Monday, March 31, 2008

Blue 2.0 Social Networking Part 3: Yet another social network site!

For the third activity in this module, I set up an account at "Second Life Librarians at 'Ning'. I was invited to join this network, and it was quite easy (probably because I've already joined SL, Facebook and Myspace.) I set up a bare bones profile, and added a picture to it. It seems pretty similar to Facebook, only with less options. I also posted a few comments on a couple of the pages of fellow Blue 2.0 participants.

Check out my "Second Life Librarians profile here:

http://sllibrarians.ning.com/profile/BenitaClarke

Blue 2.0 Social Networking Part 2: MySpace

I set up a Myspace profile for the first time, but I probably won't use it very much again after this activity. To me, Facebook serves all my social networking needs. Even with my minimal level of Facebook involvement, it takes time to keep up with everything. I don't think I have time to really get into Myspace. I did find a few friends, and signed up for the UK Libraries group. I haven't had responses to my friendship requests yet, so the jury is still out on my impressions of Myspace. Check out my profile on Myspace here.

Blue 2.0 Social Networking Part 1: Facebook

I already had a Facebook account that I hadn't used it a lot lately so this activity was a fun way to get back into the swing of things. I joined the "Blue 2.0 Libraries" group, updated my profile by using the "status" function for the first time, added some new friends from Blue 2.0 and Second Life, tried out some of the quizzes like "Just For Fun!", "Smack talked" someone, "poked somebody" and tried out a few of the other widgets. It was a lot of fun to start using Facebook again.
Check out my Facebook Profile here.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Fabala24's Blue 2.0 podcast: Photo and Podcasting, Part 3: Photos and Flickr

So far, I've reviewed a YouTube video and posted my very first podcast. I was already familiar with YouTube, so that part was easy. Learning how to use Audacity to record my podcast was a bit challenging, but fun.

I wasn't that enthused about setting up a Flickr account because I already have Photobucket and Shutterfly accounts. Happily, I didn't have to sign up for any additional accounts because it turns out that Flickr is part of Yahoo, and I have a Yahoo account. The set up was easy--you can establish your Flickr presence with minimal information, which I appreciate. It is very easy to upload pictures. One disadvantage is the 5mb size limit for files, but that is very minor. You can make your photos available for the general public, or limit who can view them. You can organize them into 'sets' that include only specific photos.

Flickr can be useful for the libraries too. When we have library events, photos can be posted from the events to Flickr so that anybody can access them from anywhere. If photos are posted to Sharepoint, on the other hand, you have to be logged in to the library server server to view them.

I took some photos during our snowy weekend a couple of weeks ago. You can view these photos, and a few others here.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Fabala24's Blue 2.0 podcast: Photo and Podcasting, Part 2: My first podcast

To celebrate the second season of Showtime's "The Tudors", I recorded a podcast about some novels from that era.

Recording the podcast was the easy part because I recorded it with Audacity, my trusty laptop, and a handy dandy microphone I got on sale at Radio Shack.

Posting it to the blog was tricky, though. I exported the Audacity project as an .mp3 file, but discovered that you can't save .mp3's to this blog. I worked around this restriction by inserting a picture and saving it as a video since this blog accepts files in several video formats. So here goes....

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Blue 2.0: Photo and Podcasting Part 1: Review of "Rosetta Stone @ Your Library" YouTube Video

I like libraries and I like teaching a foreign language, so this video from Jefferson Co, Alabama combines both interests. I like librarians with a sense of humor. It gives you situations where you can use Rosetta Stone software to learn a foreign language. The best part is that it is available for people to check out from the library. I thought it was amusing, and hope you enjoy it too.