23 things: DENIED

I've really enjoyed doing 23 things, but I've just been told that the official finish date was last week (Thursday 8 April) - I even wrote a post about this, so there's no-one to blame but myself. For some reason, I'd got it in my head that the deadline was today but Laura Wilkinson has just broken the bad news. I've spent so much time and energy doing the 23 things only to find that I'm just too late.

Gutted doesn't cover it.

Thing 21: Use a blogger gadget

Good skills! I'm really keen on learning how to do this, especially for my personal blog. I've never really explored the 'dashboard' section of my blog and can see that there's lots of opportunities for really personalizing it, which is nice.

Only trouble is that my photos aren't visible! What am I doing wrong?! I don't understand. I'm very conscious that today's the last day of 23 things and really want to ensure that I tie up all loose ends... eek! I might give Jane R a call or drop her an email and see what she says. The only place I can identify where I might be going wrong is the field where you're required to enter your Flickr username. I assume this is the name that you're greeted with when you're "home" and the space at the top of the page where it reads "signed in as xxxxx". But still, nothing!

What to do? To be continued...

Thing 20: Sign in to ThinkFree office

Hmmm... not sure about this. I think that ThinkFree office is too similar to Google Docs to be worthy of its own "thing"! Despite this, I actually think I'd prefer to go with ThinkFree if I needed to use a shared space, for no obvious explicable reason. It might be because my experience with Google docs was not a positive one, or maybe because it's not Google it seems marginally (or comparatively) less corporate and omnipotent. As you could sign-in using your Google log-in, they may very well be in cohorts, but it doesn't really make sense for Google to have two near identical shared space sites, although I could be wildly underestimating their desire to monopolise the market!

Similarly to Google docs, I like the idea of having free shared spaces that multiple users can access and edit. I'm not sure if it was because I'd just installed the Java thing, but when I tried to edit my document it was prohibitively slow.

One thing I did like was being able to access other people's documents (I'm not sure if this is an option on Google docs). I read an interesting piece on social media marketing and had the option of saving it into my office, which I did! Having this option really extends the boundaries of such a site, elevating it to a mini knowledge centre, which can only be a good thing. With so many documents stored on the site, there's bound to be something of interest or relevance to everyone.

Thing 19: Create a Google document

Hmmm... Google documents is a bit of a sore point for me. I spent two very long days back in January uploading over 150 documents onto Google docs for the bsf-pg group. The group decided to do this as an external consultant and other non-Bodleian folk were heavily involved in the group, so saving documents to the Q drive meant limited access for significant team members. Unfortunately, many people have encountered problems accessing the blessed site, meaning that all my hard work has gone entirely to waste... it's always frustrating when you put your faith in technology only for it to fail you. Some of the difficulties we’ve encountered include:

- group members not receiving the Google docs invitations. As a result, we’ve resorted to sending invitations to the space to people’s personal or home email addresses. I think that the Bodleian Libraries’ spam filter is particularly potent, as this isn’t the first time emails have failed to come through

- group members receiving invitations only to find the space ‘blank’ or empty files

It’s a real shame when those people who are reluctant to embrace new technologies are proved right, as I think the Internet is a marvellous thing with lots of potential to assist rather than hinder people. We’ve also been having lots of problems using our CDC wiki as Wetpaint won’t allow existing users to extend invitations to people who are not already members. For anyone who’s been experiencing similar problems with Wetpaint, you can read more about the problems here.

Disappointing.

On another note, can anyone tell me what the default font is in Blogger? I like the default font, but I cut and pasted some text from a Word document into this post and have been through all the font options trying to find the default without success. When I've tried to change the font, it seems to select different sections of text at random, despite highlighting the entire text. I've kept it this way to demonstrate the problem.

Thing 18: Wikipedia

Ah... the wonder of Wikipedia, eh? I love this site and use it regularly. I think I'm probably quite guilty of taking what I find as gospel, rather than approaching information with the suggested pinch of salt and scepticism, however, although I wouldn't necessarily rely on it for credible data or information.

So, I've just looked up Lars Von Trier's film 'The Idiots', as I saw it again last night for the first time in ages. I'm a big Lars Von Trier fan and absolutely loved this film. As a film fan more generally, I sometimes use Wikipedia over IMDB, for example, as a starting point for finding out more about films and often find it to be quite reliable. The references at the bottom are always good for finding out more and checking the reliability of different points, too.

The very existence of such a resource is another major coup for the WWW and its inhabitants. Yey for Wikipedia!

Thing 17: Explore and contribute to a wiki

Now we're talking!

I'm already quite involved with the Bodleian Libraries expansion into the wonderful world of wikis. I created the CDC wiki (see right) - registered, created and edited pages, made it look pretty, invited folk and maintain it - and manage the RLSSG wiki. The CDC wiki was created on Wetpaint which initially worked fine, but now users are finding it very difficult to invite new members, which is very frustrating. There's a discussion on one of their forums about it here, for anyone else experiencing problems on this site. In addition, there are lots of very unpleasant adverts that keep popping up at inopportune moments, which can make for quite awkward moments in CDC meetings when using the projector for all to see.

Wikispaces, however, is much better and, so far, we've had no problems with it.

I'm very much in favour of shared spaces; shared accountability and democracy can only be a good thing, as far as I'm concerned!

Things 15 and 16: Twitter

So, I'm signed up and ready to roll with Twitter. I'm duly following various people and organizations and I've tweeted about my experience of 23 things, including the #ox23 'hashtag' (great word!) Initial thoughts? I can't help but feel that Twitter is for people with way too much time on their hands. I think it's difficult to impart information of any real substance in sixty characters, or whatever it is. From tracking down other ox23 tweeters, I can see that some people are tweeting every hour or so. Eh?

Despite this, it's another string to my box and another transferable skill, which can only be a good thing in our new media world.