Week 6---Tagging &c

I took a look at Delicious, and that is cool how you can share bookmarks :D At first I thought, "Another complicated site to replace something that works just fine?" Reminded me of a bumper sticker I once saw. "Government's Motto: If it ain't broke, fix it 'til it is." It seemed like to me a lot of the "amazing websites!" that claim to facilitate the flow of information a lot easier than the old way don't live up to their claim. But Delicious bookmarking seems to do just that. I liked reading through others' bookmarks, and I found a cool website full of English resources that way.
http://englishscholar.com/.

I was disappointed, however, finding out that Delicious was about bookmarking and not about Delicious Library. http://www.delicious-monster.com/. Which I hope to buy one of these days to go with my new Macbook :) (Or Christmas present from my parents? Hmm...)

Technorati is pretty cool too, being able to search blogs specifically. It's like searching for interesting diaries to read...for those of us who are channeling Gladys Kravitz ;) I took a look at some of the tags, and I was surprised to see one of the popular searches was "Jennifer Garner". I mean, seriously, people want to see what other people wrote about a movie star they've probably never met? Wanting to get to the bottom of that mystery, I clicked on that tag to see what kind of posts were being made about her. Apparently she picked up her daughter from preschool a few days ago. Uhhh....that's "not news"...Also, she has a "baby bump." That phrase bugs the heck out of me. Why not say "pregnant?" Heck, even "with child" works better! But "baby bump" makes it sound rather...cosmetic and easily gotten rid of...I'm getting off track now ;)

Next post I'll share some thoughts on Library 2.0.

Week 5 fun

Made this with Wordle--oh so much fun :) This one really appeals to me, a textual-visual person.
Whenever I read something, I can get a abstract sensation in my mind--whether the text is "round" or "angular" or like scribbles; I can feel in my mouth whether it's smooth or rough, taste whether it's sweet or bitter or neutral, see the color scheme of shades of blue, red, white, silver, grey, green, or a multitude of all of these and more. So, to see the words arranged in a visual pattern with colors, this really appeals to my literary senses. I'm addicted already--the challenge for building an image like this is to find a decent section of text to copy/paste. Very very easy to use.

LibraryThing is also pretty cool, too. Here's my very basic library so far: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/hollythelibrarian

Of course, Harry Potter was the first thing I added--just off the top of my head; since I dressed up as Hermione yesterday it was fresh on my mind. I really like how it's free, and I can't believe how easy it was to add books! So....when I get a chunk of time (maybe Christmas break) I will try to put my entire library in the catalog. I have a bunch of older books, though, that wouldn't show up in the search...hmmm.....I'll cross that bridge when I get to it :)

Rollyo is pretty cool, too--if I really want to search only a few specific sites. But, call me old-school, it probably won't replace a good old-fashioned Google search. It's all about the search terms you enter--you can find anything with Google with the right search terms. I can see how it would be useful if you have a blog or a website, though. That's when I would use it, so people can search my sites--within time they will be huge :)