Thursday, August 23, 2007

Week 5

Thing 10

Yahoo! Avatars U.K. & Ireland

So I went and played with the image generators. I still like the yahoo one. It's simple, but plenty of options.

Why is there a panda bear option? Are there really that many people with panda bears or panda bear fantasies out there?

hrm.

Thing 11

I kind of love Library Thing. A friend of mine turned me on to this a while ago. I haven't used it much, but I love the idea.

The most exciting bit, though, was finding a link to www.bookcrossing.com . Really cool website that helps you tag your books before giving them away so you can track where they travel. sounds like a lot of fun. I have some books I was planning on putting in storage, but I might give this a shot instead.

my library thing

Thing 12

Rollyo is sort of interesting. nice little search option. as with the RSS feeds, however, I find that I actually enjoy going to individual sites. still, when looking for a particular subject, this could be very helpful.

I might go back and create one that just searches encyclopedia or dictionary websites. that could be very handy.

here's the one I did make.

http://rollyo.com/amrit/book_search/

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Week 4

Thing 8

I'm not such a big fan of RSS or newsreaders. I know it's a silly thing to say, but it feels too easy. Too abbreviated. I enjoy my time hopping around blogs and news sources. I enjoy the tangents, the extra links and graphics.

For me, it might boil down to a sort of low-grade ADHD. Having everything coming from one source doesn't keep my attention very well. I'm more likely to have several windows open, several websites going at once, so I can sit there and bounce from one to the other.

As a library resource, however, it could be very handy. Having an RSS of hand-picked material attached to the library website could make it a more heavily trafficed area. With increasing focus on the internet for information, the traffic coming through a library's website may be as important as the number of patrons actually coming physically to the building.

Thing 9

MERLIN was fairly interesting, but I'm still not sold on all the RSS stuff.

I went through all the search tools and found that, for the most part, they were turning up lots of junk and useless feeds. felt like I had to sift through a lot to find what I was looking for.

of those listed, Feedster seemed the most straightforward and easy to use.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Week 3


Even So
Originally uploaded by gavinmusic

Thing 5

I couldn't decide what picture to post from Flickr, then I ran across a few of my band. Apparently we have some very unambitious paparazzi out there.



Thing 6

In keeping with the theme, I went and played with a Flickr-based CD cover creator. Which might come in handy very soon. Really, all it's doing is adding a picture to a folding template. but, still, that's somewhat neat. Saves us the trouble of trying to figure out the exact origamical (it's a word now!) formula.

Thing 7

I'll go ahead and finish off my little band theme by raving about CDBaby. It's an online music store that allows pretty much anyone to sell CD's through them. You send them a few CD's, they take a cut of each one you sell through their site. It's the easiest way for a small band to sell CD's without physically being there.

The international nature of it makes it rather amusing as well. Always worth a chuckle when some guy in the middle of Iceland picks up a copy ofyour latest EP.

Week 2(ish)

Things 3 & 4

This blog has been up for a while, but sadly neglected.

Clearly, it needs some proper attention.