BB Summary

Wow! That was quite the intellectual exercise and has made me aware just what power and capability social networks have. I wonder, though, whether it is possible, in the midst of all this communicating capability, that people become more insular and/or insulated by staying within their sphere of special interest and less aware of others. The other extreme is that everybody becomes interconnected.No dobt at the present that social networks are used extensively and are a powerful tool for instant communication.

As for the Betty Blogger Summer School - I have learned a lot and found the experience interesting and stimulating. The process met, and probably exceeded, all my expectations. The directions were excellent and easy to follow. The most challenging aspect was to change my way of thinking about some things and to learn to read the instructions carefully enough not to mess up. On the other hand, messing up is a good way to find out how do do it right, and sometimes discover other aspects of the task. Overall, the self-directed learning process was quite straightforward, thanks largely to the carefully worded and explicit instructions provided. Thanks, Betty for being so methodical and having a good sense of humour.

Yup, I certainly would recomment anyone looking to dip a toe into social network pond.
More power to your elbow!

Library Thing

This is the URL for my Library Thing: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/claygoon.

It looks like a very handy way to find books that one might like to read, either by subject or author and so would be useful for bookworms. It certainly is easy to navigate and simple to understand the way it works. Will I use it again? Perhaps not as I am always behind with my reading - there are so many other ways to fill the time available.

RSS Feeds (or now for breakfast)

I have subscibed to the sqaush club I belong to as that seems to be a simple way to see new events, the Town of Halton Hills, because that's where I live and want to know what is happening in my backyard (literally), and the Globe and Mail because I want to know what is happening around the world.

It was easy to set up an account and from what I have seen so far using GR will save time looking for new stuff. I like that. Propably will add more sites in the coming days.

Family meal

There can be no doubt that a BBQ without fish is incomplete, so I would include Lake Ontario salmon, currently in season. The smell of charring fish is pervasive and enough to clear space around your table. It also stuns deer flies, and that can't be bad.

Wikis seem easy to use and the concept is interesting enought to explore further.

Food story

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Picasa

Dear Betty Blogger (and others, perhaps),

This is my effort to complete Task 5 of the Burlington Public Library Social Networks Summer School.

As requested, I opened Picasa and searched for a photo that might tickle my fancy. Specifically, I looked for a photo of California's giant sequoias. Why? Several reasons: because I happen to like trees and have grown several from seeds, including a couple of sequoias, and lastly because my wife and I took a trip into the region 3 years ago and saw these trees. They are among the oldes trees on the planet and have an amazing ability to resist fire, which is a frequently occuring natural event in the area.

Unfortunately when I tried to e-mail the photo (and others I selected) an error message - "500 Internal Server Error" appeared and so Betty dear there won't be an e-mail containing the photo. One photo I chose had 4 tags and others ranged from 1 to 4. Picasa is a useful way to allow others to share one's vacation or family shots easily for viewing at the viewer's convenience. It is quite likely that I will use Picasa after school is out.

Thanks, Betty.

Library Task 4

I was surprised to find Halton Library, Runcorn, UK when looking for BPL in Twitter. having lived near there for years I didn't know of any connection between Runcorn and Halton.
Clearly, Twitter is a neat route to connect and stay connected to lots of current events and folks in and out of the news. A recent news report suggests that not all info on Twitter is accurate, which creates a concern that actions may be taken by individuals based on unreliable, or downright mischevous information.
Yes, I do have concerns about privacy issues associated with social networking, but the I have concerns about how much is known about us by a wide variety of organisations and agencies. How does one investigate that?
No doubt there will be events that I will follow on Twitter after this course.
Looking at Option 2 for this assignment, do those who elected Option 1 really pass Go and collect $200? If so perhaps a gift to Library Lady in respect of impending nuptials would be in order. After all, we should show some appreciation for the time and effort preparing this course and looking after us all.

Task #3

The sites I chose are Briggs & Stratton, because I have recently looked for parts for an ancient hover mower with a B & S engine, and Vacations To Go because discount holidays are of interest. The tags I added were "Flymo" for B & S, and "discount holiday" (I think) for V-t-g.

Diigo seems to me to be a complex piec of software designed for thos who access many websites frequently. Since I access only a few sites with any frequency I can keep track of them easily in Favourites so I don't expect to need Diigo. However, things change and now that I understand a bit about how Diigo works, if/when the need arises I can use my new-found knowledge!

Second BPL assignment

Anyone with a British background from the 50's may remember these guys, Anyone else with a similar snse of humour may get a charge out of this "song".
http://youtu.be/rmR4FE8kWrA

Yes, YouTube is a window into a whole world of different. It can also be a great time-waster as one wanders from topic to topic. With discipline it can also be used to find out how to fix things - I have used it for that several times and found it to be a time-saver as well.

The popularity of streaming may be due to several factors, but probably the biggest is simply entertainment value. Communication may be second.

For sure I will continue to use YouTube, but as carefully as I can so as not to take too much time from other good stuff happening.

Blog 101

Have signed up with the Burlington (ON) library to learn about social media. It's about time to catch up with the 21st century and eventually become part of the social media scene. Over the next 8 weeks or so I have to complete several tasks which will become part of the course record, so stay tuned.

Right now my knowledge on Web 2.0 is sketchy, as my grandson might say, but with a bit of luck and some careful re-education that will change.