Does anyone still read these 2.0 blogs? If so, I'm posting a link to this translation site:
http://translation2.paralink.com/
As a translation site, it's no better than any of the others. The cool thing is that if you click the image of the megaphone next to the text box (either for the original or the translated text), it'll show you an incredibly creepy computer-animated person, looking at you with their cold eyes, saying whatever's in the box.
Obviously, you get the best results when you type something incredibly rude into the first box. In fact, the translations of profanity generally seem better than of other texts. I guess they know their audience.
Okay. So, how much of this 2.0 jazz do I find to be useful to the library?
I can see the usefulness of delicious, because bookmarks is bookmarks, and bookmarks is a thing we use. Perhaps a big MCL Ref site at delicious (sorry, still can't type "delicious site" without quotation marks around it, and I'm not putting in the idiotic periods), or smaller departmental sites, linked on the homepage and/or intranet, that all ref staff could add to, might come in handy, as long as we don't tag things stupidly*. Let the people who love tags tag away to their hearts content, and let the rest of us use or ignore the site as best suits our needs and dispositions.
Don't see a huge library application for flickr.
RSS feeds seem handy for anyone who wants to keep up on the news on a given topic. I can see how library professionals could use it to keep abreast of the latest developments, trends, opinions, gossip and fads. Still, Bloglines isn't that great. It's just about the only 2.0 site I have gone back to since signing up for it, because I can get RSS feeds of new MCL DVDs (which I wouldn't need to do if MCL still put "DVD" in the title of every on-order DVD). I've noticed that most of the on-order DVDs that arrive in my RSS inbox have already been in the catalog for a while, so it hasn't been a big help if I want to be first in line on the holds list. Makes me wonder what other RSS feeds have a big lag time.
Social networks: ugh. I can't see why MCL'd need a Myspace page, unless we're trying to hook up with teens for illicit activities. Please tell me we're not doing that.
Fun. I'm in favor of fun. Well, my kind of fun anyway. Your kind of fun ain't my concern.
Language translation sites: recently a co-worker suggested I use one of the on-line language translation sites to help a patron on the phone translate a sentence into Spanish. I was horrified. Okay, not exactly horrified, but it was a VERY BAD IDEA. All the translation sites are just plain awful. Let's ignore them and hope they go away.
Don't see a huge library application for LiveMocha neither.
I'll bet there are podcasts out there that'd be useful for our jobs, but I have no idea what they might be. I can't see MCL creating podcasts ourselves. I mean, sure, we could make audio from the Brown Bag Lunch series available online, but who would listen?
I'm iffy about wikis at work. In-house wikis could prove useful. We could have a wiki that would be much like the old Fugitive Facts file. We could also have a public wiki so that our patrons could feel involved with their library in some way: book reviews, upcoming events, an electronic version of the public bulletin boards, that sort of thing. I'd never look at it, but it might make some taxpayers happy. Still, we must be wary of the information that shows up on wikis. After all, it's just some stuff that someone posted online. Take it with several grains of salt.
Online word processing is a good idea. We could show it to our reasonably tech-savvy patrons as an alternative to the word processing we provide on the internet stations, especially since floppy disks are on their way out. Might have some in-house applications too. Must remember to find them later.
The social cataloging sites are obviously of greater use to individuals than to institutions. I suppose they might have some value for reader's advisory, but I pray that I will never have to do reader's advisory again.
And that's 2.0.
So, what did I learn? Mostly I learned that I really don't like computers all that much. I've said it before and I'll say it again: in the internet age, you can no longer call a television an "idiot box". But even though most of this means bupkis to me, it's good that I know it's out there, in case I need to help patrons with their 2.0 questions. I can now show patrons how to upload pictures into their flickr accounts, even though I'm not into looking at photo albums, be they virtual or physical. I've already told a patron about LiveMocha, even though I found it to be a disappointment.
And now 2.1.
At least until 2.2 comes along. And how will we know when we get that extra tenth? It all seems so arbitrary and transitory to me. And why do we limit ourselves to rational numbers anyway? How about Web pi or Web e or Web phi, where phi = 
, the golden ratio? Wouldn't that make for a much more aesthetically pleasing web? And why won't Roller let me include Greek letters in my postings? Oh, that's right, because Roller sucks.
Anyway, I'm done. Gimme my swag. It is now safe to turn off your computer.
