#13 Del.icio.us

I didn't find this site as interesting as some of the others. I can see how if you were involved in a collaborative research project this site would be useful to share information in a kind of have you seen this yet manner. I am not really anxious to have other people looking at my choices of websites. Too many years of working in public service have made me conscious of the number of kooks that are out there.

It would be valuable if you used a number of computers and wanted to have access to your bookmarked websites on each machine. If you always used a public machine this site would let you keep your bookmarked sites available. So far this has not become an issue for me.

#12 Rollyo

Very useful tool. As I was creating my new Rollyo, I could think of several more that would be real useful. Any subject that you tend to check regularly it would be very time saving to have it all together.

Select...Latest NewsSearch The Web

Now that branches are not getting the used car price guides a Rollyo of the major sites would be useful at the I Desk. Searchroles could be created for branch specific topics depending on branch needs.

Now I am going to see if I can add my searchroll to this blog in the next ten minutes before I am due back on the desk.

Here goes

# 11 Library Thing

I could spend a lot of time with this site. Fascinating, a booklover's dream. It is a wonderful resource when you have read all of your favorite author and need to find a new one. Unlike Novelist which uses a search which always seemed to lack a human touch this has recommendations from real people. If my quirky author that I like appeals to somebody else it really is possible that I might like some of their favorites.

Unrecommendations is intriguing . What is it about a particular title that generates a list of stuff you probably will hate ?

I looked at two of the libraries who use Book Thing and didn't get the point of what they were doing. It didn't seem like a reader's advisory tool.

Now I have to figure out to put a link to my catalog. I expect that I will have to get help because it doesn't seem real obvous. I hope that this address below is what you have in mind.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/chilcoat15

I am going to forge ahead for the November deadline.

# 10 Image Generators

I guess I am not going to be particularly creative with this exercise. I am going with a cute cat picture. Avators aren't my thing, very cartoonish. Staff at the branch had a great time with them; creating, changing them and showing each other what they had chosen.

Lots of great stuff - your own calendar, cards, posters ! And a lot of really weird things

I am amazed at the number of people who check out and vote on the kitten of the day. Must be lots of offices where lots of time is spent playing around on the net.

Number 9 explore Merlin etc.

I certainly found the search easiest on Blogline. I searched the same 4 things with each of the tools. I had the most success with Blogline. It could be that what I was looking for was really mainstream stuff. My impression is that Technorati would take hours to find any a feed that is really specific. The tutorial was weird especially since I got it started in Dutch. I haven't got the patience to wade through all the blogs. Syndic8 was very cluttered looking and confusing , I prefer using something with a fairly clear page. My second choice would be Feedster it is handy to be able to limit your search to a category.

There was a specific blog I was looking for and Blogline found it. I had read about it in the paper last month while I was at my daughter's in Oregon but had forgotten the name and how to spell the creator's name. A bit of playing around with the search and there it was.

These are useful to tools that help you customize how you interact with the Internet. You can pick out the bits that you want to keep in touch with and ignore the rest.

Number 8 RSS

Wow ! This is great. I having a great time finding, adding, reading and removing feeds. I am not sure that it is a time saver though. Some of them are fun to come across while I am searching and now with RSS I can check them everyday. Unshelved is fun but I never looked at it regularly. Lot of pictures of cats I can waste a lot of time. I don't find a lot of peoples' personal blogs very interesting so I am not going to be keeping those in my newsfeeds. I prefer more factual sites, must be the librarian in me.

Another thing is that I really don't care to share my Blogline account with anybody. I looked at the instructions and decided to skip that part.

Just finished trying out 2 sites that work with pictures. Palatte maker takes a picture of your choice from Flickr, the web or your files and creates a square of each of 12 colors in the picture. Useful for those who are challenged by interior decorating. Of course it depends on how good your color printer is.

There is another site that lets you search immediately for pictures on the net and add them to your document.

Knowing that I will never remember where I found these I have made myself a document called cool sites with the link and a bit of a note about what it is.

At this rate I will never finish by the deadline.