Monday, February 26, 2007
Thing #10 (Week 5)
So I went to http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/ and found a Tombstone Generator. I have to say this is probably the most fun of all the exercises so far and the RSS feeds was rather the most difficult.
Thing #9 (Week 4)
I'm trying out these RSS feed search engines and they are rather interesting.
There are quite a lot of them which reminds me of the old days when there were more search engines then you can shake a stick at. Sure there are a lot of lame ones but with the early days of search engines people actually thought they could try to compete against google and yahoo. While these RSS search sites all seem to do the same function they have a style all their own and do seem to have their own abilities.
Feedster: They are very basic and seem pretty good for someone who is just trying to just find what they want and get out. Searching seems like the usual yahoo feed back with just a title, excerpt from the feed and their links.
Topix.net: While having the usual search feature seems like a patchwork newspaper with feeds and images from all over the internet. Searching seems to be able to do a city or zip code along with a topic so you can find your home news sites. Although result list seems rather trunkcated oddly enough they also decided to show you a graph of when they had the highest times that word you searched for was searched by others.
Syndic8.com: This site seems to be a little confused. It appears to be doing to much at once and nothing at all. Or it could be that there is simply too much there that when something changes its probably a part of the site you didn't know exsisted. All joking aside this site seems huge. It has multipule ways of searching for feeds. They seem to catagorize the internet it self. When you search a word looking for some RSS feeds you will be greeted to a list of feeds shown table style. You will see the RSS feed link, the feed ID, Site name, when it was created, when they approved it, the last time the feed changed, what its status is, flag, and language. I'm not sure what half those mean but it looks like they've at least catagorized half the internet already. This site is indeed one for experts or regular RSS users and not for the novice or even intermediate users.
Technorati: This site seems to have the pulse of the internet. Any marketing company should be going here. It is a tap into everyones blogs. It lets you do a search and show anyone who happens to be talking about your subject in their blog. Uses and creates a lot of "tags" which are one word keys. These Keys show you how important something is in everyday word use. The idea behind it being the more a word is used, the more important and popular it is at the moment. While this theory is viable it also is mixed with labels, people put them on everything. These one word descriptions are added for search engines and let people look for your topic incase it might be useful for them.
So far my plunge into the RSS word is litterally that. It is a vast sea of information. Quite scary for those who realize it and for those that don't, probably just confusing. I think a good word for RSS feeds is probably Internet. This is what the internet was suposed to be, a hub of information. Information was the internets poster child.
How did Johnny get such good grades?
He uses, THE INTERNET!
While information remains to be one of the main reasons why biblebelt America hasn't tried to get rid of the internet, the internet it self has degraded some. It has been drowned by advertisements, misinformation, hackers, crackers, viruses, you name it. But it is still huge and information is being pumped into it daily if not by the second. If RSS feeds remain one of the pure chunks of useful information worthy for your consideration then RSS search sites are the heart of information. It is about the closest thing you can get to pure raw data, but unfortunately for that you have to cut out the reporting middle man who has their own agenda. Besides all that, RSS feeds are an ocean, a vast and unrelenting wave of information.
There are quite a lot of them which reminds me of the old days when there were more search engines then you can shake a stick at. Sure there are a lot of lame ones but with the early days of search engines people actually thought they could try to compete against google and yahoo. While these RSS search sites all seem to do the same function they have a style all their own and do seem to have their own abilities.
Feedster: They are very basic and seem pretty good for someone who is just trying to just find what they want and get out. Searching seems like the usual yahoo feed back with just a title, excerpt from the feed and their links.
Topix.net: While having the usual search feature seems like a patchwork newspaper with feeds and images from all over the internet. Searching seems to be able to do a city or zip code along with a topic so you can find your home news sites. Although result list seems rather trunkcated oddly enough they also decided to show you a graph of when they had the highest times that word you searched for was searched by others.
Syndic8.com: This site seems to be a little confused. It appears to be doing to much at once and nothing at all. Or it could be that there is simply too much there that when something changes its probably a part of the site you didn't know exsisted. All joking aside this site seems huge. It has multipule ways of searching for feeds. They seem to catagorize the internet it self. When you search a word looking for some RSS feeds you will be greeted to a list of feeds shown table style. You will see the RSS feed link, the feed ID, Site name, when it was created, when they approved it, the last time the feed changed, what its status is, flag, and language. I'm not sure what half those mean but it looks like they've at least catagorized half the internet already. This site is indeed one for experts or regular RSS users and not for the novice or even intermediate users.
