Rollyo and Online Image Generators

This is probably my last post, unless I come across any other 2.0 tools that I think that I should share.

I am struggling with the whole Rollyo concept. It seems like an extension of delicious, where you can keep all the internet sites that you want to go back to. But in this case you roll all the related sites up into a search engine and it will search all those sites for you (once you have something to search on). What happens if a new trusted site is added to the Web and you miss searching it because you do not go to the Web any more because you have all the sites that you call reliable in one place?

When I created a searchroll, it had suggested sites that you could include the first being Wikipedia - I would not call this site reliable or trusted!

Since I was not understanding Rollyo (even though I read the 'about Rollyo' and checked out the Buzz) I thought that I would move on to online image generators, hoping they would bring some fun back into play week.

I went in through the Yarra Plenty Library - 23 Things program and looked at The Generator Blog (I could not get Letter James to work) and FD Toys. I created my own 3D cover , but could not manage to get it on to my blog, only the link. More practice required!
This stuff seemed fairly pointless, with six assignments hanging over my head, but did not require any understanding to be able to do it.

Have a look at these and tell me what you think:

Looney MP name - may be useful this election

Butterfly animation

FlickrPoet

Exobotics

LibraryThing or Shelfari

This week is 'play week' and what a way to end my journey through some of the 23 things that I could have chosen to do.

I joined LibraryThing because that was part of this activity. Once again this was a fairly easy process, name, password, email - although I did have to change my password from the one that I use for all my TAFE logins because it would not let me use symbols. I also had a laugh at the "to verify your humanity" question - do they have many non humans trying to join their network?
I tried to add some books. My first question was why do my book cover look nothing like theirs? Not to worry, I did discover in edit books that you were able to pick the cover that matched the one that you were looking at. To continue, I kept having to go back to the search field and put the authors name in over and over which seemed to take a very long time when you have as many Dick Francis books as I have. I then discovered that I could put the ISBN numbers which made my search much quicker.

Lisa on her blog (Week 5 play week) said that she preferred Shelfari, so I thought that I would try it too. I loved the way that it actually displays my books on a book shelf! All you need to do is go to http://www.shelfari.com/. To create yourself all you need is a name, email and password. I skipped finding my friends so that I could just get started. To search you can use the book title, author or ISBN. Once you find your book you can show other editions to get other covers, and find one to match yours!

Downside: Shelfari seemed to take a long time to load the other edition covers so that I could pick the one that matched mine. I thought that it was the computer that I was using, so I tried again at work the next day, with the same result, I was timed out before I could select the cover that I wanted. Never the less I have managed to get 13 books on my shelf.

The second best thing about Shelfari is that when I logged back in on my home computer I did not have to log in again, the computer remembered who I was. Unlike LibraryThing where I have had to created myself three times! The first time I used DiDee2010 as my name, but I could not get in using it the second time I wanted to go there, so I created myself again as DiDee10, but this did not work the third time I tried to log on so I became dimckinnon! I have tried again tonight to log on to LibraryThing and DiDee10 has 21 books. So it would seem that I have had better luck loading my book covers into LibraryThing.

I liked the way that Shelfari asked for more details on consecutive screens when you were adding a book, such as when did you buy it and what did it cost. If LibraryThing wanted these details I did not bother to scroll down the screen to find them. The other problem I had in the beginning with LibraryThing was that it shows other covers for the book on the right hand side so it not hard to try and click on them to select your cover rather than clicking on change cover on the left side and going to the covers at the bottom of the page. Shelfari also has suggested tags for you to select from to make tagging easier.

My frustration with trying to log on to LibraryThing is probably equalled by my frustration of selecting the right cover and getting it to load in Shelfari.

I am now off to learn about Rollyo and online image generators. I will keep you posted.

RSS problem

Forget my last post - problem solved!
A big thank you to Leticia for pointing me in the right direction.
Down the side of her blog she has 'Just a few of my Links'. She has now solved my problem of having all the links to the places that I want to go, in one place, on my blog.
Therefore I now have my Shelfari books displayed at the end of my blog.
I have also added Librarything, Delicious and Bloglines as links to my blog. So now I only have to come here to be able to access everything. This means that I should be able to remember to check my RSS feeds more regularly.
Brilliant idea. Thank you for showing me how its done.
I am really enjoying being able to learn from what others are doing on their blogs!

Help RSS

Hi fellow 2.0 students,
HELP!!!!!!!!!!
Can some on tell me where I am going wrong?
I see a few of you have posted on RSS feeds, which is what I am struggling with this weekend.
Can you put the link to your RRS feeds on your blog or is it another site like delicious that you just go to to find all the things that you have book marked in one place.
I thought I saw some where that you could put the icon for your RSS feeds on your website but I don't have one of those, so can you link it to your blog?
If any one knows can you please let me know........
I will be forever grateful.