My journey through Web 2.0 Adventure!!!

Six weeks!!! That was super fast. I am still feeling I didn't have enough of this adventure. There were easy time and difficult time. It was like riding a roller coaster through the journey.

This is my first time using Google Blogger. I used to blog on MSN Live Spaces. That was quite easy to use with some pre-set application. I didn't explore too much of my Live Space because my PC takes ages to apply/embed new application into the life space.

Google Blogger impressed me a lot. The page uploading is faster than my Live Space. Plus, it has more gadget options provided, even with another supplimentary site, the Blogger Buster. Blogger Buster allows me to find new templates and other gadget applications that I want to embed into my blog. It was contributed by most Blogger users.

Back to my rollercoaster story. The fun part that I like most was exploring You Tube and SlideShare. I was surprised to find out that YouTube and SlideShares are good resources for teaching information literacy. They can be used in creating informative library blogs, or library websites, or even information literacy tutorial class, but have to use under Creative Common License. Oh Yes!! Talking about Creative Common License, it is another big discovery for me. I went to explore its web site and try to understand different categories of license listed in there. It helps me to better understand the copyright issue in the open net environment.

The social bookmarking, mashup and wikipedia editing gave me a huge headache. It is easy to contribute and make changes in the Australian Newspapers collaboration site, but not so in the actual wikipedia site. I guess the actual wikipedia site is governed by strict rules and its too complicatate for me to do editing at this stage. But, from my other course, I have the opportunity to use PbWikis just 2 weeks after the wikipedia adventure, and I have done some editing in that PbWiki for our group assignment.

I was overwhelmed with the information I encountered in social bookmarking and mashup. Most of the time, I was thinking "The site seems interesting, do I really need this?" "Am I taking too much time to learn a new application and manage it?" For example: I have installed the Diigo tool bar in my PC, I never have the time to learn, dig into it, explore all its applications and use them.

Mashup is terribly difficult, and seriously I haven't fully understood the principal behind it. I think if I know API, I can understand that better. But point is, I don't know API.

In conclusion, after 6 weeks, I should say my adventure through web 2.0 was a success. I have learned many new applications, and pushed my embedding skills to higher level. I wish to learn how to embed podcasting application, and embedding movies, but I think that probably be too difficult to manage within one week. I heard of this Adobe Captivate, it can capture the screen shots and used as a tool to design and develop web-based tutorial classes for students. But it is very expensive. I wonder, is there any similar version of this exists in the web and hosted by some web developers? I guess to upload podcast and vimeo will be my next target of learning in web 2.0.

Is this an end? No!! This is just the beginning of my journey into this big Machine (internet). And I really appreciate Doc Man in creating this starting point for me.

Stay tuned!! I won't stop blogging on my discovery on web 2.0 and perhaps web 3.0 or even semantic web.

Google Map with my own photo

Yo!! Done it..

I tried to embedded my own photo into Google Maps. I haven't done this before. I have tried to put markers on Google Maps on my previous post. This is what I have done:

1. Search for information on how to insert photos into MyMaps of Google Maps. I found this really helpful Google help site.

2. In the help site, it says I can add photos but those photos must be hosted on line. So, I went to my Picasa Web account and upload 2 photos which I took in Feb 2010 when I attended the Rare Books Seminar at the State Library of Victoria.

3. I then created a new Google Map and put my marker on State Library of Victoria.

4. The help site says 'click edit' and use 'Rich Text' or 'html'... I was like??!!! Where is my edit? And even when I found my 'edit' button and clicked into it, there was no 'Rich Text' or 'html' editing. Took me 1 hour to figure out, I need to install the beta version of Google Map tool bar!!! Furious!!!!!

5. Now I have my beta version of Google Map tool bar. I clicked on the marker that I have already placed on State Library of Victoria. A dialog box shows up and it allows me to add title, add description, add Rich Text, add Html; I even can edit the place details with place name, address, phone number, photos, categories and etc. (WOW!!) I have select to use the Rich Text.

6. Click the 'Rich Text' button, and another row of sub-tool bar appear.

7. Click the last icon, which is 'adding image' on the sub-tool bar. A script prompt appears asking me to enter the URL of my image.

8. Now I have to find my photo URL. I went back to my Picasa Web, and found my photo that I wish to insert into Google Maps. Right click on that photo, find the 'property' of that photo, inside there, I got my photo's URL.

9. Copy and paste that photo's URL into that script prompts dialog box in step 7.

10. Hit 'ok' button.

11. Click the 'saved' button on My Maps and done!!!!

Please see the following map for that photo of State Library of Victoria, taken by 'ME'!!!


