Biblio.com

It was difficult to decide what to look at from the Web 2.0 awards list. First I went to Mango languages, but the free lesson in Spanish I tried seemed rather laboured even for a complete beginner. So then I plumped for Biblio.com and found there were 16 copies listed of a 1977 book called Where Beards Wag All. The Relevance of the Oral Tradition by Evans, George Ewart so it isn't as rare a book as I thought, obviously!
The search facility seems a bit clunky - if you type in the full author's name you get everyone with that surname even though you've specified one person. However, it does deliver the information you want and if the item you're looking for isn't there you can fill in a form and they'll look out for it for you. You can narrow your search in all sorts of ways to get just the right copy in the right condition at the right price.
This would be a useful site to recommend to a library patron who really wants a book that is out of print and not available in the library or through interlibrary loan.

Blog written on Zoho

Here's my Zoho writer page: Thought I'd write my blog on it then see if I can import it into my blog. Zoho's online tools would be great if you needed to conduct a business that involved people at places remote from you - so many features that would work for you - even to being able to make presentations remotely and include live chat - what a boon in these times of reducing carbon footprints and yet carrying on one's business as efficiently as always¹. Great, too, that you could run a business with distant colleagues and share everything through spreasdsheets, planners and presentation development - all online.
Not sure why the flax bush picture, but I wanted to play with Zoho writer a bit more and I like this photo - I think it was taken up the road at Long Bay. Zoho writer is just like other word processors we're all used to using, so it's very easy to see what's what.

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¹ Just trying this endnote thing to see if it works!

Rollyo

No, not my sort of thing, this. You'll find my Rollyo searchroll by going to the 'gadget' on the right and clicking on the search, choosing 'Plantagenet' and that'll take you through to what it appears I have created!! A monster, I reckon. Yes, I chose my sites quickly, but reasonably carefully, I thought - however looking at the results that come up I'm thinking not nearly carefully enough. Why would this be useful to anyone, really! Simply using a normal search engine with carefully chosen keywords would result in far more useful hits.

LibraryThing

I rather like LibraryThing! I suppose because it's more relevant to me than most of what we've looked at so far, being about something I'm rather partial to. The reviews and recommendations make this of great use if you want to know more about books not yet read, or find new authors and titles likely to be to your taste.

This is the link to my shelf of five books, selected at random from my memory, although they do really sit on my shelves -
http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=majikaria&shelf=shelf

The 'Local' portion of LibraryThing has the potential to be an excellent guide to all the bookshops, libraries and book-related events in a particular area - the Auckland one is by no means complete as yet, but is off to a good start. The legacy library page is a bit bizarre, but interesting.

Yes, I think I could spend some time here in LibraryThing.

Making mosaics

1. Clematis 9-06, 2. gardenpic, 3. plumbago, 4. Crochet Hook Roll Up Organizer, 5. End of Season, 6. Wild Flowers, 7. marigold, 8. Wild Flowers, 9. Wild Flowers, 10. Wild Flowers, 11. Orange Lillies, 12. Wild Flowers, 13. Jardinero hehe, 14. Heliconia, 15. Orchid? Or just Pea Family?, 16. Cactus Closeup, 17. Asters..., 18. Bee & Flower '05, 19. Spotted Bee Balm, 20. Purple Passionflower, 21. Magnolia Center, 22. Purple Passionflower, 23. Scarlet Milkweed, 24. Water Primrose, 25. Sunflowers, 26. 20,000 feet above Winterthur Delta (or a backlit japanese maple), 27. Jasmins, 28. grass, 29. Wild Garlic, 30. Passion Flower (no fruit), 31. Swamp Lilies, 32. From My Garden, 33. From My Garden, 34. Belladonna, 35. Virginia Rose, 36. Natural architecture

I had great fun making mosaics using the image generator - http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/mosaic.php - which was really easy to use. I decided simply to have the generator find tags for 'flowers' in the above example, so had no idea what the actual images would be until they appeared before me - there were several generated that I rejected before I got to this combination - all rather random, but exciting.

Playing in the sandbox

I seem somehow to have managed to hide my creation in the favourites pages as a sub-sub-sub-heading to another page - or something like that! Not sure how that happened. Anyway I have put myself on the favourite blogs list so all's well.
This feels like a waste of time - I wouldn't do it in real life. Maybe I'm just doing it too late at night!

Wiki wiki on the wall - are you telling me the truth?

I like the idea of wikis as a quick efficient way of collaborating with like-minded groups, and part of me likes the fact that they're free for anyone to edit, but I'm like Biblio Chick in that I could never trust the info I read in one, and like my information to come from a source I can rely on. Vandalism has obviously become a problem with some wikis and in some cases has led to the restriction of editing rights, but what worry me are those where the vandalsim is more insidious and nobody has been alerted to it, so the so-called information is still out there.

Within libraries wikis seem useful in all sorts of ways - subject guides, book reviews which could just get more and more detailed, but especially for collaboration and dissemination of ideas between library professionals working anywhere in the world.