Flickr

Not having much luck so far this afternoon.

I've searched on Flickr before for photos of events I have participated in where there has been an official photographer, but as I recall that's all I did.

I just tried to sign up only to be taken to my personal yahoo account, so maybe at some point I synced the two? Anyway, I then found a few photos of my kids from years back on Flickr which I have no recollection of uploading, but I guess I did at some point.

Now a bit fed up with the whole thing. There seemed to be no help available and I tried searching for library images with no luck, just got taken to yahoo search.

Too tired and fed up to carry on with this today.

I think this shows my own limitations.....if I'm going to use web 2.0 it has to be as easy and straightforward as possible and it also has to allow me to set the boundaries, which is one of the reasons why I don't tend to tweet on a personal basis. I find it difficult to get the balance right between my public, professional voice and my private voice, so to make life easier I would simply avoid using twitter. I think it will be the same for Flickr.

Similarly with Prezi - I thought I would get a preview of the presentaion before it was uploaded, but there it was and it's only a title page. If I could access it I know I could edit it, but the access problems put me off pursuing this.

I suspect this will be the case for some time in the NHS, although we are all being urged to use tablets and mobile devices, so there is this constant conflict between new technology and the limitations around patient data. And then, of course, there's cost.

So, no real progress with the Things today, but a chance to blog about it anyway.

Prezi abandoned for now!

Still unable to view the presentation as firefox says it cannot install the plug in.....which is Flash which has just been installed.

I do really enjoy using web 2.0 but this type of situation is so frustrating. This happened to me before when I tried to investigate Prezi and it does put me off going any further.

I tackled this today as I have just finished a big training presentation and was feeling a bit drained, so I thought a spot of 12 things might be a relaxing and productive way to while away some time.....hmmmm!

Ok, I'm leaving Prezi alone for a while and moving on to Zotero. I know I already have an account set up with Zotero, but, like Prezi, I've never got to grips with it. Here's hoping......

Prezi delayed....again!

I thought I might try and catch up with 12 Things today as I'm a little behind, but once again Prezi has defeated me.

I am unable to install Flash on IE or Firefox so I cannot view my presentation.

I did manage to create an account and upload a presentation, but I wanted to edit it and view it.......hang on, just got a pop up to say Flash has been installed!

Ok, back to Prezi....third time lucky!

Prezi - delayed!

I'm not at my desk today and so can't get access to firefox, so at the moment I can't do much with Prezi as most of the applications we have used in 12 things seem to have a bit of a wobble if I'm on IE. Oh well, I'll have a look next week when I'm back at my desk. Still full of ideas about how to use Slideshare with our library Twitter account. So glad I took a look at this :-)

My Slideshare presentation

Sanghagirl’s presentation from sanghagirl

Slideshare - really easy to use!

Hi again,

I just signed up for Slideshare and uploaded my first presentation. It was so easy and straightforward.

I can immediately see how useful this could be in a library context. I could share training presentations on our library website and on our twitter account.

I'm really impressed with this and will be using it again in the future.

I'm now off to explore Prezi. I've looked at this before and, to be honest, not been terribly impressed, but that's partly because I have problems with the site when I'm at work, and also because I have been subjected to a few Prezi presentations that left me feeling sea sick, so I'm hoping it was just poor design on the part of the presenters.

Problems posting replies - change your browser?

Hi All,

I've been trying to post replies on people's blogs since we started this course, but for some reason I cannot do so using IE at work.

I've switched to Firefox and I can now post comments. So, I apologise in advance for all the comments I will now be posting. Sorry!

Keeping up to date part three - alerts

I've often wanted to use these but never got round to setting them up.

I found JournalITocs incredible easy to use. The registration was quick and easy and i've already added a number of journals. I also added the RSS feeds to my Reader.

I do love Google Reader. It's so easy to mange the feeds. I can see that this could be quite addictive. At first I was wary of adding too much as I still need to find the time to read the feeds. But I soon realised that if you manage your feeds you can still keep up to date without feeling overwhelmed with information. If I just want to know about what's happening in the library world, I'll just look at my library feeds, etc.

