Blogger Things

I have recently installed Google Analytics on my blogs. This is such a motivator since it really makes you want to think a little more about what you write to entice your readers back. However, my friend and I were trying to figure out how many people had accessed my blog yesterday. After about 30 minutes I realised that you simply needed to alter the date range in map veiw. It is such a simple solution that I really can't believe that it took us both that long to figure out!

Various Sundry Titbits

I first wanted to post something that was of the utmost importance and I felt I REALLY needed to post - but do you think I can remember what it is?

I have been working on reading published articles for academics' blogs to help show the Theatre Studies Programme what benefit they could gain for blogging. The benefits mentioned are all pretty obvious: greater collaboration, quicker publishing time, increased exposure, more freedom to mix the personal and professional (one thing I particularly admire). The negative aspects all seem to boil down to one piece of advice: what you write online is viewable by everyone. Pretty common sense really...However, I will be putting up something a wee bit more fulsome here eventually.

Now I remember what I was going to write about: why am I exploring on-line video editors when their off-line counterparts are often much more powerful and just as simple to use (I am thinking here of iMovies which has been designed with those with little or no video editing experience). However, the advantage with an online editor is that you do not have to have a terminal set aside as a video-editing station but students can use any terminal on campus - or indeed off. The good thing about a free service is that there is no further cost outlay to provide software licences.

However, it seems I have hit somewhat of a stumbling block. There are many tools out there designed to share your clips or add social bookmarks but very few for creating your own clips. Is this because the coding is so difficult? Is it too hard to make such tools easy enough to use? I know not...

Dawn and I also had a chat about online photo editors. In particular, we discussed those which claim to improve your photos. Whilst it could be a good idea to use these to improve that pic you snapped spur of the moment there could be some danger in relying on them heavily. This danger comes from diluting the basic skills of photography. I am not saying we shouldn't digitally manipulate images after we take them - this is a common-place and is part of photography. It is just that you can only improve the quality of an image so much; you can never make a bad image good with digital manipulation. Also, these editors are designed for web display. If you are using them for any purpose other than web display they will be effectively useless.

Today was also a first for me. I made my first comment on a colleague's blog. I found the blog of one of the Otago Polytechnic participants who is undertaking a project very similar to mine so could provide her with, I hope, helpful information on where she can locate tools to create an online slide show.

I also have discovered the danger in online tools where you quickly update what you are doing - such as Twitter and Facebook. My boss is my friend on Facebook and saw that I had updated my status somewhat flippantly. You see, I had insinuated that I sometimes do not apply myself fully to the task at hand. This, however, was not my intended meaning. I simply meant to state that I had the energy/motivation to get work done - two things that can begin to fade when you work the 5-9 shift. Just a word of caution: be clear in your communication and you can avoid possibly embarrassing situations. Incidentally, this brings me back to the topic with which I started my blog as this is one of the warnings that constantly cropped up in the readings I was doing for academic blogging...

Wikis or Blogs?

I couldn't quite see the difference between wikis and blogs. To me they both seem to serve a similar function. The focus here, however, will be on using these two tools for collaboration.

A wiki has an advantage because if you are working on a document collaboratively then anyone can edit the document live. However, you have no record of the original. With a blog, you can post the document and then comment on suggested changes. This may be a better option for creating collaborative documents. Of course there is also Google docs, which is perhaps an even better option.

Also, I can't help feeling that the purpose of a wiki is to allow everyone to edit the information. Something really sticks with me with the fact that you create a wiki that not every one has access to edit seems against the spirit of a wiki.

Reflection?

Well, I have been asked to reflect on what I am doing in the DIL. Last night, however, I realised that because I was not carrying out reflection in action I could not reflect on action since I wasn't even recording what my actions were! Consequently, my day yesterday was not quite as effective as it could have been.

I did start working on Wikis and video editing so I will summarise what I remember.

Simon Hart was keen that I look at wikis for the Theatre Studies Programme to use as a way of collaborating between staff since they could post an entry and other staff could edit it and provide feedback thereby having a living document. The other option for these purposes is to have a blog with an RSS feed so staff knew when a change had been made; the changes would be in their face rather than staff having to go and hunt for them. My next step is to set up a wiki to see just how they work from a practical perspective.

I also skulked around the net to see if I could find either wikis or blogs which fostered a community of practice. This was very hard since most of them talk about theatre in general rather than specific forms of theatre - queer theatre was the community of practice with which I was concerned. My thoughts here lead me in the direction of setting up a community site for queer theatre. Although the problem will be buy-in since, for the site to be of any use, the community would need to embrace it fully. Add to this the phenomenon that theatre practitioners have very little time/effort to update a blog or other site this task may be quite difficult.

