Twitter

I chose to draw the line with Twitter, I don't have smartphone, and my impression of the site is that it is most useful if you tweet regularly, and probably is most intelligently used by someone who is promoting themselves or their organization. I can see it being very useful to the library in that it provides up to the minute information about programming. The drawback of this being that if the information is not up to date ( as is unfortunately the case with some of the twitter accounts linked !!) then it can be a bit dssapointing.
I can imagine if i was a politician on campaign, or a musician on tour, that providing supporters and fans with new information about my wearabouts and appearances might be very useful. As for myself, I am quite happy with my current level of busyness, and not particularily keen to add more.

LibraryThing

Google Docs

I have mentioned Google Docs previously for being one of my favorite online applications. It does make expensive software redundant, for this reason I have suggested it to several customers as a good alternative if they do not have the means to maintain a personal computer and software. For my part Doc's has allowed me to avoid having a personal laptop, and has facilitated many group projects where multiple people are contributing to the same document, or need to view the same information. I think that one of the very best uses for Google Docs is maintianing jobseach documents, Having a current, resumes, CVs, cover letters, project diescriptions and budgets avalable at the click of a mouse, even when somthing unplanned comes up is fantastic. This has been particularily usefull for me working in the arts, where there is an ongoing series of deadlines for grants, applications and artist calls.

Flickrititititi

yes, flickr and I are friends, i have been using flicker for at lest 3 years. As a visual person i really like the straight forward clean visual layout of the site, which is obviously geared towards people who like photographs, the cite is used extensively by professional photographers, and some major magazines like American Photo often print updates of the latest Flickr stars. Some of the best things about the cite: it links easily t0 other cites, blogs, facebook etc; it has it's own built in copyrite agreement, so your photos are automatically protected unless you specify them as part of the creative commons; there is a bundled photo editing application, with add on's. My favorite thing? There is no advertising on the site because pro accounts are administered by paid membership.

RSS feeder

Bloglines seems like a good concept, and it was easy enough to set up, but i think i will have to spend more time with it to see if it is actually useful personally. I appreciate that it might keep me more focused on moving down the list of subscribed feeds. Since many of the blogs i read have a visual component, i am a little underwhelmed by the way stories display, i end up opening the individual blogs anyway, and then things start to get a little cluttered.

Google my best friend

I admit, I use Google on a daily basis. I use it often to search, and appreciate the advanced search options, and the ability to focus the search to video, images blogs etc.... I fear that Google may promote a kind of lazy scholar, and that vetting the information is still something a lot of people need to learn to do better, but it cannot be denied that it has become an essential part of navigating the internet. The other part of the Google universe use most frequently is Docs, i started using it in school to avoid constantly sending myself emails of half finished papers because i did not have my own laptop. Since then Docs, along with Flickr (which is the Yahoo version of Picasa) have been the repositories for all of my written and pictorial property worth saving, i think some people might find that scary, but i have found that storing my documents online is actually more secure than on a personal computer. I love Docs because I can use it anywhere, and it is especially useful when I am not prepared... I can keep an updated copy of my resume and know that it is the most recent because docs will tell me the date I last changed it, it doesn't matter if i am in a different country, or don't have a USB key or computer with me. Even better google docs can be exported and emailed to be compatible with Microsoft word, they can be shared with others for collaboration, and you can upload full PDFs to be filed away for reference.

Faceblah

...as it is often called by a friend of mine. Facebook can be useful and it can also be a time waster. Like most things in the interland it depends how one uses it. I have found it useful in promoting events on a small budget, although increasingly the number of confirmed guests can be misleading. Initially i was amazed with the buffet of events and the possibility that presented, but this quickly gave way a sense of being overwhelmed.

I have used it to keep in touch with some friends who are far away. I think for many people, especially those in Canada who's families are elsewhere it is a very good tool. However, I would never consider my "friends" on Facebook to be equivalent to my friends in real time, some cross over but i have a great Many acquaintances on facebook with whom I rarely spend quality time.

Wikininnie

Since i have been geeking out tremendously on harps lately, I found an article that suited me just fine. Camac Harps, a French company that is an innovator in electric harp technology had a small entry, to which i added a few things; the name of innovative company helmsman Jakez François, and the fact that in addition to the electric, they are also working on midi Version of thier now famous "blue" harp.

Needle in a Haystack

Delicious is a good tool for keeping track of useful websites, we use the CPL Best Websites frequently at the 3rd floor reference desk. There are may ways to make Delicious work, the options may be a little daunting, I personally feel the most important factor is if the chosen sites are tagged and titled appropriately. In terms of applying that for personal use there are a lot of options about how you organize the information, which should leave you free to choose the one that works best for you.

Being a visual person i have found Delicious harder to get used to that i expected, and was not initially aware that the main search option is for Delicious in its entirety, not necessarily for the CPLs collection of links. Searching by tag is also cumulative, so if you don't find anything by tag you need to remove it before you type a new search option in. Because I use it often I am now much more comfortable with it and can usually find what i am looking for quickly.

The Medium is the message.....

The 2.0 Internet is like a sponge, it absorbs everything, an endless warren of information. There is a part of me irked by the constant barrage of information being transferred. I think it has been embraced by many as a form for a kind of imagined celebrity where everyone can be a star with their own advertisements via Facebook, Blogger and the like.

While the Internet is a fascinating and very useful tool it is decidedly impersonal, for me an email will never replace a hand written letter, although increasingly they do. I fear the ever-available format of the Internet with its plethora of fictions and facts creates a disinclination to reflect on any one thing, i feel this may be detrimental to the human spirit in some way. I would guess that anyone with a passing knowledge of the 2.0 phenomena would agree that it has fundamentally rearranged the way we perceive the keeping and interpretation of knowledge.

Paradoxically, i am and have been a regular and somewhat obsessive Internet user, and belonged to some of the earliest social networking sites ( Friendster, CBC's ZEdtv site). There is great opportunity and choice in the interactive nature of the Internet, but there is still a great deal to learn about how to look for it, and what forms of older technology it is suitable to replace.