Assignmemt #6

This week's asignment was back to complicated for me again.

I had to download QuickTime Player in order to view the Technorati tutorial, which in turn switched all my Media Player files into Quicktime, which I didn't really want to happen.

Technorati does seem like a great site and I loved the tutorial, as I am really a visual learner. Seeing the facilitator naviagte through the site was really helpful. As I navigated through the site itself, it seemed vaguely familiar to me. I think it might be a little like Bloglines, from Assignment #4. ish? All of these sites are kind of blurring together for me, so I really do hope that I will have time to use them each more and learn about what makes one better or more usable than the other. It's all about finding the extra time!!!

When I created a Delicious account, I was asked if I wanted to import my existing bookmarks, which I did, but didn't really know what I was doing when I did that. Now I have this Delicious feature come up everytime I open Internet Explorer and it is a great tool, don't get me wrong, but I feel like I really have no idea how to use it properly (yet). Once more, hopefully time to practice will help me learn what it is really about. I am a little leery about the feature in Delicious that allows you to view anyone else' s bookmarks and comments who has book marked the same site as you and allows others to view yours. One of those personal security/ information issues. Maybe there are ways to not allow others to view your bookmarks, but I wouldn't be sure how to go about getting that done.

So to complete this assignment and answer the question of the week: "Would Delicious be useful for my organisation?", I would say probably not, unless all staff had a good understanding of it and used it for the purpose of helping our clients to find employment information. It could be a useful tool to find additional websites that we might not have known about or to see what others think of sites, but overall, I think I would be more inclined to use it for personal reasons more so than work.

I am happy about next week's break. I think I'll use the time to practice what we've learned so far and hopefully learn to use these sites as they are meant to be used.

Assignment #5

What a beautiful weekend.
I am finding it hard to come inside to complete this assignment when everyone and their Uncle seems to be enjoying the great out doors, big turkey dinners and family gatherings.
Library Thing is awesome. I had no idea it existed. Thanks for opening my eyes to yet another great tool of the world wide web! It was very simple to create an account but very hard to pick my fav 5 to catalogue on my new account site so I just chose 5 books that came to mind.
Loooooooooove Facebook. Of course I got very easily distracted my all the invitations I had and returning emails to people I have not seen or heard from in like 20 years, but I did finally manage to get back to the task at hand, checking out the "Green: because you can" site there. Yet another cool group I was not aware of. Neat, since I am part of the Environmental Committee at work. SO I think it would be favourable for my organisation getting set up on facebook. Afterall, let's face it, everyone uses Facebook. It might help with spreading the word about our very own non profit organisation. Concerns? Yes, there are some. It would take only one person to write something bad about the organisation and that could spread like wildfire. One person is all it would take to say something dumb or unprofessional about us thus ruining all the good. Other concerns is that technically it may be dificult to access since our IT department has placed a block on all staff to access Facebook from work computers. If the block were to be removed, would the org then lose precious work time, based on how many staff would be all too tempted to spend time purusing the site and reconnecting with old friends? More than likely!

Here's my Assignment #3 link

As I mentioned in Assignment #4, I mistakenly created a new blog to post my assignment #3, so I've been trying to figure out how to copy and paste it into my first blog ever blog, but can't quite work it out, so the best I can do is put in the link for it. Better than nothing.
http://ccartwrightsfirstbolgever.blogspot.com/

Assignment #4

Assignment #4 I am finding, is almost as tricky as last week's. Almost. Cause I am not pulling out my hair yet, like I did last week trying to figure out how to post the FLICKR image onto my blog. THat was really challenging! But it shouldn't have been so hard, it's just all so new. Things do tend to get easier as you do them more and more often, though, so I'll remain optimistic.

Last week I created a new blog to post my assignment #3 and I shouldn't have but I wasn't sure how to post anything onto my first blog ever blog. Now I think I've figured it out. Except I can't quite figure out how to copy what I wrote for last weeks assignment and put it onto my first blog page. Trial and error with new learnings, as always.

Creating a Bloglines account was pretty easy. Adding new URLs and subscibing was easy too, thanks to the tutorials and visual aids. Topix.net and Syndic8.com are pretty neat places to go. I personally found Topix.net easiest to read and most user friendly. I like how I can chat with other community members. Weird that the site knew which community to link me to. Sometimes technology scares me. I am often asking "how did it know that ?" It's like sometimes thing seem too smart. Anyway, case in point, for some reason I could not access Feedster. But it's likely me doing something wrong, not technology's fault. Syndic8.com I found, was not so great.
RSS feeds are very cool. Seeing as how I have never read blogs or really used my computer for anything but email and research on internet, my eyes are opening wider and wider as each assignment is given us. I am learning sooo many new and very cool things! I just hope I get a chance to use them again or I am afraid, I may forget how.