#7 Tags and del.icio.us And #8 Library Thing

I have no philosophical objection to tags (given their usual freeform nature)...perhaps I should - as a librarian?  I think in most contexts it works well when they are there in conjunction with more formalised, or "official",  ones.  I guess that's having a bet each way!

I noted that the ABC appeared to be the assigners on their webpages (ie rather than opening this up to the public -although of course listeners/viewers can comment in other ways to the site).  What does this apparent caution indicate?  I will be interested to see what the facility of tagging on our new Search catalogue will reveal.  Not scared, just interested!

I had started accessing del.icio.us a while ago (God it's hard, and annoying, to type that word...have to think about it every time!).  I think I haven't really utilised it as I could, or perhaps should have; it really is quite useful. For example on the Chat services, Ask Now and SLVchat.  But I haven't got into the habit of looking at it and remembering to add to it all the interesting sites I come across. I wonder about the social networking angle too.  I haven't explored that in "real life" yet. ie other than reading about it as part of this exercise.

But as an indication of my intentions at least:  I've just downloaded the del.icio.us add-on from Firefox to my imac at home.  We'll see...

Created a Library thing accnt, but will need to go home to add any more titles of my own!  I did actually once recommend this for someone wanting to do some amateur "cataloguing" for a small collection they had in an organisation.  Were wanting to be able to search, keep track of, and lend items.  I would have been interested to know if they'd found it useful.  I think theoretically it serves the purposes they were mentioning.

#6 Podcasts

Luckily I've already had a bit of a go of this.  I'm a great radio fan, and I'd wanted for ages to be able to subscribe to the podcasts which are available, particularly from the ABC.  I've finally acquired an ipod and have had my first go of downloading some (would you believe it's one with these 3 "geeks" [self-labeled!] talking about latest developments in Google!!!)

There's so many things available, again.  But, once again, the beauty and the terror of the 2.0 world is that anyone can put stuff up, so you have to try a few, and avoid the rubbish!  But generally, I'm a fan!

#5 RSS

Well, half in half....I had already subscribed to some Google Reader things in our last foray into 2.0 territory.  But I decided to have another look and refresh my memory...and I guess that partly answers some of the questions raised here:  Theoretically I think this is a useful tool, and well designed (it seems to have added some extra features since I last visited)...But, did I utilise it? No (I'm afraid); I think we have so many things to keep abreast of that it fell off my radar.  Maybe I should establish it as a particular routine to make sure I look at it, say once a week (or whatever)?

This is of course assuming that I actually subscribe to things which are worthwhile.  On my revisit I did add a couple of extras, including the ABC 774 twitter feed (just to see what it looked like).

I think the answer is also to make judicious selections also.  In terms of my work it might be useful to have a feed to keep up to date with selection subject areas.  I need to think about this.