I also found Google alerts very easy to use. I'm not sure how much I would use this, or how useful i would find it. I set up a couple of alerts for personal interests to go to my gmail account. I don't always remember to check this account as it's not my main personal email account. I also think i might get a bit fed up with receiving multiple alerts, but as I haven't received any yet it's too early to say if I think this will work.

From a library perspective, I think the Reader and the Journal alerts will be much more useful.

One last point, I've spent a lot of time on this section as I don't want to fall behind. I'm really enjoying the course and learning a lot, but it has to be said you do need to commit a fair amount of time to this.

Thing 2 Keeping up to date part 2

I found this section really interesting. I've had a personal Twitter account for a couple of years but never used it to it's full potential. We also have a library Twitter account @wshlibrary.

So, I skipped the first bit about setting up the accounts, but I did read the LSE document and the 100 ways to use twitter document, both of which were very informative and I shall be using a couple of the ideas.

What I was really interested in was the extended bit and, in particular, setting up a twitterfeed. I registered for the service (it's free) and set my feed up within minutes. It was very straightforward and I'm beginning to realise that most of these web 2.0 tools are incredibly easy to use.

 I suppose that's the main advantage to this course, it breaks down your fear of using new technology. Sometimes, when you read about new applications, it sounds so complicated, but when you actually sign up it's very easy. Frankly, I'm not that interested in how it works, just that it works.

Off to get to grips with alerts now, but also wanted to add I'm loving the RSS feeds coming in to my Google reader. It makes it so much easier to keep up to date, and to find interesting topics on which to tweet.

Thing 2 tasks 1 and 2

I'm running a little behind this week, but I've just completed tasks 1 and 2 by setting up several RSS feeds to my Google reader account.

I found this incredibly easy. The instructions on the 12 Things blog were very clear. I was a bit surprised by how many sites do not have an automatic feed through to google, making it easy to add them to my reader, but it was very easy to copy and paste the URL in to the reader.

I can see this as being really useful. We currently don't use RSS feeds as well as we could on our library website, but this will be remedied soon. I seem to spend most of my time whilst doing the "things" making notes of stuff to add to our website.

I'm really looking forward to the next thing on twitter. I've had a twitter account for a few years but I've never really taken to it. I think that's because I am a little uncertain about what kind of online identity to present.

We also have a library twitter account and this is also under-used, so I'm hoping to put that right after the next thing.

It's good to be back :-)

Checking out other library blogs

I've been spending a little time looking at some other library blogs this afternoon.

I've just become the IP and Copyright Lead for my Trust so I thought I'd better check out a copyright-related blog for some quick tips. I like

www.copyrites.wordpress.com/ it's very accessable and makes copyright sound almost easy.

I found a few others as well and I've added a gadget to my blog so I can display my blog roll (had to type that carefully, didn't want to be displaying my bog roll!). That was really easy to do so I think I'll be adding some more gadgets later in the week.

I searched for the blogs simply by typing "library blogs uk" in to Google. That brought up some good results. Then I used Google blog search, which was alright, but I got the same results just doing a normal Google search.

Think I've spent a little bit too long on this today. Off to do some "proper" work.

Hi,
I'm doing the 12 Things course because I attempted the 23 Things course last year but didn't complete it. I always thought that was a bit of a missed opportunity.

I've never really got to grips with blogging, although I have had a twitter account for several years. I also have a library twitter account although we don't blog as much as we could and I feel this is an underused tool for publicising our services. I also think twitter could be great for a current awareness service.

I manage quite a few projects as part of my role and I'm looking forward to using Google docs more. I'm also a trainer but I'm unfamiliar with Prezi and Slideshare, so again looking forward to finding out more about those tools.

I think what I am looking for most is a way to bring all of these tools together in one place. I know that I can link this blog to twitter and various other applications, so for me, the best thing about this course will be learning how to keep up to date more efficiently and keeping the tools I will use the most easily accessable to me.

Phew! Appear to have created a blog and even managed to choose a template for it.

The instructions seem to differ slightly from the reality, but even a techno-phobe like me managed to get the blog set up. I'm not sure yet which gadgets to add, I'll investigate that later, but mostly I found Blogger pretty intuitive.

Hello to everyone else on the 12 Things course, looking forward to reading your posts. Off to find some interesting blogs now :-)