Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Official Post 15 - Thing 17 - Social networking

YAY, this is so my favourite bit of web 2.0 :) Social networking is not very new to me, been on Bebo and Facebook for a while. Was on Bebo first, as my younger brother was on, and MADE me join to be his friend. I found Bebo was a great way to get in contact with lots of my friends from school, and I still keep in touch with heaps of them thru Bebo. I then got an invite to Facebook by one of my sisters (who is hardly ever on it I might add!), and when I joined, I discovered that lots and lots of our friends were on Facebook, and so its a great way to keep up with all our current friends (and family too). I get asked which I prefer, and for me Facebook is king, but lots of people like Bebo better cause its more colourful. I like Facebook because I find it has more of a community feel to me, might be cause I have more friends on it, not sure....lol! I also like that I can chat to friends that are online at the same time as me via Facebook, I've never been an instant messenger person, so this is the closest I get. I have looked at myspace as well, but really, its bad enough trying to keep up with my Facebook and Bebo accounts, let alone starting another one....arrgghh! But, social networking is great on so many levels, for example, went to a party recently, and was able to instantly share the pics with all my friends and their friends, yay!

Want to come be my friend on either Bebo or Facebook? You can look me up using my name (yes, time to come clean....looking for Kelly Mucalo will find me for sure, not too many Kelly Mucalo's out there apparently, just the one so it seems, yay! unique!)
You have to be my friend to view my profiles, but I'm always happy to have new friends :) See you online!

Official Post 14 - Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

Wow! What thought provoking stuff indeed! I read all of the links from our resource list, and it really brought home just why we are doing this whole learning exercise. It also really made me think about just how much I live in the web 2.0 environment myself already, and about how many of our customers are doing the same. If I wasn't a librarian, I would very rarely visit the library, and that's the honest truth. I would continue to come in and pick up my books, but if libraries delivered would I even do that?

I love that our website is becoming more and more user friendly, I can subscribe to the rss feeds of my favourite new items (new graphic novels, new adult and teen fiction, cooking books and on and on), so that the moment these are available, I can request all the fantastic new books coming out. I can subscribe to NextReads, and get a great list of recommended reads to request from in all my favourite genres. In my online life, I am constantly coming across books I want to read in a variety of places (what are my friends reading in facebook?), and I request them. But then I have to juggle my reading time with all my other pursuits....its no wonder that we really are having to work hard to bring our libraries to people, rather than expecting them to come to us.

And the last non-fiction book I borrowed? a cookbook. ALL my other information needs are always met online......why wait for a book to arrive, or have to go out my door when I can find it online? when I can read about other peoples experiences and share from them? Need good dairy free recipes? check out this persons blog, not only does she share her experiences and recipes, shes got some great links to other sites! this is our new world, and I think we are more immersed in it than we realise :)

I have embedded that great video here again, cause I thought it was really good, and I wanted to be able to find it again easily. If you didn't watch it, do....makes you think :)


Official Post 13 - Technorati

YUK! I don't much like technorati at all.....theres 30 minutes of my life I would like back, lol.
I explored the site a little, then did the exercise of searching for Learning 2.0 in a variety of ways (not particularly user friendly I have to say). It was interesting that you seem to find more results in the blogs than in the posts, but whew, what information overload.....so so so many blogs about this topic, guess librarians all around the world are at this minute also blogging about their own experiences in the world of 2.0 (wonder if they liked technorati more than me?)

I did however 'claim my blog' so now I have a technorati account that will probably never be used. (theres now a nice little link to the right there so that technorati lovers can add me to their favorites, though the chances of them finding me in the scary wide web is pretty small!) Sorry, not gonna tag any of my blog entries, cause I'm totally over technorati now, and moving on :)

Official Post 12 - Del.icio.us Social Bookmarking

Right, I actually started this way back when I did my last official type post, so I've just taken my time to refamiliarise myself with it, and add some new bookmarks (from my home bookmark list).
I started off just having a look around, and checking out the work account, but soon decided it would be much more fun to make my own account up. So I did, and I think this is a really useful tool! we have 2 pcs and 2 laptops here at home, with different bookmarks saved all over the place, so this is a really useful way of being able to access all my favourite sites from one place! I also had fun with the tagging, trying to be useful and creative.
I mostly see this as a personally useful and fun tool to use - a way of checking out what other sites are liked by people who like the same sites as me. Its also entertaining to see how popular my favourite sites are!
I guess it could be used for research, as in someone may have created a list of excellent sites on a topic, which you could then tap into, but I don't think this would be my first point of call to check.
I added a 'badge' for my Del.icio.us account here on my blog - its over there somewhere on the right, go on, check it out, you know you want to!

A personal update.....

Wowza! I didn't realise quite how long it had been since I was in here working on mah blog....oops. I have a pretty good reason tho - honest! This last month and a bit has been awfully interesting for me....started having these nasty abdominal pains in the middle of the night, and these 'attacks' started coming more and more often (from weekly to nearly every second night!), and lasting longer and longer (up to 5 hours long in the end...ouch!). After many middle of the night visits to the A and E clinic, it was finally dicovered (thanks Mr Ultrasound Scan) that I had a gallbladder chock full of stones. I was then put on a waiting list to have my gallbladder removed.

But apparently my gallbladder had bigger plans than that, and a few weeks ago I was hit with a massive attack (which even my industrial painkillers did nothing for) and I was rushed into hospital to have my gallbladder out pronto. I feel a little sad that I can't remember my ambulance ride there, but apparently pethadone will do that to ya. So, I was admitted on the Monday....but didn't get my op till the Thursday arvo/evening....during which time I had a couple more attacks, but hey, I was in the right place....morphine anyone? (Truth be told, I hated the morphine, it made me feel so sick...lol) So one keyhole surgery later, and I'm freeeee of gallbladder nasty pains....YAY.


So here I am at home recuperating. Spent pretty much all of last week in bed feeling sore but awful grateful (thanks to my lovely nurses at Middlemore, and the doctors too). I felt well enough to be let out of the house with my husband on the weekend.......YAY, free from the house! But then I felt awful again Sunday night, so it was perhaps not the best idea I had had. So here I am taking it easy again. My lovely mother has been a saint, taking me to my doctors appointments, bloodtests and follow ups, and apparently all is looking good.

Big thankies to all my friends and family, for the visits and well wishes etc. Thanks also to my lovely work collegues for the lovely plant and card.....I miss work.....and the gym.....lol!
Huge thankies to my husband who was amazingly good to me, and made a terrific nurse at home :) So where's your gallbladder? heres a lil pic for you from Wikipedia.com...see, this is an edumacational post too! (course, mines not there anymore!)

and p.s...they kept the stones for me and guess how many there were left- 27 of them! omigosh. My sister wanted me to put a pic of them here on the blog, but I thought that mite be too gross for ya all :)