Technorati: This site seems to have the pulse of the internet. Any marketing company should be going here. It is a tap into everyones blogs. It lets you do a search and show anyone who happens to be talking about your subject in their blog. Uses and creates a lot of "tags" which are one word keys. These Keys show you how important something is in everyday word use. The idea behind it being the more a word is used, the more important and popular it is at the moment. While this theory is viable it also is mixed with labels, people put them on everything. These one word descriptions are added for search engines and let people look for your topic incase it might be useful for them.
So far my plunge into the RSS word is litterally that. It is a vast sea of information. Quite scary for those who realize it and for those that don't, probably just confusing. I think a good word for RSS feeds is probably Internet. This is what the internet was suposed to be, a hub of information. Information was the internets poster child.
How did Johnny get such good grades?
He uses, THE INTERNET!
While information remains to be one of the main reasons why biblebelt America hasn't tried to get rid of the internet, the internet it self has degraded some. It has been drowned by advertisements, misinformation, hackers, crackers, viruses, you name it. But it is still huge and information is being pumped into it daily if not by the second. If RSS feeds remain one of the pure chunks of useful information worthy for your consideration then RSS search sites are the heart of information. It is about the closest thing you can get to pure raw data, but unfortunately for that you have to cut out the reporting middle man who has their own agenda. Besides all that, RSS feeds are an ocean, a vast and unrelenting wave of information.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Thing #8 (Week 4)
I was rather excited about this weeks exercises. I had always seen RSS feeds and those XML link buttons but never new exactly how to use them. I figured out what they were by just messing around and doing my own "play testing" but this pretty much cemented it.
Before I had just clicked on the XML buttons but when I was confronted with a bunch of XML code I wasn't sure what to do. Of course new versions of explorer and another computer that I use that has FireFox has an option that shows up above the code explaining what it is and to click "This button" to add to your list. It makes it into a bookmark and while its a neat idea, I rather like using these "Feedreaders" or online websites like it. I've always had problems organizing my bookmarks so that is just one less thing I have to worry about.
So I watched the CNET video which was very useful after reading and listening to the podcast. It put the visual to my poor auditory learning. After pretty much watching another somewhat redudant type of flash video I follow the wonderful tutorial on how to sign up for Bloglines. It is a bit dated since things are a bit different but mostly the same so it went smoothly. I was extremely happy to also notice that one of his examples to add a feed is using one of my very favorite blogs, J-List, which I already get in an email form but am happy to find I am able to RSS feed it.
I really love the idea of RSS feeds. I think it has a lot more potential than used right now but we are in the age of information. I think the hardest part is finding out which information is true and which is misrepresented fiction. One of the major flaws of our society is that if we all are told something even if its false we tend to believe its true. Which is why I worry for our system of knowledge. A lot of people use wikipedia as fact and sometimes that fact gets altered.
But I digress...
RSS feeds in theory are extremely wonderful and I really love being able to just read small amounts of information quickly. I think a good analogy of this would be a newpaper that is tailor made just for you...
I think libraries can use this in a variety of ways, which include being able to update what is new to even having set groups of RSS feeds for up to date information.
Here is my link to the wonderful word that is my growing list of RSS feeds.
http://www.bloglines.com/public/JeremyisJawsome
That is my conclusion of Thing #8!
Before I had just clicked on the XML buttons but when I was confronted with a bunch of XML code I wasn't sure what to do. Of course new versions of explorer and another computer that I use that has FireFox has an option that shows up above the code explaining what it is and to click "This button" to add to your list. It makes it into a bookmark and while its a neat idea, I rather like using these "Feedreaders" or online websites like it. I've always had problems organizing my bookmarks so that is just one less thing I have to worry about.
