WEEK 6 - THERE'S A 'WORM' IN MY GOLDEN 'DEL.ICIO.US'

Welcome back bloggers! This week's exciting challenge was to look at tagging with Del.icio.us and Technorati and to 'crystal gaze' into the Library 2.0 meme. But, before we go there, just a couple of little housekeeping matters. You'll notice some widgets are taking over my blog, what can I say, I read an article on blogging and it said to keep things interesting (just like a real relationship really), so keep an eye out, things have a habit of changing. Have a play with "must have" cyber pet Johnny (thanks kids), you can feed him strawberries and he jumps and spins when you click on him (don't ask why!) and please don't go until you've waisted more valuable work time on a game of PacMan at the bottom of this blog. Now down to business.

Delicious Del.icio.us. I mean, come on guys, WHAT'S WITH THE NAME! I would have loved to been a fly on that focus group wall. Just imagine as one 'techno' asks "and what do you think we should call our fantastic new social bookmarking tool that allows "people" not "computers" to classify (tag) information according to their own meaningful labels?". "Ah" one of them replies "why don't we call it Delicious?". "Yeah, that makes sense, and, just to further confuse them, why don't we stick some random punctuation in the word too!" Duh! And you wonder why there's e-bombs!. Anyway, I joined up, got the icons on my toolbar and got real busy 'mis-tagging' material according to their philosophy. The only thing is, I wasn't the only one doing this and there within lies the problem. A simple search of comedy on their site brought up some guy dressed head to toe in pink lycra bound to a bed and the mention of sex toys. That's what happens when you involve "people"!

Not content with just keeping tagging to oneself, one bright spark developed a system for 'web crawling' through the 'tagged' thoughts of the over 50 million (mostly criminally insane) bloggers and called it Technorati. What can I say, he must have got bored at the laundrette one day. Podcast lady would have you believe there's meaning behind this name but I can assure you it's a brand of tumble dryer (quality European appliance - available in a stainless steel or titanium finish). So, basically, if you're looking for everyone in the planet's thoughts (and a few off the planet as well) just go into Technorati and they'll search the blogosphere for you. It's best use is for tagging within your own long boring blogs so the reader hasn't committed suicide by the time you get to the point. So within this blog, for example, I could tag "e-bombs", "murder", "a" and "the" (last two for the not so bright).

Now to Library 2.0 meme. There is so much I could say on this subject (like what's a meme?) but I really have to limit myself. Although I had only to read the one person's view on where we're heading, the sadist within me read all five (what can I say, not too bright, I just had to confirm five times that I'm out of a job!) 'Cause, let's face it, it's going to take more than a serious calorie controlled diet to fit me into the hard drive to fill the position of "virtual librarian". But I get that "the times are a changing" and I'm sure I'll rise to the occasion like I always have. After all I've learned to pump my own gas (still not too good with LPG), I'm a whizz at telephone banking (don't trust the internet) and I truly enjoy Centrelink's voice recognition technology although it truly doesn't enjoy me. But one thing remains constant in this 'self-service', 'fast-paced', 'talk to the computer 'cause the face ain't listening' culture - frustration - and the search for the ubiquitous "person". Perhaps there will still be a role for me after all.

Well I'll stop boring you with my blog and BLOG OFF. Until next time fellow bloggers. Hope the Easter Bunny's blogging good to you. Which gets me to thinking, does the Easter Bunny have a blog? I'm gone.