Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Amy me'Uncle (or Flickr part 2 for #9)


Amy's
Originally uploaded by BSR-12

Y'all know how it is, with the journey over and the washing done, the emails all caught up, we decided it was time to look at the family snaps online and whaddya know we came across a good likeness of me Amy me'Uncle she is me Aunty Huia me'Uncle's great great great great great niece. To be honest she isn't the most photogenic of the rellies, it is hard life on the farm these days what with the recession...As you probably guessed it is approximately 7.23:15am in the morning and Amy is just taking a time out to enjoy a ice cream after a long morning of milking in the winter-less north.

My thanks to long long cousin BSR-12 me'Uncle for the photo, if you have a mo spend a bit of time with his snapshots...

Ruminating with Luza

Well what a journey it has been. To start with I had the wee lovely and departed Kelly to help navigate me to me rightful ipod, but the with the delivery of me ipod it was hard to get back on the highway of life, the web 2.0 didn't hold the same initial rush that it had and so this wee me'Uncle fell of the wagon...and it wasn't until the manager smacked me on the head (canna you tell she is not a me'Uncle??) and said get on the wagon, there is more to life than agility and handball, well I have to say I was completely gobsmacked. In fact so flabbergasted (and believe me it is hard to dumbfound we me'Uncle's since we are noted geniuses (no bull we me'uncles have won the me'Uncle List every year since the foundation of me'Uncle's Island in the year me'Uncle01, check it out in me'Uncle's Enyclopaedia) I decided it would be a good idea to humour her and complete the exercises.
Probably the most interesting part of the journey has been the wiki, I sometimes think we should use these instead of the ubiquitous blogs as I am over blogs, and well to be honest you cannae be a me'Uncle and not come into contact with Flickr and Youtubes as the public love us and who can blame them...
has it been useful to do this programme? I guess it has been as for some of us it has definitely been a new experience, and as Professor Genius me'Uncle XII used to say "new experiences are opportunities for learning" therefore if it can be said that one of us learnt something then our journey has been successful... well more successful than the bozos figuring out the generic login saga...and it is a saga because it has gone beyond the joke stage.

straight up from the mouth of Luza as always

e-booking around with luza

straight up from the mouth of Luza as always

Podcasts with Luza

Well wee me'Uncles are full of useful information so I was dead keen to find out how to get me & me clan's message out to as many of the creatures living in me'Uncles planet and even off planet.
We have been noticing an interesting phenomena recently, when me'Uncles leave me'Uncle Island and travel into those eight world colonies, the natives run for miles as soon as they see us...inexplicable really and truly a nightmare for us to communicate

Down the tubes with you know who...

straight up from the mouth of Luza as always

Web 2 Award nominee why you will never find Luza me'Uncle in this list

Me'uncle Ted always said I was a zoho - but only when me Mama me'Uncle wasn't around

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

web 2.0 where will the next generation of me'uncles web take me'Uncles libraries?

Reading the articles that little Kelly asked me to reinforces my concern for the library profession.
There seems to be this huge need to jump into every new technology trend, just so that we can say we have a digital presence, here I am thinking of facebook, twitter, myspace, secondlife etc...sure the digital face of libraries can not be discounted but what the fanfare of web 2.0 is forgetting that for many communities the actual physical place of a public library is probably still more important than the digital space it is occupying on Twitter, facebook etc.
The public library is one of the last public bastions that a person can enter freely without any discrimination, no is asked what religion, sexual preference, marital status, they are before they enter a public library and here in me'Uncle Island we don't ban our brown or red or yella cuzzies from entering our library. Our shopping malls have become privatised, so any drunks, homeless are shifted on quick smart thanks to Scrooge me'Uncle, but we let any drunk sleep it off in me'Uncle Library
My question would be for libraries to look at themselves and ask the question of what is their purpose? Hopefully it will be found in the mission statement ...something about serving our community. For the new emigrants, young families, old folks, students, children and the in betweens, the physical public library offers a welcoming place where they can socialise/meet, learn new things, use computers (as they don't have access to one at home) do homework in a conducive environment, things that they find are barrier free in a physical world as compared the digital world.
For this reason I believe that we can not discount the physical presence of public library just yet - at least in me'Uncle Island, if we were to become more like Singapore then yes I believe the digital presence of the library would be more important in many ways than the physical presence as a higher percentage of households have electronic access to a digital library.
straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Doing the Thing 17 with Luza, who needs the moonwalk when Luza is here

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Forget the glitterati & illuminati we me'Uncles are Technorati personified!

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Monday, June 29, 2009

wiki-ing around with Luza

Yes wiki was more straight forward than I thought it would be. I can see the benefits of the technology but unfortunately I do not think it has been particularly well used by librarians.
Looking at Kelly's examples, there was nothing that shouted "wow only wiki could have made this happen" and other technology would have worked just as well, forums, websites, blogs, etc
And to be honest I am having trouble thinking of a way that we could use the wiki successfully in a public way; yes we could use it for a book club, a la Book Lovers, but in terms of our members I think the blog is probably less intimidating than a wiki would be. Perhaps for younger generations such as RiFT or Mannix it might be more successful.
Internally a wiki could be great for staff, (I am thinking it could a nice alternative means of communication for Digital Services to use as a way to communicate, but then again who know may be it would end up being blocked...) if it was able to happen - it would save on meetings, travel etc, though I guess if the discussion was sensitive it would have to be a lockable wiki as opposed to completely open...which seems to be a bit of an oxymoron.