* of course, I would never tag stupidly.
I took a look at the social cataloging sites linked. They all looked like a cross between Amazon and Myspace.
I'm more of a music-lover than a book-lover, so I signed up for Gurulib, since it was the only site that let me make a catalog of cd's. It was fairly easy to figure out how to build up my library. I started by adding Françoise Hardy cd's. There were 308 entries, some of which were duplicates, some of which had no cover image, all of which had links to Amazon, in case you (or I) wanted to buy buy BUY! This is a commercial site after all*. I own a few of her cd's that aren't available on Gurulib, so my list ain't comprehensive, even though I made it through all 308 entries.
This exercise was just plain BOOOOORING. I guess I'm not a cataloger at heart. Good to know.
I'm not going to use Gurulib again. If you want to see a partial list of the Françoise Hardy cd's I own, go here. The titles I recommend most are The Vogue Years and La Question. Or you could just watch her on Youtube, comme ça:
I do like other artists too. If you'd like to find out who they are, come talk to me. My desk is on the 4th floor of Central.
* Have you noticed that all the 2.0 sites are commercial sites?
Also, I'm trying to put a band together to cover 60's French garage-pop songs, like the FH song above. If you or anyone you know might be interested, please shoot me an e-mail. I play drums and I may have found a guitarist. Still need a bassist, an organist and a female singer who speaks French. I hope to be gigging by Bastille Day.
I'm going to take it on faith that Google Docs and Zoho Writer are pretty much the same thing and just check out Google Docs, since I already have a Google account.
Online word processing. Sounds like a good idea. Looks just like MS Word or any other word processing program I've ever seen, so I'll bet the learning curve is pretty easy. I'm not into the whole sharing thing -- write yer own damn funny haiku * -- but otherwise I can see how this'd be useful.
Are there problems with Google Docs? Bill Kramer points out what's scary about the agreement you need to sign in his blog. I'm sure there are other, more mundane problems too. Will my documents ever disappear? Any irritating bugs, er, "features" that'll make me want to throw my computer out of the nearest window? No way of knowing now. Check back later.
* Having suffered through OPB's radio show LiveWire more than once, I don't believe that truly funny haikus actually exist. You can podcast that show, but if you do, you're a masochist.
Okay, I checked out all the links about wikis, and the main thing I learned is that wikis are all about overthrowing the old adage "Too many cooks spoil the broth." It's as if, presented with the concept of too many cooks, wikis respond,"Bring 'em on!"
But is that necessarily a bad thing?
I can see how wikis could work well with a limited number of people contributing, like members of a committee. In-house wikis could be a beneficial way of organizing and updating information for an organization or club or business. I still think public wikis are just inviting trouble. Everyone online seems to want to be an expert, whether or not they actually know what they're talking about. Online discussion forums are renowned sources of "authoritative" misinformation, and I fail to see why wikis should be any different.
Despite my reservations, I decide to read a few Wikipedia articles about some subjects I actually know a few things about, and evaluate how good an information source it is.
The first thing I notice is that every entry is hella long. This makes perfect sense to me. I imagine that most of Wikipedia's contributors are obsessive geeks, and obsessive geeks loooove minutia (hence the "obsessive" part). If Britannica was like Wikipedia, it'd be thousands of volumes long, and entire forests would die in vain.
The next thing I notice is that there are a few tiny mistakes. Hey, this is a wiki! Shouldn't I draw on my assumption of expertise and correct what I see as wrong? I suppose I could, but wouldn't that make me an obsessive geek? Yeah, it would. Damn. For the sake of my own self-esteem, I decide to let it pass.
Mostly, however, the information seems correct, so maybe wikis aren't all bad. They're not terribly exciting to me, but then again, I've never been the sort to profess my undying love for a website. My undying love is reserved for dachshunds, 60's French pop music, the Colbert Report, and the like.
So. Wikis. Yup, another stupid 2.0 name. At least this time I know where they got the name: "The word 'Wiki' comes from the Hawaiian phrase 'wiki wiki', which is commonly used to indicate something fast." It's on the web, so it must be true.
Except it isn't. The name "Wiki" really comes from "Wicca". It's all witchcraft. That's the truth. I read about it on Conservapedia.
