Ignorati

I explored Technorati as far as I could without the help of the guided tour video which wouldn't play for me. Perhaps my patience ran out and I didn't wait long enough. My directory search for Web 2.0 yielded 721 results and same search in Blogs yielded 338, as for Tags - didn't find a Tags button. I expected to find a screen full of useful tags but found tags only for specific searches completed. It took me a while to find the Popular button, and once I'd moved from there, and tried to find it again all the buttons had changed as they seem to every time you search under a different heading. In the directory I clicked on Web 2.0 under Technology which sent me to Blogs and a message "Please try again later". I'm sure with a little direction I would have fared better, but there we are.

Delishus

The advantage of Bookmarking for me would be to find websites for my particular interests, bookmark and tag them, keep them together and share them with other people with similar interests who may well provide me with better sites I didn't already know about. I explored several bookmarks including Random bookmarks where I found e.g. "Why Norwegian is the easiest language for English speakers" which had the following tags: language/Norwegian/linguistics/learning/ and in Danbury Library found our "Mister Pip" with these tags: Booker Prize/civil war/coming of age/childhood/New/Zealand fiction/Ya/Young adult/Papua New Guinea /Charles Dickens.
Libraries can create reading lists, book reviews and are already being used in many libraries. Bookmarks can make a student's research more productive and can be a good place to begin the research.

Still feeding

This has taken hours of exploration and frustration, but it's also easy to get sidetracked. Topix.net - I was surprised at the amount displayed on one screen - largest news community on the web - users able to edit the news and comment on everything - judging by the number of comments this would seem to be a much visited site. Some of the comments remind me of those heard on talk back radio, senseless and bigoted. I found the site easy to use. Syndic8 -I didn't really come to grips with this one, seemed to waste time getting nowhere.
Technorati.com -Interesting blogs on current affairs but I was put off by Google ads. I chose to search under Lifestyle, Photos and Blogs. Here I found an Italian couple blogging their way around the USA and followed them for a while. I clicked on some tags to view photos (Olympics, Obama, Business). Blog directory easy to follow. Found everything from George Clooney to Martha Stewart, Georgia and the Olympics. When Internet Explorer closed down the site I decided it was time for bed.

Entangled in bloglines

Hours spent trying to disentangle myself - opened and read all the links to newsfeeds in first part of Discovery exercise, but major problem has been in setting up Bloglines account as it won't recognise me - they say the have emailed me but that's in the ether somewhere. However, from what I've gleaned so far about newsfeeds it is a quick way to read headlines of important articles which may interest you from electronic resources, journals, newspapers et al? I have already used this technology personally before I really knew what it was about. My sister rang to tell me about a local photographic display in her home town. Although she read me the article, I wanted to search the newspaper online for said article using, I thought, relevant keywords and came up with nothing. Then I spied the RSS icon. I quickly scanned the news items and was overjoyed to find the complete article. The keywords I used to search bore no resemblance to the words in the article headline. Librarians could use news feeds for lists of new books for customers, book reviews (Amazon, Radio New Zealand), to provide announcements (events, services) and other things I haven't thought of yet.

Technology

Technology and I are not good mates, but I do have a digital camera which I enjoy using, but mostly in the "aim and shoot" mode. I have not yet explored everything the menu can offer but mostly this suffices for what I want. It is wonderful being able to delete the unsuccessful pics and try again. Needing no film is another plus especially when travelling. The photos are easily downloaded to a memory stick and emailed to family. Organizing them Flickr style will make them more manageable. The biggest hassle with it is the length of time it takes to charge the batteries and yes, I do have another set. When travelling it is also advisable to have more than one adaptor for situations where you leave them behind in some foreign hotel - lost 2 that way.

Mashups mosaics and mmm...?

Mashups I relate to a kind of collage - too messy for me, I like minimalism. In Big Huge Labs I checked out fd's Flickr Toys and liked in particular Mosaic maker which I felt was something I would most likely do with family or travel photos. I found a wonderful mosaic of Obama (Barack) and now I can't find it any more - oops - so I haven't got the actual link to it. Top cameras I liked because I found mine there, Trading card I may also use and Jigsaw could be fun too.

flickr frustration

I dare not calculate the time spent just on Q4. I seem to have explored my fingers sore. I found many interesting things to do if one had the time and the passion for the fashion. Found some great photos in "interestingness" and particularly admired "waterlily on black" by Siebe. I thought I had the link but wasn't able to find the photo easily using it. I searched for it under suggested tags but the number of photos displayed was astronomically huge and I decided to search using the title of the photo. This particular photo seems to be copyrighted so I couldn't post it. I'm going to leave it here and turn my attention to the next ex.
Well I seem to have messed this one up so I'm adding some extra bits. Enjoyed my Flickring experience, learning about online photosharing. I saw the advantages of uploading photos for safe keeping, organising them into collections and sets and tagging them for easy access later, even putting them on a map - very handy for travel and family pics. I noticed that the lists of tags for one photo can be long and range from specific to general. I enjoyed searching the photos and for my photograph I used tags Nevada, Joshua tree, desert. The Joshua trees can be found in the Moave Desert in Nevada. Here is the link to my chosen Joshua tree photo:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinhole/455286001
http://www.flickr.com/photos/siebe/539408151/