#32 Online file storage with Omnidrive

Omnidrive sounds like it would be the answer to this woman's prayers! How often do I find myself at home wanting a file from work or vice versa? And 1 gb of free memory in a web-based application sounds wonderful. I email backwards and forwards but that doesn't always get through firewalls, and I carry stuff on my "message-sticks". I am attracted by the SnipShot facility for editing images and the ability to use Zoho for editing material. But maybe that's where the warning bells should have started out in my dream. In #18 I never managed to register for Zoho and it hung my Firefox several times until I gave up and used Google for the exercise instead.

So what happened to my Omnidrive dream? I got into the website easily enough and proceeded to sign up. My email id was accepted as available as was my username, but every time I tried to sign up I got an error message and that was that. I seemed to be able to everything else I wanted on the site, just not sign up! I have sent the error message to Omnidrive help so we'll see how we go. BTW I also went back to Zoho and the website came up with a signin for me but said the password that they had on the screen didn't match my id. I tried to do the forgot password scenario and guess what! My Firefox hung and I had to reboot. Is this about ME and my PC, or is it that these applications don't work with Firefox? I can pursue them further at work with Explorer but that will be no use to me at home with Firefox.

#23 Is this really the end? No, it's a new beginning...

I started off on this journey with the avowed aim of exploring Web 2.0 particularly in relation to my private and public passion, local and family history. As I progressed through the course I was diverted into more general applications for Web 2.0 in libraries. I was familiar with a lot of the Web 2.0 tools but only as a passive user. E.g. I have been looking at other people's blogs, other people's MySpace accounts, Youtube, and other people's Flickr collections for ages. The key thing that the Learning 2.0 program did for me was make me become an active user, rather than a passive one.

However, as the course progressed I also became so much more aware of the huge number of possibilities out there. This course for me has definitely been the beginning of a journey. I feel that what I have done so far is like the tip of the iceberg. It will take me a long time to reach down underwater into the lowest crevices, particularly as parts will melt, and new bits will freeze up as time goes by.

What were the specific highlights for me?

• Bloglines is something that I am now using every day. It has been particularly interesting to use it to chart the progress of Boroondara staff in the Learning 2.0 course, but I also use it for a number of library and book related feeds and as well as for news links, ABC podcasts, new and programming links, and Flickr sites and friend's and family's blogs. I can't imagine not using Bloglines! Firefox makes it so simple to add to these feeds. You can find the link to my Bloglines on the side of this blog.
  
• Del.icio.us is another tool that I can not imagine not continuing to use. I am not at this stage using it to its fullest extent, but simply to keep track of my own tags. So there is room for further advances there. I was pretty cynical about Technorati when I first used it but have since found the need to use it, and have signed up and claimed my blog on it. I also installed the Technorati link on my blog so that people can add Hecuba's story to their favourites.
• Wikis also offered a range of prospects for use in public libraries and for local and family history. I had used Wikipedia for ages and am not in the least worried about the "unauthorized" nature of the information in it as some people are. However, I had not thought about using a wiki for a reference desk manual or creating my own wikis for various topics I am researching in local and family history. There is a lot of food for personal thought and action here.
  
• The web-based applications, such as Google docs and Zoho, seem a fabulous concept and I will explore them further. I have put up a biggish spreadsheet about Collingwood hotels and invited someone else to add material. At this point in time I must say that I think the software is a bit clunky, though the idea is a great one. Someone told me the other day that there is even a translation tool in Google docs - this would assist in getting feedback from people who read a range of languages.
• One exciting finding for me related to e-audiobooks and the implications for LOTE users. I was very excited to find Chinese, French, Portuguese and a multilingual site at a very cursory glance. Alas, Greek does not seem available. I did a search on Kazantzakis and came up with his work in many translations but none in the original.
  
• Other tools such as Librarything, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, podcasts and Youtube were useful and fun but not things that were unfamiliar to me, except in that I had not previously joined them.