So I watched the CNET video which was very useful after reading and listening to the podcast. It put the visual to my poor auditory learning. After pretty much watching another somewhat redudant type of flash video I follow the wonderful tutorial on how to sign up for Bloglines. It is a bit dated since things are a bit different but mostly the same so it went smoothly. I was extremely happy to also notice that one of his examples to add a feed is using one of my very favorite blogs, J-List, which I already get in an email form but am happy to find I am able to RSS feed it.
I really love the idea of RSS feeds. I think it has a lot more potential than used right now but we are in the age of information. I think the hardest part is finding out which information is true and which is misrepresented fiction. One of the major flaws of our society is that if we all are told something even if its false we tend to believe its true. Which is why I worry for our system of knowledge. A lot of people use wikipedia as fact and sometimes that fact gets altered.
But I digress...
RSS feeds in theory are extremely wonderful and I really love being able to just read small amounts of information quickly. I think a good analogy of this would be a newpaper that is tailor made just for you...
I think libraries can use this in a variety of ways, which include being able to update what is new to even having set groups of RSS feeds for up to date information.
Here is my link to the wonderful word that is my growing list of RSS feeds.
http://www.bloglines.com/public/JeremyisJawsome
That is my conclusion of Thing #8!
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Thing #7 (Week 3)
Our charge for Thing #7 is to discuss anything technology related this week. So I am going to talk about one of the biggest things to happen in a while, which is the sale of the new version of Windows, aptly called "Vista".
Since its first mentionable release of news about a program called "Longhorn" was going to be the new Windows, it caught my attention. After a while the excitement died down and I tried not to pay attention to the hype and news of their promisses that might or might not be broken. So I just put it out of mind, until now.
The largest software company in the world has come out with its latest version of what 90% of the world uses as its base computer platform. This is no minor undertaking and can change the world because of the huge amount of already influenced companies that use its previous versions. Billions of dollars will be spent to update every computer to "Vista".
Needless to say, I wanted to find out why I should upgrade to Vista. After reading their promotional bullets that promiss better file storage, better searching within your own computer, more "gadgets", a new Explorer (which is moraly speculative), a new Media player, better back-up and restore features, and more bells and whistles.
I'm not to keen on most of it all. The majority of it seems like fluf, all speculative "upgrades" that make things "better". Words being thrown around to say their product is, and always has been, the best.
So what should we care about paying another 200 dollars to make us feel better about how our software works? Most of those big companies will probably have their techies find out about how good it is and see if it has any bugs or does it make it crash less and if it seems to be better, buy it in mass. The home consumer has a different perspective. We don't have our techies to do all the research, so we have to go about reading all the "reviews" to see if its worth our money. But most of the time all they will come up with is mostly what Microsoft is already telling us, it is good but ultimately your decision if you want to buy it.
So a fat lot of good that does us.
Being a home consumer and a major gamer, I worry about my games working and how well they work. It is pretty much the same for other companies that worry about the reliability of their computers so things won't crash randomly on them during something important. The major difference is that we usually require a huge hardware increase that can complicate things.
There are a huge amount of factors invovled in helping and making a game run properly compared to what the old days of gaming required. Not only do you need your graphic card but you need to make sure you have a lot of ram to help. You also need good software to process all this data flying around and cleaning show it on your screen. One of the things that the new windows "Vista" promisses is a new version of DirectX. This program is a medium that game programmers can use to work with and thus ease game flow to make games work more smoothly with Windows. Unfortunately most game companies have to learn what works and what doesn't through trial and error like the rest of us. This means that pretty much any game you buy right after you buy your precious "Vista" will probably not take advantage of the smooth intigration.
So what do we do? We wait. You will be spending 200 dollars on even an upgrade, so do you really want to pay for something that won't really do all that much for you right away after spending your hard earned cash? Most software, yes even Windows, has bugs, especially when it first comes out. By waiting we let all the people before us who are impatient to help find the bugs through their own use. Then when they call Microsoft and complain to tech support, Microsoft will eventually put out a patch, a fix, and hopefully fix the current issue. This is always an ongoing process but the first problems are usually the worst.
In conclusion, when in doubt, wait it out...
Since its first mentionable release of news about a program called "Longhorn" was going to be the new Windows, it caught my attention. After a while the excitement died down and I tried not to pay attention to the hype and news of their promisses that might or might not be broken. So I just put it out of mind, until now.
