23 things: a summary

So, thing 23! It's been an interesting experience, and for the most part a positive one. I've found out more about some web 2.0 tech that I was already using, and discovered some new ones as well. I particularly liked iGoogle and related sites like Google Reader and Google Docs. I like the idea of being able to access all these things through one login, and it's all really straightforward to set up. I've been using Pageflakes as my homepage until now, but iGoogle has more features and seems to be a lot more reliable. I also liked picture editing with Picnik, which could be useful at work and at home, and wikis - we've already made good use of those at work. They're a great way of keeping everyone in the loop when you're working on a project such as reclassification.
I'm still not entirely sold on Twitter. I can see its uses for work, getting short messages to lots of people very quickly, but I can't see myself using it for personal updates - I can never think of anything interesting to say! Delicious is a useful tool, but the layout design could be improved. LinkedIn is useful provided there's a critical mass of people using it regularly, and it does give you an incentive to keep your CV updated.
Overall it's been very illuminating, and I hope I'll be able to make good use of what I've found out over the past few weeks.

Gadgets on iGoogle

Adding a gadget on iGoogle seems to have been more successful - I now have a box on my iGoogle homepage with a list of all my current delicious bookmarks. I think the system for adding gagdets on iGoogle is better designed than Blogger - I find the layout clearer, it's easier to search for things, there's more choice and it works straight away - no need to fiddle about with the settings.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Blogger gadgets

As you can see, I've added the Google newsreel at the top and a Flickr photostream at the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be displaying very well from what I can see but that could be my browser... Still, it's useful to have these things on your blog so they can be accessed easily.

ThinkFree Office

ThinkFree Office has better functionality, more choice of fonts etc. than Google Docs, but I actually found it quite slow and buggy. It could be a problem with my PC or browser settings, but even allowing for that, it took several minutes to load and once it had finally opened a page it was very slow to react when I tried to change fonts or type new text.

Google Docs

Google Docs has quite basic functionality, but that can be an advantage as it's easy to learn how to use it. You can do most of the things you'd do with Word or Open Office, and backing up your documents online is handy and makes it easier to share with others.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is another site that I probably use quite a lot. I don't rely on it for research assignments but it's quite good for short definitions and settling arguments! I updated the Bodleian Law Library page to include a few extra bits of information about changes to our IT services and OULS' change of name to the Bodleian Libraries.