Thing #12: Panoptifun

One of the things I cover in my tutorials on shopping online is how to go about protecting your privacy, and crucially, your login information, particularly on sites that store financial information such as paypal. Well, so I felt really silly when I got phished on myspace. I received an email notification of a myspace friend request. I've had a few of those before. The notification includes a link you can use to go directly to the add request section of your myspace account. Unless you know for absolute certain the add request is valid, do not ever open that link! I made the mistake of doing it. There were no hints I'd made a mistake because I was taken to what looked like the add request section of my account. Of course those are easy to mirror and where I had arrived in fact was at the dummy page created by the phisher who at that same moment had logged my myspace login and password information. I found that out when a few days later I got a 'whaa?' email from a friend wondering what the heck I was doing typing on their wall, 'check this!' and the 'this' was a link to lonelyhoustonhousewives.com. I got off easy with some mild embarrassment. Lesson: don't use email links to visit sites you're a member of! I notice that facebook (and probably myspace as well) includes exactly this caution in emails sent via facebook that contain URL's.

Technorati

I used the 'blog type' search to find postings from library-related blogs about 23 things. Interesting results. Potentially very useful feature to be able to limit searches by source type.

It's del.ightf.ul, it's del.icio.us, it's del.ecta.ble, it's del.irio.us,

Links can be stored and effectively organized using a web browser. Trouble with storing too many of them on work computers is that server power is required to load them on logging on, and to save them on logging off. Severe server power (and load and save time) when you've got lots of links and folders going. And so I've taken to gathering and organizing new links on my gmail account. I've been happy with this method, but, the playground has spurred me to go back and take a look at Del.icio.us and I'm thinking I'll try using it for a while instead of gmail as my links link. When the library's new web site has launched I can also see some potential in a communal account, or linked individual accounts, for resource guide editors to share links.

Library Thung

I now have a Library Thing account. Thank you thing 9.

Talkin' 'bout my Generator

The image generators I looked at were mildly diverting but gimicky. One of the text generators I examined was quite illuminating.

Marked Tarottory

Finders feeds

I was hoping one of the search tools mentioned in item #7 would prove useful for finding feeds on various topics relevant to Canada and B.C. I tried searches for health, arts and science news using Topix, Syndic8, Technorati and the various blog searching tools. None of them produced really useful results. Topix is American in emphasis, employs an unsophisticated search engine, and is useful only for grouping a limited number of topics by geographic area (it emphasizes, sports, entertainment and politics). Syndic8 seems like a useful enough RSS search tool (it has the handy feature of identifying feeds' national origin using 'flag' icons), but, Canadian content is skeletal. Technorati has a lot of Canadian content (close to 9000 hits for a search on 'Canada' and 'arts') but, like with the other two, the search engine isn't up to much. The blog search tools, including Google's are really haphazard when it comes to discovering subject based blogs of national or local relevance.

The best tool I've discovered for locating Canadian and B.C. sourced feeds remains Google (the search engine, not the blog-finding tool). Using subject terms along with the phrase 'rss feeds' returns excellent results (government feeds, feeds from CBC, G&M, Georgia Straight etc).

RSS

RSS feeds will be (we hope) a useful component of the library's new web site. Editors of the site's 'resource guides' will be able to incorporate subject-specific feeds. Information about different aspects of the library will be available to library users in RSS form. To get an idea of what this might look like, have a look at the RSS subscriptions offered by Hennepin County Library.

Favoured Twit

I had to do some digging through google results and in several mashup directories before I discovered a mashup that didn't seem like a second rate version of an existing application or web site, or, an extra feature of an application I'm unfamiliar with. The mashup that caught my attention was Favrd, a daily Twitter best-of ("based on the number of times an item has been declared a favorite"). It's kind of compelling.

If only it were this easy

Un Delorean estacionado en un Centro Comercial de EEUU
Originally uploaded by Dotpod

Paging Parkgate Playground Pixies

This is Frank, your branch trainer. I am very happy to provide aid and assistance to Parkgaters in navigating NVDPL Playground in exchange for carrots.

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I can do anything I want. And so can you.

--Frank