to work okay on the Learn.nets. I'd like to have a hunt around to see what else is out there.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
technorati
Just snuck around WebMarshal by looking into Technorati a bit more on my staff pc - no problems there. In fact, I've found that so far I've been blocked more on the Learn.nets than I have on the staffside, which is weird. Might need to investigate that.
Decided I wanted some feeds of recipes to add to my Bloglines page, so I searched for 'recipes' on Technorati and then on the results page, clicked on the Blog tab to see all of the listed blogs which have 'recipes' as a tag. THOUSANDS of results but even on the first page there were a couple that looked really good. I could then take a look at the blogs, and if I liked what I saw, add their RSS feeds to Bloglines.
Very simple, very satisfying to use all round. One of the cooking sites I went to, Epicurious, had several feeds; one for new recipes, one for quick, nutritious recipes, and one for each of the forums, which was cool.
Decided I wanted some feeds of recipes to add to my Bloglines page, so I searched for 'recipes' on Technorati and then on the results page, clicked on the Blog tab to see all of the listed blogs which have 'recipes' as a tag. THOUSANDS of results but even on the first page there were a couple that looked really good. I could then take a look at the blogs, and if I liked what I saw, add their RSS feeds to Bloglines.
Very simple, very satisfying to use all round. One of the cooking sites I went to, Epicurious, had several feeds; one for new recipes, one for quick, nutritious recipes, and one for each of the forums, which was cool.
feeding bloglines
I'm just working through the list of sites that will provide rss feeds for Bloglines. No luck with Feedster on the Learn.net, though it doesn't seem to be blocked; just doesn't load.
When I went into Topix, it already knew I was in Auckland, and offered up an RSS newsfeed of Auckland-focussed stories at the top of the page; I've added this in to Bloglines. The stories seem to be a bit more involved with policy, research and technology than the stories on a local news site like Stuff or NZ Herald, for example. Not sure if it's something I would want to look at regularly as a feed.
Looking through the site a bit more, news is categorised by 'topics', each with it's own feed - these go down to the level of detail of, say, an individual TV show, but could be as broad as 'Reality TV', 'Smoking' or 'Sri Lanka'. There were so many lists that I found it a bit unwieldy to browse for a topic that might catch my eye. I think the site would be easier to use if you knew what topic you were looking for, and could then use it as a discovery tool to find some feeds of interest.
Say, for example, I wanted more movie reviews on my Bloglines site. I could search for a review of a particular movie on Topix, then find a review I liked, and trace it back to it's source blog or website, then add the RSS feed from that site to my Bloglines account.
Syndic8 is currently blocked on the Learn.net - will report this and get it unblocked.
Technorati is not blocked. Searching Technorati, is, however. I can't look up anything on the site except what it wants to show me. Back to Datacom for this one.
When I went into Topix, it already knew I was in Auckland, and offered up an RSS newsfeed of Auckland-focussed stories at the top of the page; I've added this in to Bloglines. The stories seem to be a bit more involved with policy, research and technology than the stories on a local news site like Stuff or NZ Herald, for example. Not sure if it's something I would want to look at regularly as a feed.
Looking through the site a bit more, news is categorised by 'topics', each with it's own feed - these go down to the level of detail of, say, an individual TV show, but could be as broad as 'Reality TV', 'Smoking' or 'Sri Lanka'. There were so many lists that I found it a bit unwieldy to browse for a topic that might catch my eye. I think the site would be easier to use if you knew what topic you were looking for, and could then use it as a discovery tool to find some feeds of interest.
Say, for example, I wanted more movie reviews on my Bloglines site. I could search for a review of a particular movie on Topix, then find a review I liked, and trace it back to it's source blog or website, then add the RSS feed from that site to my Bloglines account.
Syndic8 is currently blocked on the Learn.net - will report this and get it unblocked.
