#20 You too can YouTube

I enjoyed this task more than I expected to, once had worked out how to find my way around. Found some great old cartoons, beautiful artworrk. Especially enjoyed Tales from fat tulips garden. Starring a youthful Tony Robinson (worst jobs in the world, black adder and so on). I've copied tale of two frogs but there are lots of others.

#19 Discovering Web 2.0 tools

I visited several Web 2.0 tools. Its certainly an amazing range. Google maps looked really good, and useful in the library when people want maps of places they are travelling too. I also looked at widgits which I found sort of overwhelming, so much to choose from. The final one, which I really liked was Lulu, a site that allows you to publish your own digital copy of a book. There were some really interesting titles being self-published and even some being bought! Some of the travel, events and organising ones looked good too. Craig's list was good too, a sort of Trading post for nearly every city in the world.

#18 Web-based Apps: They're not just for desktops

This one just didn't work for me. I set up an account but after several tries I couldn't get it past the 'Loading....." ! I think my browser, Safari, is not compatible with this site. So I got the gist but couldn't do anything practical. Frustrating because this one could be useful, especially in the library for people writing resmumes and work applications. They could save to this and not have to worry about discs or memory sticks.

#17 Playing around with PBWiki

I had fun looking at how wikis are created and learning more about how they work. I can really see wikis taking a bigger and bigger part of information on the net. Interesting to see how different ones work. I registered my blog on the PBwiki Learning 2.0 and saw how many others were already registered. I have been using some wikis with some research I have been doing recently, but have found its important to know something about the topic first, so I can make a judgement about the accuracy on the wiki (like so much other stuff on the web!)
On a different topic, it was great to see when checking my bloglines that Kingston Library is the first Australian library on LibraryThing. "Now when you search on their catalogue, not only will you get all the usual titleISBN stuff, you also get tags, similar titles, and other editions. Hurrah for Kingston for being so very Library2.0! 2." Very exciting.

#16 So what’s in a wiki?

I found looking at all the wikis really interesting and as usual it seems that the potential is almost limitless. It would be great to have wikis about all our local communities listing and reviewing places to go and things to see, established and maintained by the locals. I also found the idea of having library catalogues that could be added to by the borrower really really exciting. What a great collaborative tool. I'd be happy to start up the first one one gardening books in the library and gardening resources in our community! I can also see the down side if someone deliberately vandalises a site. It must be hard sometimes to find the balance between open access and maintaining a credible site,

#15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...

Loved the Blogpoly board and the articles on the future of the library. Especially Away from Icebers, and To a Temporary Place in Time. The idea of libraries as conversations is really interesting and the potential for the future is seemingly limitless. Its been great to explore all the exercises on the the Web and get an inkling of what the future might hold for libraries (and the rest of the world). As is said in some of the articles, it is essential that while leaping forward to embrace the future that we don't loose sight of what is good in the past and the present especially the library described at the end of To a Temporary Place "the LIBRARY: a WiFREE space, a retreat from technohustle, with comfortable chairs, quiet, good light, coffee and single malt. You know, the library." We all need those spaces sometimes. And we also need to not miss the little things at the same time as reaching to grasp the big picture. This picture is of some of the little things in my world.

#14 Getting not-so-technical with Technorati

I followed the process through with this one and agree that if your blog is full of interesting things (like boing boing - i really liked this 'most popular' blog) that it might be worth tagging things so that others can see what you are writing about. But as I have felt right from the beginning I can't really see why anyone else would want to read my blog. So I didn't add any tags or claim my blog but again may go back and look at this again. The fourth most popular blog on technorati amused me. It is 'Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done' with 1,971 members. My thought was that if we didn't all spend so much time on the Web then we wouldn't need tips for getting things done, 'cos we'd have more time anyway!

#13 Tagging, folksonomies & social bookmarking in Del.icio.us

I've spent some time looking at these and really trying to see how they might help. Unlike some others I have found really useful I'm not sure that the extra time put in justifies the easier use. I think perhaps I am naturally more of a taxonomy person than a folksonomie. Will go back an look at this some more later but don't really feel it has much to offer me at present. I like my bookmark list and I don't ever really need to use it from any other than my home computer.

#12 Roll your own search engine with Rollyo

Another really useful site. I love that I can put together a cluster of bookmarks that I use all the time and just search in these. I'm updating a book at present and need to check that all the botanical names are up-to-date. So far I have been checking them in each individual site. Now I can just do one search, so much quicker. The picture is of tree wormwood, one of the plants I have been checking. I even managed to copy the rollyo icon into my blog. I'm sure I'll find ways of using this for all sorts of other regular searches.

