Hungry for some del.icio.us chow!

Ok, I enjoyed the video. The term "peer driven information directories" struck a chord - that's pretty much what we've been covering these last weeks and it's interesting to see an "official" term for it. I also liked the term "folksonomy".
I feel pretty much comfortable with computers - I have fond memories of writing my own programs in Basic, being the only teen in the adult computer club in the Canal Zone, and loving my Atari 130XE. I have great memories of discovering Mosaic while an undergrad... and spending my alloted "allowance" on pictures of David Duchovny. Ahh, what a great use of my printing allowance (good thing I wasn't a business major). So, I feel like I know more than the average user... that is the average user over the age of 18.
I go on again about the social networking aspect. I admit, I'm not a social person (at least in my private life). I wasn't sure why I would want to use del.icio.us. Ok, I do like the idea of my bookmarks being available anywhere I enter the internet. So that's cool. And it reminds me of StumbleUpon, a website that lets you rate websites and finds new ones for you. But StumbleUpon automatically assigns the tag/s for you, so that's not too helpful. However, if you use Stumble to find the website and del.icio.us to bookmark it... that sounds like a happy marriage. It is interesting to see what others have used as tags... but I find myself getting annoyed with some of the choices. It's an individual thing, of course, so it need only make sense to the initial user.
Another thing mentioned in the video was about following copyright: does anyone follow copyright anymore? It falls under the professional ethics of librarians but I know plenty who don't follow it. I'm wondering what kind of copyright laws are involved with posting links to other websites from your own blog count as. If you're just talking about how wonderful a site is (see my links within posts for instance), are you obligated to get permission to link someone's website? Where does the line get drawn? Are we moving away entirely from copyright law - it seems almost impossible to be able to police? And why would you have to worry about copyrighting in del.icio.us?

Searching multiple websites at one time

I created a Rollyo account. God, I wish I had known about this less than a week ago so I could have shown my Spanish computer class. What a great way to add credible websites and search all at once (one of our last topics before we finished). I can think of many uses, especially since you can create more than one. At the library, you could create one with local government links... or another of websites related to health... or to antiques so you could price something... or to readers' advisory pages to browse.... WOW, how really really cool.
Many thanks are being sent to our instructors for tuning us on to these. This is awesome!!
BTW, here's mine. It's a cornucopia of different sites but I will finetune them later :)

I ABSOLUTELY love LibraryThing

Yes, I am a big fan. A huge fan. Some of you may know I studied to be a cataloger and interviewed for those positions before I got into reference. It's probably a good thing I didn't become one for I would have driven myself (and coworkers) crazy by talking to myself all the time. At least at the reference desk I'm on the go so I move the chatter with me (and no, nothing has answered me yet).

I have 156 books in my catalog - I'd have more but you're limited to 200 books unless you get a membership (an awesome deal if you ask me - I'm just broke right now). Feel free to take a look at my catalog, or check out a random sampling of my tags off to the side.

I've made up some of my own rules for my catalog. I use the original publication date of the book although I use the cover art of the copy I own (or borrowed). I use reviews procured from Novelist database rather than my own as well as the 1-2 sentence summaries. I use the comments field for series notes (mainly naming all the titles in there) and I absolutely love adding the call numbers (Dewey - but not the generic "Fic"). And the ratings! It was hard to come up with a system but 5 = all time favorite, 3 is still a good rating, 2 = decent read but didn't really stick with me, and 1 = I did not enjoy it at all. So much fun. Between this and World of Warcraft, it's a wonder I ever make it out of my home :)

image generators

Down below you'll see my attempt at an image generator. The image inside the monitor is of a female tauren from World of Warcraft, my absolute favorite game. It's a massive player, online rolle-playing game where you get to be on the Horde or Alliance side... and play a variety of races which include Tauren, Orcs, Trolls, Undead, Human, Dwarf, Gnomes, Dranei, or Elves. Really cool. There's a library guild formed by some of your coworkers called Ex Libris (we play on the Gilneas server). There are currently 10 million (yes, million) players worldwide in countries like the US, Australia, South Korea, China, Canada, and many countries from the European Union. It's a fun way to communicate and make friends since you can communicate via chat in the game, or if you're really hardcore you have a speaker set which enables you to hear each other (the people you "team" up with).

Ok, back to the image generator. It took me a couple of tries working with this as I kept uploading the sample and not one of my own picture. I like it and I can see how people who use social websites would really enjoy this. It's cute, and I imagine useful for website design too.