A Teeming Social Life

I'm finally getting a little time to work on my OWN 23 Things today. Popular to contrary belief, I'm not an expert on the whole Web2.0 thing and I am learning a lot of this stuff along with everyone else. I have used some things quite heavily already, like blogs, MySpace and Facebook, YouTube and photo sharing, but a lot of other things are totally new to me too.

However, I am an intrepid tinkerer with this technology, and am not afraid to just play with it until I get it doing something that I like. I have no fear at all of any of the technologies that we are using in 23 Things so I guess I am a lot more gung ho than the "newbies" out there who are hesitantly having a go for the first time. I will sign up for things, faff about with settings and profiles, and generally just jump on in feet first. Mostly because I know that there is always the functionality to set it back to the original way, or change it to a whole new way. I'm not at all afraid to make mistakes because I know I can just change it straight away.

So today I have been doing the module on social bookmarking. It was interesting that it put things like LibraryThing in the same category. I guess that they are bookmarking in a sense, but I consider them more social databases or catalogues. Rather than just a collection of links, I feel they are a database or catalogue of my interests and tastes.

I use several of these sites regularly. My favourites are Shelfari, Good Reads, Bookcrossing and of course LibraryThing. I am a member of all of these reading/book sites and if you want to find me, just do a member search for "sleepydumpling". (Yeah and you can stop laughing at the username now, you lot!)

I also find these a great tool for keeping track of my own books, and books I've borrowed from friends. I tag them with things like "loaned to" or "borrowed from" so that I know where they are and who I have to give them back to when they're not mine. It's a great way to track series you are reading, and you can even put in due dates when they are a library book. How cool is that?

Another one I quite like is a music one, and it is Playlist. You can make up "jukeboxes" of your favourite music, and then you can embed those in your blog, Facebook and MySpace, all kinds of places. I make new playlists up with themes. For example, on Australia Day I did a playlist up of great Aussie music, posted it on my MySpace blog and then shared it with all my overseas friends. They loved it because they don't always get access to Australian music - particularly in America.

And if you are looking for a movie one, Flixster is good fun and really useful too.

So socially online, I'm pretty busy. I'm incredibly busy in my real social life too, but I find using some of these tools actually helps me organise myself and save lots of time, as well as a great way to meet new people, find new resources (books and music etc) and share my interests. I love to talk books, movies and music, and these give me another outlet.

Some of My Favourite Blogs

Since blogging is our first topic, I thought I'd share some of my favourite blogs, ones that I read regularly and enjoy. You'll get something of a glimpse of the type of person that I am, simply by my choice in recreational blog reading!

For some reason though, blogger is a little overloaded today (could it be all we 23 Thingers from Brisbane slowing it down?) so I have to try and put the formatting in for the links myself. If it doesn't work I'll come back and fix it later. Until then, you can just highlight the link, right click and choose "copy" and then paste it into the address bar of your browser.

http://www.cuteoverload.com/ - Cute Overload. Hundreds of pictures of cute puppies, kittens, ducks, hamsters... all manner of adorable fuzzy and fluffy and feathery creatures.

http://uglyoverload.blogspot.com/ - Ugly Overload. If you can't handle the cuteness, go for the anti-cute and check out the worlds ugliest animals.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ - Cake Wrecks. Absolutely hideous cakes made by so-called professional bakers and cake decorators. Lordy me, the things people will do to cake!

http://www.shorpy.com/ - Shorpy.com The 100 Year Old Photo blog. Ok, not all of the photos are 100 years old, but they're fascinating no matter their age and they are mega high resolution so the detail is amazing. One of the best American Civil War collections around too, if you're interested in those things.

http://judgeabook.blogspot.com/ - Judge a Book By It's Cover. It's written by a librarian I believe, and she loves to take the mick out of those truly hideous cover designs that are out there.

www.postsecret.com - PostSecret. This started as an art project, people asked to send in a postcard with a secret on it to a man called Frank Warren in the US. It is now a huge worldwide phenomenon, and the postcards sent in (changed weekly - a good one to RSS feed to) will have you laughing, gasping and chills running up your spine. We have some of Franks books in our library collection.

http://ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com/ - Found Cameras and Orphan Pictures. Lost your camera or memory card? Found a camera or memory card? This is the blog that re-unites photographs and cameras with their owners. It was all started by a postcard to PostSecret by the way.

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/ - Photoshop Disasters. See what not to do when using Photoshop to edit your digital snaps!!

I am sure there are lots more I really like but these are my favourites. I'll add more as I think of them.