Week 6 -- del.icio.us and technorati

I really enjoyed learning about del.icio.us. I think it could be very helpful as I sometimes want to show someone a site that I have bookmarked on my computer, but don't know the web address. Just the other day I wanted to show my mother-in-law a website I had found, but was at her house and couldn't remember the site. I tried searching for it, but to no avail. Now I can start tagging things in del.icio.us and never have that problem again.

Technorati was also fun to explore. I didn't know there was a place on the web dedicated to searching just blogs. However, I did know that one of my friends has several blogs, but I was only privy to one. By searching her screen name for the blog that I read, I found one of her other blogs on a different blogging site. Nothing juicy to find in her other blog. In fact, it was pretty much the same stuff she writes in the one I read. I'm pretty sure I already have access to the juicy blog and the one I found by searching her screen name is her more tame version for family. Of the 51 million blogs currently being tracked by technorati, I can't help but wonder how many of them are being written by the same person. I have two blogs -- one for 23 Things and one for friends. Clearly my friend has at least two blogs. While there are 51 million blogs, I'm guessing there are only 17 million bloggers.

Week 5

Here's a billboard I made with a photo we took when we were on vacation earlier this summer. I could have a lot of fun making billboards and mosaics of friends and family. This shot is somewhat boring since there isn't much to see. But it was a good restaurant and it was very cute from the outside.

LibraryThing

I really enjoyed playing with LibraryThing. I decided to search for some books that are on my "All Time Favorites" shelf. I began by searching for them without the book in front of me. One book I entered -- The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh -- did not come up with the cover design that I have. So I retrieved the book and entered the ISBN number. I still didn't get the cover design I had. The edition that came up was from 1999 while the edition I have is from 1977.

I've been looking for something to use that will catalog our home library. At this point, I've only tagged my entries with the word "Favorite" because that will help me know where the book is located in the house. (That is to say, on the "All Time Favorites" shelf.) I need to play with this some more to see if there is a way for me to easily identify the location of the book as well as use tags to help search for it.

My favorite feature of LibraryThing is when you open one of the books in your catalog and LibraryThing provides recommendations on other books you may also enjoy. It was interesting to see that I had read and enjoyed many of their recommendations. Here's my catalog: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/skybluesnowball

Rollyo

This was another fun site. I created a roll that searches numerous recipe sites. It was also fun to explore other recipe rolls that people had created. I found some new ideas for dinner, which is always nice. Here's the link to my recipe rollyo which includes recipe sites I frequently search: http://rollyo.com/skybluesnowball/recipes/ Rollyo could also be useful for better targeting your results. If there are several sites you go to for information on a topic, you can roll them into a rollyo and just search those sites rather than searching the entire internet. By searching my rollyo for recipes with the topic "chicken and salsa" I ended up with only recipes. Searching "chicken and salsa" on google requires me to sift through irrelevant results. Rollyo can help you target your search and save you time.

Week 4

The RSS has made my life much easier. Instead of visiting several news sites, I can now visit just one and scan the headlines. If a stort catches my eye I can click the link to read it. It's really been a timesaver in helping me keep abreast of news in various cities of interest.

I added Merlin to my RSS feeds, though I'm not sure how often there will be new stuff added. It's been slow so far, but I learned a few things, like what citebite was and how I could use it. I think this could be a useful tool for those in Maryland libraries, but only if it becomes a more active community.

In searching for feeds, I found Feedster to be helpful. I liked that you could search for topics of interest, and I liked that you could search for blogs, newsfeeds, podcasts, or all of the above. It helped me find some blogs and newsfeeds to follow my favorite college football team.