Except I didn't. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that I said I did, and the really great thing is that if I post it on a Wiki, it gets the air of pseudo-authority. Sure, someone else can edit my "facts", but I can edit them right back, and we can get a proper little Wiki War going. And who's to say who's really right? Whom can you trust?
The one person you can always trust is Stephen Colbert:
You see, any user can change any entry, and if enough other users agree with them, it becomes true.… If only the entire body of human knowledge worked this way. And it can, thanks to tonight's wørd: Wikiality. Now, folks, I'm no fan of reality, and I'm no fan of encyclopedias. I've said it before. Who is Britannica to tell me that George Washington had slaves? If I want to say he didn't, that's my right. And now, thanks to Wikipedia, it's also a fact. We should apply these principles to all information. All we need to do is convince a majority of people that some factoid is true.… What we're doing is bringing democracy to knowledge.
Of course, my source for this quote is Wikipedia. It really is. Have I ever lied to you?
The original video is here, and is highly recommended viewing. Roller won't let me embed it.
I've never much cottoned to podcasts before. I think it's the name. Just a bit too Invasion of the Body Snatchers for me. But one thing I've learned from doing these assigments is that if you want to be a part of Web 2.0, you have to put your aversion to stupid names behind you (seriously, a group of people actually got together in a conference room and brainstormed ideas and the best they could come up with was "del.icio.us" or "LiveMocha"?!), so a-"podcasting" we will go.
I check out the NPR podcasts, and they all seem a bit dull. Quelle surprise. This is NPR after all. In order to complete the assignment, I do, however, add one of them to my Bloglines account. I am pleased to discover that I can listen directly from Bloglines' site without having to download any software into my computer. Unfortunately, Bloglines gives me the last ten shows at once, and so if I don't listen to them all right now, they'll be gone next time I log into Bloglines. Given that these are NPR broadcasts, I decide I'm totally okay with them disappearing.
Next I visit FindPodcasts.com, and I am delighted to see a link to The Ricky Gervais Show! I love The Office (UK version -- the American one's never done anything for me) and Extras, and I've heard great things about this podcast. Trouble is, when you click the link, you get the message "Error: Cannot currently connect to audio feed, sorry! Try again in a few seconds and hit Refresh (F5)". Don't bother hitting F5. If you follow the RSS URL, you discover that the page is no longer there. I think it's been gone for years. Nonetheless, Ricky Gervais is currently #2 on Findpodcasts' Most Popular Podcasts, Comedy Division. Either this page hasn't been refreshed in a very very long time or all the other comedy podcasts are exceptionally bad.
The Ricky Gervais Show was produced by The Guardian, so I check out their page of available podcasts. Maybe there's something interesting here, but there's just too much to go through right now. Maybe I'll try back later, maybe not.
Another MCL 2.0 blog -- I forget which one -- recommends KEXP's podcasts. I consider adding their Live Performance series, then I look at the list of who actually performs in their studios, and navigate away from the page as quickly as possible. Never could stand the indie rock.
Finally, although this isn't really a podcast, as a Reed College alum, I would be remiss if I didn't post a link to the recently-found tape of Allen Ginsberg reading Howl at Reed in February, 1956, even though I've never been interested in beat poetry, or, for that matter, anything else that's ever come out of San Francisco.
Maybe some day I'll find a podcast I really like. Also, maybe some day I'll type "podcast" correctly the first time, instead of "podcat" or "pocast" or whatever else my fingers decide they like. But for today, I'm done.
I worked on LiveMocha for about 45 minutes yesterday. It's been decades since I took French in college, so I started as a beginner. In the second lesson, I was instructed to translate the sentences "I am not a girl. I am a boy." into French. Using the word choices LiveMocha offered, I came up with "Je ne suis pas une fille. Je suis un garçon." LiveMocha insisted that I got it wrong. A minute or two later, I translated "She is not fat. She is thin." as "Elle n'est pas grosse. Elle est mince," which was also deemed wrong.
And we're supposed to recommend this site to the public?!
Clearly, LiveMocha ain't gonna help me recover whatever mastery of the French language I once had. Oh well. I guess it doesn't really matter much anyway. Given the continuing decline of the dollar against the euro, I won't be heading off to Paris any time soon.
Gotta warn ya, this entry's long and kinda boring.
I signed up with LiveMocha. Within seconds of getting my account, some Turkish guy wanted to chat. I decided to investigate this further later (LiveMocha that is, not the Turkish guy).
