Braches

Braches

Originally uploaded by Liiiiisa.

Blogging a photo from Flickr

Tagging

I started with searching del.icio.us for hairstyles. I came up with a couple of sites that I was interested in and put them on my favorites. I love the idea that I can access these from anywhere and that I can search them. It always took time and memory to remember what file I had put sites into in Explorer Favorites. I think that this is great.

I searched Yahoo and Google using the same search term. Google had too much – it took too long to search through all of the links provided to find a worthwhile site. On del.icio.us, other people have vetted the sites so when you looked at the ones that had a lot of links, they were quite good. Yahoo also was overwhelming but there were several good sites on the first page of results.

 On Flickr, I enjoyed the Explore Interestingness link. This posts the most interesting photos of the last 7 days.

A couple of the photos that I really liked are found below:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/61191065@N00/429134659/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/maritobonito/422101434/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesrye/428422456/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/steenheilesen/426448601/

I was not able to add buttons to the staff computer browser toolbar because of “Administrator access” only. Using the buttons, I would be interested to know if you have to log in, because it would be handy – but not if my kids were adding their favorites to my account.

Wiki’s

I found the myfavoritebooks wiki somewhat difficult to use. Actually, I have found many of these new technologies to be unclear in their instructions and so more frustrating than they need to be. There are certain assumptions of knowledge that I think I have missed along the way.

Anyway, back to the wikis. I was unable to set up a seperate page for some time. I ended up cutting and pasting – this worked for me. I can see the use of a Wiki for something like a favorite book site. However,I have some problems with using a wiki for a reference site such as digitalreferenceshelf. First : with more users accessing it and adding to it, the authority of the site becomes less valid and watered down, ie Wikopedia. Yes many people access it, but I know in high schools it is considered just a website – not an encyclopedia, and as such not a great reference.

Second : many unrelated pages can be added and then the ease of finding valid websites or links becomes more difficult especially if you have to wade through numerous unrelated sites.

Finally, this could be a great place for an organization to post information changes about itself allowing supervisors writer capabilities so as information changes they can be immediately updated, to post manuals that can be regularly updated, or to develop agendas for staff meetings.

RSS feeds

I tend to scan news & read only what I’m interested in. I wish that the RSS feeds could be organized like a newspaper, maybe formatted like the Netscape homepage. That way I could read the most recent stuff & decide if I want to go any deeper.  Maybe this exists, but if so I wish someone would tell me where.

Second Life

I have some questions about institutions using Second Life.

These sections are found in the Terms of Service that no one reads.

First 

GENERAL PROVISIONS…rights and obligations shall be governed by and construed under the laws of the State of California, including its Uniform Commercial Code, without reference to conflict of laws principles. The Service is controlled and operated by Linden Lab from its offices within the State of California, United States of America. Linden Lab makes no representation that any aspect of the Service is appropriate or available for use in jurisdictions outside of the United States.

Doesn’t this make everything said & done on Second Life subject to the laws of California and the USA? If this is the case, after all the upset in the Canadian academic world about RefWorks being subject to the Patriot Act, why are academic institutions looking at setting up on Second Life?

And, does it bother anyone that :

3.2 You retain copyright and other intellectual property rights with respect to Content you create in Second Life…

However…you automatically grant (and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant) to Linden Lab: (a) a royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid-up, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to (i) use, reproduce and distribute your Content within the Service as permitted by you through your interactions on the Service, and (ii) use and reproduce (and to authorize third parties to use and reproduce) any of your Content in any or all media for marketing and/or promotional purposes in connection with the Service.

Hmmm.

Uses for a blog

The best use that I can see for using a blog at an organization, a library in particular, is for a customer suggestion box. Someone in the organization would need to comment on the blogs on a timely basis, but it would have several benefits.

Through archives, you would be able to see if there are reoccuring complaints or suggestions.

By using the blog comments to respond, repeat visits would be encouraged in order to read the reponses thereby increasing your statistics.

Patrons might also comment or have suggestions about other complaints that would not be thought of by the organization.

It’s a thought.

School daze

I would like to see the schools (up to high school) operate on a Masters System. I ran into this in Vail, Colorado. It works like a one room schoolhouse with each age group in a seperate classroom. Each student works at their own pace and continues with a subject/topic/curriculum requirement until they master it. This must be crazy for the teachers as they could have a grade 7 age group class with students doing grade 9 english, grade 5 english etc. but how great for the students eh? Since all of the students are all over the place academically, no one would feel out of place; and socially, age groups would stay together. This would focus schools on Learning and not Testing.

Environmental idea

I think that a small to medium sized city should apply for federal grants to make a car-free city. It would involve building huge free parking lots on the outskirts and free transit throughout the city (probably the sticking point). You could market the city world-wide for ecological tourism, and I bet the inhabitants would be much healthier.

Hamilton’s green problem

I don’t understand why Hamilton and other cities are taking away the green areas in the city and replacing them with gravel. Has no one ever heard of plants like gout weed or lamb’s ears? I mean, I don’t know much about gardening but I’m sure there are many other varieties available. These plants look good and choke out weeds (low to no maintenance), and while fairly invasive, could be used in the centre islands maybe with a small bush or tree. Or let’s try a zen garden. Use some of the rock that falls after winter along the escarpment along with low maintenance plants (see above suggestions). One time cost, and would look good.

Grass

Someone out there needs to invent/create a grass that :  1) grows to only 3 1/2 or 4 inches tall – no cutting; 2) stays green; 3) is drought resistant; 4) feels good underfoot (barefoot that is); 5) I don’t really want invasive, but not fragile either; 6) is relatively inexpensive; 7) grows in Canada. Personally, I think that anyone who does this will “Make Millions”