#50 I'm cooked!

Imcooked (cook it, film, share it) is a web community for sharing recipes. But it isn't just about sharing recipes: you videotape yourself cooking the recipe and share it on the site! It's like Youtube for cooks, they say. There are the usual social networking elements as well as other elements: groups (not too many yet), friends, information on how to make and upload a video, a range of channels (we would call them subject groupings perhaps?) e.g. cakes/pies, desserts, bread.

I did a search for some favourites: taramasalata (no luck), plum sauce (no luck - I'll have to stick with Maggie Beer and Stephanie Alexander), moussaka (no luck) and then pushed my luck with pavlova (not surprisingly, no luck). So as instructed, I clicked the Video tab and explored the Top Favorites. There I found "Cheap and evil guacamole" which I fancied would be good for Tapsister, but I thought "why would one bother?" and she would prefer to shop. Guacamole is readily obtainable in a variety of very good brands (guacamole with lime is to die for). I used to make my tzatziki from scratch, starting out with straining the yoghurt. But I haven't done that for years, i.e. since really good tzatziki has become readily available.

I also saw there was a video of How to clone a Big Mac. ROFL. Why, why, why? Paul McCartney, Sir to you, making mashed potatoes had its amusement value. I was interested that he peels his potatoes with a knife.

Well, what of the site? It's a creative idea and takes the sharing of recipes into the social networking realms of Web 2.0. But is it for me? I love cooking and I love reading recipe books. I love creating recipes and find that Stephanie's bible is so good for reminding one of what goes well with what. I always like the fact that Stephanie is both a trained and experienced librarian and also a local Boroondara (even Hawthorn) author. But do I want to emulate Geraldine Dillon (that's dating me but her programme was really important in stimulating my love of cooking) or Maggie Beer or Jamie? I don't think so. I don't even want to be a new librarian/cook, like Stephanie. I actually don't really even want to watch someone cooking most of these recipes; the site seems very American, ie US, based, and I guess that the type of cooking covered here is not what I am interested in.

And the library application? Well, I didn't find an historical section so I guess it is about knowing that the site exists if library users are interested in this sort of thing.

#19 Web 2.0 awards

This was a fun topic. I was interested to explore all the different categories and was pleased to see that in the course of Learning 2.0 I had explored quite a few of them already. Certainly it gave me lots to go back later and explore. With the Organize category it helped me with my frustration in the previous task with Zoho. For this task, I decided to focus on social networking tools and joined up Facebook.

Like many of the other tools I have explored here, I knew and had talked about Facebook but no action! So I signed up and used it to explore the profiles of various politicians, as I was doing it yesterday between voting and watching the election results. This is a link to my local member, Linday Tanner's Facebook. It was interesting to explore the different categories of "friends" he has, to watch his Youtube, and to see his photographs. I was particularly interested to see that we shared some favourite films and TV, and indeed that Kevin Rudd and I did too. Kevin 07 is also fond of Vivaldi, and has a cat named Jasper, so the Hecuba in me liked that. John Howard seems not to have used this tool in his electioneering, though there are some made up profiles for him.

I am amazed at the number of links to others that are available using Lindsay's Facebook as an example. I could link to see who else was at his address, who else had a Master of Arts, who else had Life of Brian as a favourite film just to give a very few examples. Facebook has lots of potential for developing communities of interest. I made a few additions to my stump of a profile and found that there were a few people on Facebook who had breast cancer as an interest, and others who are interested in family history and/or local history.

For comparison purposes, I also took a look at MySpace and of course checked out the topical, namely Kevin Rudd and his Kevin 07 campaign. Kevin's MySpace site seemed to provide a bit more scope than the Facebook site in terms of customization. You could also search and view the sites without signing up, though you couldn't comment. This was a disadvantage with Facebook.

In terms of my aim to discover tools that are potentially of use for local history at Boroondara, I will have to think about this further. Obviously as individuals need to join personally, I am not sure what the extended use could be. Yes, one could use it to develop communities of interest, say in the history of Hawthorn. But I tried adding "History of Collingwood" to my Facebook profile and ended up with lots of people who were interested in the Collingwood Football Club as well as History. So I think the usefulness of this tool for local history needs a bit of reflection. But it is good that I have finally signed up and now know more hands on stuff about Facebook and MySpace. At the very least, I can now use this information to make an informed decision when next we talk about it in terms of local history at Boroondara.

#15 On Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

This whole question of Library 2.0 is a fascinating one and not one that can easily be covered in one post! I see the two main directions for public libraries as being libraries in a virtual environment and libraries building communities. Both of these converge and have as their key component social networking and user participation. I agree that we certainly need to get away from the "just in case" collection and the "come to us model" of libraries as they are traditionally perceived - except that there are other definitions of what these mean. The 'just in case" collection might be a combination of virtual and physical as may the "come to us" model. I can participate and form social networks at home with my computer, as much as in the library or in a face to face forum. I can come to the library virtually and I can search and find all sorts of "just in case" stuff out there from my computer at home.

But I am not sure that I agree with the issue about getting away from user education. I know this article was talking from an academic library point of view, so maybe it is different there. In public libraries, it is the Web 2.0 tools to say nothing of basic computer skills that people are thronging to the library to learn from us. I am thinking in particular of our hugely popular Computer Savvy Seniors program, a peer based one on one training program in computer skills for older adults, and our computer classes for older Chinese. Both of these are overwhelmingly successful, as has been our Click goes the library series which has been introducing the community to blogs, e-bay and other Web 2.0 tools.

We are atavars for the community and I don't see why we can't continue to be so. We want empowerment of users, we want user input into content creation, we want to participate, we want social networks, but we also want to help the marginalized and the dis-empowered and show them how to do all these things. We are there to help people meet their potential.

#7 Reflections on technology

My aim at the beginning of this program was to learn about Web 2.0 so that I could work out applications for local history. I was particularly interested in it for Boroondara's history but also for other research projects of my own. Doing this course has made me look at tools in a systematic way and finally to sign up to use them interactively rather than just as a passive user. I think that the potential for using local history to foster a sense of place in such virtual social networking environments is amazing and represents a real growth area for public libraries.