CPL 2.0 Completed May 31,2010

TWITTER

I personally would never use this. I find that most of the things individuals tweet about are not of any great significance. It is just so much "look at me! look at me! are you looking at me yet?" I really don't care that you just had a $5.00 coffee at Starbucks and are now stuck in traffic! I don't need to be instantly alerted to go to your blog where you will soon post in even greater detail the harrowing saga of the $5.00 coffee and the traffic jam.!!!

I think as a tool for organizations it is useful. Movie Maniacs has a twitter link to our blog and that is something worth checking out (self promotion in the extreme)!

LIbrary Thing

I found this a fairly well-layed out site, with the exception of my usual complaint for these type of sites-too many tags.

This would not be something I would use to keep track of my reading material-there are simpler and faster wasys as far as I am concerned. But I can see the appeal for some people. And if some of the users are to be believed (although I have my doubts), it is very well used. My disbelief stems from some of the numbers that people are putting up---like user bluetyson with 35,000 plus reviews?! Don't quite know where he/she has the time to read 35000 books AND find time to write a review about them.

One thing I thought it did well and would be of use to me was finding Read-A-Likes. It also had a good tool for ordering series, particularly for authors who have more than one series going at a time.

Productivity Tools

I quite liked the google calendar. I thought the functionality was very good- far better than the outlook calendar. I liked how it popped up in my email and that I didn't have to open email and then open the outlook calendar to get my agenda.

And yes, I would love it if something like this replaced ms software. I can not tell you how many times I have had to replace, rebuy or upgrade ms products..(I also say the same thing about different formats- how many times and in how many different formats do I have to buy the Eagles Greatest Hits?). I believe I have supported Mr.Gates quite enough over the years.

Flickr/Youtube

This was my first look at flickr and I found it quite interesting. It was highly navigable and the language was chatty and informal. I liked the simplicity of the rules--- 'do play nice' and 'don't be creepy'. Or "If you don't feel that you can abide by our Community Guidelines as outlined above, maybe Flickr isn't for you.' Succinct and to the point. I would imagine that people abuse the rules, but it sounds like flickr does moderate the content, so hopefully they are on top of catching repeat offenders. It would depend entirely on how much content they have to weed through I imagine---which we all know can be considerable. But at least they are attempting it. Hopefully creepazoids, out and out nutjobs and amateur pornogrpahers will go elsewhere.

I will definitely load a picture or two and play round with some photo editing and see what I can create. As to youtube, I use it strictly for entertainment---from the occasionally profound, to the more often inane, it is just silly fun for the most part.

And if I have done this correctly, here is a picture from the public archives that has no known copyright restrictions !!! It is circa 1890 and is of Dunottar Castle, Stonehaven Scotland.

RSS FEEDS

This was the thing that I was most interested in learning about. If I had any idea how simple it was I would have done it ages ago. It was unbelievably easy to set up, and I was able to add 3 sites to my watch list. It will really help to cut through a lot of the clutter. This will be a tool that I will regularly use and is of far more interest to me than facebook or delicious.

I think CPL needs to get our website enabled for this.

Comic Expo

Had the opportunity to man the CPL booth at this weekend's Comic Expo. What a blast! Lots of great costumes ---we were two booths down from the BEST Avatar, a young lady in full body make-up, wicked wig, and even the little pluggy-iny thingy on her tail (I know there is a proper name for this, I just can't be bothered to look it up). Lots of people stopping by our booth, and a host of compliments on CPL's graphix's collection. And although I couldn't get anywhere close to Leonard Nimoy or Brent Spiner, at least I breathed some of the same air that they did. This was a really excellent event for CPL to attend-people were impressed to see us there.