Thing 23

Can't belive that I have finally finished!! Although, I will have to do a bit more homework soon, to be able to use my new MP3 player (don't know much about them).

At first this programme appeared a mammoth task - something that I would never finish in time. I got stuck on the Mashups, but once I managed to sort it out (with a lot of help from FF staff), I was on my way. I had never heard of most of the tools examined in this programme, so this has been a real eye-opener. For slowies like me, it took a lot longer than the 15 minutes a day allocated (although I did pick up the pace a little at the end).

Once I got through Technorati, I seemed to become more motivated and the work seemed more straight forward. Got a lot out of having dedicated sessions in the training room.

Will have to revise some of the work I did at a later date, as seemed to run out of time.

Glad to have at last completed it.

Thanks

Thing 22

I already recommend that our customers use this database on our digital library for course work, but was surprised to see the scope of the material available. It was easy to create an account. After creating an account I took a bit of time to browse the collection and found an interesting book on asthma. I also did a search on cooking and found a few other ebooks to browse and add to my favourites. I like the way it gave other related search terms. Had a quick look at Kindle but will go back to it later, as it looks interesting and can store about 200 books.

Thing 21

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/books/books-podcast-archive.html
Had a play around with all 3 tools, then went into Yahoo Podcasts, then searched under Book Reviews Podcasts and selected the New York Times Book Review Podcast. In these podcasts Review Editor Sam Tanenhaus talks to authors, editors, critics and senior editor and best-seller columnist Dwight Garner about new books. I listened to the one on Joshua Ferris, the author of “Then We Came to the End”, Scott Stossel on biographies and John Leland on Larry McMurtry. Thought this may be a good way of including excerpts from some of our author's talks on our website. Added the RSS feed for this podcast to my Bloglines account.

Thing 20

Had fun completing this task - could browse these video clips for ages. In the end I did a search under 1970s and picked out a video relating to Quadrophenia. It was great, although it kept stopping midway through the video (could be a problem if we have too many YouTube links on our website). Thought this could be a good website tool (eg. if there was a relevant video on an author who was talking at the library, or if there was a video on a subject related to an event, exhibition, display etc). This was definitely one of my favourite sites so far.

Youtube video

Thing 19

I selected a travel tool called Farecast at www.farecast.com
This site won first place in the travel section of the Web 2.0 awards. I found it a good way of viewing flight details and prices for most of the major airlines (found Air New Zealand, Qantas etc.. flights) and for many destinations. I could even search for a trip from Whangarei to Auckland! It is meant to also provide useful predictions as regards the best time to buy bargain tickets, but there didn't seem to be many entries for New Zealand destinations. I think a link to this tool would be a welcome addition to the travel pages of our website as it is not difficult to use and has quite a simple interface.

Thing 18

Seemed simple enough to create a free account in Zoho Writer. However, it did take a few attempts to create a new document. Once I managed to create a test document, everything else seemed quite straight forward. Many of the features are similar to word. It was easy to post an image etc. I posted one of my test documents to my blog. It is entitled Test Document 1.