Week 6: Thing 13

del.icio.us is a great tool for keeping track of favorites in one place. I actually started an account last year because our favorites were deleted from the network each night at my old school. As with all Web 2.0 applications, it took me ages to decide which site to use. I think I may still have a furl account out there and I really liked the look of Ma.gnolia as well (which got a 1st place award), but you couldn't see enough of the links on the page. In the end, I chose del.icio.us because many of my friends and colleagues were using it.

I spent some time adding more sites (past recommended websites from my old school's website), adding to my network and bundling my tags. I haven't used my account with students in the library, although I have considered creating another account for the library. I am still undecided. In the meantime, anyone can feel free to check out my faves. (It's mostly professional, just ignore the baby stuff!)

Week 5: Thing 12

Rollyo has great potential, if I can just get my students to try its search box instead of Google. I created search rolls for British and American literary criticism on the web. I'm going to try them out with some classes this week as they begin literary analysis papers.

Week 5: Thing 11

I have been interested in putting my children's book collection on Library Thing for some time. I'm so glad it's an award winner!

And so is NetVibes! I have a startpage on NetVibes, though I was thinking about switching to PageFlakes. I may just keep what I've got, since NetVibes got 1st place. We'll see.

In the meantime, I started playing with Shelfari, a social site sent to me by a fellow (non-librarian) book lover. I started a bookshelf of young adult titles with a few reviews because of the number of books I've been reading and trying to keep track of as a member of the RI Teen Book Award committee. I like it quite a bit. It has some potential...but as it isn't an award-winning site...

I definitely want to play more with NetVibes and Library Thing. In the meantime, check out my bookshelf on Shelfari.

Week 5: Thing 10

I created my Wicked Good Dog Read poster with Big Labs, so I thought I'd try something new... Image Chef (http://www.imagechef.com/)

We always begin fantasizing about our summer cottage in February. Only 6 months until we can get back there!!!

Week 4: Things 8 & 9

Apparently, I'm a little behind. As I realized that I'm giving birth in less than 10 weeks and I have quite a bit to do and read and prepare, I let this Web 2.0 business slip to the back of the line. However, it's time to get back to work. I'm so glad it's February break and I've had time to play/catch up!

First of all, I explored Bloglines weeks ago, but I was interested in creating a start page through PageFlakes. It has its own reader, but I can also add a Google Reader or Bloglines link to my start page. I decided, after much deliberation, to just create the Bloglines account and figure out the PageFlakes reader later.

Finding blogs for the feed was fairly easy. I have quite a few in my del.icio.us account. Now I can have feeds delivered much more efficiently. I always meant to do this! I also used Edublogs to find a few. However, Bloglines froze on me several times as I tried to add feeds. I became increasingly frustrated and only have 5 out of ... I don't know ... a dozen choices. Now that I have the account, I will be able to add feeds directly as I find useful ones, instead of adding more cumbersome more bookmarks. This should be a huge timesaver...and I may actually read the posts more regularly.