Week 12 - Pea haters on YouTube

I have only been involved in filming and uploading one YouTube video. It was actually my sister who filmed and uploaded the content but we have identical usernames and so I'm not going to create my own YouTube account. I remember it took a really long time to upload the video! We shot the video January 1, 2008 when my nephew was dramatizing his dislike of peas. He does a great job!

If you do a search for I Hate Peas, you will get 484 results!

Week 11 - iTunes and podcasts

I didn't have iTunes on my work machine before so I have now installed it. I do you iTunes at home on my MacBook laptop. It's been awhile since I have downloaded any podcasts so I am going to put that on my to do list for this morning!

There are a lot more podcasts available on iTunes than the last time I looked a few years ago ...I started out by browsing the categories but eventually found the power search, which made looking for podcasts a lot more efficient. Power Search is over on the right-hand side of iTunes under QuickLinks. I subscribed to a couple of Spanish language podcasts, a flamenco podcast from Radio clasica espana and a podcast of the 2007 Missouri Botanical Gardens orchid show. Also, two climbing podcasts and a podcast of the Everglades. That should be enough for now!

Cooliris

Ok, so I thought Cooliris looked kind of fun, so I tried to install it. Unfortunately it did not install in Firefox because it said it is not compatible with my version of Firefox, which is apparently somewhere in between 3.0 and 3.1. I'm currently updating to 3.07 but I have a feeling that won't work either.

Facebook update

Okay, so I broke down last week and reactivated my account ... you can find me on Facebook under my real name. Resistance is futile!

Week 9 - Social networking sites

You can find me online @ Twitter:
http://twitter.com/neichenlaub

My jury is still out on Facebook ... I created an account last month after years of being a "Facebook Resister". In fact, there is another recent Toronto Star Facebook article that is worth checking out.

Anyways, I deleted my Facebook account after less than 24 hours ... however, I soon learned that you cannot delete your Facebook account! Your account remains, but it just becomes "deactivated". Be warned!

Google Maps

I think Google Maps is a great application and I use it on a daily basis. What did we do before Google Maps!? Most recently, I've been using it to measure the distance of my walks for our Canucks Run Amok challenge. It's 1.9 km from Jane Station to our house!

Week 8 - Google apps

Google Docs:
So far I am sharing a spreadsheet (View not Edit) with my group members.

The technology petting zoo last week was great, especially the guest appearance by Sheldon Levy. I am still coveting an iPhone!

Who knew web 2.0 would lead to cataloguing parties!!?

I was just poking around inside LibraryThing and came across the following post announcing a flash-mob cataloging party.

Apparently the first-ever catalog flash-mob was held back in November when a group of 20 people (librarians? library school students?) converged on St. John's Church in Beverly, MA to catalogue over 2000 items in a church library using LibraryThing!

I created a LibraryThing account back in July. Unfortunately, an email address was not mandatory and for some reason I did not provide one, so I was not able to retrieve my forgotten username and password. I eventually struck the right combination and was able to access my original account, which I had set up for orchid blogging purposes. So far I only have 2 books in my LibraryThing collection.

Delicious

I am somewhat of a delicious late bloomer ... created my first delicious account for the purposes of our RULA 2.0 activities last week. The disadvantage of delicious is that it is, as I'm sure many of us are feeling, one more username and password to remember! However, having web-based bookmarks rather than computer-based is definitely an advantage, and the social aspect of it is really interesting! For example, it's neat to see that 12 other people have bookmarked Biblios, and I can even see who they are! My tag cloud is pretty weak right now because I've only tagged with rula20 so far ...

Spring?

I am so curious to see what is on the ground underneath all that snow ... especially in the picture below. What will the woods look like come spring? Perhaps we will have some wild orchids like the ones pictured here. I believe this picture is from an early morning hike up Mt. Wells in Victoria. What is hiding underneath the snow here in TO???

It's Flickr week!

Flickr is one of my favourite online tools. I've had a Pro account for a few years now so that I don't have to worry about uploading limits and more recently, limits on number of sets that you can create. I think the $25 / year is well worth the money for the ease and ability to store, find, and share photos.

A couple of days ago I was browsing Flickr and I came across a gorgeous and multiple award-winning photograph of some trees in a forest with morning light. Unfortunately I have so far failed in my attempts to relocate the photo but I will keep hunting and see if I can track it down again.

Wikis

Here we are in week 3 of RULA Learning 2.0 and I have just posted a link to a recipe for Blueberry Cheesecake on our RULA wiki.

I think wikis can be useful tools for collaboration. In a past life I had to create a wireframe for a team wiki that would be used for all team communication, document storage, etc. We spent a lot of time planning the wiki and trying to anticipate how people would use it but I do not know how much use the wiki is getting now as a team tool.

In terms of wikis as authoritative sources, I know that I often refer to Wikipedia to get some fast facts about something with which I am unfamiliar. I think Wikipedia can be a very useful tool, but it should be used with some caution.

More Bloglines activities

Ok, so I reduced my number of RSS feeds from 22 to 13, but I have now subscribed to the blogs of my group members, so I am back up to 20 feeds. Here is my blogroll.

Happy blogging and blog following everyone!

Bloglines activities

I just rediscovered my bloglines account ... hadn't logged in in probably close to 2 years! Amazingly I was able to remember my email (my old RRU email) and password and so I have now updated my email address. Apparently I am subscribed to 22 blogs and I think I can probably lower that number down a bit!

Winter in Toronto

Here is a shot from a sunny Sunday morning in the woods by our new house on the east side of the Humber River. There were fresh cross-country ski tracks and snowshoe tracks and even a snow angel! Now I just have to find my cross-country ski boots before this weekend's snowfall ...