More Thoughts on MySpace & Library Thing

On MySpace: Do we REALLY want to support advertisers with library sites?

On Library Thing: I noticed that title searches typically led to several variations of the same book, each with its own number of people having it in their libraries. Do recommendations consider only the version you select?

Custom Search Engines

I liked Google better than Rollyo-- Partly because the appearance is more familiar, and partly because a search for "Events" yielded a KCLS result on the first page of Google returns, where I found only Seattle and Sno-Isle (at least in the first 5 pages, which was as far as I went) in Rollyo. The search for "Programs" led to a quite different outcome. Since the two terms are fairly interchangeable, I would have more confidence in either engine if they gave me the same results on both. Too bad there's not an advanced search option that lets you use an OR operator (for those who don't know the sytax). I AM quite excited to have my own Google search engine (On Fine Art Paintings, of course). I chose to have it include the entire web, but emphasize my URLs, and so far, my results lists seem to be more relevant than what I get with a straight Google search.

Marty Simpson

Here I am. Don't you think it's a good likeness?

WIKIs

I have used Wikipedia as a starting-point/overview type of source for information on various topics for some time. Am glad to learn about some of the others. Two Library applications that come immediately to mind are Reference FAQ with answer &/or source and a forum for LTA's to share expertise and tips that is more organized than bulletin board postings.

Myspace Update

Well, myspace seems to be allowing me to accept friend invitations now, but still no invite from the 2.0 team!

Technorati & Library Thing

I love library thing! Think it will be a help in reader's advisory, and I now plan to recommend it to every patron who asks me for a record of what they have read. I know we can show them how to "opt in" to having a list saved for them through KCLS, but Library thing allows for so much more!

Delicious NOT (Or maybe)

Yes, I could see everything mentioned in the 2.0 blog, but I think del.icio.us (did I get those dots in the right places?)would quickly drive me nuts if I just browsed link to link in endless loops and crossovers. Search, however, looks like it might lead to the discovery of things I maybe wouldn't find through google. Only time will tell.

On Second Thought...

Social networking sounded good in theory. But as of today, I have had it with myspace. Everytime I attempt to do anything, it tells me to log in (even though I am already) and then tells me to verify my email address (which I have now done about a dozen times). After I do that, it says I will now be able to do things I couldn't before, but I still cannot add friends. The ones whose emails I entered when originally setting up the account (which I later learned I was supposed to skip) worked, but none have since. The find a friend search yields a null result set even for the the 27things account, or for friends that are already linked to my account! I could not even successfully respond to the invite from one of our advocates. GRRRR!!!! It remains to be seen if I will be able to respond to the 27 things invitation when I get it. I'm not hopeful.

And then there's the matter of layouts. I have spent hours in a vain attempt to find one I like completely, and could spend hours more tweaking the closest approximation to get it up to my standards. Forget it! And why does my basic info display not match what I entered in the form? In my opinion, the whole thing is too unweildy and unreliable to be worth the effort.

P.S. I just noticed that there is an RSS folder in my KCLS Webmail account. How would I get those feeds I subscribed to through bloglines to show up in Webmail instead (not that I would necessarily want to, but maybe some of the library related ones...)?

Social Networking Sites

Seems like a good outreach vehicle.

RSS Feeds

STEP #7

I think it's too soon yet for me to tell how I'll like the feed thing. In theory it sounds good. (I sure love the KCLS book alerts, which are a bit similar.) I was frustrated by finding that many sites and newsletters I tried out did not have RSS feeds (although sometimes they are hiding in strange places). I'm guessing that if it does not have to be subscribed to on the site itself, that it would still work by pasting in the URL, and that you could still only see what you haven't previously "read" (i.e. "new" stuff), but that if you have to subscribe, it wouldn't. Is this assessment correct? I also anticipate frustration when I have to use my snail-paced dialup internet service to look at all the cool feeds I did discover! I was pleased to find book review sources among these. Maybe I'll finally stay up to date on those reviews!

STEP #8

In addition to "cheating" and subscribing to librarian.net, I came up with the following library related feeds by using the bloglines search tool: Combined library job postings, Librarian's Internet Index, and Library Link of the day. I found the feedster categories useful, but only to the extent that they had a category that I wanted. A search returned generic cut and paste search term ads and articles, only some of which appeared at all related to the search terms entered, and the site names did not seem at all search-term specific. Syndic8 also returned some rather confusing results. I thought Google was very straight-forward.

Making Progress

Well,

I've finally figured out how to narrow the side by widening the middle, but "spell with flickr" is still vertical! It looks like there is more space that can be cut hiding somewhere in the code, and I am DETERMINED to find it.

Help Please!

Does anyone know what the right and left borders on the blog template are called in html? I figured the reason my "spell with flickr" entry turned vertical was because the space for it wasn't wide enough. (It looked fine in the preview.) I tried changing every width or padding or margin I could find in the html code, and nothing affected those exasperatingly wide sides. Some of the changes did eliminate the sidebar image and log, but that was not what I was going for!

Retrievr

I have to say it's something of a mystery just what criteria Retrievr uses to judge similarity. Color is obviously one of them. Shape much less so, although the flower did bring up two flower pictures and the dog sketch did result in one image of a dog, along with a flower, a baby, an old man with a hat, and a rear head shot of a woman with long black hair! Mildly amusing, but not very useful.

Spell With Flickr

Here goes an attempt to use the spell with flickr mashup.




Hmmmm. It sure looked a lot better horizontal on the screen than it does vertical!