View My city, my love in a larger map

I feel so satisfy when I have done this. Now I can go and shoot as many photos as I want on different libraries and interesting sites of Melbourne and 'enriched' My city, my love.

Try it out!!! It is fun!!!!

Something about Mashup

Mashup is difficult!!! Because I don't know how API works..
But I have found one interesting slideshare about it..
I will embed it here.. very informative.. And I wish I have more time to dig into every sites recommended here.

Sticking between: mashup in libraries

View more presentations from bonaria.

This slideshare is prepared by Bonaria, used here under Creative Common License.

My first Yahoo Pipe!!

Hooray!! Have a try on constructing my own pipes using Yahoo Pipes, and success!!!! Yahoo Pipes is an easy tool to do some mashups on content around the web, especially for person like me who do not have any knowledge and training in API. It took me half a day to figure it up. I watched the "How to Build a Pipe in Just a Few Minutes" video from Yahoo Pipes homepage.

Learn How to Build a Pipe in Just a Few Minutes @ Yahoo! Video

Then, I started to build my first ever pipe.. (Excited!! and Scary!!!)

1. I need an Yahoo account in order to sign into Yahoo Pipe

2. Watch the above mentioned video.

3. Decide my Pipe's title: Latest Social Media News

4. Browse some social media sites which contain latest news or feeds in this area.

5. Back to my Yahoo Pipe page. Click "Create a Pipe"

6. Start building.. Drag a "module" I want to use from the "source" (tools on left column). I chose the "Fetch Site Feed" and add the URLs of the social media sites that I want to include. See diagram below.



7. Next, I filtered the feeds with some limitation. Link all the boxes together. The following diagram shows the Filter box and limitation rules that I set.



8. Type my pipe title, hit the "Save" button, then click the "Run my pipe".

9. Here is how it looks like in my Yahoo Pipes home page. It lists news about the latest social media sites.



10. I can add this list to My Yahoo, My Google, or get it as RSS, JSON, results by emails or phone. I can even embed it into Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress or iGoogle.



I chose the Blogger Badge because I want to see how it looks in my blogspot.

11. Done. Please refer to my homepage left column under my Twitter updates, there is a box showing the latest social media news.

Well, this is my first "kindergarten" level of piping or mashup skill.. I will dig more in the future. Very Interesting!!! I feel soooooooooooo satisfied after I managed to do this.. ^_^!! haha!! With this skill, I can make my own homepage with mashups content targeted to my own information needs.

Playing with Google Maps

New adventure for me. I use Google Maps to find location and direction. This is the first time I actually build my own Google Maps with relevant information for my end of year holiday to be. With few trials and errors, I finally know how to put placemarker, write some descriptions to them and embedded them here.

Finger cross...


View My next trip to be in a larger map

Hehe... Success!!!
Holiday Location: Kowloon, Hong Kong.
I will stay at Metropark Hotel, visit the rest of Hong Kong using subway train, visit the Temple Street Night Market, and eat, eat, eat!!!!

My love with Twitpic

I saw my friend, Jer using Twitpic to post his photos, and it automatically sends a link to Twitter. So, I went to explore that site too and found it really handy to upload my own photos. Since I use Twitter a lot, this site is actually more useful for me than the Flickr.

Twitpic is an additional photo managing application offered by Twitter. If you have Twitter account, you can sign in with your Twitter username and password. You can even embed Twitpic gadget into blogger. Here is the simple instruction:

layout > page elements > add a gadget > search for Twitpic > choose the gadget "Twitpic Update".

Please scoll down to the bottom of my front page. You will see my most recent Twitpic photos with updates too. Twitpic Update is different from Flickr Photostream. Photostream only shows thumbnails photos; on the other hand, Twitpic Update shows the latest photos with description. Another good thing about Twitpic is, I can use my mobile for twittering and also uploading photos to share with all my followers.

This is very good tool to use in live broadcasting of an event. In February, I have observed how MSO (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) has used Twitter and Twitpic to do a live broadcast on their concert event. For us as information mananger (to be), we can use microblogging linked to social photo and video sharing sites to run our special library events. VALA has used this for their big conference in February 2010.

How to embed Flickr gadget

I have Flickr account since January, 2010. I knew it for a long time, but too lazy to sign up a Yahoo account in order to use Flickr (arrgh!!! I hate this!! Too many accounts to manage). I used it more often in February when my baking classes started. I found that people who love baking also love photography (or it is only me???!!!).

I like collecting photos for making my presentation slides. Over the past few years, I have a role in my church to set up powerpoint slides for worship. That was my starting point in getting into photos collection, photography, learn to use photoshop and powerpoint.

