Zamzar (Week Two)

This is the most succinct website we have ever had since we started the web 2.0 training.
Simple as 123, free, no sign up, without downloading software, the only thing you need is an e-mail address, you can convert file to whatever format you want. Next time when customers have any problems to open file from their own USB drive because of formatting, we can try Zamzar!
Sounds too good?
Want more? you have to pay if
Ø File is big
Ø You want to storage you file more than 24 hours
Ø You want fast conversions

Back to my blog (Week One)

After about a year since the last post, I nearly forget about everything. Finally I am back to my blog!
I am asking myself what things have I learned from it and what I can learn from the new things except spending hours and hours on it. Hope I would find more answers after I finish the new Web 2.0 training.

last one

It has been very interesting working through all of this, and I have learned about a lot of things available on the web which I was not aware of before.
There are many tools available, many of which I was not aware of before. Many seem like they could be very useful, or at least fun.

In particular, Wikis and Video sharing, both with user generated content seem to have had a large impact on modern society. It's fun, interesting and informative, which happens to also be what libraries strive to achieve as well.

E-books

Ebooks sound like a very good idea, as it offers books to people who dont have access to the library, or people whose local libraries do not have books they would like.
It is also free, easily transferrable, compact, and convenient.

Project Gutenburg has a lot of famous texts free of charge, which I did not expect. Of course, most recent novels are copyrighted so are not available.

The downside of E-books is that the process of reading so many pages on a computer screen or similar device tires the eyes and makes it difficult to read large sections at a time. Printing it out would use a lot of paper and ink, as well as printing time, which makes it more worthwhile to just borrow/buy the actual book in my opinion.

E-books do have potential though, but I prefer ink on paper

Podcasts

The podcast website took a while to load, but once I finally got on, I looked around at what was available.

Podcasts come in all sorts and it is interesting to listen to them. They could be very useful if you are busy and want to catch up with news or want to learn about something of interest to you. You just have to download the podcast and listen on the go on an mp3.

It is also useful as you can suscribe and get updated when more news comes up.

#20

I actually wrote about youtube before on the last post, so this time I will just talk about a video I watched.

I watched Susan Boyle's performance on Britain's got talent. I choose this because I saw a link to it on a news website. It's been so popular, it's had nearly 50million views!
I enjoyed it very much as it is like a cinderella story, but in real life.

#19

I chose Youtube as the site out of the list of winners.

Youtube has a large number of user contributed videos on almost every topic imagineable. A lot of news agencies like BBC and TVNZ have their own youtube 'channel' too where they upload videos of their news.

It's very useful if you're looking for a specific topic to watch, but it's hard to sift the rubbish from the good stuff sometimes, and if you dont have a specific idea in mind, it's difficult to find interesting videos sometimes.

The downside of having individuals freely upload videos is that more often than not, the videos are unprofessional, poor quality, and a waste of time. On the upside though, a lot of talented people have created lots of wonderful videos for everyone to watch.

The library could utilize youtube to host videos on things like how to use the library's facilities.