I've never heard of this site until now. I agree with the VST that librarians can totally use Rollyo to bookmark favorite websites when doing searches for customers. Here is the first one I started working on after making my account:
http://rollyo.com/rockstar_librarian/ya_readers_advisory/ (it's a work in progress!)
There are a couple of things I see that would prevent me from using it:
1) I'd be too lazy to sign in on at staff computer on the floor. I would just deal with more search results.
2) What if I didn't add a site that could be totally useful? I would be missing that information if I depended on my specific search choices.
One way I could make good use of it is to post it on our MySpace page or our sjlibrary.org page so patrons can use it whenever they want to.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Week 5, Ex. 11
Of course, out of all the Web 2.0 selections, I decide to pick a subject that is near and dear to my heart: shopping.
So I took a look at a couple of choices in the "retail" category. Each one offered a completely different way to do interactive shopping.
Etsy.com -- This site allows up and coming artists a chance to share and sell their clothing, crafts, toys, books, jewelry, and anything else one can think of. Besides the type of item you may be looking for, Etsy also lets you search by location of creator, their hot items, and even by the color! It's an awesome way to get something really unique and it also offers these creators an inexpensive way to showcase their talents.
The only warning I would give is that anyone can make an account and post products. I was looking at different stationary and stumbled on a seller who make 4 Valentines out of construction paper and was trying to sell them for $10.50. Not cool. I would consider this to be like Ebay... be very careful about who you buy items from.
threadless.com -- I *really* like this store. Just like Etsy, this site gives artists a chance to sell their artwork, but all designs are sold on cotton shirts. The one thing this site does to prevent an overload of choices, is it allows the public to register as a score-person. Once registering, you can start looking at recently submitted designs and score them on a scale from 1-5. The highest scores are made and sold into shirts. I like the way this site encourages designers, but I also like how there is a filtering process so not just anything is posted and sold.
Both sites offer the viewer a number of things not offered before when it comes to shopping on the Internet:
So I took a look at a couple of choices in the "retail" category. Each one offered a completely different way to do interactive shopping.
Etsy.com -- This site allows up and coming artists a chance to share and sell their clothing, crafts, toys, books, jewelry, and anything else one can think of. Besides the type of item you may be looking for, Etsy also lets you search by location of creator, their hot items, and even by the color! It's an awesome way to get something really unique and it also offers these creators an inexpensive way to showcase their talents.
The only warning I would give is that anyone can make an account and post products. I was looking at different stationary and stumbled on a seller who make 4 Valentines out of construction paper and was trying to sell them for $10.50. Not cool. I would consider this to be like Ebay... be very careful about who you buy items from.
threadless.com -- I *really* like this store. Just like Etsy, this site gives artists a chance to sell their artwork, but all designs are sold on cotton shirts. The one thing this site does to prevent an overload of choices, is it allows the public to register as a score-person. Once registering, you can start looking at recently submitted designs and score them on a scale from 1-5. The highest scores are made and sold into shirts. I like the way this site encourages designers, but I also like how there is a filtering process so not just anything is posted and sold.
Both sites offer the viewer a number of things not offered before when it comes to shopping on the Internet:
- More viewer/shopper interaction
- A chance for new artists to show their stuff
- Viewers have more control over the content of the site
Of course, I guess that's what Web 2.0 is all about.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Week 5, Ex. 10
As you can see, I decided to use the http://www.comicstripgenerator.com/ for exercise 10. Why? Um, because there was actually a Mr. T cartoon on it. What can be better than that ... seriously.
Besides the fact that these kinds of image generator sites are just another example of how the Internet is becomming more and more interactive with its users... it's also a great way to kill time.
Week 4, Ex 9
Perhaps it's because I'm too lazy, or that I really don't have a lot of time (or the desire) to search through blogs, news, podcasts, etc., but I really thought that Bloglines had the best variety of feeds for me. I found some from sites I already visit: Digg, slate, sj mercury, and nytimes, and I also found some that I've never heard of like Popgadget: Personal tech for women, and Obscure sound, an indie music blog.
I tried using Technocrati and Syndic8 and I found both of them too overwhelming. There were a lot of blogs to go through and a lot of them were just personal ones that I had no interest in. I guess I can see if I was really interested in a specific topic, I may want to look for others that share my interest. But my interests are pretty broad and a couple of well-known feeds should cover my need. :)
Besides using newsfeed sites, I also tried searching for newsfeeds I thought should exist. For example, I wanted to know if The Daily Show had an RSS feed and yay! they did. It's obviously not the quickest way to search for feeds, but it still worked.
I also use the "personalize" feature on Google. Rather than have the standard google.com home page, you can choose all of these different feeds, games, news, etc. to show up on the home page. It's just like the yahoo! home page except very specific to what you choose to be on it. I currently have on my Google page: the date, world news stories, local news, the weather in Cupertino, and the "how to" articles of the day.
As mentioned in my previous entry, I never used Bloglines until now and I find it really useful and convenient. Now there's one more thing to distract me @ work!
I tried using Technocrati and Syndic8 and I found both of them too overwhelming. There were a lot of blogs to go through and a lot of them were just personal ones that I had no interest in. I guess I can see if I was really interested in a specific topic, I may want to look for others that share my interest. But my interests are pretty broad and a couple of well-known feeds should cover my need. :)
Besides using newsfeed sites, I also tried searching for newsfeeds I thought should exist. For example, I wanted to know if The Daily Show had an RSS feed and yay! they did. It's obviously not the quickest way to search for feeds, but it still worked.
I also use the "personalize" feature on Google. Rather than have the standard google.com home page, you can choose all of these different feeds, games, news, etc. to show up on the home page. It's just like the yahoo! home page except very specific to what you choose to be on it. I currently have on my Google page: the date, world news stories, local news, the weather in Cupertino, and the "how to" articles of the day.
As mentioned in my previous entry, I never used Bloglines until now and I find it really useful and convenient. Now there's one more thing to distract me @ work!
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