Instead, I played around with online translation services. I started by taking the poem I posted a couple of weeks ago (which I later submitted to the Portland Mercury and won Letter of the Week with -- Learning 2.0 is beginning to pay off for me!) and tried translating via various different online services linked by Langenberg.
Google's translation site was pretty bad. If it didn't know how to translate a word or phrase, it'd just leave it in English. Some of the results were very disappointing. When I tried to translate the sentence "I read about it all online" into German, it came back as "I read about it all online." Not exactly helpful, huh?
Freetranslation scored better. When I translated the poem into French, it became:
L'ancien Federline de Madame
A perdu son petit petit esprit
Et à l'hôpital limité.
Je lis de lui tout en ligne.
Peut-être elle a juste besoin de dérouler.
Prions sa psyché réaligne.
L'un ne devrait pas être vraiment hostile.
Le célébrité est un tel meule.
At least it looked like French, what with the accents and all. It did translate both "tiny" and "little" into "petit", so "tiny little mind" became "petit petit esprit", which was awkward. Translating it back into English increased the awkwardness, but actually got somewhat close to the spirit of the original, although "mind" became "spirit", "unwinds" became "unfold", and although "realigns" translated into "réaligne" quite nicely, it couldn't make the return trip:
The former Federline of Madam
To lost his small small spirit
And to the limited hospital.
I read of him all online one.
Maybe she has just need to unfold.
Let us pray his psyche réaligne.
The one should not be really hostile.
Fame is a such grinds.
Next I tried Dictionary.com's Translator. In French, I got:
Ancienne Mme Federline
A perdu son petit esprit minuscule
Et à l'hôpital confiné.
J'ai eu connaissance tout en ligne de lui.
Peut-être elle doit juste dérouler.
Prions sa psyche réaménage.
On vraiment ne doit pas être dur.
La célébrité est un tel morcellement.
which looked better, but looks can be deceiving. Plugging it back into English yielded:
Former Mrs. Federline
With lost its tiny small-minded person
And at the confined hospital.
I was informed all on line of him.
Perhaps it must just unroll.
Let us request its psyche refits.
One really should not be hard.
The celebrity is such a parcelling out.
I could have tried some more, but I could see where this was going. My conclusion: none of these sites are terribly good, but working with several at the same time might get you acceptable results, especially if you use them as rough first drafts, and later go over everything using your old French 101 textbook. But that's not very 2.0, is it?
I first listened to Pandora about a year ago, and at the time I was very unimpressed. Trying it again now does little to change my mind.
This time I begin by trying to find music like Francoise Hardy. The results are uniformly awful. I don't even like the FH tracks Pandora plays.
Next I try the Small Faces. The results are better. Pretty much everyone who likes the Small Faces also likes the Who's pop-art period, and the second song Pandora plays is Pictures of Lily. I'll give Pandora props for recognizing the obvious, but it's still playing a lot of songs that I have to skip through pretty quickly. One thing that I find interesting is that the playlist includes quite a few Small Faces tracks. On one hand, this is good: I tell Pandora that I like them and so Pandora plays what I like, but I thought the whole point of Pandora was to introduce me to music I hadn't heard before but might enjoy. I already know I like the Small Faces.
When I type in Syd Barrett, the results are pretty similar: Pandora plays a good early Kinks song, then a generic 60's garage-psych tune, then a song by some drab indie-pop band, then another Syd tune. Next Pandora tries to make me listen to the Smiths, which is completely unforgivable.
All in all, I give Pandora a gentleman's C.
One online music source that I'm completely impressed with is KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic page. This is the closest America's got to the old BBC John Peel sessions. It seems like just about every pop or rock band going through LA does a live session on this show, so it's an excellent way to discover new music. For example, suppose you'd like to hear why Vampire Weekend is the latest buzz band. Why look, they played on Morning Becomes Eclectic just the other day! So you can listen to their show and find out what the fuss is all about, and if you're anything like me, you'll conclude that they're a bit dull.
One really great thing about this site is that they archive all the old shows going back to around 2000, and the archive is searchable if you click the More Past Shows link on the bottom of the page. Some of the shows are excellent (Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Robyn Hitchcock), some are abysmal (I'll let you find those for yourself), and some are exclusive broadcasts of concerts recorded outside of KCRW, such as Paul McCartney's free in-store at Amoeba Records.