#11 All about librarything

At last I have found something that I really feel I could spend a lot of time with. I would love to use this site to catalogue all my gardening books. And all the collections of my favourtite authors. I very much look forward to spending more time on this site.
I've added a few of my books to librarything at librarything
The picture has nothing to do with the text, I just added it because it is so joyous. I took it on a recent trip to Adelaide in the botanic gardens rose garden

#10 Play Around with Image Generators

I have enjoyed looking at different generators, not just the image ones, and can see that a great deal of time could be spent on these. I had fun with the Ya Ya namer generator (http://yayasisterhood.warnerbros.com/cmp/namegen_small.html) where I found that my name should really be Duchess Sweet Flower, I figured I could live with that, not so sure about my son's Ya Ya name, which would be Empress Drunk as a Skunk!

I then found out I could generate my own lava lamp (http://www.jellymuffin.com/generators/lava_lamp/) Wow!

Create a Lava Lamp

And then I found I could also create my own clock

Custom Myspace Clock

At this point I thought I should stop while I was ahead

There are lots more like these at
http://www.jellymuffin.com/generators/textpix2/

#8 and #9 Make life "really simple" with RSS & a newsreader

I had no trouble navigating my way around the ideas of RSS and newsreaders but found the actual setting up much harder. Putting 'Sub with Bloglines' into my bookmarks menu headline made life much easier, because I could then just go onto a site I wanted to add to my Blogline, click on this and it would tell me if it had an RSS feed or not. If it did I would then be straight onto the page that allowed me to select the feed I wanted. My main disappointment was that most of the sites I visit from time to time did not have RSS feeds, even the Bureau of Meteorology site does not have one but they are working on it.
I'm really not sure how useful all this will be to me as I don't really spend that much time on the net, but I'll give it a go. It might be useful. I have added my URL for my blogline, but really doubt that anyone else will find the time to look let alone find it interesting.

http://rpc.bloglines.com/blogroll?id=Herbert

This was definitely the hardest thing I have done in this project so far and as its taken me hours (about 3) I need to add something calming to make me feel better about it all!! Hence the picture above from my garden. Did you know that all parts of the nasturtium are edible. Try adding nasturtium flowers to salads, they not only look great but have a mild peppery flavour which tastes great too.

#6 More Flickr Fun, Multi Boab

Multi Boab, originally uploaded by Herbage8.

I spent some time playing around with mashups and color pikr as well as several other applications. I enjoyed color pikr but would have liked to have been able to select the pictures and arrange them myself. Thought I'd try the Wharhol effect on a boab photo. I really liked the end result.

#7 Blog about technology: Photography

The technological thing I have been ruminating about today is digital photos. I love taking pictures and have taken them for years as part of my work. I still think that it was easier in many ways when you could just take the pictures and hand them over to someone else to produce the end product. I find that it is a very steep learning curve to learn and then remember the steps involved in saving, editing, changing, deciding file size, changing megabites, sending, and now uploading to an online site. What I thought would take me a short time, has taken much longer and if it weren't raining it would be eating into my precious gardening time. Fortunately I have a 16yo son who is a wizard at anything to do with computers and photography, so I can just ask him. But he will probably leave home at some stage (although don't they stay at home for ever these days) and then I will be lost if I don't know how to do it myself. So I keep plugging away!
I have now spent too much time on this computer so am going to read a book.
For those interested in photography another really good site for photography and design is Red Bubble. It is based in Melbourne so is a good one to support.

From the end of Streeter's Jetty, Broome

Willie Creek, originally uploaded by Herbage8.

This is one of my photos (actually my daughter's) that I have uploaded to flickr (called myself Herbage8 if you want to look at the others). The photo was taken on our last holiday when we spent some time in Broome WA. I love the contrasting blues. Streeter's Jetty is on the edge of Broome township and is the jetty where all the pearling luggers tied up when they came in loaded with pearl shell.

#5 flickr Rosebud Pier

Rosebud Pier, originally uploaded by Yodels.

I've spent a lot of time on flickr uploading some of my photos. Probably too much time! but I really liked this photo of rosebud pier which I found by searching flickr and as I spend so much of my working time in Rosebud I thought this would be a good one to add to a post.

Happy

I really have puzzled for a while about what to put in this blog as I am not a natural diary writer, especially not for public consumption. But finally decided that I could talk about what is making me happy at present. I guess it is my garden and the flowers of spring, one example of which is above. And the other thing that is giving me pleasure and regularly makes me laugh are Peter Nicholson's animations. If you want to sign up he will send a regular email to let you know when he has created a new one.