#26 Little bits of the Internet, on your desktop

This was a bit of fun - the instructions for yourminis are a bit different now from when the #26 post was done in June 2007, but it was all straightforward. I had been playing around with widgets on various Ning sites in the last few weeks so I was familiar with them. Yourminis offered a fairly small range of widgets or gadgets as Windows call them.

My problem arose when I selected and tried to copy them to my blog. It was all right if I posted in a normal post, but when I tried to add them to my sidebar I simply could not work out a way to resize. I attempted to do this with a couple and finally ended up with a weather one which can mostly be seen. In fact, if the ad for Weather Channel which was not visible in yourminis were not there, all of it could be viewed.

I tried changing the measurements and alignment in the HTML but that didn't seem to make any difference - I always had a bit on the right side chopped off. I wonder whether it would look all right if viewed in Explorer - I'll check that out when I'm at work. I've left it there for the minute, imperfect as it is, and note that the current Melbourne weather brought to me here by Weather Channel is different to the current weather brought to me on my browser by accuweather. Who is right? My thermometer says something different again. All I know is that it is HOT particularly for Hecuba with her long coat. This task has also been a trigger for me to go back to one of my pages on Ning and successfully load the weather widget.

Life after #23?

I think that I have been having withdrawal symptoms since the end of Learning 2.0. I have missed the intensity of learning and the excitement of experimenting with new things. I haven't been wasting my time, however. I have spent quite a bit of time going back and exploring things that we touched on in the course. I have explored Flickr, its emailing, and its networks and in the course of this have found some great photos and struck up a correspondence with someone about Collingwood's history, as well as communicating with people I know virtually and physically. I have explored LibraryThing a bit more and signed up for some of the book discussions. I am still monitoring them via Bloglines but I don't really think that it is for me. I use Bloglines and del.icio.us regularly still and occasionally glance at Technorati. I have also been intending to get on with setting up some wikis on some historical topics, starting with Boroondara's hotels, but I haven't quite got there yet.

But the really exciting thing I have been spending my time on is Ning. Fiona introduced me to this and we have set up a Ning network for City of Boroondara Library Service. You can see the link to it on the side panel. To date, the network is pretty embryonic with Fiona, Jonathan and me rattling around in it. However, we have had some good discussions particularly around Christmas books and will no doubt have more as we encourage more people to join in the New Year. Today I have been experimenting with setting up a Ning network for Hawthorn's history - again the link to it is in the badge on the side bar.

One side effect of poking around in Ning was that I discovered the Learning 2.1 Ning network and discovered that indeed there is life after Learning 2.0. It is Learning 2.1 and there are many more things to learn. Apart from the Learning 2.1 Ning network, there is also a Learning 2.1 blog as well as a Learning 2.1 wiki which I notice several Australians have already registered on. I have been spending too much time on Ning today, but my brave new world will start soon and I will embark on #24! How exciting! Helene Blowers may have moved on to Ohio, but this program continues and continues to have an amazing world-wide effect on libraries of all types.