# 14 Technorati...again?

I blogged a bit about Technorati in a previous post about finding feeds so I actually groaned a little bit when I saw that this was the subject of another exercise. I think maybe I've been working on Learning 2.0 for too long this morning because I am definitely grumpy that I had to spend more time exploring Technorati. I thought it was OK the first time...my opinion hasn't really changed much.

I did do a search for "Learning 2.0" and compared the results of the keyword search vs. the blog search vs. the Blog Directory. I really didn't like the keyword search results - you just get way too much stuff not related to your topic of interest. I much preferred the blog search, where you get a little blurb summarizing the purpose, topic, focus, or angle of the blog. The Blog Directory was OK but I still like the blog level search best. For example, when I drilled down in the Blog Directory to Lifestyle and then to Literature, I thought I would get blogs related to , well...books. This didn't appear to be the case. Instead I got blogs like RawMeat.com - The Cure for Boredom. I can't say much about RawMeat.com's claim to cure boredom...but I can say this shouldn't be the tag line for Technorati!

# 13 yummy bookmarks @ del.icio.us

Macaroni and cheese...one of my favorite foods ever! Very yummy....one could call it del.icio.us, actually! OK, enough with the corny stuff and onto the content!

I have heard of del.icio.us but I didn't really know what is was until this exercise (which is the point, duh). I created an account in delicious and played around for a bit looking at what sites people have bookmarked with the tags teen fiction. I even added a few of these to my brand new del.icio.us account.

I think that I will continue to add links to my account mostly because I can easily access those links from any computer. I follow several blogs and listservs that contain links to sites of interest and using del.icio.us to bookmark and tag these sites will be much better than adding each of them to My Favorites. I guess I see del.icio.us as sort long term storage for inter testing links. When you add every semi-interesting link you find to My Favorites, this list quickly becomes too long and very difficult to use. Using del.icio.us to store these links allows My Favorites to go back to being a place to quickly access the only the sites I use the very most.

Just another quick tidbit - I read in my email today that Deep Freeze is going to be installed on the public desk PCs here at Arabian. Due to this change, any favorites that you add one day will be gone the next on the desk computers. I think having links bookmarked in del.icio.us will help to alleviate potential problems here! How timely for me :)

#12 MyBook and FaceSpace?

I watch the teens in Teen Square play with their MySpace pages all the time....and yet before this exercise I had never been on MySpace or Facebook.

I really did try to experiment with these two social networking phenoms but I have to admit neither of them really captured my fancy. Overall, if I had to use one in my personal life, I would probably use Facebook because it seemed to have better privacy options and the layout was much more user friendly. I found MySpace very clunky and awkward to use...just way to much going on for me, I guess. I did a few searches in MySpace and checked out the page of award winning YA author John Green as well as the page for the Teen Librarians at Glendale's Main Library. In Facebook I looked up an old boyfriend and a few folks I went to high school with. I didn't contact anyone but I know where I would look if I wanted to get back in touch with some of those folks.

Anyway, this was an interesting learning exercise but I don't see myself using these in my own life. I do think it would be cool to have a library MySpace page for the teens to see what events we have coming up. City IS will probably allow that about the time I am ready to retire :)

# 11 The thing about it...

Finally, a "Thing" that I know someTHING about! Let me start out by saying, I love LibraryThing. I started using this several months ago after trying out Shelfari for a while. I just found LibraryThing easier to use for some reason. This is a great tool that I use to keep track of my reading history. I also try to add tags to each book to remind me what it is about, although if you take a look at my library, you'll see that most of the time I just add the title. I keep saying that one day I'll go in and tag each book, but by then I'll probably have forgotten what tags each book needs! One thing that I rarely, if ever, use in LibraryThing is the Groups or Talk features. I guess I just don't have the time, especially with all my Bloglines feeds these days, to keep up.

Anyway, since I already feel comfortable with LibraryThing, this was a pretty quick exercise for me. I did decide to add the LibraryThing widget to my blog, which I think looks pretty snappy if I do say so myself.

