New Virtual World

Flickr is generating a new virtual world
http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn17017-maps-in-flickr-photos

Week 8: Delicious

Loved this. I have not been a great collector of Favourites as having too many defeats the purpose of quick easy access. When I am chasing a topic I often print sites as I expect to have trouble relocating them. (then cannot find the hardcopy anyway). I expect this tool to minimise the printing.
Delicious seems to be a tool to enable the eating of cake and keeping it.
Noticed (Margaret) that there is a button that enables the resorting of the web sites to a variety of sequences including Alpha.
Found this explaination very helpful in explaining the concept & value of the various components http://tinyurl.com/d3kj24
Had a quick look at Digg and didn't much like the philosophy. Furl however I Want to explore as it seems to address a few issues I have found with web sites not being the same when I return to them (and its not just my memory).
Still searching for a content bookmarker!

Week 7 - iGoogle

I enjoyed this weeks exercise. After an initial bit of circling around the concept Dorothy pointed me at the web site to read the instructions (Well I am a male). Once the process was clearer, away I went. With the previous experience of setting up a blog the process was clearer and much quicker and it enables a lot more flexibility in position (size is still predetermined tho). The fundamental difference being - a blog is an evolving discourse but the iGoogle page is a more static display of reference material. The blogger site however seems more mature with more tools and cleaner process.
Love the ability to pull together a number of the items we have experimented with over the previous weeks especially the multiple email services and subscription feeds. I suspect it is a more suitable vehicle for displaying the types of things I have been building on my Blog.
Next step work out if I can share it with the world?

Week 6 Googling

I use Google a lot and have used docs and the spreadsheet program so this week has been a bit easier (I am getting an early start cause of Easter). However, there is a lot more available then I realised.
I added the Google Map Street View of my local cafe to my Blog by creating a Zoho doc and pasting the pic & Web link in (the web Link doesn't seem to be live).
I Searched with Google books and found an obscure Australian publication (it didn't have the cover which is on my Library Thing account).
So now for some study of all the different aspects I haven't looked at yet.
An issues I find challenging is there is just too much of this stuff and its hard to find until you know of it. But even then as there is more and more it gets too much to keep linked and sorted (internally); so maybe there is a role for librarians to have these maps and effective paths mapped out for people (along the lines of this course!).
Microsoft labs is working on a product called Silverlight that is intended to enable a more knowledge oriented accessing of information and I assume this will eventually extend to applications. (The photosynth and deepzoom sites I have on my Blog are subsets of this work. Check it out http://silverlight.net/world/ ). This would mean all the books papers and quotes etc referred to in a text would be visually linked with cross reference, relationship and relativity connections. This would facilitate an exploration of the details behind many of the things we read.
I think we are in for some interesting times.

CHoo Choo

Directions to CHoo CHoo Cafe

Drive down McKinnon Rd

    Its next to the newsagent opposite the T-intersection.

http://maps.google.com.au/?q=choo%20choo%20mckinnon%20rd%20mckinnon%20australia&t=h&utm_campaign=en_AU&utm_medium=ha&utm_source=en_AU-ha-apac-au-gns-ssm&utm_term=add

How to Achieve our GOALS

(Okay, so now we have a flicker account and photos and a link to my blog).

Choosing a path requires
1. Making a choice to go somewhere...
2. A clear INTENTION;

Sounds simple, however, I have often found that what seemed obvious to me is far from obvious to others. This results in lots of confusion and arguments about what should have happened. Then as the questions fly I usually find that I was not clear about what it is was that I actually wanted. This lead me to wonder - "what actually is a clear intention and how do I know that I have a clear intention"?

I also have a lot of examples of when my intention was clear and the desired result was achieved quickly and easily. What follows is my understanding of the necessary components to communicate (and understand) a person’s intention.

An intention is the clarification of a proposition, thus an intention requires a proposition.
We will take as an example the proposition "A journey of 1000 miles begins with one step".
Now what is implicit in this proposition?
a) we have a goal - Our goal is a destination 1000 miles away.
b) There is a choice involved (isn't there always?) “to start or not to start"? So we know there is uncertainty involved.

c) We must have a reason or purpose for going on this journey. It is reasonable to believe it the difficulty of deciding if the achievement of the purpose will outweigh the cost of the journey that is making us hesitant?
d) To make this determination we must have a measure of the reward (of arriving at the destination) and a limit on the cost (of the journey). And it will make our choice easier if we decide on a few things like the maximum time for the journey.

Okay we have – a goal, a purpose and a measure. Is this sufficient for a clear intention?
No; this is not enough; we also need to have some idea of the necessary actions required.
We may not be prepared to walk 1000 miles; so a means of transport may be required. If it takes more than 1 day, where do we stay? Will we camp, thus needing a tent etc and the means of carrying it or will we stay in motels and need extra funds etc? Assuming we want our partner to do some of the preparation, unless we have agreed on these types of things an argument will result. This tells me we have not yet made our intention clear.

e) For a clear intention the general process must also be clear.
f) Plus, there is another thing we need to have some clarity on. What could be the risk of our journey being too successful? Maybe we have so much fun on the journey we become travel junkies and forget the destination and just go on travelling. Or we like the destination so much we never come home. If our purpose was to improve our relationship, a difference of opinion in these choices could break up the relationship. Thus, identifying the Risks of Success helps refine our measures so they are consistent with our purpose.

Now we know we have a CLEAR INTENTION; instructions we can pass to a 3^rd party and have them implement for us and produce what we wanted to have.

Making a goal happen
Originally uploaded by IBPservice

Okay, with all that sorted, we are now in the position to decide if we want to go on this journey. We have a good idea of what will be involved, how we will know if it is worthwhile and what we will get out of it at the end. We can make an informed choice.

This gives us a nice test of a clear intention.

A clear intention enables me to make an informed choice about my involvement in a planned action.

This leads us to the time frame for all of this. We still may not be able to participate if it clashes with something else we have planned. Once we know the plan (Who will do what and when, we can take the 1st (and subsequent) steps as the proposition says; we can begin.

Week 5 Facebook Etc

Okay, yet again, took me a while to get what this is all about (so many new concepts, hey!). I believe it is really an implementation of six degrees of separation in operation. Once I opened up and logged in it showed me a bunch of "friends" who were already on facebook. (I assume it got this from my Google contact list which I uploaded once I realised I could upload my calendar). Interestingly this included a few people I had lost contact with; and some I didn't really want to make contact with again! FOund it useful to ba able to visit their sites.
One friend's facebook I looked at had an interesting little video so next step was to add a youtube video to my facebook and from there to add one to my Blog so have jumped a bit to exercise 20.
Looked at myspace on yrl and wasn't impressed. Opened an account on myspace and found it similar in lots of ways to facebook but not as good. It boomed out alot of times and I found not real value in it so will stick with Facebook.

Also renewed my entry in LinkiID and checked soem contacts
The ease of doing all this continues to amaze me.

Zoom-in Photos

This Class takes me a lot of time as I keep finding & exploring exciting new stuff. I believe I now have a zoom-able image from Microsoft labs Photozoom.
Click on the Image at the side here - if you have a scroll wheel rotate it to Zoom the Image in /out - move your mouse around to move the image around.
- Check out just ho much definition & detail you can see from a simple little set of photos.