Tuesday, May 18, 2010

LibraryThing CPL 2.0

Like Facebook for book lovers, LibraryThing is a great social networking site with a theme.
With LibraryThing you can keep track of the books you've read, and it's great for Readers' Advisory for work. I started using this site a short time ago, but not very much. After looking at it today I can see that it will be a very useful application, with loads of possibilities for diving into book discussions, figuring out what to read next, and for remembering what I've read previously (because lately I tend to forget what I read last week!).
I think too that I might recommend this to my book club ladies. We have been together for nearly six years now, and I think LibraryThing is something they might be interested in for all the wonderful things it holds.








Monday, May 17, 2010

Google Docs Rock! CPL 2.0


I have looked at Google Docs and I am very impressed. With these totally online, web based, documents you can create documents, presentations, spreadsheets and you can upload documents you have already created in most formats. Google Docs looks incredibly EASY and I think that is what will ultimately matter in the end. You can make a presentation similar to PowerPoint. Or use the spreadsheets which are similar to Excel.
Google Docs allow the same functionality, but are free and easy. When all this "software" is free and so easy to access, the question is obvious! Will it take over from Microsoft? It may drive the price down. I think eventually more and more people will start using Google Docs. Why not? What is there to lose?

Friday, May 7, 2010

CPL 2.0 Pictures and Movies

YouTube and Flickr...

YouTube is great for seeing something you missed... "just look it up on YouTube", is becoming a common expression, not too different from "just Google it", only instead of a website you get a video. YouTube is very user friendly. Posting a video on your Facebook or Blog is super simple, as is emailing it to someone. Awhile ago, I remember seeing on the news a thing about this lady singer named Susan Boyle who was on Britain's Got Talent. She was singing a I Dreamed a Dream by Le Miserable, which I love. I looked it up on YouTube and emailed it to some friends. Today that clip has been views a gazillion times! (actually 92,166,727 views) YouTube had a role in her instant worldwide "success".

As for Flickr, it is fairly new to me. For my own photos I use Picassa, which is a similar product that Google has, and I like it for how it organized all the photos on my computer by date. I mostly use Flickr for its Creative Commons when I'm making a display or poster. Having looked further into Flickr with this assignment, I found it very user friendly and I also discovered some new things: making cards out of your photos, for instance.

Charlie bit my finger - again !