#12 (week 5) Summarise my thoughts

Wow, finally I complete this program. I’m sure that I have learned how to use some new Web2.0 tools from this exciting experience. Indeed, it’s a bit time consuming, but mostly worthy to do it. We live in a digital era and computer and internet play vital roles in our daily work and lives. Particularly, in order to provide better information service for library users, as library staff members, we must keep on learning new digital skills to catch up with others. So that playing with these new tools, not only because they are quite fun, but can be useful and helpful. Thank you very much for the great efforts that all the program team members put on this program. Hoping see you again in future.

#10 (week 5) Social networks

I signed up in Digg http://digg.com/, which made me tried for three times to join in, quite frustrating! I took a look around and realized that the most interesting thing about this site might be its news variety. From the different view points of people who come from the whole world, they upload all types of news on the web pages, so that users may broaden their view and know more than ever before.

Newswine http://www.newsvine.com/ is similar to Digg, which is also updated constantly by users. Compare to these two sites, I prefer to Newswine, although I love the inco of Digg, cute stuff. The interface of Newswine homepage looks like more professional and the photos on the sites are also attractive; additionally the photos size is just right.

# 9 Go! Anitmate

GoAnimate.com: the joke

I can’t believe that I can make my own cartoon. It’s amazing but easy to make, and also it bring such a fun and enjoyment for me and my family member. My daughter was so exciting to watch it and wants to make her own one afterwards.

I think most people love them, especially young age customers. Libraries can create a cartoon show on the webpages for kids to promote their services or guide these kids in a virtual library, or teach them how to renew and request items on line.


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

Week 4: Getting creative #8 Animoto

I created an account on Animoto, and looked around. I have to admit that it’s a cool site, but I don’t like its background color, all black and sometimes hardly to recognise the words on the web pages. I think we can use it for promoting events and activities occurring at the libraries, similar to Podcast, but I don’t know how much we should to pay, is it worth or not? We might need to do more research and evaluate it before stepping ahead.

#7 Bookjetty

I’ve signed up in Bookjetty and took a look around. I found that I’ve to be very patient to wait for every web page opening. When I search for a particular book, it’s very slow to display the searching result.

I put 6 books on my bookshelf http://www.bookjetty.com/people/kathyfu/books, and I don’t want have more later on, unless the website is being upgraded in future, as I can’t wait for the page opening. However, in the case of people searching for a book, it seems quite straight forward to do it.

Bookjetty connects to Amazon site, so it is easier for people who want to buy books online; in addition, there is no limit on the books people can list on their Bookshelf, which is comparatively better than Library Thing.

I think Bookjetty might be useful for library users sometimes. Eg. For customers who love reading huge amount of books but with bad memory. They can list all the books they have already read, so that they will not get confused afterwards.

My Favourite Site

#6 Authors on the Web

I visited Authors of the Web http://authorsontheweb.com/ and took a look around. I noticed a very interesting thing, there is no Search Box on its home page. This site supposed to be useful for people looking for books and authors, but it seems quite hard to find the access.

Comparing to Authors of the Web, the site Books & Authors http://0-bna.galegroup.com.www.elgar.govt.nz/bna/ looks better, not only because of its better interface but its searching functionalities. There is a Search Box on the top of the right-hand side; people can search by Title, Author, Keyword or Series. I typed in keyword “Harry Potter”, and it brought up 17 relevant items, including the complete 7 Harry Potter series and some other books as well, such as a biography of the author, J.K. Rowling and The Science of Harry Potter.

Week 3 #5 Litlovers

This week, I explored the Litlovers site and checked out the site for resources about the novel-Twilight, but I couldn’t found anything about that. This novel has been talking about a lot recently, because of its film adaptation with the same title in 2008. It became popular again especially among teenagers. I requested it through ACL website and was so shocked by the long queue; more than 1,000 customers are waiting for this book, even more than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows of last year.

I guess the reason why Litlovers does not choose it to talk about is its genre, Vampire-romance. It seems not a good one to be recommended in a book club.

I checked out one of the LitCourses, How to Read: Character. Based on the author, the most pleasurable part of reading a novel is that readers can meet different characters with different lives and situations. Readers may learn from them and they also reflect the point view of their authors. There are 15 steps in this course and covered every aspect of the topic. I think that customers will find that this course is useful and helpful. It doesn’t take too long but learn enough.

Week 2 Genealogy

This week I signed up both in MyHeritage and Geni. Then I uploaded 3 Family photos on both of them, but 4 other types of photos only on MyHeritage.

I felt that it’s easier to build a family tree on Geni, because its friendly user interfaces; however, it seems much harder to build a family tree on the site of MyHeritage.

The interface of these two sites are similar but with different functions. I prefer the web design of MyHeritage, it is available in 34 languages and home to more than 30 million family members and 30 million profiles. Providing different languages makes it really easy for parents or grand-parents who are non-English speakers to connect with their loved ones abroad. However, the function and usability of Geni is much better than MyHeritage. If combining them together then it will be a great site!

License to Play 2009

It's been a long time since I left my last message on my blog in 2007. After that, I was extremely busy with my work, study and life...; but I still can remember how exciting I was when I first time built up my own blog!

Computer and information technology is developing, so we have to catch up with it from time to time, otherwise we'll miss something. That's the reason why I registered to learn this programme this time. I'm sure I'll get some new knowledge from this programme and enjoy the learning process as well!