23 and counting

Image by Alex No Logo, on Flickr

Well, it has been a fun ride.  I'm grateful for this experience, and I've especially enjoyed being both a participant and a coordinator.

Thank you to the Learning and Development Committee for initiating this program and for writing up the proposal.  I feel lucky to have joined LDC this past fall when the 23 Things program made its debut.  Thanks to my awesome 23 Things team for all your hard work and patience.  It has been a fantastic learning experience!

Looking forward to the party tomorrow!

Word fun

It's a Wordle!

Who knew I used the word 'images' so often.  That was a surprise.  Wordle was indeed a fun thing.

I've been aware of LibraryThing, but now I hardly ever do any leisure reading; so this is probably not the thing for me. Not that long ago I used the Visual Bookshelf app in FB, but somehow that went by the wayside. My online collection still exists - I just never see it.

Hmm, this is probably a better representation of my thoughts: chaotic and grey.

Smilebox is actually something I've used more than once.  I love e-cards, especially since most of my family live in different parts of the world.  Being able to personalize an e-card with my own pictures has added a whole new dimension to my communication repertoire.

Making maps

I decided to go on a coffee walk, but I encountered a few pubs along the way. So naturally I had to stop for a pint as well. CommunityWalk - it doesn't necessarily give me the travel itch, but it sure makes me wish it were still the weekend.

CommunityWalk Map - Coffee walk

Google Maps - it's a brilliant innovation.  A couple years ago, Saskatoon made it to Google Street View, and so did I.  As I was standing at the bus stop one bleak day in April (I think it was April), the Google camera car drove by.  And now the whole world can see me.  Hmm.


View Larger Map

Kind of digging this thing

Social bookmarking:  I have used Digg a bit, but I've never actually gotten into the "social" aspect of it.  I mainly like the idea of being able to have all my bookmarks saved in a single place, accessible from any computer.  Actually, so far I've only used Digg like an RSS feed - I enjoy seeing the popular news feeds that people have chosen.  Email, RSS, Twitter, social bookmarking, etc:  it's a never-ending supply of news feeds.  And in terms of organizing my bookmarks in a single location, I have used Google Bookmarks for this purpose.

Now that I've signed up to Diigo, I think I might actually use it instead of Google Bookmarks.  I like how "My Library" organizes bookmarks.  It's similar to GB in terms of tagging, but it adds some other features like highlighting.  (The bookmarks I save in GB or Diigo aren't my everyday-use ones, since those are easy to remember or Google wherever I am.)  Another thing I really like about Diigo is the extension for Chrome that I have downloaded.  (Google Chrome is the primary browser I use.)  The Diigo extension is pretty slick: a single click... add a few tags... and voila.  But again, I'm not sure if I'll get into the social side of it: adding friends, or a profile, or making my bookmarks public.  FB is enough "social" for me.

Widgets: as we have found, all our web pages are chock full of widgets/gadgets.  I love how easy it is to personalize my blog and iGoogle page (although I haven't used iGoogle in a while).  Widgets and apps - this is what mobile technology is all about, right?

So-so-cial

Since I was responsible for the social networking week, I've been thinking about this particular subject for a little while now.  And I have found myself feeling quite ambivalent about it all.

At one time in my life, I was a Facebook resister, but I eventually gave in.  I have never been quick to jump at the latest trends, as I usually like to test the waters and see what fits with my values and goals.  So FB did not initially appeal to me - I had the impression that it might only be used for vapid conversation.  But as FB continued to grow, my curiosity caused me to cave.  Ooo, unintentional alliteration.  Anyway, FB is an interesting phenomenon.  I have had a love-hate relationship with it over the years, but I think the pros mostly outweigh the cons.  It has certainly helped me connect with friends and family I might never have connected with otherwise.  And I feel like it helps to keep me connected and involved in various events around town.  On the other hand, it's sometimes hard to know how to manage my online identity... and really, that is what we're all doing, right?  Managing some "other" persona.  For the most part, we can choose to include or exclude anything we like.  So as long as I can continue to maintain a certain level of control, I think FB is a great tool.  But there are times when I feel conflicted... should I add that person as a friend or not?  Should I keep some distance between my work and personal life?  Very rarely have I said no to a FB friend request, but I can't say I've been the most proactive "friender" either.  Anyway, enough about FB.

