Thing #12 Rollyo

Rollyo reminds me of our federated search package - SingleSearch - the distinction being that the majority of subscription based sources on SingleSearch are accessed via connectors, whereas Rollyo relies on the free to air content from the internet.

I created a new search roll called News - Australia, utilising the major online news services and newspapers and this is publically available for use. This time around I did not bother with creating a username, but if I end up using this service more regularly in future, I certainly will create a profile.

Editing an existing search roll was simpler than I thought - just access it and make the changes. I did this for a roll called 'My recipes', adding a local Australian site - recipefinder.ninemsn.com.au - to a predominantly US centric list.

After exploring some of the existing searchrolls, I can see how our research capability can be supplemented by dipping into these ready made resources that may provide good leverage particularly when commencing a research project. Search results for 'taxation' included very relevant rolls such as:
*Canadian Taxation rolled by macneiju
*TAXATION Search rolled by trillbaby
*Business and Legal rolled by oz_mendoza
*Complaince of Tax rolled by sopirbis
*Revenue Agencies rolled by elibrary

Thing #11 Library Thing

I created an account on Library Thing (any librarian's delight!!) and added loads of books by my favourite authors. Guess what - there's not a single taxation or accounting or law title among them..............

Most amazingly of all, I inserted a widget from Library Thing into my blog containing some of my favourite literature titles!!!!!! This stuff (Web 2.0) is finally making sense to me - how content can be created, manipulated and shared across different internet locations without ever needing to download to a local computer. This makes the content always accessible - so long as you have an internet connection.

Thing #10 Online Image Generators

This is definitely the best fun so far- it all feels so not work related - but I know that it is helping me to learn to manipulate content from the internet and design new creations of my own.

The movie theatre marquee image is available at http://www.redkid.net/generator/marquee and the Confucius image is from http://confucius-says-it.txt2jpg.com/

Things #8&9 - RSS and Newsfeeds

Bloglines
I set up my Bloglines account (very easy) and added some feeds available for selection such as literature, gardening and fashion of course - and then went on to subscribe to some ABC Radio National podcasts inlcuding Life Matters, so that I can later download the content to an MP3 player. To keep up to date with what my ATOLearning colleagues are doing, I included a few of their blogs as well in my Bloglines account.

Library related feeds
I tried out Feedster, Syndic8, Technorati and Topix.net to search for RSS feeds and while they where OK, I found the search function on Bloglines was returning more relevant sources and it made it easiest to subscribe to feeds directly from one location. I signed up for the ALIA feed, the Library 2.0 podcast feed as well as an interesting site called Library Technology NOW.

Thing #7 - New technology

I have been using an Apple Mac computer which has a lot of multi-media functionality. I have created special effects on photos and then combined these with music excerpts to create really lovely slideshows of family photos.