Task 23. Reflections...

I am really glad that I started on this and thank Helene Blowers who set it up and Lynnette and Denise who found it and organised it for us. I started off feeling very negative as it has seemed to me that so much stuff posted in blogs and You Tube etc is garbage.
However I have been forced to learn so much that is really useful.
For me my Yahoo photo account will be wonderful and I can see the point of Library Thing.
What I really intend to do now is start a wiki probably calling it "Glenlyon growing native plants" There are lots of people in our area all trying to re-establish native vegetation and we could all learn from each other. If I set one up with a list of indigenous plants and a page on my experiences over 20 years, and put a note about it in the local newletter I am sure others will contribute and make corrections.
If I do an interesting overseas trip I think a public blog would be the way to go. You could give all your friends the address and just add new posts as you had a spare minute, and upload photos as you had the time.
I feel much more confident now about all these new things happening on the web, and yes, if there was another course I would do it!

Task 7. Yahoo photos

I have investigated Yahoo photos for this task. I have not yet bothered to get into digital photography as I am not very interested in photography. However I have decided to get a digital camera in Japan in March. I have been sent plenty of photos as email attachments to my Yahoo email account so I sent some through to my Yahoo photo account and have set up two albums. I also practised with rotating, naming and moving around photos in "Our family" and chose the covers for both albums. So I am ready to start using a digital camera and will certainly keep this account going.
The link is
http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cmgbellair/my_photos

Both albums are public so anyone can look at them

Task 22. Downloading books

I had a look at Overdrive audiobooks. The ones available are certainly very limited. I chose "At Bertram's Hotel" which is an ebook to read by Agatha Christie and downloaded it onto my computer. I chose that partly because I like Agatha Christie and partly because it seemed easier to download something that runs on Adobe reader. In fact I had to update my version from 5.0 to 6.0 but I don't wish to lisen to audiobooks on my computer and I didn't especially want to download the software. I can see that if you had an MP3 player it would be good to download books and music to listen to while driving, but all the different software systems you need to download first to listen to items in diferent formats are a nuisance.

Task 21. Podcasts

I have investigated podcasts and had a look at some. I have downloaded one onto my bloglines account. It is called Grist environmental news. Myself I am not very fond of listening to radio, but I can see you could listen to an interesting talk as you drive.
You can see my choice at my bloglines account
http://www.bloglines.com/public/cbellair

Task 20. A Quick Tour of the Gail Borden Public Library.

Seems well resourced- a drive-in library!! I did it! I posted a video on my blog!. Mind you I didn't find much useful stuff on public libraries but I suppose we can be amazed at all the features American public libraries have and we might get some ideas.

Task 19. Web Tools

I had a look at the awards and chose to do a new customised home page with Google. It is great. I have got BBC world news and Economist news and my Yahoo email along the top.
Underneath I have got To do, Calendar, Weather australia and Wikipedia.
Below them I have currency converter and a Google map centred on Daylesford.
My only criticism is that the calendar is American with the months and days back to front!
I might change the home page around a bit but I am certainly sticking with it.

Task 18. web based applications

I have created a document in Zoho and saved it , but when I click on "publish" in Zoho and then click on "publish in blog" nothing happens so I cannot transfer it across. I will try again tomorrow.
Zoho seems like word to use and I have emailed my document both inline and as an attachment, but I feel frustrated not being able to publish the recipe that is my document.