I was quite happy when I found the flickr gadget in Blogger during week 3 into Web 2.0 Adventure. I have successfully embedded it into here. I think this is a right time to write down some steps that I have gone through.

1. You need to have Yahoo account in order to sign into Flickr. (cos Yahoo is the big boss of Flickr, I just realised that in January this year.. hehe... so slow)

2. Upload your photos into Flickr first. Uploading is pretty simple and straight forward. Choose photos from your pc photo storage file; upload; add description, tags, titles and organise them in files.

3. Go to blogger > layout > page elements > add a gadget > more gadgets > Flickr photostream in thumbnails.

4. You can drag the gadget to any location you like in the layout page.

5. Done.

I changed my Flickr photostream to the front part of my homepage. They are all about food.. haha!!

Adventure into Gurulib

I can't resist not to explore this site because the LibraryThing is quite difficult to use. I want to see how easy this site is for building online personal library.

According to Gurulib, it claims to provide home library cataloguing and organising application. Users can catalogue books, music, movies, software and games. I haven't tried to use LibraryThing to catalogue music yet, and I doubt it can. I was pretty happy with Gurulib's music and movie cataloguing ability because I need that to catalogue my personal collection of music scores, classical music DVD and CD.

Signing up was very easy and free. Adding book is simple and straight too. I can choose to use ISBN or manual cataloguing. I have tried to add one book that I just finished reading recently, "Google Blogger For Dummies". This is what it looks if I choose to do manual cataloguing. Please see the diagram below.

I found that it has simpler setup compare to LibraryThing. I think this is better for general public without cataloguing training to use the tool to record their home based personal libraries.

Here is the manual cataloging page in LibraryThing. It offers more links to other sources which users can import the copy cataloguing from. The setup looks more like cataloguing tool used in professional library cataloguing system.



Do you think home library need such a detailed level of cataloguing? Plus, do you think general public has more time to search other libraries for detailed bibliography records?? I don't think so. Therefore, I will recommend Gurulib for setting up home library.

Back to Gurulib, here is another diagram which shows how bibliographic record is arranged in the book details section. The layout is simple with the most important details located at the centre of the page. While further information such as DDC, ISBN is gathered at the right column. There is ad at the left column which I found that is annoying. But those are what you will get for free online service.

Now, going back to my gurulib homepage, here is my virtual bookshelf with only 1 book at the moment. When I put cursor over the bookcover, it will open a box with brief description of that book. Cool tool.


There are a lot of other functions embedded in Gurulib, such as barcode reading ability through web cam (I haven't tried this out yet!!), note taking ability, cataloguing research papers online, facebook application, iGoogle Module, blog widget, graphical RSS (Wow, I don't even know what this is) and etc. So, yeah!! It is a cool tool. I will continue to use it.

YouTube videos that I dearly loved!!!

Ok!! This will be a totally new adventure for me. I haven't attached any video clip ever in my life becausce I have no time to watch video online.

But, I know the effectiveness and powerfulness of multimedia tools nowadays in delivering short and visualised message to internet generation. Audio and video clips are often used in teaching, including both face to face and distance courses. Libraries have widely used them to introduce their promotion events, special activities, and online tutorial resources provided to patrons.

I'm going to try to embed two video clips from YouTube that I like the most. Both of them are related to my career. hehe!! I am learning to become a music librarian.



Woohoo!! Successful!!! The funniest classical music video, and they are so talented!!
Have a look!!

Here come the second one, I love this one, it is very informative and you will understand web 2.0 and social media more after watching this videoclip from YouTube.



I am going to embed another clip here from SlideShare. When I first saw this, I was "WOW"ed by the creativity of 21st century CV. SlideShare is an online community that users can share their presentation slides. In this SlideShare, the creator:Chris Ferdinandi created his CV using visual slides. Lets have a look here.

Social Media Resume

View more presentations from Chris Ferdinandi.

I have learned from the help section of SlideShare that embedded code only shows up if authors have agreed/chosen to share their content on SlideShare(for example) publicly.

I have a great fun time with video embedding today.. ^_^

Adventure into Faviki

Hmm... Here is my tour through Faviki site. It is another free social bookmarking tool developed by Vuk Milicic from Belgrade, Serbia. Differ from Diigo that it does not need to install toolbar, which make it more simple to use like Delicious. One amazing thing about Faviki is, it introduces semantic tags concept to users. According to Faviki, "free-word tags do not have defined meanings". What Faviki does is, it not only allows user to bookmark web pages, insert tags, automatically categorise tags, it also connects those tags to wikipedia's terms. It gives meaning to tags used in it. It also provides bookmarklet which links to the user's browser toolbar.

