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.

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.

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!!!

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!! ^_^

Proudly present to you, my twitter!!

Twitter!! The 21st century hottest microblogging tool so far..

I heard of it. I signed up for it when US president Obama said he was on twitter last year, but, I didn't tweet or use it until December 2009. This is due to I have a negative impression of it at the start. I thought, why should I let other people know what I am doing all day long? And I am not interested to know what other people did to their life, living, work, study or whatever.

And, here comes the change. During my long four months summer holiday break, I have time to visit many librarian blogs. I bookmarked them (most of them, especially those who are active in blogging). I found that, nearly half of them have twitter account. Because I was so attracted to these librarians' blog posts, I started to think, may be I can use my twitter to follow them. Since then, twitter has become another information gathering channel for me. I log onto it several times a day using my mobile twitter platform, and I have many recent and newest issues and topics about librarianship; issues related to information institutes, university and high school libraries; social media new tools, application and trends; the latest web related technology development news and etc.

Here is my twitter and you are welcome to have a peek on my most recent updates to the left of this blog.


I have only 25 followers. I filtered most of the advertising and "spam" followers. I don't follow many people too (only 69 for the moment), because I am very selective in whom I follow. Think of this, when I follow someone, I will get their tweets showing on my twitter. If they are not tweeting quality information, I will have wasted my time reading over those unnecessary rubbish. This is the issue of how to manage my twitter to best suit my need.

Oh yes! Thanks to John (our lecturer of Doc Man) who linked the bit.ly that can shorten the URL I want to include in my tweet. Bit.ly is very useful.

I will show you my lists of whom I have followed next post.