Thing No 7: Animoto.com

Well, I've sort of semi-embedded my video (Sunsets to Blues) from Animoto on my blog, but the links don't seem to be working very well today, so I will have to try and re-do it later. I first tried through Add a Gadget/Link list/Configure Link list, but the "add button" button was not working. So I then tried saving the video to my home computer and then uploading from there - but that didn't work...so third time sort of semi-lucky, I tried Add a Gadget/HTML/Javascript and it's on there now but not working properly as a link. However, if you highlight the whole web address, then right click and click on "Search web for http://animoto.com/play/z0La9y9Zxn3t3Tvn2586LA?autostart=true", it will take you to a results page - click on "Go directly to http://animoto.com/play/z0La9y9Zxn3t3Tvn2586LA?autostart=true" etc and you will end up at my video, which I am very proud of, even though I just used the photos and music supplied by Animoto :-) I am now imagining myself as a Film/TV producer or director....and looking forward to making lots of video clips in the future, both for work and personal use...but more about that next post :-)

Thing # 7 Bookjetty

I enjoyed Bookjetty and had fun adding books to my bookshelf. I couldn't think of any books that I'd "dropped" lately so I just added the book I am currently reading, which is The Warrior's Princess, by Barbara Erskine (interestingly I am apparently the first person to add that book to my bookshelf:-), some books that I have already read and some that I want to read in the future. Bookjetty seems to be a great way of keeping track of what books you have already read and what you would like to read etc and I would definitely recommend it to customers who wanted to keep track of their reading. I would also recommend Authors on the Web and Litlovers...all great ways of finding out more about books...how could any booklover resist them ? :-) And I will definitely revisit all these sites myself and do a lot more with them in the future.

Thing # 6 Authors on the Web

I looked at all the sites and enjoyed them all even though they didn't have some of my most fav authors on them...Barbara Erskine, Christine Feehan etc...and have embedded links to Author yellow pages and Bookreporter.com on this blog. My fav site was Bookreporter.com. I like the daily quotes, and the Awards section where books that have won various awards are listed. I love the Contests Section! :-) I subscribed to the Bookreporter.com newsletter, partly so that I would be in the draw every month to win 5 free hardcover books, but also to keep up with all the book news...well, one does that when they're a librarian aka bookworm, don't they? :-) I like the author bibliographies, although again some of my fav authors weren't on there...but no site can list every single author of course :-)And I really, really like the "Books coming soon" section - it's a great way to find out what's going to be hitting the bookshops soon etc.

Thing # 5: Litlovers

I enjoyed looking at Litlovers and I passed details of this website on to other staff at work who run or might want to run a bookclub. I really enjoyed reading about the feature bookclub and ended up being inspired to start my own bookgroup outside work - which is a good thing because I used to belong to one that was quite boring and I'd sworn never to join one again! :-) There are some great tips for making bookclubs different and interesting and I love the idea of having different food according to what book members are reading etc. I did the first Litcourse called Literature Matters: Why we Read and although I found it interesting, I felt that the summing up of the Romance genre in particular was a bit one-sided and actually incorrect in places e.g. the Tip Sheet for Love Scenes says there is only one love scene in a romance and that is near the end - well, as a Romance Reader and would-be-Romance-author, I can honestly say that most romances I read have lots of love scenes and definitely not all towards the end of the book! And the Romance reading, if based on a book written in the 1940s, is very different from what Romance authors write today. I do have to agree that I read Romance for escapism though :-)...but yes, I do read "literature" as well...and there is a place and time for both. I thought Dan Brown would be a good author to read and discuss at a bookclub meeting, and found that his book The Da Vinci Code was included in the Reading Guides. I found out all sorts of interesting things about Dan Brown and the book - there was a summary of the book (which I have read, along with all his other books - I am definitely a Dan Brown fan :-); a bio of the author, book reviews and even bookclub discussion questions. The most interesting thing I found out was what inspired him to write this book. I have saved Litlovers in My Favourites and will definitely be using it in future for finding information about books and readers and different bookclubs and also to do the other Litcourses.

Week 2: Genealogy

I signed up to both My Heritage and Geni, and I liked them both. There are things I prefer about each site, but I think my preference overall is for the My Heritage site, probably mostly because of the "fun" activities. I like the photo slideshow on My Heritage and I had great fun doing the celebrity face recognition collage, which shows what celebrities you resemble. I have posted my celebrity look-alike collage on this blog. I also saw myself morph into Jesse McCartney using the celebrity morph, and I am looking forward to trying the look-alike meter once I have uploaded more photos of my kids and my ex-husband onto my home computer. However I don't like the fact that my family tree shows me under my maiden name because that's what I had to type in when I entered my name - I haven't yet managed to figure out how I can possibly show both my maiden name and my current name. I also don't like the homepage on my family site which assumes that my current name is the same as my maiden name - so I need to do something about that! :-)I like the family tree part of Geni better than the one on My Heritage because it shows both my current and maiden surnames, and I like the arrows radiating out from each person on the family tree so that you just have to click on them and add brothers/sisters etc (down arrow) and parents (up arrow) etc. There are lots more things I like about each site but this post would end up a mile long if I listed everything - so I won't :-) Would I recommend these sites to customers? Definitely. I would recommend both of them and leave the customer to make up their own mind, because what might suit one person more might not suit another so much. And I will continue to add my own family tree and photos etc to both sites ...they each have different things to offer and different strengths and weaknesses.

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

http://www.myheritage.com/collage

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities

My family tree from Geni.com

View more of Merrilyn's tree  |  Get your own family tree at Geni.com

License to Play ... I'm back! :-)

Hey, I'm back! This is great! :-) Just made it back from a couple of weeks' holiday in time to register for this course on Monday 2 February so I'm lucky I just managed to scrape in. Thank you for doing more of this "web 2.0 learning stuff" 'cos it's fun and I really enjoy it..and I definitely don't need the prize incentives to do it...I'd do it anyway :-) I am resurrecting the blog I created for the first ACL Web 2.0 course. It wasn't too bad finding it again because I'd set Blogger up as one of my Favourites...but I had forgotten which email address I used to set it up, and then I had forgotten my password...but it only took a few minutes to work out which email address I should be using and then to reset my password. As to memories coming back, yes there were a lot of those :-) I really enjoyed the first course, forgotten some bits here and there 'cos I haven't used them (hate to have to admit that but it's true and it's mostly due to lack of time to "play"...but at least I know the different things that are available and I've got them all set up as Favourites so I can use them when I want), and probably should do a refresher of that course sometime too... But as I said, I'm glad to be back :-)