And here Endeth the lesson!

In the spirit of Randomness I got to the last thing - I Google and guess what - discovered I already had an account and had set it up monthes ago. Heres a picture of Neil Young and heres neil.

Bloglines and RSS feeds

I had a play with setting up RSS feeds and am yet to master but this interests me greatly especially the capacity to transfer feeds and podcasts etc to a mobile device to make the train journey home more bearable.

Wikis arent as Wicked as I thought - Wicked!!!

The world of the Internet always tantalises and then lets you down. I thought some evil person somewhere would have developed a wiki that was about wickedness - well they have . Except it is about Wicked - the musical - DAMN!! And to compound things when I went looking for Wicked Librarians this is what I got - beware its a hot blog! Well organised and a good explanation of Wikis.

Library Thing and the e book thing

I can see why small libraries might find this a possible answer to cataloging. I added a few books one of whicgh I was the author and pretty impressed with the capacity to search large bibliographic sets quickly. Interesting that most are in English.

The Project Gutenberg site is worth exploring. I downloaded Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

Mindmaps - Free Mind and Mindmiester and Mindmap - I think!!

I love mind maps. We certainly used them heavily in recent business planning exercises. That was a commercial product called Mindmap ( i think?) but I also used Freemind which although clunky in some regard I quite liked. For this exercise I have had a play with Mindmeister and this is very easy to use.
As an observation with the recent work we have done on the business plan I found a number of people felt that the use of Mind maps to express a business assessment and direction quite challenging. I had repeated requests for the text version starting with the title and content page and ending with the index.
Methinks they are actually an art form!

Skype - I Like the Hype

You can see why the internet is changing all known business models. Check out Clay Shirky on Newspapers and then think about how Telstra and the telcos are going to live in a world of Skype.

Second Life and You Tube

You Tube is fascinating I suspect more so for its wealth of random ordinariness . Check out my selection of random videos from YouTube displayed using the Blogger widget.

And hows this for random. Yesterday I fired up an old PC and found a link in my web favorites section of Firefox. The link was to an experiment by a company called Daden LTD in about 2002 using Chatbots as online Reference Librarians - it was very raw. The Library world were horrified that this looked like the future and in many cases missed the point which wasnt about providing an online reference service but learning about how people interacted with chatbots and in particular how language was used ( I used to delight in asking the female chatbots for their phone number and trying to find out if they wanted to go out and see a band!!)

How does this marry into Second Life you wonder? Well when I clicked the link I discovered that Daden have developed somewhat in the intervening years and are now , among other things selling Chatbots and Virtual personalities (Price: From £3499 set up and £999 a year hosting and support ) and have made what looks like a lucrative business out of virtual worlds - they have an island in Second life. The link stored in my browser took me to a You Tube demo on aircraft tracking in second life.

What does this all mean? I am not sure, however two things come to mind. The value of being able to experiment and use that to innovate and develop products is still as important as the day man first experimented with the wheel. And it is highly unlikely that airline food will be any better in Second Life!

Facebook Versus MySpace - Neil Young Wins

I believe there should be a global battle organised. All those on Facebook move to the right of the world and all those on Myspace move to the left- and then charge! I find both interesting. I like and have for some time occasionally used MySpace for random searches of music- most often using Neil Young as a Jumping off point and following his friends.

THIS brings me to Facebook - something I set up a while ago. Firstly I was surprised that people wanted to be my friend and what was worse my family wanted to be my friend!! On a serious note Facebook is quite useful for communication, talking to others, sharing games etc. Also as secretary of a community sporting club I set up a group to see how useful Facebook could be in sharing information- its very useful is my conclusion. I also joined the Save the Timboon Pub group and we got it reopened!!

PS: thats my Facebook photo!!

Photo of pearl harbour - Photo Generator and Other Generators

Played around with some of the photogenerators and this shot of the bombing of Pearl Harbour looks nice in a frame. Purportedly this is one of several photos taken on the day and left for many years undeveloped in a box brownie.
I tried to get a frame around the photo but somehow failed however I did play with the Apple rumour generator and got this rumour "An operative deep inside Apple has advised us to expect a 16 Core Mac Pro in the Second Quarter 2007". Makes you wonder about the currency of rumours.

You Tube and Flickr

I really like the fact you can incorporate random ( sort of) You tube and Flickr slideshows in your blog. The stuff to the side are a combination of random keywords, Places such as Warrnambool and Tower Hill, combined with things such as potato and trains brings together a wonderful array of images.

Golf at Port Fairy

Imagine a cold autumn day with the sun going down in the west and the moon rising in the east. Mix this with the sound of the wind and the waves rolling in on the beach just over the hill and a scorecard with multiple double figure scores pales into insignificance - at least that's my argument ( a 12 on the first!!)

Above playing the last hole at Port fairy golf course. The hole is dedicated to my mothers cousin which in the true spirit of Vimineousity I discovered by accident.