Photostream

Oooh! Look what I did!!
Now, it would have been nice if some of the other Things had been as easy as adding my Flickr photostream to my blog; not to mention as quick!
I think there will be cause to rearrange things as I go on as I have decided I might keep this going once the 23 Things Thing has finished. I know of a couple of people who might read it, so it's worth it, I suppose (thanks, guys!).
I've not looked at the dashboard element of this much since I started using it, and am pleased to note I can change the name of the blog... Not sure what I'll call it as yet!

Think Free...?

It is interesting to know that these online "Office 2.0" applications exist, but I felt the same way about ThinkFree Online that I did about Google Docs: my own needs, as mentioned in my document, right, are met by Word and my memory stick.
The application required me to disable the pop-up blocker in order to open the window (annoying) and also took about five minutes to load, despite this being on my work computer, so I can see why this would be a very frustrating tool to use on a slower machine.
So... interesting, but maybe not.

Google Docs

Ok, so this is kind of like Word, only not, right? Interesting... anyone who can be bothered to try to read the text on yonder screenshot will see that I have taken a mildly sarcastic tone on this one, but as I didn't have any actual text to hand at the time I thought this would suffice.
Again, Firefox and the whizzy way it remembers all my passwords saved me much tedious rummaging in my drawer for my login details, so it was actually quite an easy task compared to some of these.
On a slightly more positive note I do love the concept of cloud computing and I loved that article to which there was a link at the end of the 23 Things blog post about the wherabouts of the servers. I guess that might make me a geek, but frankly I don't care. Regardless of whether I actually have time to do any of this stuff (which I don't), I still find the explosion of opportunity which the more recent Web innovations have brought about fascinating and inspiring.
So, will I use GoogleDocs? I might... but probably not. My PC at home has Office 2007, and I am probably more likely to use something like Open Office when I (eventually) get around to installing Ubuntu on my tired laptop as that will skip between operating systems. There is no mention in the 23 Things blog about whether these things are supported on Linux... Enquiring minds want to know...

Wikipedia

SERIOUSLY?? Does anyone NOT use this?????????
I have a tool on my iGoogle page with a search box! I have cited it in assignments for my Masters!!
I am only dignifying this with a post because it appears on the 23Things Oxford blog in bold.

Wikis

This task looked at first to be pretty straightforward, but having attempted a deeper investigation I once again find myself with more to do than I have time to do it!
I object on general principle to the first thing I noticed when I opened the page to which we were directed (http://socialouls.wetpaint.com/) which was the dreadful flashing and leaping-around advert right at the top of the page. I realise that these sites must generate revenue by selling advertising; it is a shame that the adverts on this particular page were directed at teenage girls rather than at a more sensible audience.
I had a look around the site but as I have been busy this week it looks as if the references to OULS have been expunged quite well by the hundreds of my colleagues who are taking part in this! I will bookmark the site for future reference, and may deign to edit something if I discover an error in the future, but don't hold your breath...

Still Tweeting as @inky_fluff

I must admit, I think Twitter is one of my favourite Things on the programme so far! This morning I got into work to find a message that Yoko Ono is following me, which I know is just a response to my following her, but still, not something you expect to find on a Friday morning!
I spent a fruitful few minutes yesterday customising my page to make it a bit less agonisingly BLUE... the starry purple background appeals (but will probably clash with my blog!) and I also like the intuitive way you can customise all the colours of all the other things, from the background of the sidebar to the links. I am following a couple of library related people so far, and I think I will definitely make more use of this as time goes on. I have sent messages to people, and re-tweeted a funny headline from the Onion, so I think I've covered all the tasks for this Thing. It will take me time to really get into my stride, but I am sure that if I take two things away from 23Things that I will actually use this will be one (and the other will be the penguins!).

Tweeting as Inky_fluff

I must admit to having been looking forward to Twitter. I might even have delayed joining in order to do so as part of 23 Things!
I have found several people/things to follow and look forward to exploring more; time constraints due to working (that old issue again...) mean that I cannot explore for as long as I would like to today, but the appeal of something so well, tidy, compared to the sprawling mess of Facebook is such that I think I will probably engage with this quite well.
A word about my user name: long ago in the dim-distant past (2003), I used to participate on a forum on the Daily Info's website. Inky fluff was the name I chose, mainly because I spent a lot of time cleaning library stamps during that period of my illustrious career and inky fluff is what you get if you clean a stamp! It was also anonymous enough for me not to worry about the possibility of being discovered... in those days the idea of an online identity frightened me more than it does now, although I still have the occasional twinge about the prospect of so much data about me being available. Although, having said that I did have that existential crisis last week when I Googled myself, so perhaps I shouldn't worry so much!

LinkedIn

Hoorah! I have completed both Things this week without having to spill over into next week! Well, when I say completed, I have a very sketchy LinkedIn account now, which I will probably seldom use but which might be of use to me in a professional capacity someday.
It's rather a boring website, a bit too much green for my tastes, and the instructions are even more obtuse than Facebook, which took me some time to figure out. I have come across this service before in a professional capacity; as part of my job I sometimes have to look up academics who have supervised theses which I am cataloguing and they often have profiles on LinkedIn, albeit sketchy ones with hardly any details (a bit like mine then...).
I suppose if I think about my long-term professional future then services which provide work-related contacts with people are potentially going to be of use to me. For the time being, however, I am still vaguely uncomfortable about the level of Web presence I do have, whilst also being a bit depressed that when I Googled myself the other day I didn't find myself AT ALL. Talk about an existential crisis!

Facebook and Libraries

Finally! Something I don't have to sign up to!!
As is my way, I was a late convert to Facebook, having dismissed it as intrusive and banal for quite some time. In the end I joined on the back of a number of discoveries, not least that my 70-year-old father uses it to communicate with his chums in the Poker community and also that I needed it in order to find out the movements of the Oxford Part-Time Learners Group. Having joined I found myself in touch with various disparate people from my landlord to friends from school to my more recent fellow-students at Aberystwyth University, and so I began to appreciate the value of this type of networking-resource.
The trouble with libraries is that their content has always, until recently at least, been pretty static and not particularly obvious from anywhere but within the library itself. Facilities such as Facebook, blogs and other Web 2.0 applications give libraries the opportunity to inform their readers and potential readers what they are doing, when there are events which might be of interest to the wider community, and also to highlight aspects of their collections which might otherwise not be widely publicised.
The News Feed on Facebook is invaluable as a way of sneaking in information to users/fans/members (although I do get a little tired of other people's horoscopes), which requires no effort on the part of the people who are signed up for updates, unlike for example Google Reader (mine is showing over 450 unread items at present...).
In a setting such as Oxford University, where many of the users of the libraries are young and have grown up used to using the Web as a tool far more than those of an earlier generation, these sites will already be an integral part of their lives and therefore ripe for exploitation by forward-thinking librarians.
And as for the older generation, it does not pay to underestimate their involvement either; when my new Bodleian email failed to work yesterday, my Mum sent me a message on Facebook... :)

YouTube

Ahh, YouTube... yet again a Thing which feels as if one shouldn't be doing it at work. It has taken me rather a while to do this Thing, mostly because, as I said in my previous post, I have had more pressing commitments with work. Still, I have had a look, and I am sure that I would use it far more than I currently do if I had more time on my hands. I actually have a little YouTube gadget on my iGoogle page, so can access it whenever I wish.
I am not going to spend a lot of time on this, but I am glad to have been introduced to it and will probably find myself coming back to it later.
P.S. I did upload a podcast or two to GoogleReader after my previous post. I just haven't had time to listen to them...