Burst Past The Post

How to conclude? In finishing anything, I always like to look at how I began. As such, here is my first post:

Like (I assume) many others I was surprised by my first ISYS1166 class. This was not what I was expecting.

I expected lectures, notes, definitions, databases, search algorithms, and big O notation. Nice, safe, measurable, examinable facts.

Instead we have unknown terms, new technologies, and indeterminate assignments.

I'm being forced to think, explore, learn, and change.

I am so glad I was wrong.

I'm still glad I was wrong. In nearly all my previous university study my focus has been upon meeting criteria and responding to assessment objectives. I've always concentrated upon doing exactly what was necessary to achieve the greatest mark. In all the time I have been doing this assignment, I have not thought about its assessment at all. I have been too busy doing something else. I have been learning.

I found the Web2.0 Adventure engaging and interesting for the great majority of its components, and often enjoyed the opportunity of recording my reactions to new tools through this blog.

Some tools I had not encountered before the course that I will certainly continue to use are;
- Cite U Like
- iGoogle
- Wikis
- Some music mashups (which ones exactly require further investigation)
- LibGuru

Cite U Like and Wikis in particular I find extremely useful for academic pursuits, with Wikis in particular impressing me with their extraordinary value. Before this course a Wiki to me was simply Wikipaedia. I simply had not seen the wider value of group content control. I will encourage all groups I'm part of in the future that have a task to complete to make use of a Wiki.

Downsides

Boundaries - some tools such as social news and bookmarking, I found to be so diverse that it was hard to know just how many different providers, and in what depth with each provider, one should investigate. I feel that if I didn't already have a familiary with social networking tools I would have encountered the same issues.

It should be noted that the lack of boundaries I only find to be a concern when thinking about assessment. I think that I learnt alot as I felt free to investigate tools I encountered indirectly - through those actually outlined in the Web2.0 adventure. This further investigation was great for finding and learning new tools, but did tend to put me behind on the overall project.

Collaboration - should I and my buddies created our own wiki? Need we have opened flickr accounts and joined the same group? Were we right to become friends on Facebook? Was commenting on each blogpost the extent of collaboration needed?
These are some questions that I feel could have been more clearly answered early in the assignment.

Conclusion

I have spent an extroadinary amount of time on this project, simply because it has been so engaging. I have formed strong opinions about many of the tools investigated, and now have a much greater understanding of what people, companies, thinking groups, and librarians can and want to do with the internet.

Most importantly, I have a renewed interest in web tools that will continue beyond the duration of this course.

LibWolf - signing over...but not out.

sMash pUps

I need an emoticon. Better yet, look at this:




This is how I sometimes feel when beginning a blogpost.

I'm not really sure how to describe the emotion, apart from the example presented in the above moving image. Anyway, down to business.

Mash Ups

My first look at my buddies blogs and the web2.0 adventure instructions showed many examples of mash-ups using Google Maps. I believe a mashup using a map can be an extremely useful thing, but surely there are other mashups out there. Not all information needs a location component.

Wikipedia had an interesting opinion. It included applications such as iGoogle (see my previous post) as an example of mashups. To refresh those unfamiliar and too lazy to follow the above link, iGoogle allows you to create a homepage with the content you desire 'sucked in' from other sources. Mine includes little widgets and RSS feeds from sources such as NBA.com, recipe of the day, BBC News, Library Garden, Read Write Web, my buddies' blogs, and much more. And when I consider the previous sentence, I can certainly see Wikipedia's point of view. Information from many sources brought into the same place = mashup.

I am, however, not totally convinced that I agree with this understandable viewpoint. For me a mashup needs to be more integrated than are the separate widgets and newsfeeds that sit next to each other on my iGoogle homepage.

Wikipedia give another example - JobBlob. This British site brings together job listings from an astounding number of other job recruitment sources.

I searched for 'librarian' in 'Manchester' using JobBlob, and got 65 results from sources varying from local libraries' employment pages to Hays.com (big recruitment company) listings. A very useful service for job seekers, and again bringing info from many different sources to one page, but I still feel dissatisfied, but I think I know why.

Mashups incorporating maps are image-based, and feel very interactive. The two mashups I've just described have on the most part text components. What I'd love to see are mashups with the interactive feel of a map, only without a map (I know what you're thinking, and yes, I agree that last sentence sound crazy).

So what can the image/interactive component be, if not a map? That is where I was stumped, until I found this through the Programmable Web site - 500 Photo Mashups. Mashups with an image or video-based interactive visual component. Many (as stated by Programmable Web) concerning music and musicians, which leads me to another genre...

Music Mashups
Some of these look extremely cool. Especially the first one on the list, LastGraph. I love looking at my music listening habits in number form, and to be able to see this graphed in many and varied ways will keep me occupied for many a Sunday afternoon over the next few years. LastGraph is for last.fm listening data only, but I"m sure I can find (or even write, if I have time) a similar tool for iTunes.


To Conclude:
As a tool, the combination of data or information from different sources brought into a convenient location is excellent. iGoogle is one of the tools I've found (indirectly) through this course that I use the most, and find the most useful. I'm sure we'll see many mashups in the future that bring together information that seems so vital and important to our lives that we wonder how we ever functioned before. It's just coming up with the idea to combine said information in the first place that is difficult. So put your thinking cap on, there could be incredible benefits.

Putin's House

Check out the spiffy widget i've added to my blog - Russian News.

Easy to do, I just copied the HTML from WidgetBox and pasted into the appropriate Add A Gadget section of blogger's customise options.

Other widgets available range from sporting, music, and movie information, right through to an Amnesty International Widget, or downright depressing Black and Missing widget, which displays photographs of African American women who have gone missing.

Whatever your taste, there's a widget for you. Unless you're Google, then there's a Gadget for you. Grrrr.

Fløibanen

Fløibanen
Originally uploaded by nayana.sondi

I've linked my flickr and blogger accounts, and this is an attempt to include an image from flickr using flickr's "Blog This" function.
I hope the credit for the image is automatically added - but if not, the image is beautiful shot by navana sondi

I wonder...

Can I embed a photo as easily as a video...

Images uploaded from my hard drive seems to work.


I am now trying to link my blogger and flickr accounts, maybe this will work also.


I have linked the accounts - hopefully the next or previous post to this one is of a much nicer photograph than the one to the left.

Awww, drats...but We Can Do It!

Trying to integrate my own photos directly into GoogleMaps, seems to be a no go.
There is an option which brings up a plethora of photographs which have been added to a (you guessed it) Google photo-sharing service called Panoramio. So I signed up, and added one of the photos I wanted to include in my GoogleMap.

When uploading photos to Panoramio I was able to assign a place to the photo, so I did, assigning the place, Kintore, seen on the western edge of my maps in posts below. Having done this, I tried to view the image through my GoogleMap. But no luck.

The photos on GoogleMaps show in one of two sizes, and I thought this might be dependent on number of views in Panoramio, but that guess was incorrect. Perhaps there is, however, a minimum number of views necessary before my photo pops up, so, view my image!! Go for it. Have a look and see if we can get it showing on my map.

Oh...I see

As you can see from my the post below, GoogleMaps allows you to select how you view the map, terrain, satellite or map, within my blog. There was no need for me to include all three myself.

Firstly, I am embarrassed, but mostly I am impressed. I am starting the enjoy blogging so much more now I know just how well you can embed or link interesting elements such as maps and YouTube videos.

I'm also a little proud. I had to mess with the HTML of the template I use on this blog to get the maps to fit in the size I desired. Took a little fiddling, but I'm very happy with my success.