Final post

All done once again. And once again I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, and learned some stuff, some of which will stick. I loved encompassculture and tastespotting, thought Box.net a potentially very useful thing and found the others to be more possibly than probably beneficial. But as my Mum would say, no knowledge is ever wasted.

Week 6 encompassculture

This could well become one of my best loved sites (I've already added it to My Favourites). I've picked out my next book to read once I've cleared the existing pile, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro. I'm sure I will recommend it to any customers I know who reads lots of books and can use a computer - unfortunately the two don't always go hand in hand. But for those who are not comfortable with computers I can search on their behalf to find more recommended titles of the sort they like. Another way we could use it is to print off recommendations and reviews to put with books, maybe on displays, or maybe just booklists made available for customers to request from. Avid readers are always looking for ideas for their next read.

Week 5 SlideShare - online presentations

SlideShare has a deceptively large amount of content on it, and I found there were many interesting ideas and applications mentioned that I would like to follow up on (particularly for my other job in a special library for blind and low vision children). I looked at a presentation on web 2.0, another that showed how libraries could use the Second Life game, with avatars, and the most interesting to me, a presentation named New Technologies that Save Time and Money - they had a tool for creating staff schedules!
Again, it was easy to use and I think customers would manage it fine. I'm not sure at this stage what it could be used for within our public library working environment (apart from maybe the staff schedules), but it's certainly interesting to know about. The pop-up ads were a bit annoying, though.

Week 4 TasteSpotting

This is a seriously evil site and I'm shocked that we have had to feast our eyes on it! My favourite recipe would be all of them but I've chosen Sharp cheddar and creamy fontina cheese with caramelized onions grilled between two slices of homemade beer bread. Even the homemade beer bread on its own has me drooling. And I don't even know what fontina cheese is!
The site is extremely easy to use and I think I would even recommend it to patrons, especially ones I know would be interested in food. And what I personally got out of this site is, as I suppose everyone has answered, extreme hunger!

Week 3 FeedMyInbox RSS Made Simple

Another pretty straightforward application. Seems a bit easier than the first one we used way back when. I would use it for blogs about books and reading (like those library ones), and I think this would be an easy way to keep up with the publishing world. I subscibed to the Christchuch City Libraries blog - some interesting talk about the Man Booker award. As for its use with library patrons - hmmm...most patrons wanting to do stuff like this don't really need our help, and as for using it for our own work, I guess it could be another way of communicating on particular topics, although there are probably more appropriate applications to use. Still good to know about though...

Week 2 Picapp

This was easier to get to work when I right clicked to select rather than copied the URL, but yay it's there now (love this cat!) I'm not sure we would be called on to help customers pretty up their blogs, although it could be another option for finding images for kids for assignments and whatnot.

Week 1 Box.net

Good start to this exercise - a very user friendly little application! It could be used for any of our little groups within libraries (for me that would be ESOL, Nextreads and interloans) for sharing ideas and keeping them in one place for future reference. It was easy to use and straightforward and I would definitely promote it with customers trying to save their work without a memory stick. I seem to remember another online application from our first web 2.0 called Zoho Writer that was also good for this purpose.