Google maps

I love Google maps! I discovered pubs that I did not know existed in Brunswick, and I worked out I could do a pub crawl to all of them that would take about 1.5km, walking from my flat in Brunswick. I inadvertently found those in Germany too, I was too quick hitting the search button. I will be attending a health librarians meeting in Alice Springs in September, and I found out the quickest route to get from the hotel where I will be staying to the venue. The Internet went down this afternoon while I was working, so could not do something really neat and upload the relevant map with the route marked. Will try again later, hope I can get the technology to work.

I can see the applications of Google docs, easily facilitating collaboration between teams and the ability to access documents anywhere in the world - for example the benefits of placing scanned copies of important documents on my site while I am travelling abroad.

Wikis

Wikis can be useful to create online communities and enable collaboration between peers. I could see how for instance, I could try to understand how to design a website (the very idea is mind boggling for me) using this tool, with more tech savvy colleagues providing assistance. The use that public libraries have made of wikis is innovative and I can see how it would serve as a forum for training - some of the training resources gathered in one place were impressive. Equally innovative NZ Police using of wikis in a positive way.

Wikis can be the place to go if you are after an arcane fact or something obscure - I did a Google search on Andrea Palladio (+ wiki in search box) - the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice is stunning - and was instantly gratified to find pictures of his public buildings and plans in Wikimedia commons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_San_Giorgio_Maggiore
There is always a boffin lurking around, collecting little know facts on a topic, wikis can
excel in this regard. Lucky to find archiplanet, a wiki with literally thousands of architects listed and their work.

Face Book

It was interesting to see that NASA has embraced Face Book to capture a younger audience. I can see how young people love this, one can instantly engage with hundreds of 'friends' and send out messages and images. I cannot see the value of this in my work environment (or in my personal life for that matter), and did not register. Similarly the Gen Ys and those younger are enamoured with My Space. I can see this facility being useful in the public or school library scene, it would not be appropriate or indeed useful in our work environment. It was worthwhile exploring the various sites, some are very creative and eyecatching. Victorian teacher-librarians are using Ning quite extensively and I can see how this can be a viable tool to share information on the latest in children's literature and general gossip.

PS

I have already joined HLA blog spot, and regularly receive updates on professioan developments. Blogs may not be as useful to be applied in our work environment; much of our work is sensitive in nature and is not appropriate for sharing via blogs.

Feeds

Spent some time this afternoon exploring feeds. Added about three, and then discovered 'bundled' feeds from Google. This may be overkill, I'll review the situation in a couple of days to see if I am overwhelmed with information and delete those that are not as interesting or useful. I can see the advantages of signing up for feeds, just need to remember to check them each day. It would be good if we can apply them to library alerting services - need to negiotate with our IT people though. I have found that they are terribly partial to chocolate frogs.

ImageChef

This is a cool app, I can see lots of possibilities .... image chef easy to use. I think I have got the hang of entering text beside the image now. it took a couple of goes.

Backsliding

I have dropped out for a few weeks now, never thought I would get back into blogging. It is quite addictive really, so hopefully I am back on track now - a few week's work to catch up on. I really love LibraryThing. I am in two book groups (one more serious than the other) and with LibraryThing I can list and keep track of my reading, add reviewers' comments and what I thought of the books. I have just finished 'The heart of the matter' by Graham Greene, such an anguised guilt ridden novel - there will be interesting discussion tomorrow night. I am re-reading this after a number of years and am reflecting of what I thought of it the first time I encountered it.