I then changed my concentration ever so slightly to look at on-line video editors. Why? A practitioner could use them to report/reflect on their work (if they are working in a traditional paradigm); they could be blended with live theatre; they could be used as a digital performance. I am using a web 2.0 directory to find on-line editors to use. So far this has been fruitful but has not been carried out in a co-ordinated fashion. My colleague Allison Brown, Digital Initiatives Librarian, who had the brilliant idea that I compare the different editors I find on a spreadsheet. What a fantastic idea! And, I know, you are thinking it is also so banal but my mind is working slowly these days. So, you can look forward to more...

Things to Work On

These are some things I need to work on/explore:

Wikis
Blogsphere - particularly RSS feeds therefrom and collating these (can you publish RSS feeds in Facebook?). Also searching the blogsphere for new things that crop up.
Second Life

Googlicious

God I love Google! They now have so many great little things to use. Go and have a wee look-see.

Applicatorama

Just want to have a scope out of what Web2.0 strategies/apps/tools are out there? Well, here is a start. I suggest setting aside QUITE a bit of time for these - there are one or two...

Flickr Color Pickr

Just found this great tool - Flickr Color Pickr. It searches public photos on Flickr for a certain colour. What is fantastic about it is if you need a certain coloured image to match the colours in your document, you can find it easily. Squeee.

Further Webbish Fun

This morning I had an impromptu de.lici.ous session with the Reference Services Librarian. We started with adding an extension for Firefox. The great thing about Firefox is that it gives you a personal profile on your local desktop. This means that you don't have to have access to the server - which is why Internet Explorer may not let you modify it.

Having set up the extension, we had a session bundling tags. I think this is the most problematic feature of de.lici.ous. You can't bundle tags in your sidebar or when you bookmark a page. You still need to edit bundles on the de.lici.ous website. However, if you have the toolbar enabled for Firefox then you can right-click either and then manage . This brings up a dialogue box which is much more linearly hierarchical. The "bundle tags" feature on the website is more pictorially hierarchical. So, each feature suits a different style of epistemologist.

The bundles are also not differentiated in your sidebar. The icons for both bundles and tags are identical. However, you can differentiate between your tags and bundles because your bundles will probably have more websites tagged in them and also they are on the higher level - i.e. you will have to expand them in your sidebar to see the tags. However, the search function in the sidebar works as a keyword search in both your tags and the names of websites. This is much handier than the traditional bookmark view where if you want to rename the bookmark you will lose the website name.

We also tried the other day to import bookmarks from Firefox. However, the website's instructions work only for I.E. To export your bookmarks from Firefox you will need to select "Organise Bookmarks" under the "Bookmarks" menu.

Watch this space for more exciting develpments...

Web 2.0 Playing

At work, we have had some time set aside for playing with web 2.0 strategies. I went to the first session on Friday. Whilst it is fun to just have a play to see what different things can do - I experimented with avatars and flickr - I couldn't help but feel the blog we were using as a guide, see here, didn't seem to take the power of these strategies into account fully. Whilst it did mention the requirements for using each strategy - such as what systems were needed - so librarians could cater to their patrons needs, the site did not go into how patrons could better harness the power of these strategies for their own requirements.

For example, with flickr, it is a great site for finding source materials. Indeed, I have already used it for my 400-level Advanced Directing paper to provide provocations for rehearsals. I also use it to find creative commons photographs for Critic. With my interests in theatre in mind, it seems like a good website to explore its power for presenting a performance in pictures. Can flickr be used to create such a performance? Or, perhaps, there may be too strong a feeling that performance can still only be done by live, present people.

Twitter is Great!

I have just discovered Twitter. Whilst it may seem rather pointless to have a blog in which you can only post 140 characters at a time it is a great way to keep people updated on what you are up to. With such small posts, you don't need to set aside much time - as I find myself doing for these posts - but you can quickly scribble something down. And, what is more, it is really fun!

Ho, Hum, Twiddle-Dee...

Well, how up to date I have been with this blog! I usually turn my attending to web 2.0 strategies late in the afternoon so don't get time to update my blog as the lure of 5pm is just too strong.

I have, however, updated my extension (2.0.48) for firefox. Irritatingly, because the extions is pre-release it is not avialble through Addon updates yet. You will need to go here to download it. You can place comments on the beta version here.

del.icio.us

Seeing as though I volunteered to investigate how central library can use del.icio.us as a reference tool I thought I had better start a blog so you can all monitor my progress.

Although I have been using del.icio.us for some time I have never really had a good opportunity to have a wee play with it. This project lets me explore and, what's more, lets me get paid for that exploration!

My first discovery for the day: notes. I know this may seem rather obvious but the notes field displays in your list on the site and you can display them in your sidebar by hovering over the little note icon. Yay, this is quite useful - now you can actually describe your bookmark without putting too much information in the tag.

If you would like to watch my links growing then add me to your network (DU.lib.gopher). If you don't use del.icio.us then go here to find out more information or sign up. What is even better - you can access your bookmarks from any computer!