Ah fun. Who doesn't like fun? Fun is fun, after all.
Well, I guess it all depends on what you consider to be fun.
I checked out some of the generator sites on Generator Blog, and none of them were very entertaining for more than about a minute. I love Black Adder, but even the Black Adder Quote Generator got tiresome quick. I'd much rather just watch the old episodes.
Youtube's another matter. I like Youtube, and I'd like to thank Learning 2.0 for giving me an excuse to watch it at work. No matter what you want to watch, someone has posted it on Youtube (unless it's porn, but I hear there are Youtube-like porn sites out there too). One thing I never seem to tire of is 60's French pop music, especially Françoise Hardy. I'm sure this is way sexier than anything on the Youtube-like porn sites:
There's so much 60's French pop on Youtube, and it took me forever to figure out how to embed it in my blog, so I'll post some more. I genuinely love this stuff. This is a clip of yé-yé girl France Gall singing Les Sucettes with the song's composer Serge Gainsbourg. There's another video of her singing this song on Youtube, which I will not post on the blog I do at work:
Finally, another Serge Gainsbourg composition, this one sung by his then-lover Brigitte Bardot. This song is an absolute masterpiece, at least 10 years ahead of its time. Cool video too:
Later Serge abandoned melody, Françoise began singing dreadful MOR music, and French pop was never as good again.
I'm trying to figure out how to use Bloglines to keep informed of the latest gossip, whether it's about Britney's breakdown from TMZ.com or Ginnie Cooper's reign in DC from washingtonpost.com, filtered and fed to me, without getting absolutely everything from those sites filling up my Bloglines inbox. I'm failing miserably. As I said before, Feedster, which the tutorial recommends as a feeder, ain't there anymore. I tried looking at Feed Demon, but it looks like I'd have to create an account first and then find out if it'll meet my needs. I'm getting sick and tired of creating more accounts just to keep up with Web 2.0. We've only been doing this a few weeks, and I'm already forgetting what 2.0 accounts I have. What Web 2.0 needs is one-stop shopping, like Fred Meyer. We should be able to go to fredmeyer.com and get all of our internet needs met.
This posting is sponsored by Fred Meyer. What's on your list today? You'll find it at Fred Meyer.
I am totally not feelin' this week's lesson. I looked at MCL's myspace page and whew! It's pretty bad. I'm not sure why an institution is trying to network. And it appears most of MCL's friends are other libraries. Maybe the libs should have Libspace.com (and network amongst themselves) instead trying to be painfully hip on myspace or friendster? If we're trying to reach out to the young folk this aint the way, people.
And please no facebook account for MCL. I think the library (or libraries in general) try too hard to keep up with the whippersnappers. I mean do we really have to sell ourselves that hard? We give out free stuff! For three weeks. FREE STUFF. Seems like we should sort of lead with that...
I was off for four days. I'll finish off last week's assignment later. Instead, let's jump into this week's assignment about social networking.
I've had a Myspace page for a few years. Like any new toy, I played with it for a while and then let it collect dust. I can't remember the last time I logged in.
Despite Myspace's much-publicised minuses for being a dream-come-true for pedophiles and the go-to site for online harassment, it's still a reasonably good tool for musicans to help promote themselves. For music fans, it can be a good way to introduce yourself to music you've heard about but never actually heard. Many of these are tribute sites, created by fans. Just google "myspace" and the name of a band or musician you want to hear, and chances are pretty good you'll be able to listen to a few songs by that artist. For example, here's a fan site dedicated to yé-yé girl France Gall, whose Laisse Tomber Les Filles is one of the best 60's French pop songs. For me, being able to listen to 60's French pop songs online is pretty much Myspace's only usefulness.
I've checked out MCL's Myspace page, and sorry, but I don't like it. Granted, Myspace sites are never terribly attractive, but ours just looks ugly and amateurish. Who chose hospital green as the background color? We only have 158 "friends", so I fail to see the use of the site as an outreach tool. It looks like it hasn't been updated in a while; I suspect the people who were working on our page lost interest in it, just like I did with my Myspace page.
I briefly had a Facebook page. I joined Facebook so that I could join the group One Million Strong For Stephen Colbert. Then he failed to get on the ballot in South Carolina, so I retired my Facebook account. As far as I could tell, it was just another Myspace but with different graphics. Looking at some libraries' Facebook pages now reinforces this idea.