During the course, I have regularly read the blogs of my Boroondara colleagues and those of some of my colleagues from other libraries and have tried to comment where appropriate. I have been amazed by the excitement out there and by the possibilities that are being thought of in terms of Web 2.0 and public libraries. Some staff have fully embraced this program, while others have had difficulties getting started or difficulties keeping on with it. We set up a system of mentors in each Boroondara library using people who had finished early and this peer support has helped many Boroondara staff on their journeys. One library is rumored to be using chocolate bribes (aka encouragements) so we will see if that affects their completion rate ;>).

The real issue is where to now? I know for myself what my learnings are and I can identify tasks that I need to pursue. What I am really interested in at this point is the "where to now" of this Victorian Public Libraries Learning 2.0 program. I hope that the course blog will stay up and that our staff can continue to access the training after next Monday. I am sure that Boroondara will have some staff who have not quite finished and who would like to continue. I am very happy to take over registering their blogs and doing the staff tracking. I am sure that other staff, particularly those who have been mentors, would also be happy to help with the monitoring.

Now that the program has been set up, I would also like to encourage into the program other Boroondara staff who for whatever reason could not participate within the existing time-frames or parameters. Some of this course could easily be incorporated into our induction program, and it would also be useful if staff could just access particular modules. E.g. when we are working on developing podcasts, it will be useful for staff who have done Learning 2.0 to go back to that module as a refresher and for staff who have not done the course to do that module. There are many ways that we can use this program in Victorian public libraries in the future.

#18 Google documents again

I have been exploring this tool a bit further. Previously I tried uploading a word document, and then publishing it on my blog. This worked well and seemed not to lose formatting. I have just played around with creating a presentation. The software is very clunky and I also discovered that you can't upload the presentation document to a blog. I also experimented with uploading a biggish excel file on Collingwood Hotels. This seemed to work fine. Again, the Google spreadsheet does not have an option for loading to blog.

Continuing to play around with this has been of use to me in terms of discovering a practical and immediate use for this. I am working with a team of people from the Collingwoood Historical Society to update material about Collingwood hotels. I have the master excel spreadsheet of information on my desktop. Now I have it also on Google documents and will be able to invite the others to add their comments there directly. I notice there is also a chat facility. So my next step will be to invite the other team members to make their additions to the spreadsheet on Google documents. I am not sure how that will display, ie will we know who has made what changes? I presume that won't be like track changes, but will appear in the list of versions which seems to track even the most minute change. The first trick will be to make sure that the people I invite to share don't dismiss my invitation for spam. This happened recently with a new blog I set up! They just don't know me as Polyxena.

#18 Web-based applications: they're not just for desktops

I've had very mixed results with this topic. I can see that the concept of taking emails to the document, rather than attaching the document to multiple emails is a great concept. At work we manage this for shared documents by putting them on a common drive and all doing our commenting and editing there. But it would be very useful for moving things between work and home and vice versa and for material that needs looking at by people who are all in sorts of different places.

Ever obedient to my instructions ;>), I first went to explore Zoho and was excited by the prospect of a site where I could write, use a spreadsheet, notebook, database, planners, create a wiki, do mail etc. But that's where my excitement stopped. I tried to sign up and crashed Firefox three times attempting this. At that point I gave up and moved on to #19 which explores the Web 2.0 awards. I was interested there to note that in the Organize category they gave Google the first prize and Zoho the second. Why not try the best as the second-best didn't want me?

Using Google was completely simple from a sign in point of view as I, of course, have a Google account and it just welcomed me and identified me. Google documents allows one to create or upload documents, spreadsheets and presentations, others can be invited to join in either to read or write, and publishing is possible to your blog or to a url. I was particularly interested in uploading, so I uploaded a word document from my desktop. That seemed to work very well and to keep all the formatting. Then I successfully uploaded the document to my blog, and also to a website. These both seemed to work very well. I have since deleted that post as a long document on Foy & Gibson was not likely to be of interest to most who would be reading this blog ;>). I'll do some shorter ones when I finish this post. Experimenting with the presentation part was more problematic. I tried uploading several Powerpoint presentations from my desktop and none of them seemed to work very well.

So, my reflections on this topic are that it is a great concept and could be very useful. However, it does not seem to be working perfectly for me at this point, and maybe Google documents need developing more. It might work better with documents created internally as almost inevitably something is going to happen to formatting etc if you are transferring them. Zoho, I can't comment on except to say @#$%.