CPL 2.0 Week 10: Twitter

Twitter: In my opinion, the name about says it all... I'm a bit cynical about Twitter. My experience is that if you actually have anything to say, 140 characters is not enough!!! It has been tricky to promote CPL events through Twitter for this reason. With a program to promote, it is extremely tricky sometimes to whittle even the barest relevant details down to 140 characters. Once successful at this task, I often find that there is not enough description to get people interested in attending an event.

As for the other popular users of Twitter, I'm not interested in when certain celebrities are eating ice cream... let alone random strangers keeping the world up-to-date on their minute by minute mundane activities. I'm sure there are others out there who love it, but I'm not convinced.

CPL 2.0 Week 9

Librarything:

I think it's easy to navigate. I enjoyed browsing other people's reading choices and reviews, although I'm not likely to be posting exhaustive lists of what I've read and my reviews. I think it could have applications for library workers, with the caveat that it's like a labyrinth: easy to get sidetracked on a winding path that leads off-topic. It would be hard to use this as an efficient tool, but as a browsing/leisure activity, for those who like to spend their free time reading or online, it seems very well-designed.

CPL 2.0 Week 8: Google Docs

Google Docs: Seems to work OK; I did have an error message withing a few minutes of uploading and editing my file, but refreshing the page seemed to fix it.

I will continue to use traditional word processing programs. The main issues would be the potential of needing to access my document at a time when the Google Docs site is down or having problems; also, issues of security. Although I don't have any "top-secret" documents per se, I would still be concerned if my files could be accessed or changed or deleted by mischief makers. If banks and government websites are vulnerable to hacking (as has happened in the past), Google cannot be totally secure either.

After the Google books settlement, one also wonders how long it would be before Google "owned" the rights to everybody's personal documents and chose what to do with them without prior warning or express permission...

CPL 2.0 Week 7

Flickr & YouTube:

Great sites for users and browsers if you want to:

- share photos or videos online
- make your content available publicly
- look for other amateur-created content
- find old footage from various sources

Everybody's a star.