Wrap it up (and put a tag on it?)

Here I go, under the wire.

There were times during Project Play when I really thought that my head was going to explode. Even so, this was completely and totally the right way for me to dangle my feet in the water of these applications and ideas.

I'm not entirely ready to embrace every part of Web 2.0. I'm a Productivity Enhancer, and not sure I'll ever be an Omnivore, but I'm OK with that. I've learned a lot, and I'm looking forward to learning more.

Over the past few days, I've been thinking a lot about the whole information overload thing. I can't recall any of the specific numbers, but I remember about 20 years ago it was a truism that we had to absorb more information in [some short period of time] than [some previous generation] had to process in a lifetime. Think of how that increased with the advent of the Internet. Web 2.0 must represent another order of magnitude beyond even that.

No wonder I sometimes feel like my head will explode.

I like blogging more than I thought I would, although that casual, punchy writing style that characterizes my favorite bloggers tends to elude me. I am also severely impaired in the visual design department, so I fear I will never have the cool graphics I envy so much on other blogs.

I was skeptical about Bloglines, but I'm a convert. It's a real timesaver.

Flickr made me slightly insane, but I feel motivated now to get my personal digital pics uploaded and tagged--just not for the whole world to see.

My 2.0 goals before Semester 2 starts up: read more Project Play-er's blogs to get other perspectives on these issues; get some photos uploaded and tagged for my personal use; work on setting up del.icio.us to do my bidding rather than just annoying me; explore the idea of a staff wiki for my branch to capture all that "How do we do this?" and "Where do we keep that?" information.

That's a little ambitious, and no iPod dangling out there in front of me to spur me on to action.

We'll see how it goes.

Back yard view

Back yard view
Originally uploaded by Boomer Librarian

OK, here is the photo, coming to you directly from my new Flickr account. Ta da!


Now that I have the Flickr account, let's try a link, too.



Third time's the charm?

That wasn't too hard

I'm not sure where to start typing after all that code. I guess this will be a surprise!

This is a picture of my back yard (well, not all of it was my yard) in a former life. We pause now for a moment of silence while the grief washes over me.

The hardest part was finding a photo without my or other people's kids in it. Seems lots easier than Flickr, but to be fair I haven't tried setting up a Flickr account yet.

Clearly, my previous attempt to post a link failed spectacularly. Here's hoping this works!

This is not my cat

Here's a go at linking to a photo. If this attempt is successful, I might even try to upload a photo, if I can find one on my 'puter that doesn't include my kids.

Fingers crossed....

My Friend Flickr

Or maybe my un-friend.

It makes my head spin.

[Sure, I'll have some cheese to go with my whine]

It seems so gol-dang cool, but the physical act of doing anything more advanced than spending mucho time browsing other people's pictures makes me hyperventilate.

I am determined to complete the assignment and will post again with my picture, but for now I'm trying to get my reflections done during a slow night on the desk.

It is cool to be able to look at other libraries' signage, displays, furniture etc. I can see using this as a source of ideas and an easy way to share information visually. Assuming I can leap over the technical hurdles of actually uploading something, it seems like a great way to share photos with friends and family. The thought of my precious personal photos living on someone else's server, a machine over which I have no control, makes me a little queasy.

[As if I actually have any control over my own PC. Har, that's a good one.]

Of course all of the toys are a lot of fun too, but at the end of the day the whole thing just feels unwieldy and disorganized to me. I get confused about sets and collections, and I think there's something about groups, but that's people, not pictures, right? So the library set (or maybe it's the collection?) is not the same thing as the library group?

Probably it will be clearer if I actually use it, but in theory it just seems like a big muddle. When you search for something common, like cats, you get thousands upon thousands of images with no discernibly reliable way to narrow things down a bit. If photos are well-tagged, of course you can use that but not all photos are well-tagged, and don't EVEN get me started on the lack of authority control.

And while I love the extensive tags that some people use (which are especially fabulous for categorizing your own personal photos), the multiple access points can result in photos showing up in your search that appear to have nothing to do with your query.

I'm actually complaining about too many access points. I need to go lie down.

Flickr's community standards guidelines just make me laugh and laugh.They basically say, if you think anyone, anywhere in the world might find your photo offensive, don't make it public. I think that gives the average Flickr-using Joe waaay too much credit for being culturally sensitive.

So I guess to sum up, I think Flickr is uber-cool for one's own personal use. When you start getting the rest of the world involved in viewing your vacation photos, not so much.

Not very 2.0 of me, eh?