dark stuff

It is interesting seeing how successful some scams are, and realising that it is a close think between hitting reply at the wrong time. Vigilance is permanent.

Mashups

I am a fan of mashups. I think the recent work done by the National Library and the government 2.0 task force show the possibilities of using government data. It would be great to see more data released for re-use. I like the way mashups can make you think differently about information and data, and sometime they are just fun. They have the potential to really expand library services.

IM

I use instant messaging quite a lot. In an online course I did a couple of years ago it was the main way I communicated with the team of people I was working with on assignments. It works really well. I used it again in an online course I did last year when we had class meetings. I also use it very often in the online game I play as that is how players communicate with each other (higher levels use 'vent' which is spoken, but at the level I am at it is IM. It works well. People are understanding about typos, and it can be quite chatty.

I am just experimenting with Skype so it is a bit too early to comment yet.

I have used video instant messaging as well. This really depends on connection speeds for its effectiveness.

I have done a bit of tweeting at conferences and I find it useful to follow tweets for some conferences I don't get to go to.

Google docs

I really like Google docs. It has changed how I do teleconferences as it helps to have people logged in to the one google doc while the teleconference is happening. People can take notes that everyone can see, it is clear who has agreed to what, and people can just add in topics for other business which can be discussed when it is time rather than taking time earlier in the meeting. I have co-written a paper and a presentation using Google docs and that worked well. I really like this tool. There were some great hints in the long list and I have added Google docs blog to my rss feeds.

iGoogle

I have had i-google set up for a while, sometimes I use it and other times I just stay logged on and move between gmail, google reader and google docs. I should have another go at using i-google as it does work well and you can have links to a range of other tools I have three pages to my i-google. One focused on Flickr, one on rss and catalogue widgets and the other with google docs, gmail and various news feeds. There is also a spider widget which I rather like. Each of these pages has a different theme - just to give variety.

Event management

This is a catch up week for me.

This week I set up two meetings with doodle and am using eventbrite to take bookings for a seminar in March. I really like doodle because it saves lots of to and fro e-mails. You might have to poll the meeting a couple of times, but at least everyone can see what is happening. I think eventbrite is a useful tool, easy to use, easy to share.

I have not explored Google calendar much as it sadly does not integrate with the electronic calendar I use at work.

I like all these tools for the different purposes which they have.

rss

This is my favourite web 2.0 tool. I have experimented with the alerts through it and they are now a critical part of the information I scan. I am not really interested in filtering my rss, as I already sort by folders - some I always look at, others scan more occasionally and others mostly delete without even looking at.