Technorati is not blocked. Searching Technorati, is, however. I can't look up anything on the site except what it wants to show me. Back to Datacom for this one.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
ps. re rss
Three new things I've learnt:
1) Blogger saves a draft which you can find in the list of all posts, so I could have recovered my 'eaten' post after all
2) To change the detail settings of a single feed in Bloglines, select that feed and click on 'Edit Subscription' to look for summaries, rather than detailed items
3) My public Bloglines URL is http://www.bloglines.com/public/dcartermcc.
1) Blogger saves a draft which you can find in the list of all posts, so I could have recovered my 'eaten' post after all
2) To change the detail settings of a single feed in Bloglines, select that feed and click on 'Edit Subscription' to look for summaries, rather than detailed items
3) My public Bloglines URL is http://www.bloglines.com/public/dcartermcc.
blogger ate my homework
OK, so I just wrote a long post about RSS and Blogger became 'unavailable' when I came to publish the post, and now it's gone and can't be retrieved. Lesson 1 - I don't know... copy and paste into Word while working? Very very annoying.
First off the blocks today - Bloglines, like Blogger, was blocked on the Learn.nets (and now is not, thanks Michael!). While I was waiting for it to slip through WebMarshal's sticky net, I worked through a couple of the tutorials listed on the course blog. Palinet was a very useful, simple and basic introduction, though I found the wait for transitions between slides was slightly annoying. The 'Using Bloglines tutorial' was great. It started with the basics, with plenty of screenshots, and then blossomed out into an exploration of some of the ways you can use the site.
I really like the idea of RSS. I'm a spotty user of the internet, as it is; I read a couple of web comics, spend a bit of time browsing galleries and art sites, watch batches of movie trailers and read reviews... all 'when I remember'. The idea of something that collects the stuff I find fun and inspiring into one place, and serves as a gentle reminder to see what's new out there, is very cool. The challenge is, I guess, not to be flooded with stuff as a result, because there's so. Much. STUFF.
Also, of course, there are things we can and should be doing as a library service, with RSS. We've got the lovely new New Books pages which could be drip-feeding into people's newsfeeders, and Kelly's suggested we could have a News and Events feed so that people get notified whenever there's a new event posted. Definitely something to explore in the future.
Re Bloglines itself: I found it pretty easy to set up, and adding feeds is easy so far. One thing I want to investigate is how to change the options for a single feed, rather than all feeds; for example, in Options, it says I can choose a level of detail for single feeds, but I can't see very clearly where to do that. Something to explore.
I was interested to see a library-related feed in the Top 50 list, so I've added that and will give it a whirl.
First off the blocks today - Bloglines, like Blogger, was blocked on the Learn.nets (and now is not, thanks Michael!). While I was waiting for it to slip through WebMarshal's sticky net, I worked through a couple of the tutorials listed on the course blog. Palinet was a very useful, simple and basic introduction, though I found the wait for transitions between slides was slightly annoying. The 'Using Bloglines tutorial' was great. It started with the basics, with plenty of screenshots, and then blossomed out into an exploration of some of the ways you can use the site.
I really like the idea of RSS. I'm a spotty user of the internet, as it is; I read a couple of web comics, spend a bit of time browsing galleries and art sites, watch batches of movie trailers and read reviews... all 'when I remember'. The idea of something that collects the stuff I find fun and inspiring into one place, and serves as a gentle reminder to see what's new out there, is very cool. The challenge is, I guess, not to be flooded with stuff as a result, because there's so. Much. STUFF.
Also, of course, there are things we can and should be doing as a library service, with RSS. We've got the lovely new New Books pages which could be drip-feeding into people's newsfeeders, and Kelly's suggested we could have a News and Events feed so that people get notified whenever there's a new event posted. Definitely something to explore in the future.
Re Bloglines itself: I found it pretty easy to set up, and adding feeds is easy so far. One thing I want to investigate is how to change the options for a single feed, rather than all feeds; for example, in Options, it says I can choose a level of detail for single feeds, but I can't see very clearly where to do that. Something to explore.
I was interested to see a library-related feed in the Top 50 list, so I've added that and will give it a whirl.
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