What ever happened to Friendster anyway?
An eight line poem by Lawrence Philip Will.
Copyright 2008.
The former Mrs Federline
Has lost her tiny little mind
And to the hospital's confined.
I read about it all online.
Perhaps she just needs to unwind.
Let's pray her psyche realigns.
One really oughtn't be unkind.
Celebrity is such a grind.
So, will Roller allow me to post this time? I swear, this thing was created by the same people who came up with Millennium.
Anyway, about RSS feeds: this actually seems useful to me. I'm getting tired of scouring sites like TMZ and OMG, trying to keep abreast of what's up with Lindsay and Brit. Why not let my robot slaves do the work for me, and deliver the results like a cat bringing me a chewed-up but still-living bird as a present?
First thing, watch the video (sure beats reading): "Rafe Needleman ... explains how RSS feeds give you the news you need..." Hey! I know that name! Didn't I go to college with him?! So, I watch the video and I absolutely don't recognize this guy at all. Either he's aging badly or I never actually met him in school. Probably the latter. Reed's a small place, so there's really no excuse. Still, it saddens me to realize that another one of my old classmates is working in the computer industry.
I really hope he doesn't have his RSS feeder set up to find any new mention of him online. If so, no offense, dude.
Which brings up another potentially useful feature of RSS feeds: I can find out when anyone posts any new crap about me online. And then I can plot my revenge. Sweet sweet revenge.
Okay, back to the assignment: signing up at Bloglines is easy enough. Yet another online account to keep track of. I'll bet you good money that Web 3.0 will be all about managing all of your Web 2.0 accounts. Anyway, as soon is my e-mail address is deemed copacetic by Bloglines, I start adding blogs to my account. I begin by adding some of my co-workers' 2.0 blogs, since I'm sick to death of trying to find them on MCL's Learning 2.0 homepage. Seriously, have you people ever heard of alphabetical order? It may not "look cool" like tag clouds, but it's hella useful.
While reading co-workers' blogs may be an enjoyable enough waste of time, it ain't gonna tell me squat about young Hollywood's latest drug- and madness-feuled adventures. For this I need an RSS feeder. Feed me, feeder! FEED ME!
End of part one.
Join me next time for part two, in which the "super easy" tutorial instructs me to use Feedster.com to keep track of the latest news. I later discover that Feedster has been off-line for the past few months.
Gary and I are skeptical as to the usefulness of RSS feeds in my daily life. We'll see. For now, it's yet another account I've set up out there on the Internets I'll have to keep up with. I've heard of RSS feeds but had no clue as to what they actually were. So I went through the tutorial, signed up on bloglines (with difficulty) added 10 feeds--and still not sure what RSS feeds are. I guess, like del.icio.us--it's a way to catalog and keep up with the latest on your favorite blogs/news sites? In worklife, I'll definitely use it for keeping up with book reviews. And MCL could probably use it to publicize events and classes plus book reviews.
I spend the better part of a half hour typing about my experiences with Bloglines, and then Roller makes it all disappear when I try to post it. My hatred for Roller grows at an exponential rate.
Here I am, trying to do the part of the assignment where you upload a picture from flickr into your blog. Should be easy enough, huh?
Flickr doesn't allow you to right-click and view the photo in a new window, so you can't just link the photo directy via Roller's Insert/Modify Window icon. Strike One.
I try clicking on flickr's little Blog This icon above the photo, which asks me to configure a blog to post to. When I try to do this, I see that Roller is not listed in the drop-down menu. When I click on "(none of the above)", flickr informs me "Uh oh. It looks like we don't know how we can post to your weblog. Sorry!" Strike Two.
Okay, let's try it the old cumbersome way, where I right-click the photo, save it to my desktop, upload it to Roller and then delete the file from my desktop. Trouble is, when I click Roller's File Uploads it takes me to a page where I can upload the image just fine, but as far as I can tell, I can't get back to what I've been typing all this time. When I try using the back button, everything's gone, so I get the pleasure of re-typing everything again. Strike Three, and at this point, I'm making obscene gestures at the computer screen. Did I mention that I hate Roller?
But as long as I've actually managed to upload the photo, I might as well post it. This is from a performance I did with 3 Leg Torso last spring. My shirt looks very good in this photo:
We were supposed to play at MCL's Keep Portland Weird Festival a few months ago. We didn't.
