Week 7, Thing 16: Technocrati Reconsidered and Tagging Part II

Well, I'm taking back most of what I said about Technocrati in a previous post. This week's task was to take a closer look at the blog directory site. I hadn't noticed the Tag Index in my last visit to the website and I enjoyed having a look at some of the post popular tags used on the website in the last month (I even found that my favourite soccer team was top tag - Arsenal!!).

The Tag Index is a neat way to get an overview of some of the more popular subjects of the time.  For example, under the letter C I saw that Copenhagen and China are the top two tags. Copenhagen because of the upcoming UN Climate Conference in that city; and China because, well, probably because Obama and Harper have visited the country in the last couple of weeks. The top three tags under the letter F are Facebook, Fort Hood, and, big surprise here, flu.

The Technocrati Tag Index is a great way to monitor popular social and political trends. In 1000 years tags might be important factors for historians, anthropologists, sociologists, and other researchers to understand today's social climates. By quickly glancing at an alphabatized list of commonly used words, we get insight into what is going on in ths blogosphere and the popular conscience.

Week 7: Thing 15: Tagging is Delicious!

 What I like most about Delicious is the idea of a folksonomy vs. a taxonomy. Taxonomies are official, rigid, and not very user-friendly. Unlike taxonomies, folksonomies are designed to be broad or specialized, they are always changing or being added to, and they are created from the bottom up. I think it's neat to see how people tag the same photograph or website with different words. Everyone interprets something differently. Delicious and tagging, to me, are at the core of Web 2.0. I even added some tags to my blog today!

Week 6, Thing 14: Movie Poster!

Thing 14 was the best yet! Image generators can be a lot of fun, you're limited only by your imagination. I went to Big Huge Labs where the tagline is 'Helping you do cool stuff with your digital photos since 2005'. You can create vintage photos, magazine covers, jigsaws, movie posters, and more with your own photos. I used a photograph from the Whitby Online Historic Photographs Collection to make a funny movie poster! In a way this is kind of like public history. Cultural institutions could use image generators to make historic photos more relevant and even a little funny.

Week 6, Thing 12: It's a Library Thing

Like many people I know, I have a large queue of books that I want to read, buy, and/or borrow (working at a library doesn't help...). And also like many people, I have about a dozen places where I've written down the names of titles or authors of said books and I keep losing them!

I started using the virtual bookshelf application on Facebook because I could keep track of all the books I've read and want to read. It also suggests other books I might be interested in based on the books in my collection. I have also tried Library Thing, a similar site for organizing and cataloging your book collection. I don't think Library Thing is as intuitive as the Facebook application - once I added a book from a series (Harry Potter) to my collection, I had to go back to the search page and search again rather than it automatically generating other books in the series or by the author, for example.

Like the Facebook app, Library Thing produces a list of other books you might be interested in based on your collection. It also shows a list of other users who have similar libraries to you. That's how I found the glorious blog that is AustenBlog (which I have added to my Bloglines account)! I probably won't use Library Thing in the future but I am thankful for the fact that I now know where to go for all my Jane Austen related news!