Tagging & del.icio.us

I have always wondered what "del.icio.us" was. Now I know! It's a great ways for people to: 1. Save their bookmarks on the web so that, even if their PC crashes, they are still accessible on another PC connected to the world wide web and 2. It is a great way for people to share their bookmarks. Hmm.... I'm beginning to see a pattern here. A lot of the new technologies that I have looked at on this blog so far involve sharing and "del.icio.us" is no exception.

Tagging is a very useful way of pointing people towards information on a certain topic and I must admit that I haven't taken much notice of tags before. But on web sites such as "del.icio.us" and "Flickr" tags have become a powerful tool. For me, however, the concept of a "Tag cloud" is the coolest thing. Just having a whole list of different words in alphabetical order on the page may appear pretty intimidating at first, but once you look more closely at the list and see that it's not an ordinary list, then the real beauty of the system becomes apparent. And that beauty is that the most popular tags are the biggest words! So at a very short glance, you can tell what are the most popular topics. And because all of the words are bunched together, you don't have to scroll down a long list.

Going back to del.icio.us, it is the little things about how it operates that I like so much. For example, if you click on one of the upside down triangles that is next to one of the major headings on the right hand side, you will automatically hide all of the smaller subject headings underneath it. So if you do that on the suthlib del.icio.us page, you will be able to look at all of the major headings on screen at once, without having to scroll down.

#1 at Spyglass Hill & How can libraries use Flickr?

#1 at Spyglass Hill, originally uploaded by gremlingolfer72.

I picked this photo from the Flickr website for a number of reasons. Firstly, I like golf. Secondly, I prefer outdoors photographs to indoor ones. Thirdly, I have actually visited the area where this golf course is at (even though I didn't actually play there!). I must admit that this photo does bring back good memories for me as visiting the "Monterey Peninsular" was one of my highlights of my trip to the United States about fifteen years ago. It's a great area for golf courses- the other famous golf course in this area is "Pebble Beach" which is actually a public golf course that anybody (with a low enough handicap and enough money!) can play.
Doesn't the fairway look beautiful and the picture of the bright blue Pacific Ocean in the background is magnificent.

Musings on Flickr

Well, I have spent the last few hours "playing" with Flickr (looking at lots of photos, having a play with the maps feature, creating a "Flickr" account & posting an image to my blog) and I think that I am now ready to add my two cents worth on the subject.

It looks as though Flickr is a great tool that people can use to share photos with other people. While it does have a few flaws, it does have a lot of great features. Being able to "tag" photos with keywords is quite a useful feature as it gives the image poster the ability to make their photos easily retrievable for those who search the database. The "sets" feature is also useful as it allows the photographer to group all of the photos that have the same theme together. As far as the flaws are concerned, I didn't find the help very useful at times (maybe that's just me however!) & the advanced search was hidden for some reason (there should be a link to the advanced search from the home page in my humble opinion).

How can libraries make use of Flickr?

1. By creating a Flickr account, libraries will find it much easier to post pictures on the Internet of library activities. In other words, no html knowledge is required! How good is that!

2. I would think that Flickr is a great marketing tool- by showing off photos of previous library events you can create interest in up and coming events.

3. As I have just done, libraries and other organisations can make use of Flickr by integrating it with their blogs. Once a picture is found in Flickr that you want to add to a blog, in most cases it is as simple as clicking the "blog this" button.

4. Like blogs, Flickr can have a real community feel to it- so when new images are posted to a library's Flickr account, people should not feel afraid to add their comments. And as public libraries are there for the community this should be a perfect fit. With the publics feedback, libraries will be able to improve their services.

RSS feeds- my experiences

So, its time now to have a look at the wonderful world of RSS feeds! I must say that the RSS technology is intriguing. I guess the idea of RSS feeds is to make it easier for web surfers to look at anything new that has been posted on their favourite web sites.

Look, I think that RSS feeds are a great idea. However, there are still one or two kinks that probably need to be ironed out. For example, I subscribed to a feed for the ABC television guide, and for some reason, when I look at the guide in the "Google Reader", only todays TV listings are shown, not the whole weeks listings. Which is fine- obviously that is only what the ABC is providing. I also didn't like the layout of the TV guide but that could just be a problem with the Google Reader itself. Another thing is that I am quite used to using the "favourites" or "bookmarks" menu to keep track of my favourite web sites and I don't need to remember a password in order to use my favourites or bookmarks! Actually, I like the way that the "Firefox" web browser uses the RSS feeds. Just under the tool bar at the top there is a RSS icon that you can click to have a look to see if any of the content that you have subscribed to has been updated.

That's not to say that Google Reader doesn't have it good points. One thing that I love about Google Reader is that it can combine all of your favourite websites into one. So then you can glance at feeds from a number of different sources all at once. This also saves having to open multiple windows.

Finally, how could libraries take advantage of RSS to improve services? Well, one good way of taking advantage of RSS is to have parts of the library's web site as an RSS feed that it's clients can then subscribe to if they wish. Customers are then made aware of goings on and any upcoming events.