CPL 2.0 RSS

Voltaire said, "The multitude of books is making us ignorant." I think if he were alive today he would say the multitude of RSS information is making us crazy! I think RSS has its uses for sure. From what I've see so far, if you are subsided to some pretty specific fees you will get lots of information that may be appropriate to you.... but I also think it will be easy to get overwhelmed with information and heretofore go crazy!

Google products CPL Web 2.0

Maui sunset 2007 (taken by me) Maui daytime 2007

Picassa is the perfect Google product for all your photos. Here you can find, edit and share all your digital photos. What's great about this product is how it will go into your PC and find all your photos, collect them and put them all together by date. Wow! I had way too many pictures and it was difficult to locate all of them from the different files I had them in. Secondly, with Picassa you can edit your pics, taking away all those red eyes for instance. Finally you can publish them into web albums so you can retrieve your photos from any computer in the world. And share your pictures via email or to other members of picassa.

Another Google product I recently started using is gmail. It is really great. I started it because I want to be able to manage my email from other computers and I can't retrieve my telus email once it is downloaded onto my home PC. Anyway, so far so good with gmail.

Facebook CPL 2.0

I've been on Facebook for a while now. Sometimes I use it a lot; other times I don't really go on it at all. In a lot of ways, I think Facebook is very much like going back to High School-- and I didn't love high school. Well, I did like the socializing part. I think Facebook is popular because it is the new way to 'hang out', and some people take it very seriously. They think that it's actually important to report what little things they do to fill their days.

I think people are learning to socialize in a totally different way these days, and that is due in part to social networking sites like this one. I wonder if people are truly satisfied with socializing over the Net and how much face to face contact is actually going on. Though I like communicating with people over this site, I would still much rather meet someone in person for coffee to chat.

My next door neighbour is also one of my 'friends' on Facebook, and one day we both were on Facebook at the same time and started chatting with each other. Eventually she ended up just coming over-- we both laughed and thought it was a little absurd that we would be chatting over the Internet instead of her just popping round. But then that is what people might have thought about the telephone when it was a new medium for communication.

Another component of Facebook that I think is great is when you reconnect with someone you have lost touch with. I recently found a friend who I went to elementary school with and we got together and reminisced when she was visiting Calgary last year--- that was great. I like Facebook for staying in touch and for posting pictures. I think it can be a very useful way to communicate. But like when I was in high school, I sometimes think "why do some people have way more friends than me?"

CPL 2.0 Wicked Wikipedia!

This assignment forced me to reconsider my opinions about Wikipedia! I used to really frown on it, assuming it was all rubbish and in no way comparable to our reputable E-Library resources that are fact-checked, well-written and true. But in the time I had to explore Wikipedia looking for mistakes, I haven't yet found any. I was trying to look up some obscure things, too, like one of my favourite authors, Ray Coleman, who wrote a great bio about John Lennon. The info. on him was actually pretty good. I also searched out one of my favourite books, Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell, and was pleasantly surprised at the amount of interesting information available. I think I will re-visit this website a little more often now.

Del.icio.us is Yummy CPL 2.0

I love our best websites. I am constantly showing them to customers. I think it is a fabulous way to organise and store favourite links. If you think about it there is such a wide variety of subject matter to cover in terms of websites. Google is not always effective in searching out sites that we know are fact-checked, well-written, reputable and appropriate for what a customer needs. Once familiar with del.icio.us, it is fairly straightforward and easy to access. The tags are useful as well. I commonly use delicious when referring customers to our resources for becoming a Canadian Citizen.... and I really like the Search Tools tag bundles. There are amazing search engines available that are more specialized than Google and can find more accurate results. One of my faves is http://www.intute.ac.uk/