'Things' 21,22,23- Social Networking and Summary

Twitter ditter dither - face to face, phone, email, text including hand writing cards is absolutely more than enough for me to keep in touch with the significant others in my life and essential work and life matters.I do not want any unwelcome followers.
As a parent of the "Me, MYSpace, I" generation, Facebook & My Space have their anti social presence in my household with the familiar "Just a few more minutes mom". Surprisingly one son thinks these sites are just for anti-social losers with no REAL friends. Only as part of my discovery exercise I created an account to UNPLUG shortly afterwards as I had all these followers(friends is not the right word!).
In summary, THANKYOU for this 23 things learning adventure which has been a great opportunity for me to play and explore both 'things' that were familiar and others that I have not cared before to know more about. Undoubtedly there are tremendous benefits to many of these Web2 technologies but being in the education industry it is imperative that we reflect on just how useful they are in facilitating student engagement and deep learning. The role of Blogs, RSS and Podcasts will undoubtedly play an increasing role in library related resource and service communication.
Infoglut and Datasmog and its huge timesinking remains my concern - just how much information can one effectively absorb! For me "unplugging" more is the way for my REAL and soul saving future, and perhaps for many more people as well, as revealed by the research observations in "The New Social Disease" or perhaps it should read "The New ANTI-Social disease"!

Things' 19,20- YouTube Metube ,Podcast, Smodcasts.'

Enjoyed clicking and viewing and listening through YouTube - especially my all time favorites the GoBetweens and "Streets of our town". Not surprisingly Library related stuff was not in the most popular- perhaps we can make it so.:)
And information OVERitload with all those Podcasts directories - only explored Podcast Alley and browsed a Library related listing and listened to a few - short and non-irritating voice is key I believe.

'Things' 17,18 - Googleworld

McDonalization is no longer it is Googlization!! Love GoogleMaps tho' and use it frequently. GoogleDocs was worth knowing about however one has to be mindful of the privacy/ security of what they save. And iGoogle perhaps for me... I will see....

'Things' 15,16 - Wikis

When I first saw that word "Folksonomies' I went straight to Wikipedia- often a favorite of mine I must confess for background info on topics (a habit I gathered from my childrens experience). The Library success: a best practices wiki is well worth exploring and I particulary enjoyed the Podcasting section and the Curtin experience with podcasts and video tutorials. The Libnet task instructions currently do not work.

'Things' 13,14 - Tagging, Folksonomies & Technorati

Explored Del icio us and good value for accessing and sharing bookmarks from multiple sites. Followed a few tags clicked through a few more and now all blurred into a single technological trance. I guess it depends on your topic but I prefer Googling! As for the home of 51 million blogs Technorati-and soon to be 100 million!! - brain freeze stuff especially after browsing 'Whats popular'.

'Things' 10,11,12 - LibraryThing & Google Books & LibriVox

Suffering username/password/account fatigue! Although LibraryThing was easy to set up and use I have no desire to catalog my rather large personal book collections and as for the integrated social networking application- no I prefer the face to face bookclub or the bookshop cafe and shelf browsing. Had a good browse of Google Books and read some childrens books albeit only previews. And LibriVox, a fab resource for sight impaired but not for me(just yet I hope) as I could not stand the irritating accent of several I listened too.

'Things' 8,9 - RSS & Newsreaders

Set up my Bloglines account - easy but yet another account(and MORE info) to manage. Personally I 'do not feel the need for feeds' from other peoples blogs! - am I WEB Squared! I believe the guy who coined the term Web 2 has just coined that term and although I don't know what he means by it thought it seemed appropriate in this context here.

I do realise any feature that can filter the signal from the noise like RSS feeds has tremendous value for 'alerting' & saving time, but again it requires time to keep up to save. Newsfeeds are not new for me and have had the odd one which became a bit of a 'inbox burden' and now have set up a new one for RadioNational Indigenous posts.I do not dig 'Digg'

'Things' 5,6,7 - Photos & Images & Technology issue bloggin'

Woowweee - Flickr with millions of photos to explore. I so enjoyed browsing some Antoni Gaudi ones -here is a sample
@ http://www.flickr.com/photos/el_mo/2283707796/
but r-e-a-l-l-y where does one find the time for this! Firefox did not allow me to upload an image but 'tis not for me anyway as I prefer to share my photos face to face or via email. I was successful however in uploading some images on Picasa - yet another large image bank.

All this connectivity - has technology stolen our soul? I can really relate to the sentiments expressed in a blurb on a new book in our collection called "The new social disease: from high tech depersonalization to survival of the soul" which is about how we personalise our computers and associated technologies while depersonalising others and ourselves. Well research insights into how increasing use of technology mediated communications is impacting on human lives resulting in loneliness, depression, social isolation, and the rise in uncivil behaviours based upon the frustrations, hopelessness and devaluation of human life! Unplug and save your soul - no not at all but there has to be a balance between the use of technology for human advantage, and developing valued human relationships!

23 Things a bloggin

Here goes .....a Playin and a Bloggin 'Things' 1-4 accomplished on my lifelong and longlife discovery of emerged/ing communication technologies.