The Aleph 2.0

Final Thoughts on 23 Things

This exercise has been a wonderful opportunity to explore the world of blogs as well as access other Web 2.0 applications including: Bloglines, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and Last.fm.

I have consistently made my blog entries very visually oriented, with less text. I am a very "visual" kind of person and learner, and I think that kind of learning works well with all the opportunities and features of Web 2.0 strategies. I have now set up so many online accounts! Time will tell which ones I continue to access and which ones I ignore.

I do think the world of Web 2.0 is exciting and extremely engaging. Everyone can be an active participant in organizing images and text through social tagging, an activity that will continue to become more and more prevalent.

Even though the 23 Things exercise is officially done, I plan on continuing to maintain this blog by continuing to add entries on library-related information. Thanks for being the reason to get me started!

Overdrive

Instead of accessing NetLibrary, I further investigated Overdrive. This is the site where South Central Library cardholders can download audiobooks. On the Madison Public Library website, you can connect to Overdrive by following this link-
http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/referenc.html
Just recently, they started adding Overdrive mp3 audiobooks that can be played on both PCs and Macs (and can be downloaded onto ipods). Here you can "check out" or "place a hold" on certain audiobooks. The collection is continually building.
(South Central Library System appears to have only an ebook subscription to NetLibrary. I could not access their audiobooks.)

This American Life

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YouTube

Links to YouTube ....

Last.fm

Wikipedia writes of Last.fm:
Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 21 million active users based in more than 200 countries.[1] On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m ($280m USD).[2]

Using a music recommendation system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user's computer or some portable music devices. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("scrobbled") via a plugin installed into the user's music player. The profile data is then displayed on the user's profile page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.

Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm's music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand, or download tracks if the rights holder has previously authorised it. Registration is required to acquire a profile but is not necessary to view any part of the site or to listen to radio stations.

After hearing much about this Web 2.0 music site, I finally explored the site and set up an account. I was actually much more impressed than I thought I would be. You can build up an extensive music library and listen to your self-created library radio stations. As you add artists to your library, you can add tags to that artist or band. Also, there are constant recommendation links that pop up at the bottom of the screen. For each artist, you can view news, photos, videos, play counts, and short biographies.

Zoho Writer

I was aware of Google docs and not with Zoho Writer. These are nice tools for someone who does not own Microsoft Office software.

I ran into some technical difficulties in publishing the document I created into this blog (it would not recognize my blog username or password.) I also then had difficulties importing the HTML I exported from the document. Hmmm, I will have to experiment further with these options.