NRSS

Yeah.

Not Really Simple Syndication.

I had problems this week. I REALLY wanted to get it. I REALLY did. I thought RSS was going to be the best thing I learned through all of this. But all I REALLY wanted to do was pull my hair out.

However, I did learn a few things. Such as:
1) You have to sign out when you are using a public computer, otherwise everyone else will get confused when they try to log in and just keep getting you. Oops!
2) Not every website has RSS. And even if they do, its not always easy to find their little &$% link. (sorry)
3) Linda is the queen of RSS on the 2nd floor, and we all have her to thank for helping us finish our assignments this week. Thanks Linda!!
4) That it's basically like my "favourites" list on my internet explorer window. And yeah, I get that I can get to my favourite websites from any computer if I use bloglines, but still... I don't know.
5) The one real advantage that I see is that I can save "clips". This might be useful for when I write my Youth Trends report for the InService packages. That is, if I can remember to login and check my bloglines account on a regular basis enough that it actually becomes useful. Time shall tell!

So yay or nay for RSS?

Nay for now.
Yay maybe later??

Google 2.0

For this part of the assignment, I had a hard time choosing a Google product to try out because I didn't know how they worked! It seemed like they all wanted me to download something (which is next to impossible on a CPL computer, coupled with the fact that I'm terrible at it). Not having the patience to figure this out, I abandoned several interesting options, such as the 3D thing, Google Earth, and Google Trends.

Finally, I picked a boring sounding one: Google News. And I was surprised to find... not so boring! It was neat that it categorized subjects together with articles from all over the world. It was like having a super newspaper. Now I'm intrigued, so I read the "about Google news" section to find out how they are doing this. At first glance it sounds great, stating:

"Our articles are selected and ranked by computers that evaluate, among other things, how often and on what sites a story appears online. As a result, stories are sorted without regard to political viewpoint or idealogy and you can choose from a wide variety or perspectives on any given story".

Sounds great, doesn't it? No regard to politics or idealogy. We get to choose from this wide variety of perspectives. Great.

Except.

The way that google chooses the stories is by how often it appears or is linked online, which essentially means that only mainstream media will be pulled from. And with the media ownership world getting smaller and smaller, this so called variety of perspectives isn't as "wide" as they claim. And though I'm sure they mean well, and it's the system that they're drawing from that's broken, they're claims become false.

But aside from that... I thought it was a very convenient tool for a quick catch up on the days events. I just couldn't recommend it for anything meaningful.

facebook: useful or time-waster?

I'm going to be annoying and not come down on either side of the debate on this one. I think it can be both things.

Useful: keeping up with friends' lives, knowing what's going on, what people are doing, seeing others' photos, etc. It has also become extremely useful for organizing events with friends. Instead of a million emails clogging up your inbox, you can login to facebook and check one wall or message string.

Time-waster: it is incredibly easy to lose track of time while keeping up with friends' lives, finding out what's going on, what people are doing, seeing others' photos, etc. You log on with the intention of messaging one friend when suddenly a whole hour has gone by and you can't account for it.

Wikipedia, here i come!

Wikipedia is not new to me, but writing in it sure is! I can't believe how easy it was to add information to a page. I mean, I know we tell kids all the time that it isn't reliable for homework, etc etc. But I didn't even need to log in, or give my name or email or anything!!

I wasn't sure if I felt expert enough to edit information, so for this exercise, I went to my home town's wikipedia article (which was described as a "stub" in Wikipedia due to the lack of content), and added a sentence. And while I knew the information was correct, as I pulled it off of the town website, I still felt nervous making the change. I was almost fearful that the mayor was going to come after me and scold me for messing with their page, or something. (Of course, being a good librarian, I included the footnote and cited my source, so hopefully that should curb any suspicion from town council). Below is the link to the article (I wrote the "Poplar Grove" sentence).

Innisfail, ALBERTA

Wow. I'm published.