#14: Technorati

Today I spent more time looking through Technorati than I ever have before. I did learn some things but found it pretty frustrating, which has been my experience every time I've tried to look through Technorati previously. It doesn't do a good job of telling you what you are looking at so if you are a new user it can be pretty intimidating to try to find your way around and understand what their postings actually are.

For example, one of the assignments was to do a keyword search for Learning 2.0 in the Blog Directory. I went to the Blog Directory page and did a search for that term. I got a different number of results than when I did a search on the main Blogger Central page but it was only a slightly different number. Neither results pages indicated where my results came from - what grouping I was actually searching. I thought this was confusing and sort of irritating.

I was hoping to be able to see a tag cloud of the most popular tags but all I could find was the 10 most popular tags on the main Blogger Central page - way less than I would find useful.

But speaking of useful, now that I've looked through Technorati much more thoroughly than I have ever done before (and I did this mainly because I HAD to for this assignment, because the whole process was pretty irritating), I still don't think this is something I would be likely to use much. I guess I just don't care what some random person thinks about Obama, or Brittney Spears, or Apple.

I will definitly NOT claim my blog, nor tag my posts so more people can find them. Are you kidding? Nobody gives a hoot what I have to say about Learning 2.0. I guess I'm not much of a social networker! :-)

Del.icio.us

I like the idea of sharing favorite Web sites with others through a social bookmarking site like Del.icio.us, but I doubt I would do this myself. I mean, it's cool and all, but other than photographs, there's not much about myself I really want to share with the world.

I can see how it might be useful if you were doing research, but is it really better than Google? Would I get better search results going to Del.icio.us and searching tags? I don't know the answer to that. I guess if I was working on something very in-depth it would be a good way to be as thorough as I possibly could be.

Generally I'm not really interested in viewing other people's comments about Web sites but I suppose the ability to see who else has bookmarked a certain site and commented on it might be kind of interesting.

All in all, this is something I probably wouldn't use but am glad to know about.

Adding a JAXCAT Search Gadget

It's added now to my blog. I'm not too fond of the way it looks, though - probably will take it off eventually. The instructions were pretty easy to follow although not totally accurate - I wasn't quite sure how to access the dashboard of this account from the blog itself, although I reasoned that "customize" might get me there and it did - yay!

Once there it was pretty simple to add - thanks for supplying the script!

Not that I will actually USE it. Since it offers limited functionality I doubt I would routinely search JAXCAT from my blog page, and I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone else, either. I wish it opened in a new window - anyone using it on my page would be directed somewhere else rather than staying on my page, which I really wouldn't want.

It's still pretty cool, though, and I would have no idea how to create it, so kudos to whoever did!

LibraryThing is my thing

I've been using LibraryThing for quite a while, mostly just to keep track of books that I have read. It's cool that you can add books to your library, review (or just summarize) them, rate them, and sort them in a variety of ways. I usually sort by date - most recent to oldest.

I use it to just REMEMBER books I've read, though - not to discuss books, or trade books, or look at the LibraryThing blog, or any of the other things you can do with LibraryThing. I LOVE to read but generally don't really enjoy discussing books(hence I will probably never run a book club!), so all those other functions really aren't for me. It's a record-keeping system. Guess I will have to upgrade to the paid account when I reach 200 titles - only about 75 more to go!

Here's the link to my LibraryThing catalog:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/camtb

Playing around with image generators

Well, this lesson just seems like more of the same. Didn't we already do this last week? Sigh...

Anyway, I didn't really find any image generators that really thrilled me but I did do a Wordle, which was kind of fun:

Using search tools to locate RSS feeds

Well, this was mostly a bust for me. Bloglines search tools were pretty easy and intuitive to use but I really didn't think much of all the other ones. Feedster was not up when I tried to access it. Technorati seems like much ado about nothing to me. You still have to follow the link to each news item to get the feed (unless I missed something) and they don't even cite the source unless you go into the detailed screen. I kind of liked Topix.net 'cause the news items were local but, as above, I still had to follow each link for each news item in order to get the feeds.

I think what I would do would be to go to Web sites that I use frequently to get news and get the feeds directly from there. These aggregators are not my cup of tea.

Bloglines & RSS

I found the RSS feeds assignment very enlightening. In the past I have not really understood how to set up RSS feeds, but with Bloglines it's pretty simple. The thing I had the most trouble with was coming up with 10 RSS feed to add to my Bloglines account. I think this is something I will be tweaking over the coming weeks.

Here's the public URL to my Bloglines account:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/CBailey

Technology at JPL

Okay, I'm up on my soapbox now. Much of the technology at JPL is so incredibly, woefully behind the curve that it's embarrassing. Thank you, City of Jacksonville. Our computers are way out of date and don't have anywhere near enough memory, processing power, updated plugins, anything. I know it's extremely expensive to keep public PCs up to date but when the computers freeze up CONSTANTLY (which happens at Pablo Creek all the time and I understand at other JPL libraries as well) then something obviously needs to be done.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had our own independent source of technology funding and didn't have to rely on the City for any of it? I know that's unrealistic but I'm just dreaming...

Don't mind me, just venting.

Warholized!

I found a bunch of fun Flickr tools on bighugelabs.com and decided to be Warholized! Here is the result:

Flickr pic

I love this pic by Jay Wilkie:





Jay is an extremely talented local photographer whose pictures never fail to impress, astound, amuse or entertain. This photo just blew me away the first time I saw it - the tenderness in the man's face and the utter trust and relaxation on the child's face are so moving to me. What a lovely representation of love.