8/28/2006

What is Pandora?

Pandora
is a music discovery service designed to help you find and enjoy music that you'll love. It's powered by the Music Genome Project, the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Just tell it one of your favorite songs or artists and it will launch a streaming station of music in a similar vein.

You can vote for songs that you like or dislike, bookmark songs to hear again any time or buy them from iTunes or Amazon.com with just a few clicks. Great to use as background music any time or create playlists (from your bookmarked songs) for parties.

8/25/2006

Honey, honey

Our dear friend, David, visited us at home last Sunday bearing gifts of pure Jarrah honey and honey and sandalwood. He's a firm believer in alternative medicines and had read a newspaper article proclaiming the benefits of honey as an antibiotic - particularly against Staphylococcus aureus. It sounded ludicrous but he advised Tim to rub it on his feet and let it soak in to let the benefits permeate his whote system. Feeling a bit of a nana Tim followed his instructions that evening and covered his feet with plastic supermarket bags to keep the stickiness off the furniture while he watched TV.

Next day he was on his feet all day presenting an OH&S training course. This usually leaves him with very sore ankles (arthritis has affected them, he has collapsed arches and doctors have recommended surgery to correct the problem) and he is almost unable to walk. He walked in the door that night without a stick and proclaimed that he was pain-free! His knee wound was also less angry-looking and puffy. Each evening this week he's followed the same procedure, except for last night. Today he is using his stick again so plans to use the honey treatment every night and see whether he can maintain the improvement to his mobility. He will be in Melbourne training all next week and the following week will be on an oil rig in the Timor Sea.

Intute is a free online service providing you with access to the very best Web resources for education and research. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in their database and write high quality descriptions of the resources. Good directories are hard to find and require a lot of maintenance by their creators. This one shows promise.

Does anyone out there use Moodle? Moodle is a course management system (CMS) - a free, Open Source software package designed using sound pedagogical principles, to help educators create effective online learning communities. Sandy Dailakis was enquiring about it recently and I’d like to know if anyone has experience with it.

The Library 2.0 Reading List from Squidoo has dozens of links to thoughts and ideas for using Web 2.0 in the Library. Web 2.0 is about finding new ways to interact and collaborate on the internet. An example is 5 Suggestions for Upgrading to Library 2.0 (or Some Easy Steps to Get Started...Really) from an article in Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology A Weblog by Michael Stephens

Mary Ellen Bates Search Tip of the Month doesn't necessarily come out every month. The latest edition is for July and August 2006. She always provides insightful comments and it's worth signing up for her newsletter or adding her site to your RSS feeds.

8/21/2006

Surprising Search Patterns
A new study questions the common assumption that search engines control the hierarchy of the Internet.
By Kate Greene in Technology Review

Writely is a web-based service that allows for the creation and sharing of documents in a sophisticated word-processor-like interface. I love the idea of being able to access documents at home that I have started at work (or vice versa). Sign-up is free and once you have logged in you can start a new document or upload one from your computer.

Internet Resources Newsletter has many, many links of interest on a wide variety of subjects. There are far too many to list here but I recommend that you subscribe to it and pick the topics that interest you most.

8/16/2006

After another week off I'm back at work again. This time it was all pleasure. Tom (my son) and his wife, Nessie were on a visit to Perth from Melbourne. This is the first time I've seen them since his accident last year. He has made an amazing recovery through sheer guts and determination but still needs to have half his pelvis replaced. I hate seeing him limping and in obvious pain but it doesn't seem to get him down and his presence in our house was like a breath of fresh air.

My iP0d continues to give me pleasure and I read all I can find about its uses. I can't imagine wanting to watch videos on the tiny screen so I'll probably stick with my 2G Nano - until eye attachments are available enabling large screen viewing. I've come across several mentions of the use of iPods as educational tools but can't imagine that they'd be of much value in a library. See iPod has new role as educational tool from Engadget.

A Wiki symposium - what next? I know that wikis are hot news and I look forward to reading the papers available from WikiSym 2006: Papers and Presentations. Some are already online and others, I hope, will be available after the end of August. I'd love to attend but Denmark (in Europe, not Australia) is rather far away.

Free web-based tools can be very useful - particularly if you don't want to be tied to Microsoft products. ResourceShelf has posted a link to a growing list of Zoho tools including word processing, spreadsheet and presentation tools. The full list is awesome.

A report in one of my favourite RSS fees,
BBC News, relates that Time magazine list the 50 coolest websites. "Many of the websites chosen for 2006 are examples of so-called web 2.0 sites, which give users tools to create and share content online." I've never heard of most and will enjoy investigating them.

My husband Tim now takes his antibiotics orally and his infection site shows marked improvement. Sue Benson, his microbiologist, must be a miracle worker. Not many years ago he wouldn't have survived golden staph. Thank goodness all that is behind us and we can get back to a normal life again.

8/04/2006

Two weeks leave is never enough. I spent the first week running around for my mother to doctors and immigration interviews and the second trying to recharge my batteries.

Tim (my husband) is home though for 2 weeks he had daily intravenous doses of antibiotics administered by a series of charming nurses. The drugs would have cost us over $250 per day - thank goodness for private health insurance. His knee is looking much better. The swelling has gone down and the redness receded and he manages to get around quite well - sometimes even without crutches.

Because of the treatment we couldn't go away on a much needed holiday but were able to take a break of one night at a lovely B&B in the Perth Hills, Falls Retreat, run by our friends Jenette and Peter. We spent the night in a delightful self-contained suite that was snug and warm despite the winter temperatures and rain outside. Peter cooked dinner - a simply delicious curry made with fresh, authentic ingredients, not just the bottled curry sauces that we usually use - and they treated us to a slap-up breakfast served in the suite next morning, as they do with all their paying guests. Thanks guys, we had a great time.

On my return to the library I found an email from Ralph Mattner, librarian at Swan TAFE, advising me about Swan's Community Services Blog http://swantafecs.blogspot.com/. He also pointed me to these two sites http://jokay.wikispaces.com and http://jstuffed.blogspot.com , great for anyone interested in the Learning Community.

ResourceShelf this week contains links to searchable databases from some of the major art museums around the world at http://digbig.com/4mfck.