Library Thing the Sixth: Mashn

Much frustration involved in attempting this part. The only one I could get to work was the colour picker, which admittedly was a fun toy (and useful for them as are into proper design principles, I'm sure).

Montagr seems to be the most irritating device of all time - honestly who writes a piece of software then doesn't describe how to use it? I know that minimalist/'clean' interfaces are the way to go these days, but only if what it's styled around is so brainlessly easy to work first go that people like me (with minimal attention span) won't get frustrated and leave after the first three goes. I've been back a couple of times but I still havn't worked it out. I presume one needs to load a tag to source the 'pixel's of the montage, then load an image to apply the pixels to? All I can get is either the one image I specify, or the first image in the tag list to show.
An example of poor user interface design? I think so. Which is a shame, it would be great to be able to make these things (though I don't know when I would). Maybe I'll check out one of the other ones.

The Mappr wouldn't even load, so had a wee bit of difficulty trying that one out.

The colour picker was pretty fun, I just wish I had one back in the day, when I was designing my first pages *reminisce* not that the colour schemes dreamed up by an angsty teen during the height of grunge would be particularly original, but you never know.

The issues with Mappr and Montagr both raise the issue of technical barriers to 2.0 interfaces, those of site useability. It is of little use attempting to use an app that doesn't explain itself to those who don't understand; or that you can't actually get into in the first place however fancy it is. I found this to a lesser extent with FaceBook, the amount of time it takes to sign in to, and load the pages of can be rather annoying if all you want to do is perform a quick change.

Fifth library whatsit FLICKRn on

Finally a pic on my blog from Flickr. I couldn't find an easy static link to the image; I eventually had to go through image properties to find a link that would upload from the Flickr website using Bloggers url upload tool. I could've saved the image to my pc, then uploaded that way, but it's more convenient to do it straight from Flickr's site (or so I thought). I guess not having a static link allows Flickr to stop bandwidth thievery.

Having keywords/labels/tags is a great thing; instead of a generic search engine spider crawling creepily through a page looking for keywords to index (how does it know what's relevant? And as many many old skool web pages showed, such bots can easily be spoofed), and Googles strategy (unless it's changed since I last heard about it, which it likely has) of ranking results based on the number of sites linking to the page doesn't give people a way to specify what they think their site/post etc is actually about (dredging back to the proto-internet for an example, I have heard of one website that was such an excellent example of bad design that the vast majority of links to it were of a 'what not to do' nature; the actual site I believe was about cooking... wish I could find the address).

Another site I have heard of but hadn't explored is Photobucket; powered by Google rather than Yahoo. Picasa came as a surprise - logging into there showed some pics that I uploaded to another blog I started from the same gmail account : / as it's part of the Google empire it makes sense to run off the same user space as gmail/blogger.

I must say that all the mobile phone (posting and browsing etc from mobile and such - that goes for face book etc as well) options make me jealous. I think I need both a new phone and a perhaps a new country (some options only work with certain - American - mobile carriers, it appears). But any phone that comes with a web browser will do... and a phone account with free data options...

Fourth Library Thing - Wait, what happened to 2 and 3?

Oh, apparently they were the creating & registering a blog ones, I see.

Anyway I already have a FaceBook account (as does most of the department) so I have already experienced the... joys... of being Booked. I tend to find it a tad busy - too many things happening that I can't be bothered immersing myself into, so I essentially end up just responding to other peoples requests : ) Also attempting to work out how to find people, what a network is, what a group is, finding a specific group and such is a fairly steep learning curve (well it was for me...). Easiest thing to do is to find someone who already has an account to send you a friend request then you can piggy-back off their account (although, that may be where my confusion lies - because I didn't really spend much time trying to work out how to do stuff I don't know how to do it. Hmm fancy that).

Bebo I like better than FaceBook - the interface seems cleaner and easier to navigate (although I don't have an account so don't know about that side of things). It does seem like a pretty good place to find interesting movie clips and such - although it is a tad dodgy having a movie of a tied up woman entitled 'Dream Lover' on the homepage : / Wonder if they have any WoW clips...
I like the time limited auto-login option - log in automagically but stop remembering me after two weeks is a good idea, especially when with all things faddy after a couple of weeks one tends to have found a new toy to play with.

And now for the dreaded MySpace *shudder* looking at the main page it looks slightly more comprehensible than FaceBook. I'm a little sceptical about the default search including relationship options : / Or perhaps I'm missing the point and MySpace is actually a dating site?

I've discussed with people, who tell me that the fields I'm seeing as being about dating are optional (so people don't actually have to fill them in) - as are the search options as well. I just feel that if the site is about making friends and being sociable, dating is only a part, rather than the first thing that you search for. Perhaps this is part of a bigger social discussion around the point of being sociable, dating habits/mores (it seems that when trying to find people on here the search strategy asks 'who would I like to date' which I guess is as good a basis for finding compatable people as any - but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't date most of my friends).

Maybe I'm just confused and read too much into it : / But I am a moral philosopher, so it is my calling...

Second attmept at First Library Thing

So this is my (latest) contribution to the blogosphere... I have set up a few blogs before but they are all horrifyingly naive and personal and hence will not be referenced here. Good luck trying to find them, they are dispersed in random locations across the world. Which is the point of the internet, really.

What I'm finding useful is the post-by-email function... so instead of going through all the palaver of logging in to blogger such forth, one merely needs to check their email and dash of a quick post. Most convenient.

I must say the inducement of an mp3 player is most incentivising. Which is a word, inspite all grammar rules to the contrary.

Post and be damned

Yeah so it's another glorious day in the world, apparently.

The globe still round (well, actually more squashed spherical, but to all intents and purposes we shall disregard that fact) and the sky is still, against all expectation, blue.

Lets see how long this blog will last