What does Veronica Mars have to do with Delicious?

The assignment for week five was to explore Delicious and Technorati. I have mixed feelings about Delicious. I think it can be a very useful tool for organizing bookmarks and making them available to the user from any computer. I've added a number of sites that I regularly access from work such as other museums, reference resources, and archival suppliers. It will take some time and experimentation on my part to make the tags useful to me.

I instantly liked Technorati. It gave me the results that I expected to see when I used topix and syndic8. And I didn't have to break out a manual.

Random note: What does Veronica Mars have to do with Delicious? Read the last question on the FAQ page.

Dangerous Bliss

The 23 things blog designated week four as "play week" and I visited the following sites: The Generator Blog, Library Thing, Livemocha, and Web 2.0 award winners.

I think I lost several hours of my life playing with The Generator Blog. I now know that "Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo is hiding" from the Chuck Norris Random Fact Generator and that my Depeche Mode name is "Dangerous Bliss." I also had to force myself to stop clicking through The Random Kitten Generator even though I am a life-long dog lover. The only drawback to The Generator Blog (other than losing several hours of my life) is that I discovered a number of links were no longer operational.

Library Thing is to librarians (and book lovers) what Ravelry is to knitters. Ravelry's library feature enables knitters to share their book "stash" with their online friends as well. I think sites like this are very useful in bringing people with common interests together and that Library Thing is a potentially useful tool for promoting the VHS collections. I enjoyed scrolling through some of the VHS library and will have to take a look at Alec's Legacy by Frank Robinson to find out why a Celtic cross is on the cover.

I did not engage in a conversation on Livemocha, but I will keep the site in mind if I ever decide to learn Hindi and surprise my brother's in laws.

I think the Web 2.0 award winners site is very useful if you are looking for the top sites in a specific category that interests you. I was pleasantly surprised to see Etsy on the list under retail. The internet has so much information I could spend (and have spent) hours examining only a small little corner of it. I also think the number of hours I spend on the computer are both "dangerous" and "bliss." It's a good thing that I don't watch that much t.v. I'd never get anything done.

RSS and Newsreaders

I have not been procrastinating writing this post. I have been avoiding it. After spending a couple of weeks experimenting with newsreaders, I have decided that I prefer Bloglines to Google Reader because it offered some topics when I signed up that interested me, such as the Abstract Art feed from flickr, without forcing me to go search for them in cyberspace. I also added news feeds from CNN, BBC news, and NPR: Arts & Entertainment. A lot of the major headlines repeat on each site, so it is nice to have them feed into one place and decide whether or not I want to read them later.

I have also discovered that Bloglines is a great way to keep up with the knitty blog, a blog that is part of the online magazine called knitty. Apparently the United Nations has declared 2009 "The International Year of Natural Fibers." INYF for short. The UN decided this in December of 2006. Where have I been?

As for topix and syndic8, I was less than impressed. Overall I preferred the layout of topix, but it didn't bring me any closer to knitting resources than Ravelry or knitting blogs already do. The FAQ pages for both sites are more complex than the manual that came with my computerized sewing machine. The sewing machine is easier to use.