RSS Feeds

Today we had a smashing session learning about RSS feeds and as the acronym suggests - it was REALLY SIMPLE, stupid! :)

I have subscribed to websites that cover my many esoteric and interesting interests. What did we do to find out information and share things before the internet was invented. For example I love electrical appliances and grew up thinking I was the only one - but there are thousands of people like me who love electrical appliances on the internet. For those who want to check out the lastest and greatest whitegoods check out (like I did)
http://www.appliancist.com/

Of course sometimes I like to get out of the laundry and explore the great world around me. One country that has always intrigued me and which I would love to visit is Estonia. Estonia is on the Baltic sea between Finland and Russia. It is only a small country but apparently there are many Estonians living in Australia and if you are interested what they are getting up to you can find out on http://www.eesti.org.au/

And speaking of obscure European countries once a year they get to play with the big boys and often win in the annual spectacular Eurovision Song Contest. For 55 years the nations of Europe have united to sing an original song and then vote for their favourite. Of course this years contested has finished but on http://www.eurovision.tv/page/home you can read all about the aftermath and also look forward to next years contest in Germany.

Of course if you are like me and looking for something to go ARRRGGGHHH!!! about, http://notalwaysright.com/ shows you all the dumb things customers say to service people. There are some LOL moments there so maybe discretion needs to be shown when you are at work ;)

What an interesting lesson we had today. Now that I have subscribed to these websites I shall never be short of news on all the things that interest me. Hopefully I will still get some time to spend the libraries budget on new books. Perhaps I should next subscribe to a page on how to effectively manage my time. However we learned how to adjust the settings on Google reader to make sure that the things that interest me are delivered in a timely manner and useless distractions are kept to a minimum. This means I can learn about all the marvellous things that one can do on the interent and still get back to the basics of my job, which is spending the libraries budget on new books, serials and electronic resources.

We are here today because of what came before.

Recently the Telstra commercial has been making me go arrrggghhh!!!

You know the one, some small internet connected contraption and the head of Alexander Graham Bell talking to us from inside some glass dome. Someone at the advertising agency has been taking something because not only is it freaky and frightening to small children, you have no idea who the talking head is supposed to be until he starts discussing how he invented the telephone.

And this gets to the part that irritates me. The talking head of Alexander raves about Telstra's smart phone and how it can do a myriad of amazing things and that the phone he invented was only good as a paperweight.

This irritates me because todays telephones may be able to do amazing things, but we would not have them at all if it was not for the determination, imagination, hard work and research by people such as Alexander Graham Bell for inventing such things as the telephone in the first place. It is all to easy to dismiss stereo systems, televisions, mobile phones from previous generations and nothing more that bizarre curios but not only were they amazing technological revolutions at the time, they were often much better constructed and cost more as a percentage of the weekly income than todays consumer products.

So as we learn about the amazing things we do in this web 2.0 course, lets remember the hard work of people who developed telecommunications and computers to the point that we have the technology at our hands today.

Things that make me go arrrggghhh

Haley Joel Osmont saw dead people in "The sixth sense". I too have a special quality, I see dumb people. Dumb people are everywhere, people who are oblivious and do not look around them to see how they impact on others, people who are wantonly rude and ill mannered and make no attempt to change because "we must accept them as they are". People who do not care about the environment around them or the people that they meet.

They make me go arrrggghhh!!!

Fortunately I am in Web2 training and Lhan Gannon is not dumb.

Thank goodness for small mercies.