Blogs. Hmmmmm.

What a busy little blogger I am. Well, today anyway.

This is my first blog. It's not something I've done before because I've never really felt that I had anything of any interest to share with the world. I'm still not convinced that I have.

But I don't have a negative view of blogs though. I quite enjoy reading other peoples thoughts, and can see how they could be used in interesting ways.

So whilst blogging hasn't been for me, I'm approaching this with my "information professional hat" on (please note, this isn’t an actual hat), and I’m looking forward to seeing where 23 things takes me.

igoogle

The first part of the 23 things program was to create an igoogle account.
This is something which I've been using for a while as my homepage in my browser.

I think its great, mine is pretty simple but its got the main things that I use a lot:
Google calendar
Google search bar
My gmail account
My hotmail account
Wikipedia (always need to know who was in what band, and how old whatsit off the telly is)

The other bits I don't use as much, but they're handy to have.

Oh, and my current theme is a fake Banksy. Mostly as it's fairly unnoticable.

Generally I'd say that customised start pages are pretty good, as they're tailored to what you want/need, not what someone else thinks. They're especially useful if you use a number of computers, as you don't need to rely on browser bookmarks.

The main downside? You miss the intersting facts and interpretations of the Google homepage. Can't have it all I guess.

23 things: the start

Well, hello blogosphere – anyone listening? This is my 23 things blog, pretty obvious if you’re reading this as it says it up there ↑↑.

I’m taking part in this to get to know web 2.0 a bit better. I use a lot of this stuff already (Facebook, Twitter, customised homepages) but I don’t really know how they work. Which in day to day life, is fine.

However, from a professional point of view, understanding how they work will help me use them in a better way. I’m involved in running the library website, and it would be nice to use some of these features; but not just tacking them on because there’s a vague feeling that you “should” have them. I guess it’s easy to be caught up in some of the hype (we should have a Facebook site – everyone else has!) but really I’d like to know how to use web 2.0 technology a bit more creatively, especially as a means of communication.