Oh, but I did see the movie, The Social Network.  Great movie.  It did, however, make me want to quit FB immediately.  How did I let myself get sucked into this popularity contest started by a seemingly heartless college kid?  (Well, I kind of think Mark Zuckerberg probably isn't all that bad in reality.)  So I let myself be annoyed for a short while and then went back to enjoying the benefits of the Face Book.  

Moving on, I signed up for Twitter.  Somehow, it took me until January 2011 to do this. Once again, I was trying to resist the pull of another popular fad.  Well, I think I am a true convert, except I will likely not be tweeting much.  As we have seen in current events, Twitter and other social networking tools have contributed greatly to various social and political revolutions.  I recall my sister also telling me how useful Twitter was about a year ago during the red shirt/yellow shirt protests in Thailand (where she was living at the time).  When it comes to my own use of Twitter, I mostly love the following end of things. What better way to follow this federal election than via Rick Mercer?  I can even follow President Obama.  He's been tweeting since 2007 - how about that.  Now I wish I had signed up long ago.  Well, better later than never.

IMAG-ine the possibilities

I have uploaded a few images from Flickr for the 23 Things blog.  When we first created the blog, we were still using the old editor, since it defaulted that way.  Little did I know that the new Blogger editor had some amazing features.  For one, the new editor makes it so much easier to work with images.  The first time I uploaded images from Flickr, I spent way too much time trying to figure out how to add a caption below the photo, to provide a linkback to credit the photographer. I ended up finding the HTML coding for adding a caption, and that seemed to work for the time being.  Then one day we realized we could upgrade to the new editor, and voila!... suddenly the images practically uploaded themselves!  When you click on an image you have uploaded, there is now a toolbar below the image with options to position, re-size, and add a CAPTION below the image!  I sure wish I had known this when we first started working on the 23 Things program.  Anyway, yes, it's a lovely feature, and I enjoy uploading images now.  P.S.  For anyone still blogging with the old editor, I highly recommend upgrading to the new WYSIWYG editor.

With regards to searching for images in Flickr, one thing I have been doing is limiting my search to Creative Commons licensed images.  I have only uploaded cc images to the 23 Things blog.  You can limit your search by clicking on the Explore drop-down menu, and choosing Creative Commons.  Or you can click on Advanced Search, and check off only cc images.

I prefer embedding the image (the way you would embed a YouTube video), rather than copying the URL of the image.  The options are "Grab the link" or "Grab the HTML/BBCode", and the second option is the embedding one.  I'm not sure why I prefer the second option, but maybe it seems to provide more control over the image (in terms of re-sizing or whatnot).

Image provided by mstephens7, on Flickr

Uploading images from Flickr is a great way to go, and provides beautiful, high-quality options for any projects you might be working on.  As far as other photosharing sites, I haven't used any personally... unless you count Facebook.  I only recently realized that Facebook is basically a photosharing site in a way too.  I have also searched for images via Google images, and since you can do an advanced search and limit to just Creative Commons images there as well, Google is also a viable option.

Wiki Thoughts

Wikis - another great collaboration tool.  I haven't had much experience with wikis yet. Our 23 Things team set up a wiki (well, Becky set it up, and the rest of us merely contributed), and that was probably my first real experience using a wiki in a purposeful way.  I think it was June 2010 that I took the basic training offered by Campus ITS - certainly a useful introduction.

It seems to me that wikis, blogs, and docs have a lot of the same benefits and functionalities.  I think the challenge comes in knowing which tool to choose.  Probably the greatest drawback of a wiki is the ability to overwrite changes others have made, as some of the 23Thingers have already experienced.  So it's likely not the best tool for synchronous editing.  Wikis do, however, keep a good history of revisions.  (But then again Google docs also keeps a history of revisions and is better for synchronous editing.)  Obviously, you would want to use something like Google docs if you needed to actually create some sort of document.  But in terms of sharing and collaboration purposes, blogs, wikis and docs have a lot of similarities.  Maybe some blogging software offers more interesting and dynamic templates than wiki software, so it might be fun to use a blog if you have a fairly small group.  Another advantage for wikis, on the other hand, is that they can be opened up for anonymous editing and commenting, probably more so than most blogging tools.

I tried adding the RSS feed for the 23 Things Wiki to my Google Reader (using the Feed Builder), but either I was doing something wrong, or it wasn't working.  Maybe someone can shed some further light on this for me.  I'll have to try again another time.