Now We Know Everything About Everything!

Ok maybe not, but this was a pretty good program.  I've never been too interested in social networks and other web 2.0 stuff, but these exercises pushed me to at least take a look at sites that I wouldn't be investigating otherwise.  The highlights for me were the blogging and Google Reader.

Music...Web 2.0 Style

For this exercise I checked out Last.fm.  The site was pretty good but not perfect.  First the good stuff:

Last.fm seems to have a pretty good selection and lots of information about bands, albums, and even specific songs.  The more obscure you get the less information there is, but there were numerous bands that I was surprised were on the site at all.  Also, this is one of the few sites that seems to be pretty good at guessing what I would be interested in.  For instance, if I type in "Sir Lord Baltimore" the site also shows similar artists such as Leaf Hound, Granicus, and Bang which is not only correct, but is also what I would be interested in listening to if I were already listening to Sir Lord Baltimore. The site is also well designed and easy to use.

Unfortunately, the site is not perfect.  First, the sound quality isn't great.  It sounds like they're using mp3's which always results in poor sound quality, and I'm sure the problem is compounded by these terrible Coby headphones.  Second, the songs aren't always the original version of the song, and I believe are not even always by the original artist, yet they are presented as though that is the version that is actually on the album.  This is inexcusable, and I would be surprised if they haven't had complaints from artists.

Anyway, as for Web 2.0 the site has all of the usual features like, comments, tags, music sharing, etc.  Also like usual I can't say that I'm too interested in that aspect of the site.  I would like the site better if they took out all of the social networking features and instead focused on expanding their selection and replacing the fake versions of songs with the real deal.

Online Productivity: Productive or Just Cost Effective?

For businesses with limited resources and a limited need for complex spreadsheets, documents, etc. something like Google Docs could be very useful.  You get some basic "Office" type programs without having to buy Microsoft Office, and because it is all online you also don't need a network for file sharing.  However, for businesses with more resources or ones that need to create complex documents "online productivity" is probably not the answer...at least not yet.

I mostly tried out the spreadsheet part of Google Docs and I found two glaring problems.  First, it does not convert Excel spreadsheets very well.  It appears that during conversion essentially all formatting is lost, and if you have any charts get ready to redo them.  My charts did not show up at all in Google Docs.

The second problem is that the programs are a little too basic.  For instance, the spreadsheet program does not have any easy way (that I found) of creating heat maps like what is possible in Excel 2007.  Even worse, it seems to be missing some very basic features such as the ability to zoom in and out.

My verdict:  Cost effective, but if you want real productivity stick with Microsoft Office.

Online Book Communities

For this exercise I mostly looked at LibraryThing.  This site looks quite useful for people who have extensive personal libraries and have trouble remembering what they have or keeping their books organized.  I was also impressed with the extensive information that users can get for each book.  The book reviews are useful too I'm sure, but reviews are certainly not unique to this site.

Unfortunately, this is another "Web 2.0" site that does not seem very useful for me personally so I did not create an account.  I do not own an extensive collection of books, nor do I ever have numerous books that I am waiting to read.  Also, while having the ISBN, publisher, etc. is useful for libraries, I do not need to know that information for books that I own.

Like the previous exercise, I would also have to question the way that web 2.0 sites supposedly allow you to find people who have the same interests as you.  On LibraryThing I searched for one of my favorite Beatles books and looked through the libraries of some people who also had that book.  I had a very hard time finding anything else in their libraries that I was interested in.  It looks like if you have an account with LibraryThing you can see other people who have the same books as you.  It is difficult to tell from the screenshot exactly how this works.  This would be useful if it only showed people who had many or all of the same books.  Sharing one book in common is not an indicator of many common interests.  For instance, for me to be particularly interested in someone else's library, it would at least need to include books on astronomy, babies, and classic rock.

(The Site Formerly Known As)Del.icio.us Leaves a Bad Taste in My Mouth

Am I missing something?  Why would I use the site formerly known as del.icio.us (now delicious.com) to find information online instead of just doing a Google search?  Let's do a little comparison.

I want to find the site for National Geographic so that's what I type into Delicious.  I get a bunch of sites dealing with National Geographic, but the main page for the site is nowhere to be found.  Since Delicious is supposed to be all about tags I click on a tag labeled "nationalgeographic", and am greeted with a bunch of seemingly random articles, etc. from National Geographic.  Next, I click on the link to see the bookmarks sorted by popularity.  Surely, the main National Geographic page would be the most popular and would appear first...right?  Well, yes and no.  After looking through the new list, I finally find the main page for National Geographic which is in fact the most popular.  The only problem is that even though I am looking at the "popular bookmarks" they are still not sorted by popularity, so the entry I was looking for was 5th on the list.  Now let's see what happens with Google.

I go to Google, type "National Geographic" into the search box, and the main National Geographic page is the first result.  I click on it and I'm there.

Outside of work I do not see any benefit in looking at other people's bookmarks either.  I clicked on the user that came up first for the National Geographic page, and I see that this person has 3332 tags.  The majority of these tags don't have anything to with my original search or anything that I am interested in.  The bookmark sharing seems to assume too much.  A Delicious user and I both being interested in National Geographic does not mean that we have any other interests in common. The person I have the most in common with is my wife, but even she and I probably wouldn't have any bookmarks the other would want to look at.  The delicious website says that "we can show you the most popular bookmarks being saved right now across many areas of interest".  I do not believe that a social network is better at deciding what I'm interested in than I am.  When I'm online I want to see information that I'm interested in, not necessarily what everyone else thinks is currently interesting in that subject area.

I do see that with only looking at co-workers work related bookmarks, Delicious could be useful in sharing information at work, but I don't see myself using it at home.

On a side note...  Did anyone else find it a bit strange that "vegan" was the #2 tag for JPL?  Who knew that vegan(ism?) was so popular?  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

No Luck With Podcasts

Ah yes, the trials and tribulations of finding a good, up-to-date podcast.  Let me start by saying that I did not use iTunes for this assignment.  Unlike the silhouettes at right, I am not nearly cool enough to own any Apple products.  These silhouettes must also have a lot more money than I do because I can't afford to purchase products based on how cool they will make me look.  I think the last Apple product I used was the Apple IIgs.

Anyway, I began my podcast search on PodcastAlley.com and immediately ran into some problems.  Unsurprisingly I couldn't find any podcasts related to what I do at work (periodicals), so I tried to find some blogs about music or libraries in general.  Unfortunately, every podcast I clicked on ended sometime in 2006 or 2007.

Next I tried the NPR site.  I clicked on "podcast directory by topic" and went to the music section.  There seemed to be a lot of jazz and classical music, but there were also a lot of podcasts where I couldn't tell what they were by their names such as "Ear to the Ground" and "Aspen Hot Wax".  At this point I was guessing that "Ear to the Ground" might be a reference to "When the Music's Over" by The Doors, and that "Aspen Hot Wax" is either in the wrong section or focuses on Barry White songs.  Well, I was wrong and wrong.  First I tried "Ear to the Ground" which I found showcases musicians from New Mexico.  Next, I tried "Aspen Hot Wax" which showed some promise by mentioning the 50's, 60's and 70's, but it all fell apart when the next line read "highlighting artists like Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley...".

Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley?

Ugh.  That's it for me.

Google Reader

I don't have too much to say about this one.  I signed up for Google Reader a while back.  It is easy to set up, easy to use, and it is pretty handy getting all of the usual website updates in one place.  My only complaint is that the presentation is much more boring than the actual websites.