grrrrrrr

thing 12: this isn't the image i set out to upload about 3 hours ago, but blogger couldn't deal with the other one and kept sending out error messages...


thing 13: this was the easiest thing of the week - pretty straightforward instructions: first do this, now do this, now do this... although I haven't worked out how to make a link to my flickr page, my screen name is 'kate the cook'

thing 14: I really did spend several hours on this, and found almost everything about the process very irritating. When I finally did generate an image, and went to upload/export/save it whatever - somebot somewhere had a major panic attack and sent out security warnings about something or other and closed everything down!

thing 10

I searched for 'copyright australia' (midway through was wishing I had chosen something like 'chocolate hedgehog', but never mind - it's there for another day).

del.icio.us came up with 562 hits: one thing that had already struck me about their layout is that it would be very useful if there was a visible date - if you aren't familiar with your topic you could spend a lot of time looking at 4 year old newspaper articles (not necessarily a bad thing, but irritating if you're looking for current information) - I do like the way the 'social' aspect can take you to other directly or laterally relevant sites.

Connotea came up with one item - which wasn't actually about copyright or australia anyway - and their 828 hits for 'copyright' alone mixed in IP, trademarks, etc etc and were all (well the ones I looked at) from/about the USA. I liked the layout though.

Citeulink didn't have anything for 'copyright australia', and I didn't bother to tweak my search term.

Google offered 19,400,000 hits (334,000 when I chose Australian sites only) - it was interesting that a number of government departments: the AG's dept, the ACC, and CAL and other useful sites were top of the lists - I wonder how they managed that? $$$? However after those, the hits were mostly to copyright and disclaimer statements on websites - not so useful.

Dogpile gave me 36 sites - the AG's, CAL, and the ACC; but then more copyright and disclaimer statements.

Zuula had 'about' 497,000,000 hits via google, 503,000,000 from yahoo etc - it's good to be able to switch, but again there was a strong US focus and included trademarks, patents, etc.

Kartoo had 476,000,000 hits but only displayed half a dozen or so at a time on its map - very focussed though - it would probably take me a while to get used to visual prompts rather than words - but I was quite taken with it, and liked their adjacent topic list.

The social searches are interesting because they can lead to other connections that might be shared by co-posters - and I do like working out both my own folksonomies as well as other people's.

yet more social sites

browsing the Australian online over lunch and noticed at the end of each article the reader is offered a choice of 'Social Web links' to 15 social bookmarking sites (by icon) - I couldn't copy the image but this is a link http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22652330-11949,00.html

tag clouds

this is the tagroll from my del.icio.us, I've been doing some tag-bundling as well because I imported all my favourites from my work computer

week what?

Just checked the rss feeds in googlereader for the first time in a week.

Although I had almost immediately deleted most of the subscriptions that I created in last week's tasks, there still seemed to be an awful lot of headlines to wade through; so many that I'm not sure how useful the feeds will be for me.

However, I did notice this item - "How to: Put your feeds on a diet" by Fiona Bradley http://librariesinteract.info/2007/10/02/putting-your-feeds-on-a-diet/

I'm not very happy with the way that link appears, although it does work, which is something, so there's a 'thing' to fiddle around with for a while - maybe it has something to do with 'enclosure links' which has mysteriously appeared as an option in the edit site for my blog - off to discover more ...

heartening statistic

In a discussion of the importance of public libraries in countering the effects of the commercialisation and technical lock-down of intellectual property, Siva Vaidhyanathan's 2004 book The Anarchist in the Library (which I keep misreading as the Antichrist in the Library - probably the same difference for some folk) states that, at that time anyway, "there are more libraries than McDonald's restaurants [sic] in the United States" (p.123) - best news I've come across for quite some time.

Further down the same page he says "Libraries are leaks in the information economy. As a state funded institution that enables efficient distribution of texts and information to people who can't afford to get it commercially, the library pokes holes in the commercial information system." lovely stuff!

toolbox

I can see how other experiences, technologies, and websites feed into this: creating and maintaining a website for work has eliminated a lot of the anxiety about my potential to blow up the whole network - as well as being quite proud-making.

And if you watch IT specialists, even they will often have quite a lot of goes at something before they get it right - there are many many paths to the same goal! Usually if you keep fiddling about you get there in the end.

Also, I'm starting an online course - Copyright and Academic Culture, with Siva Vaidhyanathan at the University of Maryland - using a delivery system called WebTycho and a server called Nighthawk. The names alone are seductive! Anyway, there's a training course in the use of Nighthawk before one even gets to the classes, so that's going to add to the tools.

Chatting to one friend in particular (similar age, similar luddite tendencies - as well as ludic) about the ways in which we learn: particularly with digital stuff - both are now quite competent at a surprising number of techniques, but that's because we both learn to use a particular skill when we can see its use as a means to an end, rather than simply as a skill to acquire in isolation from a purpose.

Haven't quite got to a goal for this project yet - other than the enjoyment I get from increasing my capabilities in pretty much any direction. Enough for now.