Social Networks

I'm all for social networks in general and library participation in particular. Especially if I can continue to ignore them entirely. I'm not a very social person and online communities don't hold a lot of attraction for me. I really, really hate IMs. I prefer e-mails to phone calls. (They're so much easier to ignore.)

The articles weren't entirely clear on this point, but I thought profiles were fairly passive. You find them when you search, but you don't have to click on them. I'm assuming Libraries don't force people to be there friends. If people are looking at the library's profile then it's because they're interested.

It sounds like a quiet way to remind people about the library. The online equivalent of deploying the bookmobile. When people see the bookmobile going down the street they remember the library. At the fair or in the Safeway parking lot it advertises as well as provides library service. Let people see it and think, "I should return those books and ask whatever happened with that last levy!" I think joining online communities is necessary for libraries, although I would personally rather eat glass then have to maintain any such project.

RSS Concluded

Okay! I finished with the RSS unit, to my satisfaction at least. I guess Feedster didn't work for anyone else either. I tried it a couple of times over several days and GOT NOTHING! Now it is crossed out, as it deserves to be!

I can see Topix has a lot of potential for real information. Blogs seem to exist mainly for diaries and opinions, but Topix seemed to be newspaper articles and things of that nature. It is very reminiscent of InfoTrac, but with pictures.

Some of the library blogs were interesting. I added a couple from other countries, (in English), and a few from other libraries in the U.S. Where was FVRL's? I couldn't find it and Multnomah timed me out.

The RSS is working well for most of my web comics. It's odd to see them off their sites like that, and on one of them I loose the links of the day. I never visited any of these links but I am a little irritated to loose the option. Aside from that it's working out very well.

More RSS

I had high hopes for Syndic8 but was confused and disapointed. It just seemed to want me to pay so my site would get more exposure. The way the used the infinity sign as the 8's shadow was clever, but I was expecting them to use an eight ball. Maybe that is copyrighted?

Feedster kept timing out, I never got to play with that one.

Technorati was fun, I think I liked that one best. It seemed to come the closest to what I was looking for. I don't like the way it's set up, the look is irritating. I think the whole RSS think of giving you just a bit and then making you click another link to get to the real site is irritating. Also, those links are too tiny.

The Google Blog search wasn't bad. On one of them I got blocked from looking at a site until I clicked a box and claimed to be 14 because the site might have adult content. It's lucky it did, pineapple cocktails were mentioned. The filth people get away with on the Internet, it's shocking!

Magic!

I need to stop relying on magic to solve my computer problems, it just doesn't work. I spent the weekend, off and on, thinking about RSS Feeds and I figured out what I'd been doing wrong. Somehow I had become convinced that a siter had to have one of those RSS buttons before it could be added. The button was to be clicked and magically something good would happen! Now I realize that it's more a matter of copying and pasteing addresses.

I miss the magic, but I'm getting better results.

My main interest, (in life), is webcomics. The RSS feed will be useful for them because they don't always update as often as scheduled. RSS will keep track of the ones I haven't read and I can check them all from one site. Those are the pros.

The con is mostly that it just shows the comic without the site and I don't like it out of context like that. We will have to see if there are more pros and cons later.

I'm really enjoying adding pictures.

RSS Feeds

This one was REALLY hard, but I have completed the minimum requirements. At least I think I did. I will have to give it a few days and see how I like it and if I did it right enough that it works.

I'm very pleased I managed to sign up for theRSS feed of the webcomic AmazonEss. I'm going to have to try with other webcomics. I remembered reading his blog about setting up the RSS feed and not having any idea what he was talking about.

I've long dreamed of being able to design my own comics page that has only the good comics. Knowing if they're new would be an added bonus. If I'm understanding this correctly it might be perfect! But I feel guilty about the amout of time it takes me to finish any of these units.

I really wanted a picture of Dan Ackroyd reading the news, but Jane Curtain was a close second choice