The largest software company in the world has come out with its latest version of what 90% of the world uses as its base computer platform. This is no minor undertaking and can change the world because of the huge amount of already influenced companies that use its previous versions. Billions of dollars will be spent to update every computer to "Vista".
Needless to say, I wanted to find out why I should upgrade to Vista. After reading their promotional bullets that promiss better file storage, better searching within your own computer, more "gadgets", a new Explorer (which is moraly speculative), a new Media player, better back-up and restore features, and more bells and whistles.
I'm not to keen on most of it all. The majority of it seems like fluf, all speculative "upgrades" that make things "better". Words being thrown around to say their product is, and always has been, the best.
So what should we care about paying another 200 dollars to make us feel better about how our software works? Most of those big companies will probably have their techies find out about how good it is and see if it has any bugs or does it make it crash less and if it seems to be better, buy it in mass. The home consumer has a different perspective. We don't have our techies to do all the research, so we have to go about reading all the "reviews" to see if its worth our money. But most of the time all they will come up with is mostly what Microsoft is already telling us, it is good but ultimately your decision if you want to buy it.
So a fat lot of good that does us.
Being a home consumer and a major gamer, I worry about my games working and how well they work. It is pretty much the same for other companies that worry about the reliability of their computers so things won't crash randomly on them during something important. The major difference is that we usually require a huge hardware increase that can complicate things.
There are a huge amount of factors invovled in helping and making a game run properly compared to what the old days of gaming required. Not only do you need your graphic card but you need to make sure you have a lot of ram to help. You also need good software to process all this data flying around and cleaning show it on your screen. One of the things that the new windows "Vista" promisses is a new version of DirectX. This program is a medium that game programmers can use to work with and thus ease game flow to make games work more smoothly with Windows. Unfortunately most game companies have to learn what works and what doesn't through trial and error like the rest of us. This means that pretty much any game you buy right after you buy your precious "Vista" will probably not take advantage of the smooth intigration.
So what do we do? We wait. You will be spending 200 dollars on even an upgrade, so do you really want to pay for something that won't really do all that much for you right away after spending your hard earned cash? Most software, yes even Windows, has bugs, especially when it first comes out. By waiting we let all the people before us who are impatient to help find the bugs through their own use. Then when they call Microsoft and complain to tech support, Microsoft will eventually put out a patch, a fix, and hopefully fix the current issue. This is always an ongoing process but the first problems are usually the worst.
In conclusion, when in doubt, wait it out...
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Thing #6 (Week 3)
I enjoyed this exercise because it was all about photomanipulation and creativity using things called "mashups" that are made to mess with images and help ease the process if you have a flickr account. Plus I highly enjoyed making myself into a trading card because it reminded me of a card game I used to play called "Magic the Gathering". So in Magic style I tried to create my card. I will later see if I can find a mashup to make actual magic cards using flickr images but here is my card so far!
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Thing #5 (Week 3)
I explored flickr and sync'd it with my yahoo account which was also rather confusing but still pretty easy. It was partly me being confused but still rather confusing on their part. I originally had thought I have never created a flickr account. So everytime I would try to create an entirely new flickr account it would say I had a yahoo account and have me log into it. Then it would make me sync my flickr and yahoo, which obviously would confuse someone who doesn't already have a flickr account. Luckily it turns out I had a previous account and guessed and was correct.
Anywho, I set up my account and after that it was easy cheesy to add images to flickr...now to share them...
So I sync'd my flickr account with blogger...
I have to say all this syncing things is rather annoying and completely unnecessary. I know we have the option to just upload the photo using blogger but using flickr to sync your photos is just a waste of time and shares more of your information. This would all have been easier if we just used photobucket and added the link to blogger to share the image.
But I digress...
This lovely image is our Almaden branch childrens collection. A nice show of our non-fiction shelves with the pretty words showing branches, which happens to be our motif. In another picture I shall add are pillars, which are currently being molded into trees. I've been told it will all look rather spectacular when they are done.
Thing #4 (Week 2)
I sent Team Services my address through my San Jose Public Library e-mail address and was rather happy when I found out they posted a wonderful responce to my first post. I hope the people that happen to check on my Learning 2.0 status enjoy my Random Rhetoric Rants of Rule.
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