I am going to show you all what does it mean by giving a meaning to tag. Here, I have decided to bookmark the Louise Hansen Dyer Music Library.

1. Click the add bookmark "+" on the top right corner in Faviki.

2. Type in the URL address of the website you want to add as bookmark.

3. A tag adding box will appear with different suggested tags.

4. Place your cursor over Louise Hanson Dyer, a drop-down box will appear with a brief explanation about who is Louise Hanson Dyer from Wikipedia. See the below diagram.


5. You can add as many tags you want.

6. Save it.

7. Back to your Faviki main page, a list of bookmarks that you have added will appear, include all the tags you have selected.

8. Place your cursor over each of those tags, you will have a brief explanation box appear under the related tag. As shown in the diagram below.


Another good thing about Faviki is, those tags are available in 14 different languages.

Fun tool to use!! Try it out!!

Adventure into Furl It and Diigo

My adventure starts here....!!!!

The first fact is: FURL WAS SHUT DOWN ON APRIL 17, 2009, and absorbed by DIIGO!!!!!!!! Why is it still there on course blackboard??? No wonder when I clicked that link, it brought me to Diigo site. AAARRGH!!!!! Alright then, Diigo now.

Diigo is another free social bookmarking site similar to Delicious but with more optional functions. Diigo claims to enable users to annotate, archive and organise bookmarks. Users can archive or store their favourite web pages (bookmarks) forever and make them searchable. Users can search collections by tags, full text (oo, I like this), highlights, sticky notes, titles of web pages and etc. These bookmarks can be achive into multiple version, either as html (webpage) or picture (screenshot) formats.

I like its organising feature the most. It allows user to highlight and add sticky notes to specific parts of web pages archived... WooHoo!!! And the sticky notes can be freely positioned, resizable and floating... And more, users can organise items by tags or list (GoogleNote import is supported!!!). Users can build web slides too, an interactive slideshow to introduce their bookmarks.

It also provides collaboration in group, which group bookmarks can become a repository of a collective research. Several applications for group usages: group widgets, group sticky notes, group forums, group tag dictionary and etc.

It can be used in several common browsers. But a Diigo toolbar is recommended to install into the browser. (ooo... after I installed the toolbar, my PC toolbar looks horrible, too many things... because I already have Google Toolbar on it plus the IE Toolbar... now, the Diigo wants to squeeze in for a place.. I should evalute this after one month - how often I use the Diigo toolbar.. ) Apart from toolbar, Diigo offers several other tools as shown in the diagram below.

This is how its help page looks like, videoclip is embedded in most help pages to help users better understanding how to use Diigo.

And here is the Diigo Community that users can search and find interesting bookmarks to achive through some popular bookmarks or tags.


It also includes social features such as users can sign into Diigo through Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo and Open ID.

I found it very interesting and it is now sitting on my PC toolbar. Need sometime to dig into it, test it and evaluate it.

Great Tool!!!

Embedding LibraryThing widget

I went to dig out how to embed LibraryThing widget into here. I was thinking if I could embed the Delicious, I should be able to embed the LibraryThing too.

1. Find the widget tab or button on the top left corner of your LibraryThing homepage, as shown in the diagram below.

2. It was called "Make a LibraryThing Widget". In here, users can customise their own LibraryThing.

3. Refresh the page after you have selected your preferred setup. There is a refresh button on the bottom left side of that widget page.

4. Copy the html widget code as shown in the diagram below.

5. Back to your blogger Layout > Add a Gadget > HTML/JavaScript gadget

6. Paste the html widget code from LibraryThing into the content section.
7. Save it.

8. YourLibraryThing will be added to your blog like mine. (Please refer to the left hand column on my blog homepage, after my Delicious Bookmarks.)

Try it out!!!

My delicious and My LibraryThing

OO.. Talking about my delicious, I have used it since last year. What I did last week was I learned how to embed Delicious widget into this blog, please visit my previous post if you are interested to know how to do it.

I just checked my delicious site. I have 116 bookmarks and 110 tags. I put tags to help me to search them easily.


Here are my tags. The most popular tags that I use are:

• 1. libraries-reference-resources (61)
• 2. Facts-n-Figues (31)
• 3. Authoritative Resources (30)
• 4. Government Resources (28)
• 5. Search Tools (28)
• 6. Statistic (28)
• 7. Australian Government sites (27)
• 8. Virtual Reference (27)

The reason I used Delicious is preparing myself to be a reference librarian in the future. So, I started to set up this online web-based bookmarks to collect all the bookmarks (it is actually the URL of each related site) to help me to search and provide useful links easily for patrons in need. The benefit of using web-site social bookmark is, it allows me to access to these bookmarks wherever and whenever I have internet access. I don't have to store these bookmarks on my USB to carry them around. I think the bad site for this is, if Delicious's site went down or in maintenance or in repair one day, I won't be able to access this information.

