If this doesn't inspire you I don't know what will: Learn by making.

Wowsa. )

oh.. ouch... ajax slammed

The Web and AJAX have many deficiencies, including security holes, and much more needs to be done to iron out these problems, according to a keynote speaker at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose, Calif., on Thursday evening

After taking the audience through a history of computing interfaces beginning with Hollerith cards to time-sharing and finally to the Web, Douglas Crockford, an architect at Yahoo and creator of JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), gave a mostly gloomy presentation on AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) and the Web. His presentation was entitled, "The State of AJAX."

"The sad thing was the Web was a step backward in terms of interactivity [when it debuted]," Crockford said.

more here

----

really, the web was not as interactive, as say, real life? Oh, that is funny! In spite of that silly statement, an interesting article with an overview of most of the major programming languages used in web development (as well as their flaws!). Perhaps, a little jealousy that yahoo wasn't more on top of the web 2.0 trend? I finally gave up on the automigration of my photos from yahoo to flickr, and just did it myself...

migrating to a new user name in blogger.

I started blogging at blogger long before google purchased it. Once google purchased it, users were given the option of continuing to blog the old way, or move on over to the google way. To entice people to move on over to the g way, google offered enhanced blogger with lots more functionality (widgets!!!!!!!! love widgets. thank you ajax. another topic)

When I finally moved to the google way, unfortunately, my user name at blogger migrated as a new gmail/google account. So, although I had a gmail account, I now had a second gmail account just for my blog. Sigh! Initially, everything I read online said there was no way to merge the accounts... never the two shall meet. However, I am a person who if it is related to technology and seems possible... well, I'll find a way. Just about the time I decided that maybe I would just copy & paste all my entries into a new blog and back date as needed (bleech, been there, done that, for a different blog), I discovered the easier way to migrate a user name. Okay, it's still kind of a pain in the ......

Anyhow, I've migrated all of my old blog to here, contentdivergent. ;-)

..and here is how I did it in case that it is remotely helpful. You must do the steps in order and you might also want to test to make sure it does work (just create a new blog...)

• You'll need 2 gmail/google accounts (You already have one with blogger -- we'll call this one blogger-id for clarity; and then you'll either need your alternate gmail account or you need to create a new one. The alternate account is where you are going to migrate your blog. We'll call this one alter-ego for clarity).
• Login to your blogger account using your blogger-id (gmail) account
• Go to your dashboard. Under your blog, click on settings.
• Under settings, click on permissions.
• Add new author. Invite your alter-ego.
• Now, logout of blogger.
• Go to gmail and login as your alter-ego.
• Click on the email for your invitation.
• Follow the links, logging into blogger under your alter-ego.
• Logout of blogger.
• Log back into blogger under blogger-id (gmail) account.
• Now, the most important steps:
• Go to your dashboard. Under the blog you want to migrate, click on settings.
• Under settings, click on permissions.
• Change your alter-ego to admin (clicking on guest changes it to admin).
• When your alter-ego is admin, both users (blogger-id) and alter-ego will display with a link, admin. Now click on the blogger-id and click Remove.
• Scary moment, eh? Okay, logout of blogger.
• Log back into blogger under alter-ego (gmail) account. You should see your blog with only your alter-ego listed.

NOTE:
This worked perfectly for me. I migrated 10 blogs (long story about why so many). Some sites state that you need to remove the original user (blogger-id, in my example) under the new gmail account (alter-ego, in my example). I didn't find that to be true, but it may be due to changes in blogger/google. So please try this on a practice blog, before you do it. ;-D

best of luck, robin

...and a link from the blogger google group:
Google groups

Mini presentation on Web 2.0 technologies

Overview

• What we are doing

  • IM

    • External (Chat Ref)

    • Internal (Serials, Ref)

  • Blogs

  • Del.icio.us

  • The cataloging del.icio.us page has been up for about a month.
  • We have 7 users linked to this page and we will be in a list of libraries using del.icio.us in Library Journal
  • http://del.icio.us/url/db7b6b3059612ca00876d4a393f3747c

  • Wikis

    • External (FAQs)

    • Internal (Reference, Serials Cataloging)

• Looking to the future

  • Higher profile web presence

  • Being where our users are

  • Facebook

  • Comments in blog

  • PennTags – tagging by users in the catalog

  • Example
  • Flickr?
  
  
  
  • Web 3.0/Semantic Web
  
  

A quick intro to social bookmarking

Social bookmarking is an activity performed over a computer network that allows users to save and categorize (see folksonomy) a personal collection of bookmarks and share them with others. Users may also take bookmarks saved by others and add them to their own collection, as well as to subscribe to the lists of others. - a personal knowledge management tool …

The concept of shared online bookmarks dates back to April 1996 with the launch of itList.com. Within the next three years online bookmark services became competitive, with venture-backed companies like Backflip, Blink,Clip2, Hotlinks, Quiver, and others entering the market. Lacking viable models for making money, most of this early generation of social bookmarking companies failed as the dot-com bubble burst.
--- Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_bookmarking, (2007)

The main features of any social bookmarking tool are

• centralized storage and availability of web links (i.e., accessible from most any computer with internet connection)

• the ability to organize web links in some way (tagging, categorizing, bundling, descriptions, etc.)

• ease of use (little or no coding experience needed)

• discovery (e.g., the ability to share, recommend, or discover web links from other users)

A few popular social bookmarking tools include:

CiteULike (http://www.citeulike.org/ ) saves citation details, exports them in a few different formats, and aggregates journal articles. Sometimes called the "del.icio.us for the academic world".

del.icio.us (http://del.icio.us ) is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to save, recommend, and share bookmarks through networks. Users can bundle (categorize) web links as well as assign tags (keywords). Links can be publicly shared or private. A GIL record can be tagged in del.icio.us.