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Luza's del.icio.us as ever - as are all me'Uncles...

Del.icio.us yes I have to admit I have heard someone describe me as such more times than you have stumbled upon an honest politician...the readings were hard yakka, but the youtube video made it seem easy so I decided that it would be just as simple if I gave it a go and sign up to del.icio.us
Signing up was straight forward, I decided to skip importing all my bookmarks as we me'Uncles's are in the midst of a recession and have to share pc's hence it made sense to start fresh, rather than import some other bozo's bookmarks.
I decided to bookmark two of my favourite handball sites, and give them tags, which was kind of fun as being a genius I know more tags than the average bozo...having done this I couldn't wait to see if anyone else had bookmarked the sites and so I could compare tags were but bugger me down, it seems that I am the only one who has bookmarked them, which is making me hear Joan Armatrading wailing "Me, myself, I" - so much for the social networking aspect.
I am going to keep perserving with del.icio.us as I do fancy myself as a stalker and I am sure there is a handball fan waiting to swap sites with me somewhere some time...over the rainbow it just a matter of time before I develop a network of fans if I do say so myself.
straight up from Luza's mouth as always

pbwiki-ing around with Luza

Finally a simple straight forward exercise for little ol'Luza to do.
I had no problems adding me blog to the Favourite Blogs page, and since it was a small task to do time wise I decided to add a few of my Favourite Handball & Corgi Websites to the favourite websites page... the temptation was there to delete everybody else's work but I refrained myself as I know me manager still has to do this exercise and if anything goes wrong she would be on me case, quicker than the vultures on MJ's money!!

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Skyping about Luza's technology revolution

I know I know I keep mentioning the recession, but it has really hit us hard here at me'Uncle Island especially since we had a wee fire at the money factory, to cut a long story short ol' Paddy me'Uncle fell asleep reading the paper while smoking his pipe and before you could say "bugger me days" the factory was ablaze even Fireman George me'Uncle was unable to divert the disaster and now we are stuck trying to use the old #5 wire and 4x2 plank's to survive.
But thankfully Skype me'Uncle came up with this clever idea of VoIP. In a nutshell we can now make free calls to all me'Uncle rellies in New Plymouth, Wellington, Singapore and Ireland all for the grand price of zilch, finally life is looking up. I have been able to indulge in three way conversations with the me'Uncles' in NP and Singapore at the same time which is really really cool. We are even able to instant message while talking and seeing each other on the screen.
Admittedly there can be problems with the calls being dropped mid conversation, and the sound time delay but for the price of zilch we are willing to put up with these minor inconveniences.
And there are ways to keep your details private so as to minimise cold calls from strangers, so yeah we me'uncles are
skype fans.

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Flickr mash-ups etc..

With the recession and all, we canny me'Uncles are having to find ways to cut costs, and believe me it is getting pretty tough to do this, for instance we have sliced our beer budget down to a mere thousand litres per day, our porridge to 3 pots, and potatoes to 1.5 sacks per adult me'Uncle, small me'Uncles get precisely half these rations, so this is where these Flickr mash-ups come in handy.
For instance instead of spending money on buying a business cardwe have been able to create our own business card isn't that great??
Luza me'Uncle Business card

straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Flickr with Luza

Well we me'Uncles have never been the type to flickr at anyone, not like miss princess pottymouth who is forever flicking her finger, you can tell she never went to convent school...
I actually kinda like Flickr, there were some pretty good photographs to look at and the tools and APIs were okay, some of them I had come across in the earlier exercises, but that was okay, I figure Kelly must have a drop of me'uncle whiskey and forgot...
Anyhows I decided to create a Flickr account under me name Luza me'Uncle and added some photos, well six, as I realised after only putting two up that the tags wouldn't show if I didn't have more than 5 and what's more there is a waiting period...so that was a bit of a drag. Your challenge Jim is to explore Flickr with the tag Manukau Learning 2.0 and see if you can find me'Uncle photos...this post will be destroyed in less than 90 seconds, no pressure now! here's a wee hint
Millie me'Uncle at Flickr
straight up from Luza's mouth as always

Luza is blue over Rollyo

I cannae really see a useful reason to use Rollyo...for sure it adds a pretty red colour to me blog, but to be honest if I need any red in me life ...all I need to do is just embarrass me wee tosser of a friend princess smutty mouth...
It doesn't offer anything new... I mean I know how to do a boolean search can narrow me searches quickly enough, I have bookmarked my favourite sites, and I can always use google apps to search my desktop, email etc, so no I don't think rollyo is offering anything to me'Uncles, we already have enough gold so don't need the ashes that Rollyo is...

straight up from Luza's mouth as always