#10 Generator X

I always wondered where people found all these silly quirky things online....now I know that lots of them come from image generators such as those explored in this exercise. I was unfortunately somewhat limited because many of the generators that I wanted to play with were blocked by the city. However, I did get to create a personalized chocolate bar from the Letter James website. It is almost too pretty to eat...almost! Here it is:

I honestly could have played with all of these toys for hours...I' beginning to see how the teens can play with their Myspace layouts for hours on end.

As a quick note, I really want to try out the Harry Potter Name Generator that is linked from the Generator Blog. I'll try it from a public PC and post that for fun later on!

#9 Feed me Seymour!

See, the title of my post is "Feed me Seymour" and my last name, before I was married, was Seymour...and this post is about "feeds"....see, its sort of funny and witty, right? OK - EJ (my husband) would certainly groan at my pitiful attempt at humor. Maybe I should just stick with the task at hand.

So, this exercise continued to explore RSS feeds and several tools out there to help you find and add feeds that you want. The directions suggested trying out the Bloglines search tool, but since I had already used that in Thing #8, I decided to move along to the next suggested tool, Topix.net. After exploring Topix.net, I've decided that I like the the overall look and layout of this site. I also like the fact that they quickly provide you will some big picture news feeds like Phoenix news, US News, and World News. They even have a special Election 2008 section that you can subscribe to. My only complaint with Topix.net is that it is not very obvious that these are feeds. I didn't see an RSS, XML, or Subscribe Here button anywhere on their site. I decided that I would like to subscribe to their Offbeat News feed but it took me a while looking for a feed icon of some sort before I finally decided to try just copying and pasting the site's URL into Bloglines. This worked but I think for someone unfamiliar with feeds, Topix.net doesn't do a very good job of explaining what they are and how they work. I do look forward to checking in on my Offbeat News feed though....

I next moved on to Syndic8.com. Honestly, as soon as the page loaded I was turned off. The layout is so terrible that I didn't even want to experiment with this site. In the interest of learning (this is Learning 2.0 after all) I decided to try a quick search for "English Bulldogs" to see what kind of feeds came up. I had tried this same search on Topix.net, but most of the results were related to sports teams with a bulldog mascot so I didn't both adding this search to my list of feeds. I was pleasantly surprised when Syndic8.com returned 2 feeds that both seemed related to news and information about bulldogs! Unfortunately I wasn't able to add either of them to my Bloglines account. I'm not sure why this was a problem but I will try Syndic8.com again from on a public PC in hopes that I will have more success next time.

Finally, I moved on to Technorati.com. Since Technorati is a source for finding blogs, I decided to look for more Teen Fiction blogs that I could follow. As I mentioned in a previous post, the Goddess of YA Literature and Book Obsession blogs are two that I have been following for some time. They are both a great tool for helping me to stay on top of what is coming out in Teen Fiction. I found several blogs to choose from by doing a search for "Teen Fiction". I decided to add Teen Fiction Cafe to my list of feeds. The great part is that if I don't like this blog that much, I can go back to Technorati.com and find a better one. It looks like a pretty good one though.....

So, after completing Things #8 and #9, my Bloglines account shows 14 feeds. If I can successfully add the two bulldog feeds that I located on Syndic8.com, I'll have 16 feeds! I'm not sure how I'll ever keep up but at least I know I'll always have something interesting to look at online!

#8 Simple thoughts on RSS

I had experience with RSS feeds prior to this exercise so probably the most challenging part of this "thing" was to pick which 10 feeds to subscribe to on my Bloglines account. You can check out my picks here.

I like the idea of RSS feeds but unfortunately I have yet to really incorporate their use into my everyday personal or professional life. I use Firefox at home, which has a built in feed reader, making it even easier to subscribe to and follow your favorite RSS feeds. I have several of these "Live Bookmarks" on my PC at home, but I find I rarely check them. I have a feeling I'll log in and check my Bloglines account even less.

Despite my current lack of use of RSS feeds, I do see that they are a useful way to save time and keep updated on what going on in your favorite websites, news sources, and blogs.