I don't have the photographer's permission to use it, but he didn't have my permission to put it online, so as far as I'm concerned it's fair game. You think all the people posting pictures of cats on their blogs get the photographer's permission, let alone the cat's?
Done the assignment. Really not that exciting. I saw the flickr photos of MCL. Lots of photos of zines. Ugh. I think it's fitting that MCL's Zine Symposium was sponsored by Stumptown: both zines and Stumptown's coffee leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I already have a yahoo account, so signing up for flickr was easy. I searched the web and found a couple of photos that people took of some of my performances, so I uploaded them to flickr. Then I read that you shouldn't upload photos by other photographers, so I made them private. I don't have any flickr-friends and don't really feel like being a part of another "virtual community", so no one will ever see them but me.
Of course, I was never asked to sign a release allowing the photographer to use my image online; I guess the rules of online photography favor the photographer over the photographed.
I found some of my friends' sites, looked at their pictures. I thought about adding them as friends, but why bother? I've never owned anything other than a cheap disposible camera, so I don't think I'll be getting much use out of flickr. Just another online account to sign up for and then let drift away. You need to sign up for lots of accounts to be a part of web 2.0.
Again, I could see how other people could get excited about this sort of thing, just not me.
Oh joy, Roller's doing that annoying jumpy thing again. I hate Roller.
First of all, after this sentence, I'm never going to type it as "del.icio.us" again. Stupid name, stupid way to write it.
When I found out that you could make your tags private, I signed up for an account with delicious (that way reads so much better than "a delicious account"). Okay, you can make your tags private, but you have to set each individual tag private after you've tagged the site. It doesn't look like "make all of my tags private" is an option. So, a bit of a pain if you don't want to play the social bookmarking game.
I've watched the video about tagging, but I still have no idea how to add the tagging button to my browser. I am totally okay with this, since I don't want to clutter my browser up.
I went to the site's homepage (sorry, I cannot bring myself to type "the delicious homepage" except in this parenthetical remark), which brings up a "Hotlist" of sites, such as "Pexpect - a Pure Python Expect-like module" and "MySQL Tutorial". Clearly, I've been living my life with a completely wrong impression of what is "hot". There are also a bunch of "tags to watch". By whom? Not me certainly. I'd rather watch paint dry than check out "howto Install 802.11n in a MacBook Pro". Also, the homepage is extremely cluttered and just plain ugly. Yet it is "delicious". Go figure.
While I'm typing this Roller is living up to its name and rollingeverything I type below the bottom of the Content box. Serious;y, I stop typing for a fraction of a second, and I can't see what I just typed. Are there typos? I may never knoe. This is extremely frustarting.
Oh sorry, I forgot, blogging is fun. LOL.
On del.icio.us: "You can think of it as peering into another user's filing cabinet." Whaaaa?! Should I let other people rummage around in my sock drawer too?
So, I watched the video, checked out MCL's del.icio.us page, clicked on some links, read some comments, tried to stay awake. Although I would never want to do social bookmarking myself, I can see how it might appeal to people who spend way too much time online.
Oh, this was fun: I was trying to see if there were any del.icio.us links to sites about the ye-ye girls, the 60's French pop music craze, so I typed "ye-ye" into del.icio.us' search box. The response: "Search engine failed. Please let us know." I stumped it the first time!
By the way, tag clouds look stupid.
It's pretty clear to me that if I was a senior librarian in the Washington DC library system, Ginnie Cooper would have had me fired. (If you don't get the reference, go here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801380.html)
On setting up my account: Signing up would have been a lot easier if you had put the video link above the instructions about how to change your account. I stopped scrolling down when I got to the end of the instructions, so I didn't see the video until after I set up my account. Roller isn't all that user-friendly, so I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to change my password alone. Fun.
On library blogs: It seems that library blogs are no more interesting than any other blogs. A lot of the content is about blogging itself or online communities like Facebook. How very meta. I can't imagine ever wanting to read them again.
Oh, and when I hit the link to Walking Paper, a new window opened, but the site never connected. After waiting about ten minutes, I closed that window, which made all of my windows close. I had to log into Learning 2.0 and retype everything again. More fun.
So far not digging blogging at all.
I hope you are not offended by any of this.