RSS Feeds

This training blog is hosted by wordpress. I’ve discovered that it is relatively easy to add RSS feeds. You can see two examples to the right:

• The Alumni Blog
• Public Education Network

All you need to do is add RSS widgets to your blog, type in the feed’s URL in the appropriate box, and then give the feed a title.  You have options on number of items to show (I chose three), identifying the author, and how much text to display.

The main issue with RSS feeds is content. There seems to be plenty of “outside” opportunities to include content, Public Education Network is an example. The big question is what do we want to include, and how often.

Jing

Click on this link to see my Jing Database Searching presentation.

Yahoo Pipes

Here’s another presentation I didn’t catch at Computer’s In Libraries 2008 but wished I had. It was called Mashups for the Nontechies: Yahoo! Pipes by Jody Condit Fagan.

This is something I am going to have to play with. I’ve started a “pipe” and will give you a web address once I am up and running.

Creepy Treehouse

You just have to read this blog post about creepy treehouse from flexknowlogy.learningfield.org. There’s more at acrlog.org. I don’t need to add anything extra on this topic except to say that we don’t have this problem at my institution.

However, I have to come clean. I once used creepy treehouse (but didn’t know it at the time) on my workmates. I asked them to sign into a wiki I’d set up and to leave a comment. My goal was to get them to see how easy it was to work on a shared document but alas it was a real fizzer. Reactions were puzzlement, silent non-compliance, and we don’t need to do this.

So, where does that leave me now. Well, I just plug along with projects… hoping that one day someone might join me hmmm…