Week 11: e-books

I wasn't clear about joining up to the World Ebook Fair site & paying $8.95 (US) or whatever....there was nothing there that really attracted me. I couldn't find any free downloads there as was suggested in the discovery exercise. The Australian site of the Gutenberg Project is much more interesting http://gutenberg.net.au/#ebookreaders It has a good overview write up on the ebook readers that you can get for portable reading rather than reading from your lap or desktop computer. Pretty pricey... I have a flyer that I picked up at last year's HLI's conference day from DA Information. They can sell you an iRex digital reader that is a bit bigger than A4 size for $1,149. I was also interested in reading on the Gutenberg site that you can become a proof-reader for the Project. They send you scanned pages to proofread because they can become distorted in the scanning process. There are strict guidelines on how you proofread, and another person surveys your work before the book goes online for everyone else to access.
I've just found the "parent" home site for the Gutenberg Project, which is a better place to go to than the World Ebook Fair site for totally free stuff (no $8.95 required). http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page I found some nursing books there written by Florence Nightingale.

Pheew...here is Mr Bean at last

Had to have the Edit Html tab activated in the create posts box. Then cut & pasted the embedded stuff on Youtube. I won't do the same for Chaser War on Everything's Crazy warehouse spruiker guy at the library. You can look up WOE videos yourself...there's a few of them.

Week 10: Glitches

Somehow my links to my embedded Youtube videos do not work ....found this at home and at work, so I'll have to have another go. I was pretty tired when I did them last night but not sure if that's good enough excuse. I notice that others of you managed to get the picture screen up for your videos rather than just a link....I'd like to know how you did that. Will go back to the drawing board but that may not be for a couple of days. OK, I've just found the Add video icon in the compose box here. I'll try using that later, but have to do some work right now. Have a good weekend everyone.
Right, I've also discovered that there's a Youtube gadget in "gadgets".....how hard could it be?
Plenty of options here for me to use.

Week 10: Youtube

Well, I've found a couple of funny library videos & posted their links. I haven't spent too much time in Youtube testing and searching out things and so I'm not really in a place to comment about its features. As usual it seems to be a case of getting used to each site's terminology e.g. their Community tab is about the folks using Youtube rather than the larger community out there. I'd like to have look at TeacherTube too, but it's time to go, ...I've got square eyes & need a good night's sleep.

Week 10: Podcasts...hear, hear!

I found some good, sensible sounding podcasts to do with surviving in libraries in one of the directory links in the homework and tried to get them downloaded into the Juice program that I downloaded, but without any success. I don't have many IT genes I'm afraid. Then I read what Roz had done & so I also went to the Odeo directory type site in search of a simpler solution. http://odeo.com/ There I found that I could directly embed a podcast straight into my blog by using the HTML gadget in the blog customize thingy. I chose a podcast called Peter Cundell & Kostya Iszyu thinking that I'd be in for a bit of garden biffo entertainment! That's when I discovered how the directory descriptions given these podcasts can be a bit misleading. It was actually an ABC conversation hour interview firstly with Peter Cundell and then with Kostya Tszyu...how disappointing....but the LIBRARY link is that Peter Cundell started out his career in Australia as a librarian!
I've learnt that RSS technology is also used to move audio files around...not just headings & text. I was looking for the RSS symbol on the directory page, because the homework said "add an RSS feed for a podcast to your blog reader"....lack of those genes again, it seems. At least now I'm pretty right with "embedding" without blushing.

Coming down the back straight...(though not galloping)

Congratulations to those of you who have finished your exercises...what you've discovered and written about is helping me get on with the last tasks. I'm also happy to see that other bloggers are continuing on and I hope that we all get there in time. Thank you Fiona for persisting with us "late-ies". I've been doing some work on the podcasts and will write up on it in due course. I've gained much more confidence to "have a go" at this web stuff that sometimes seems to have the assumption that you should be able to follow what it's all about...how hard could it be? I've found that it raises more questions and quirky twists than appears on the surface, but ultimately that just adds to the breadth of the learning and a feeling of accomplishment when it starts to make sense and I can identify an actual useful application for the tools. See you later...