The end of the road.....or is it?

Well it took a full year, but I have finally completed all the tasks. I would have to say that the program did introduce me to a few new tools and concepts even though I had my doubts that there would be any tools that I haven't used before. I really enjoyed playing around with the image generator as well as the virtual computer. Virtual Computer was the tool I selected to explore from the list of Tools of the year list. My least favorite tool was Technorati, I thought it was quite messy and not very user friendly. It could be that I'm just not a big fan of blogging.
From the entire exercise I got to learn about a few new tools that could and probably will come in handy, but if this program teaches me anything is that if I want to keep up with all the latest tools it is almost an everyday task.
Overall I was quite satisfied with the program and think it is very useful for everyone to get through it and lets hope the CCLC takes advantage of a few of the tools on offer.

So Farewell Web 2.0 till we meet again!!!

eBook

We all know that books are here to stay and they will never disappear. However we live in the age where people are always on the go and these days so many people spend hours and hours in the car. That's where eBooks come in perfect. They are for the people on the go and people who are visually impaired. These days it is so easy to download an eBook, place it on your Ipod and plug it into the car stereo. And if you are stuck in a car for most of the time at least you got something to keep you occupied and amused. Or in some cases even calm. We all know being calm in a car with quite a few crazy drivers around us isn't easy, so this can help. This doesn't however mean that eBooks are strictly to be used in a car, they are great for people who enjoy to listen rather then read and best of all they are mostly available free of charge. Some audio books can cos $100 dollars and more.
I say bring on the age of freeware and shareware.
Who says nothing is free!!!

Podcast!

We have so far listened to quite a few podcasts explaining why we are doing the Web 2.0 tasks and what use we have for them. Therefore libraries could have great use for informative or instructional podcasts to explain different things to patrons. For example, how to successfully search for items in a library.
In the "podcastalley" directory I have found a great series of podcasts titled " The Library Survival Guide Podcast" which contain information on everyday library services. If you wish to explore it follow the link below;

http://www.podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=52949"

I have also subscribed to Podcast news and added an RSS Feed to my Bloglines account.

You Tube!!!

I love you tube. It is so easy to find a video clip of just about anything and of course it is free. You can find different clip sizes as well as different video clip quality. Also, if you have a decent internet connection the loading times are very quick. I really like how easy it is to share the clips, you can place it on the blog, a website and as always email it.
I guess the only downside is that you have to be a bit careful about copyright implications, especially if you are using the clip on a website.
Overall You Tube has been one of my favorite sites since it first arrived as I got easy access to all the soccer clips I can get my hands on. Below is one of the funnier ones. Well for the soccer fans at least.

Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

For this exercise I have looked at a web tool called " G.ho.st". It is virtual computer. What this means is that you can run it online exactly the same as you would windows at home. It contains all the applications that you need to create documents as you would with Microsoft office and you get storage space as well. Therefore a virtual hardrive. You also get an email address and application and it is very user friendly if you are sharing files. The biggest advantage is that you can access it anywhere, it is free and you don't have to worry about admin tasks. Overall a very useful tool.
The only down side would be that if for whatever reason you don't have access to the internet it can't be used offline. If you want to have a look at it below is the website.


http://g.ho.st/?language=%20en

As regards to its usage in the library it could be very useful on the public usage computers, but it may be difficult to implement.

Zoho Writer

As you can see in the previous post I have managed to publish my Zoho Writer document onto my Blog. To me Zoho represents a collection of free online programs that are easy to use and easily accessible. It is also an online storage so that you can always find your documents where ever you are. It is also really good to see that you can export the files as various file types so that they are compatible no matter what software program you use to open them.

test

Well I hope that this works and that this document gets placed in my blog. I guess I will call this test 1.