All Thinged Out. Thing 23: So long, farewell, aufwiedersehen, goodbyee!

This is an end of an era. My final Cam23 post. But it's not goodbye, as the title may suggest, it's just au revoir.

May 24th 2010 saw the launch of the Cam 23 programme. On May 24th I was but a mere web 2.0 wannabe. I had dipped my toe into a lot of the 2.0 pools and adopted a few of them, but I hadn't really examined any in real depth, or had the time or the reason to.

13 weeks later, it is August 19th and I find myself with a Blog and 23 blog posts. I doubt this would ever have happened without Cam23 to push me over the blogging edge. I'd thought about blogging before, sure. But I didn't really think I had anything to say. I wouldn't say that Marsh's b(l)og has changed my life, but it has definitely given me an outlet to order my thoughts and get them down on (virtual) paper. After all, thoughts aren't much good to anyone if they stay in your head are they?I've been genuinely surprised and pleased that people have taken the time to read and comment on my posts and if I have managed to help anyone with anything in the process then that is an added bonus.

I think I will continue with Marsh's b(l)og, even if I am the only one who will benefit from it as a cathartic exercise. In the future I will enjoy choosing my own subjects and not being quite so pressed for time. Writing doesn't come naturally to me but blogging has definitely helped me with my prose and I think I should continue with that.

So which 'Things' have I adopted that I wasn't using before?  As I said above, this blog. Also Slideshare and Flickr. I knew about these two Things before but hadn't looked into them in any great depth. I will use the search facility in Slideshare more often  and I have created a Flikr account for myself which I intend to add to imminently.  I will also try to keep Zotero going in the background.

The jury is still out about  linkedin and LibrayThing. These aren't floating my boat, but at least I gave them a go...

I was already using of all the other Things, pre-23 Things,  and I will carry on with those as normal. I couldn't live without my Google calendar and I am rapidly deserting Facebook for twitter which is my current Fave!

All in all though, Cambridge 23 Things has been an exercise in getting to know you! (why is this turning into a Sound of Music Fest??) I feel that I have forged some good friendships and links out there in the virtual Cam Lib community, even if some of you are still hiding behind your pseudonyms! I hope we can continue in a similar vein and I will be attending the communication meeting next week. I'm going to be working for libraries@cambridge again as of September 1st and hopefully will be in a position to help with communication across Cambridge libraries. I'm all ears!

See you in the future!

P.s. Big thanks go to the Cam 23 organising team. It's been a big effort as a participant, I can't imagine what it's been like for you guys!

An amble through Flickr brings me to a highland cow and Thing 9

Oh goody, goody, goody! This is the Thing I've been wating for: Flickr. I luuuurrrrve photography and images and have had 'join Flickr' on my to do list for so long that it changed from 'join Picasa or Flickr' to just 'join Flickr' as this giant of the image world has slowly taken over over.

So far I have only used Flickr as a search engine for creative commons images for use on websites, so the full functionality of the site is relatively alien to me. I also haven't been very good at following the destructions, I mean  instructions, for each Thing on the Cam23 blog so this presents a good opportunity for me to follow the rules for once and look at something with fresh eyes...

...I got as far as 'Try one or more of the following searches' and I was away, lost in my own thoughts. Then I realised I had too many thoughts and would have to start writing this post before it became a novel.

So, here goes. I will take you through my Flickr amble step-by-step and think out loud as I do so...

Destruction 1: Go to www.flickr.com and, without entering text into the search box,
click on ‘Search’
All ok so far, I get the main search screen with a blank search field. Doing well I think, so award myself with a cup of tea...


Destruction 2: Try one or more of the following searches...
Hmmm, I'll go for a place I want to visit and enter 'Lake District' and search under 'Everyone's uploads'. Not a good move. Takes ages. Tea goes cold.
Try again and narrow the search down to 'Ambleside'  . Much better: get 25,474 results in a couple of seconds.

Leave destructions and do my own thing...
Sort results by 'interesting'. That looks, well, interesting. How do they define interesting? Are images tagged that way? No idea, let's see... oh, there's a photo of a highland cow that catches my eye. What's that got to do with Ambleside?  (can't show you the photo here as 'all rights reserved' but I can link to it: Highland cow by Lune Rambler

Explore the little 'i' information button that's part of the thumbnail image. Oh, that's cool. Brings up a lightbox with extra info, including tags and I can see some of the tags, but not all of them as there is a '...'

... to find out more... click on the thumbnail of the picture to drill through to the bigger picture (no pun intended!). When I pass the mouse over the big image I can see that there is a hotspot over the cow's face and I am invited to 'give me a happy face'. OK. I will. Click on the mouseover and am taken to another user's Flickr site. I have no idea what that was about as I was expecting the cow to get a cartoon smiley face. That would have been quite fun. Maybe it is some kind of viral marketing? Answers on a postcard please...

Next I decide I want to explore the tags for this image a bit further. Mais, ou sont les tags?? I have to scroll down quite a way past all the sets and the 'plus-signed' folders on the right-hand side (really don't know what they are and look annoying to me) to find the tag list. 30+ tags. Excellent. A photographer after my own heart; see previous post on tagging. 

This is good, when I hover over the tags I can see who added them. Mostly the photographer, but also other users who seem to have put the photo into some kind of folder, or put it forward for an award? E.g. 'PlatinumHeartAward'.

Again, I don't know what that's about. I will have to do some more exploring and sign up to put my own pics on there.

Scrolling down a bit further, under the tags, there is some interesting equipment information. I can click through to stats about the camera, great for a photo-geek like me. I can also see the individual properties of the photo. Exposure, aperture etc. etc.  **rubs hands with glee**.

Having just bought a new digital SLR I used Flickr to see which camera  SirCam was using. I much admire his photos so was interested to see what equipment produced such good shots. I did in the end go for a Canon camera and was highly influenced by Flickr photos in this choice. Fickr is good for camera research. You can even see how popular a certain model is when you click on the camera in the 'additional information' section of an image (see above).

So, all that remains is for me to put my new camera into action and sign up for a Flickr account. Watch this space...

End of amble.