ATOLearning exercise

Last thing....

1. Go to www.ebookee.com
2. Have a look at the ebooks that are available on the site (encyclopedias, classics)
3. Check out the 'free magazine subscriptions'
4. Read about Amazon's Kindle

Not sure re this one - guess would be great to stock up on some books if were going travelling & didn't want to cart the paper kind around.

I did work out (eventually) that for Huckleberry Finn, could go to a link to Rapid and slowly download it (which I did to see what it looks like). Of course if I parted with money, could get it much quicker. So there's free and then there's free... I refrained from saving this 1.4 MB PDF copy of the book (I have it in hard copy at home & haven't gotten around to reading it, so don't think I'll get around to reading an electronic copy of it). Noticed it is part of the Project Gutenberg. Layout was ok and nicely formatted.

After discovering this link, went back to Little Women and found the external download links for that. Now the page makes a bit more sense, but the layout needs improvement to make it easier for novices (like me) to negotiate.

Part of the attraction for the site, I'm guessing, is the whole try before you buy concept. Read a chapter or two online & if you find you really like it (or get sick of reading it online), can then go shopping for the hardcopy. I wonder how much business Amazon get's this way. Would be good if you're remote & don't have the luxury of visiting the library or bookshop and would like to buy based on more than the blurb on the backcover and online reviews.

Quite an interesting assortment of titles under the various categories. LOL with what's catergorised as "romance" !

Had a look at the Magazines section - there seems to be quite a theme happening with the most viewed titles! Strange that Technology Review and Men's Health actually made it onto the list, given the calibre of the other titles on offer. :-) Again, looking at the various tabs there is quite the range of topics/titles - Japanese Modelling stood out. Not sure how, but ended up on a page for The Cambridge History of Japan Volume 4 (Early Modern Japan) which did look interesting.


The free magazine site that they were recommending was http://www.asiaing.com/ which I've never heard of before, but did look worthy of further pursuit (with a bit of time!!)


Kindle (Amazon) sounds a great concept but needs a bit of work & a price decrease. And availability beyond USA. It was good to see the 1 star ratings - the consensus seems to be wait for the 2nd version, but even the 1 star ratings weren't too bad.

I guess this is the end of the Learning Experience for now.

Ciao or Miaow for now.

Beyond #46 - My Web 2.0 - part 1

I had a look thru Technorati and came across this site http://www.wordle.net/create

I thought this would be great if you’ve found an article or report and want to find out what the keywords are for further searching – what’s mentioned most?


This is an example already done




I’ve tried a couple of examples:



Original article: http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24663336-952,00.html



Another test



Original article: http://www.ato.gov.au/corporate/content.asp?doc=/content/00169431.htm



Greater prominence given to the most used words - might be good for the obscure or the basic researcher.







At the 2008 ALLA conference, we were introduced to this YouTube video by Michael Wesch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wesch - the first one listed, The Machine is Us/ing Us (need a standalone to view). I highly recommend viewing this video re the Web 2.0 – it is a great representation of the way that technology has changed and the use of mashups (with catchy music too!). A nice intro to the use of this technology which might be good in a training situation, providing you've got ability to use a standalone to view it.

Thing 46: Updates!

Revisiting the original 23 things...



Thing 21 Discover some useful search tools for locating podcasts.

I had originally had a look at this site: http://podcasts.yahoo.com

One thing that is definitely new since I did this is that apparantly this site doesn't exist anymore so perhaps my blog entry was correct - may as well just search for podcasts in search engines, not need a special search engine/page for it

I did, however, find a couple of specific search engines by Yahoo:

http://video.yahoo.com/ - for video

and one for audio

http://audio.search.yahoo.com/audio - did a search for abc.net.au and found a few hits.

As it says Find audio files from across the Web including music, podcasts, interviews and more I guess that they've expanded coverage.

I still think it's easier to just do a search for podcasts within a particular site or on a particular topic across any search engine.


Thing 13 Learn about tagging and discover a Del.icio.us (a social bookmaking site)

http://delicious.com/ - the site name has changed - no need to remember where those dots are anymore!

re registered and found it much easier this time round to navigate & add entries etc

The layout of the site is much different from what I remembered; a lot easier to make sense of the results and the layout of the tags is much better.

Big improvement for this site!!

Thing #45: Go with the flow - flowcharts & mindmaps

Used Mindmeister & Gliffy for this one.


Mindemeister - Mindmap

This is a boring Christmas card/present list (couldn’t think of anything exciting so made up a bunch of names) - useful for the more visual of us - a different take on writing lists as well as the more normal project stuff, outlines of reports etc

Very easy to use.

It takes awhile for the insert to come up, but copied just fine




Gliffy - Flowcharts - used it to create a lounge room, so it's not just stock standard flowcharts

http://www.gliffy.com/publish/1540774/ The embedding into blog html code didn't work, so have a squiz at this instead.


http://www.gliffy.com/publish/1540779/ Flow chart here (I don't think I've ever actually used a proper flowchart to make use of the all the symbols as they name them).


Both very easy to use. Good for a one-off project that it doesn't matter who sees what you're up to. Very WYSIWYG.

Thing #44: Nag yourself

http://jott.com Jott

Looks very simple, quick & easy to use. Guess it's one way around endless bits of paper that then get misplaced. Would be heaps quicker than adding to a PDA etc.

I found the New York Times review of Jott plus other services can use on your phone was most useful http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/technology/personaltech/05pogue.html?scp=2&sq=Jott&st=cse

Thing #42: Google Groups / Usenet

Well, I found it interesting that anyone is using this system, given the plenthora of alternative discussion groups/lists availabe. It does seem that useage is once again on the wane - probably because there's just so many possible channels available now. It might have worked a bit better on a standalone - Google was pushing out ads at me for some of my searches which obscured the screen somewhat. And what about phrase searching!! A bit too basic and frustrating for me. Would be of value from a historical viewpoint.

Thing #39: Animoto

Had a lot of fun with this one. Very hard to limit self to only 15 or less photos.

I obtained photos from http://www.flickr.com/

A $3 fee for full length videos is a good money spinner - much easier to find more photos than fewer and with such a modest fee most would be happy to pay. And probably again and again!

They've made it very easy to put together. Tried the remix function and got a much better result than what I had first up. As have 15 photos, not all seem to show in the video.

http://animoto.com/play/ruSUEHkO4hQqB8XlIYOA6A

Aimed at the novice - just shove in a heap of photos, choose some music and voila - heaps of fancy effects are done for you. So easy.