Official post 17, thing 19 - online productivity tools

Would you believe this is the 2nd time I'm typing this 'thing' up, just hit the wrong key and wiped everything, and sadly my last draft save seems to be blank, grrr!

Anyways, I have been a long time coming with this post, as I tried to access the last few 'things' at work to complete my web 2.0 training, and they had been blocked, and usually when I've been free to do it, all the learn.nets have been busy too, so here I am at home finally finishing up. I have also taken a wee while, cause every time I start exploring the tools from the site, I start playing, and then I haven't been happy with a single result to post about. So I've decided to talk about the tools I have explored, otherwise I may never get through this thing!

Firstly, from the Fun Stuff category, I checked out HairMixer, where you can upload a photo of yourself and try on celebrity hair styles. After much playing and testing, I was horrified at ALL the results - it would seem that I am not meant for a celebrity hairdo, so much so that I refuse to show you my result here...it was just scary!

Next I thought Galaxiki sounded kinda cool (from the Games and entertainment section - well, I am doing this at home in my own time now...tee hee) From the blurb in the awards, I thought I was exploring some sort of cool Sci-fi/fantasy on-line world...perhaps about books/games/movies/tv - turns out its an ACTUAL galaxy, where you can register and have your own star in a solar system. Whilst I am very much admittedly a geek, this was way way beyond me! (but big ups to all those in the Galaxiki community!)

Lastly I went to Last.FM from the music category. This was pretty cool - you can register and make a list of your favourite artists, and then the site recommends other artists you might like. This is something I'm coming back to explore in full, I kept getting waylaid looking for new stuff from older favourite bands. You can also listen to 'channels' based on a favourite artist, eg, I had Lily Allen, and I could listen to a Lily channel, which played her music, but also other artists similar to her like Kate Nash.

None of these are particularly relevant in a library setting, but many of the other tools on the awards list that we have already explored could be (google.docs, PBwikis, bloglines and so on) I just wanted to look at some new stuff this thing round.

FOOTNOTE...

I can now say I have found an excellent use for google.docs - another staff member and myself were a part of the step challenge late last year, and we wanted to find a way to keep it going. So I have made us a spreadsheet in google.docs that we can both access from home. Its set up so we can each enter our steps, and then they translate into a graph that shows our progress against each other - the competition keeps us motivated...YAY!