Goggle Docs

Wow, this has been frustrating. After some headbanging, I finally typed up my blog post in docs, followed all the instructions explicitly, and guess what, nothing happened. Is there a blog post here, NO! Sam is my witness that I did everything correctly, so there. However there is a possibility that it takes time for the blog to show up from docs, so if there are two posts here, ignore my ranting and raving.

Cool Stuff

Wow, this was fun. Obviously I signed up for the blog readability test and was quite puffed up when I was granted a Genius reading level. (I hope you noticed my cool badge or whatever it is called attached to this blog.) Deflation was only a heartbeat away when Sam let me on the inside scoop that genius level might be a red flag for booooring. Don't say I didn't warn you.

My next fun trial was easy enough; scrapulous is a natural. I love scrabble and all games that are part chance and part brains. I like this site because you can play without registering as long as you want to play solitaire with only yourself or against a robot. That robot is too darn smart and most likely cheated. Otherwise how did it get 240 points to my lowly 85 before the game was halfway through? In fact the robot chose words I never heard of and would likely challenge in a real game. Still this is fun and educational---a good way for young people to pass the time while learning.

Another word for Wordshoot could be Just Shoot Me Instead. For someone who has struggled with typing for 45 years and is not likely to get any better, this game is a nightmare. If I ever am forced agaonst my will to play (isn't this called Hell) the pharmaceutical industry will benefit as only a high dose (preferably lethal) of high blood pressure and antanxiety meds would get me through the torture.

Good bye from the Happy Camper

Wikis--my favorite social software so far

I think Wikis open up a whole new world, giving anyone with a special skill, knowledge, or idea to share it with the real world. I have used wikis before, specifically to add to our computer class syllabus. It is so easy to edit or add comments to most of these, and you know you might be able to help someone. My special favorites are the "how to do it" wikis. From our Discovery 2.0 blog I linked to wikihow which is loaded with great how tos. However I prefer the site ehow, which does the same thing. Ehow has a user friendly web design with the subject categories visible on the left. They also have a large number of entries, and a wiki is only as good as the the number and talent of people who subscribe. I have found the legal category helpful and wish I had had it a few years ago. There may a legal category on wikihow also, but if so, it is buried under something else.

One caveat---watch out for spam. I went into a library wiki site and there were of dozens of links with really odd, and disgusting, tags. I thought there were part of the wiki and some kind of joke, but it was all spam. Sam saved me and deleted all the spam since he is registered on the site, but never fear, you have plenty of more chances to find like spam on other sites!

Happycamper

Library Thing

After checking out both LibraryThing and Goodreads, I signed up on LIbraryThing. I liked the look of the interface better, and it just "felt" friendlier somehow. Goodreads was also very irritating since anytime I tried to look at something, it displayed the annoying message that I have to sign up. My five books very easy to add except that I couldn't add them by searching title. I had to look up the author and search that way---very frustrating, and I am wondering if it is just a fluke tonight. However this is a friendly site to use and it is easy to edit titles.

I know that this is social software, but as a social person, neither so these sites takes the place of discussing books with friends (real friends). It's hard to feel real passion about a book on these sites. However, this is a good start if youhave nothing else.

Here is a link to my LibraryThing page.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?

Happycamper

Technorati

I think this website has promise, but it didn't do much for my searches. For the search Discover 2.0 fvrl, I got one hit in post, 0 in the other categories---blogs, videos, and photos. I'm not very impressed. Then I realized the first search box isn't much good. In searching for something on psychotropic drugs and children, I needed to go to the advanced search. Doing our 2.0 search in the advanced still gave me one post and three goose eggs.

I will play around with this to see if I can refine my searches. One thing, I used only the signed out version. I watched the video twice, but my simple search bar does not look like the search bar in the video, but the Technorati developers promise to keep working on making a user friendly interface, so maybe my comments will be obsolete in a short while.

Happycamper

Some del.icio.us samplings

This is a fun task. It's interesting to me as a person who cut her teeth on controlled vocabulary to learn about tagging (although I knew about it long before this exercise.) It's about time the general population got to organize information in ordinary language and in ways the average person would look for it. On the downside, it's hard for me to relate to the sheer number and nature of some of the tags. It seems no stone is left unturned. Maybe someone sent their second grader to the dictionary to find every word that could possibly be used to describe a site!

I had a fun link from one of the IS del.is.ious sites. I chose cartoons because it had a fair # of links, but was disappointed to find the site an encyclopedia of cartoon information, instead of the cartoons themselves. Never fear, however. There was a link to the actual films, and I got to watch a cartoon of Little Lulu from the mid 40's, called Bored of Education. (Are you laughing yet?) Anyway it is a real period piece and chock full of politically incorrect humor!

Happycamper