Digg (http://digg.com/) is similar to both del.icio.us and pageflakes in that it is social bookmarking. Digg provides categories as a controlled entry point and allows users to rate articles.

furl (http://furl.net) is a social bookmarking site website that allows users to store searchable copies of websites; additionally users can share their website copies.

PennTags (http://tags.library.upenn.edu /) is social bookmarking for the University of Pennsylvania's catalog. An example of a record tagged in PennTags catalog (a Voyager catalog!)

Pines/Evergreen is anticipating tagging as a Fall 2007 enhancement; OCLC’s Worldcat.org also has social bookmarking on their list of future enhancements.

StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/ ) is a toolbar feature which allows for user recommendations and metadata entry (descriptions, etc.), and random discovery.

..and expanding beyond bookmarking…

Nines (http://www.nines.org/index.html ) uses Collex “a collections and exhibits tool for the remixable web, to aggregate peer-reviewed online scholarship and allow you to collect, annotate, and share it with students and colleagues” and have partnered with libraries such as University of Virginia.

Pageflakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/) is an ajax driven site that allows a user to pull in and share multiple kinds of rss feeds and web sites including del.icio.us links, news sites, blogs, and more. pageflakes is actively developing its service to give users more features and greater functionality without sacrificing ease of use. To see a pageflake pulling in UGA's library content: http://www.pageflakes.com/georgiawebgurl/

Netvibe (http://www.netvibes.com ) is an ajax driven site that allows a user to pull in and share multiple kinds of rss feeds including del.icio.us links, news sites, blogs, and more. netvibes was a little earlier than pageflakes in development.

LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com ) is a organizational service for materials such as personal libraries which provides means to organize, share, and discover resources. LibraryThing has recently developed widgets for use by libraries. Two academic libraries are testing.

SmartTech (http://smartech.gatech.edu /): Georgia Tech’s institutional repository which includes user submitted content.

...and other social networking sites which are offer more expanded services

Academic Libraries using Social Bookmarking:

Griffin Tech
http://del.icio.us/griffintechlibrary/

University of Michigan

http://www.lib.umich.edu/usability/resources.html

University of Tennessee
http://www.lib.utc.edu/interesting-websites.html

University of Georgia Cataloging Department

http://www.libs.uga.edu/catalog/links.html

Savannah Technical College
http://del.icio.us/savannahtech

..and there's even a Library community devoted to academic libraries using web 2.0 technologies:
http://library20.ning.com/group/academiclibariesandlibrary20web20

A few resources about social bookmarking/networking and other web 2.0 tools:

31 things to do with flickr in a library

http://www.webjunction.org/do/DisplayContent?id=17624

The Academic Library 2.0 (a graphic)

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=222280353&size=o

Academic libraries who are blogging (a list)

http://www.blogwithoutalibrary.net/links/index.php?title=Academic_libraries

Chief Thingamabrian [LibraryThing overview]

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6403633.html

Five weeks to a Social Library [resources and courses]

http://www.sociallibraries.com/course/

Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services

http://onlinesocialnetworks.blogspot.com/

Library Thing: Sneak Peek LibraryThing for libraries

http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2007/04/sneak-peek-librarything-for-libraries_09.php

Social Bookmarking Tools 1: General Reviews
D-Lib Magazine, April 2005, Vol. 11 No.4
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/april05/hammond/04hammond.html

Tagging in the Medical Library

http://tunaiskewl.wordpress.com/2007/07/08/tagging-in-the-medical-library/

Why and how to use blogging to promote your library’s services

Infotoday, Nov/Dec 2003, Vol. 17 No. 6

http://www.infotoday.com/MLS/nov03/fichter.shtml

Learn more about social networking tools via video:

The machine is us/ing Us (Very good and very short introduction to what is web 2.0)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

RSS Feeds in Plain English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

Wikis in Plain English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY

Using del.icio.us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1pOsYjCvE8

To the future:

Web 3.0/semantic web

The semantic web is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily.^[1] It derives from W3C director Sir Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange. At its core, the semantic web comprises a philosophy,^[2] a set of design principles,^[3] collaborative working groups, and a variety of enabling technologies.

--Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web

So, if Web2.0 is about collaboration, ease of use (on the user side) then Web 3.0 is about taking information and the efforts of the Web 2.0 collaboration and using technology to extend possibilities.

Semantic web technologies(?)

Freebase (http://www.freebase.org ) is a collaborative site (i.e., social networking) which also uses metadata to assist in organizing content.

Mashups?

A Mashup is a web application which pulls together information using a variety of resources to produce a singular thing (movie, webpage, etc.).

more

Getting started with del.icio.us

http://del.icio.us/help/

delicious page for links in this presentation

http://del.icio.us/webtechnologiespresentation

Image by sirexkat (Kathryn Greene) licensed under creative commons attribution 2.0 (flickr)

Thanks to Melissa Rethlefsen (Learning Resource Center) Mayo Clinic for sharing her list of library del.icio.us links.

tag you're it..

Here are a couple of swell ideas about tagging the library catalog. The first generates tags based upon subject headings from the catalog by using a particular table in the db.

http://www.daveyp.com/blog/index.php/archives/127/

and then there are user contributed tags:
http://tags.library.upenn.edu/

It seems that ajax is the magic.