And the award goes to..

Wow I've finished out week 8! This post is on Thing #19 - Discover any site from the Web 2.0 awards list. I definitely liked the sound of that, and I wasn't disappointed! the Web 2.0 awards list was brimming with awesome cutting edge technology. There were many categories to explore. Of course, I immediately went for the "games" award category. I really enjoyed playing around with Guess-the-Google, "the image guessing game". They show you 20 pictures returned in a google image search all found with the same keyword. You need to guess what the common keyword is for all the pictures in 20 seconds. I would say this game uses the same technological ideas as tagging. My highscore was 222! This game reminds me of one I discovered while searching for mashups. Google has a game that helps them improve the quality of their image search. It's called Google Image Labeler. You're partnered randomly with another player, and over a 2 minute period, you're shown different pictures and you need to match the other player's tag suggestions. The more specific the tag match, the more points you get. It's highly addicting! Well there really is nothing useful about the site I discovered on the web 2.0 awards list.. except maybe as a stress reliever! Which is something we probably all need from time to time! haha.

zoho, zoho, it's off to work we go!

Thing number 18 already! The following was composed with zoho writer. I published it directly from zoho's site, and it was easy as pie.

Zoho writer is a cool tool!

All the little buttons here are intriguing!
They even have some emoticons here to use!

Here is a table	that was easily added
You just select the table button	and tell it how many cells you'd like!

There is a chart for inserting "special characters" so that I can type "my fiancé" correctly!

Zoho writer is similar to any "word" program. It's conviently housed on the web, so there are no problems with OS compatibility, and you can save the file in any format. Zoho has several other services that I found interesting, such as zoho show, to make things like power points. (they even have a wiki!)

Playing in the Sandbox!

Thing #17 was "Add an entry into the Sandbox Wiki created with PB Wiki". I visited the Maryland Libraries sandbox wiki. It was pretty fun, I must say. I added my blog to the "favorite blogs" page, and I when I viewed the "currently reading" section, I decided to add my current book! You can see my edit here. This was really easy. You don't even need to know html. I also discovered that any one can create a wiki. pbwiki.com lets you make a free one. This sounds useful for someone running a club, fan site, or the like.

Wikis!

I'm on to Thing #16. We were asked to learn about wikis and discover some innovative ways that libraries are using them. wikis are huge networks of information on anything under the sun provided by anyone who wants to contribute. That fact has always discouraged me from using these types of websites as resources for something I need the absolute truth on. Any average joe can edit the page on rocket science, plus the navigation on wiki sites has always been a little confusing for me. I can see, however, how it would be beneficial to librarians to use wikis for researching topics for patrons (while using more trusted sites as supplements), or sharing information with other libraries. I actually didn't find anything that really interested me on any of the suggested wikis. I think I prefer the infamous wikipedia. This site has millions of articles on anything you can possibly imagine. I like how these articles have a place that editors list the external resources they used. I also think the random page link is pretty fun to play around with. I've been from an article about an australian high school to an article all about britney spears's baby one more time tour (haha). There are links to entries that pertain to what you searched for, so you could be lead on a seemingly endless trail of information. Here is information on fallston, MD. I learned that Melvin Mora from the Orioles lives or lived in the area. I had a lot of fun looking at the demographics of various cities in maryland. While Being circumspect, wikis make learning fun!

The Future is Here!

Thing number 15. Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 & the future of libraries. With the evolution of web 2.0, the library has had to morph into it's own 2.0 version, adopting new ideas for creating and supplying new services to the public. I read the OCLC article Away From Icebergs. It presented a few challenges (or "icebergs") that libraries will potentially face in the future if we don't all shift over to serving in 2.0 form. Another article that rang true for me was Into a New World of Librarianship. Librarians themselves need to become 2.0 as well. They need to be trained in and study the new technologies that will allow them to help patrons navigate new channels of research. Because before you know it, 3.0 will be here!