As it claims in its about page, it is a free social bookmarking service. Users can discover, tag/categorise, save/store, manage and share web pages (URL). It is designed for dealing with web pages. It can be used on most of the browsers including: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, and bookmaklet button on any browser. It also provides tools (linkrolls, tagrolls, network badges, blog posting) to enable users to link and display widget to individual blog.

I haven't used EndNote before. I wonder how similar and different in function from Delicious.

Now, here comes my LibraryThing, I didn't use it very much. This is my first impression of it: Wow!! too much information squeezed into one page, too complicated to use. I prefer to use Delicious than using LibraryThing. But they each serves different purposes. For Delicious, it allows me to save and manage bookmarks. For LibraryThing, it allows me to build my personal online library with my own collection. It took me longer time to learn how to use LiraryThing. Honestly, a lot of functions I still don't know how to use and no time to explore them.

On its homepage, it claims that it allows users to catalog books from Amazon, the Library of Congress and other world libraries. This means I can import (copy cataloguing) the related bibliographic record from the linked resources. I can share my own book review or view other people's comment on the same book that I intended to put on my personal library. It acts like a booklover community that I can find people with same interest and explore new books. It is available in many languages. Ha ha.... Yeah! I have to switch to chinese language to catalogue my chinese book.

Well, I am a bit ashamed to tell you all that, there are only 5 books on my LibraryThing. As a 'perfectionist', it normally took me ages to cataloge a book, find its book cover and fill in some information about it.


Here are some information about LibraryThing. It is an online personal library service that allows users to build own library, search for new books and publishers' first comment, a community of book reviews, and access books catalogue anywhere and anytime with internet. It doesn't need software to setup, but it only allows users to catalogue first 200 books for free. It charges really small amout of money $25 USD for cataloguing as many books as users want for a lifetime.

I reckon it is useful for librarians, especially small community libraries. It has a full powered cataloging application, and it allows editing, sorting, storing, managing of books in a collections. Small libraries can use it as a catalogue for their collection, according to LibraryThing. Its LibraryThing for Libraries application allows: tag-based browsing, book recommendations, ratings and reviews. It has widget to be used in personal blog too. (Great discovery today, I need to dig this out).

On its tools page, it has information about how to add Librarything widget to individual blog and mobile phone; adding chiclet; adding bookmaklet on Amazon; iPhone application; adding book-extension to Google Chrome; following LibraryThing on Twitter, Flickr, YouTube Channel, LiveJournal; import and export data to LibraryThing.

I was and still am overwhelmed by its extensive applications included. Too many information and too difficult to manage or explore it. That's why I never have time to add more books into my collection in LibraryThing. Shame! Shame!!

My Twitter 'goodies'!!

Here are some individual tweeters and organisations that I have been following for quite a while. I did a rough categorisation today, and this is my result.

I have:
22 librarian tweeters
16 innovators, leaders in web technology, social media tweeters
17 food bloggers
9 organisitional tweeters
4 coursemate tweeters
1 musicans tweeter
1 friend

Lirarian tweeters, innovators and leaders in web technology and social media, coursemates are all information and knowledge management related. I was surprised that I only have 1 friend tweeter, haha, which means all my other friends are not into twitter except me and this friend.

Another surprise was, the first tweeter I followed was an organisation, the ABC Classics FM. I think it was September last year, when the top 100 list of favourite symphony voted by Australians was released through Twitter and ABC Classics website. I used my mobile to access that list when I went travelling to uni. This was because by accessing Twitter, it is quick and straight to the result I need without using too many MB downloaded to my mobile. Therefore, that was the first time I realised the powerful of using twitter in promoting and even running big public events. It was like live, short news in 140 characters that you want to know about what had happened to certain event (in my case, which symphony was voted which place out of top 100).

In February this year, MSO (Melbourne Symphony Orchestra) used twitter to promote and broadcast their live event, the famous free concerts opened to public at Sidney Myer Bowls. On 3rd concert, it was an MSO-tweeting night. The conductor Benjamin Northey actually posted live tweets (msointhebowl) pre, interval and post concert. During the interval, some interesting tweets were read to the public. In addition, live photos taken from that concert can be accessed through that twitter site too.

I like twitter!! ^_^