Award winning Web 2.0 website: Zillow.com

Zillow.com is an interesting real estate website. I looked up my neighborhood to see what properties are for sale. I chose a house at 119 Lakeside Drive, Greenbelt, MD. It's a 5 bedroom, 3 bath home built in 1966. It's 1,676 square feet, vinyl siding with a finished basement. It's selling for $455,000 by owner. The listing lists special features of the home, a written description and a note about what the owners love about the house. There are photos of the house, a zestimate of the value of the house, last year's property tax ($3,693)and stats about number of homes in zipcode area, Greenbelt, Prince George's, MD and United States median house prices and historical value trends in these areas. They also provist a bird's eye view and street map of other homes in the area with their values showing at each location. This information would be helpful for customers who are thinking about putting their homes on the market, people shopping for a new home, people relocating to the area and want to see what's available in a particular neighborhood. Real estate agents, prospective buyers/sellers can post their homes, even FSBO properties. Housing trends and property tax information are also helpful information. Satillite photos of a neighborhood area marked on a street map or photos.

You Tube Experience

I've seen videos from You Tube that my nephews have shown me. They even post some out there to share with others. Today was my first solo trip to You Tube. I created an account. My user name is bookworm20770. I liked the Mental Lapse video called Happy Thanksgiving stop motion video. A man is decorating for Thanksgiving and finds that one of the paper turkeys he wants to display has its head torn off. While he leaves the room to go get some tape, the six paper turkeys come to life. The turkey without its head falls off the countertop and the other five turkeys eat the pumpkin pie left on the counter. When the man returns, he sees the mess and assumes that his poor cat did it! Cute stop motion.



You Tube can be very helpful for librarians and archivists. Some of the postings are serious, showing historical film clips and news clips. By using the search function, interesting things can be found. There's also a lot of silly and disgusting entries too. Like anything else, it's a tool that could be helpful for research and information.

zoho writer

It took me a little while to figure out Zoho writer, but once I got the idea, I liked it. It's nice to have access to a word processing program on any computer you link up with. They icons are similar to Word or Word Perfect. I had trouble saving the document and naming it. After a couple of tries, I think it worked. I wrote about going to see A Tuna Christmas with my son and friends last Friday night at the Warner Theater. What a fun play! Jaston Williams and Joe Sears play 22 characters who live in a little town called Tuna Christmas.

I like the tagging feature of the program. Sometimes it's hard to decide where to file something--it belongs in several different places--tagging allows you to create virtual "files" to cross-reference documents and other information without having to remember where you put it.

sandbox wiki

I had an interesting (note frustrating) experience with sandbox wiki. First, when I typed my wiki entry, I didn't know that it had a limited number of characters. When I went to save it, only half of the entry appeared. I thought at first that I didn't save it properly, so I recreated the end of the entry. When it cut off a second time, I realized that my entry had to be shorter. When I shortened it, it worked fine. Then I tried to save it--OK that worked. I had to really struggle to get my url posted. I'm not sure it worked right. I tried several times to get the link icon to work. I assume I was to post my blogspot url as proof that I did it. You can go to the search box and put my name in (JoEllen Sarff) or scrapbooking is my favorite thing. It was fun once (and if) I did it right.

What is a Wiki

Wikis are a collaboratively developed websites. They are easy to use, web-based, use simple syntex, flexible and anyone can make changes to any entry. They are used for a wide variety of things, including conference planning, meetings, project space, restaurant reviews, travel information for groups generated by locals or other travelers and booklists. The possibilities are endless! Libraries can also use them as electronic pathfinders to post local history or community information as well as posting questions and soliciting answers to survey questions about library services and policy. Using Wikis might get people who normally wouldn't come to the library participate in sharing information or respond to questions that the library is gathering. As more people contribute to wikis, the more popular they will become.

Library 2.0

The ideas presented in the various links dealing with Library 2.0 is very exciting. What a great way to look at information--both in books and virtual--not as a commodity to be sold and held but as part of a community available for everyone at any time! We've been moving toward a more sharing society in libraryland with OCLC cataloging and virtual books. Not having to reinvent the wheel every time we have a new book to catalog, we can copy catalog and have our materials out on the shelves much more quickly. With the advent of computers, even a small rural library can have access to the world. Wikis have given people an opportunity to add to an entry additional materials that help extend information and knowledge. The world of Library 2.0 is using these technologies to share information 24/7 outside the walls of the library. Since the public is comfortable with Amazon, Ebay and other sights that are "user friendly" and available anytime and anywhere there's a computer internet connection, the library needs to offer the same kind of service to keep up with technology and the changing lifestyles of our customers. Otherwise we'll be become a dinosaur that no one will use. I agree with the various authors that said this change will happen one library or library system at a time--the success of a few pioneers will lead the way for the reluctant to move forward. Change is difficult but necessary. Change is good!

technorati comments

Technorati is an interesting site. It keeps track of registered blogs worldwide. The number of blogs doubles every 5 months! Today there were 14,928 posts and 806 blogs registered under the name "Learning 2.0". The top favorited blog was called "Boing Boing" that collected cultural curiosities and interesting facts about technology. Among the top searches today were YouTube (no surprise), Malaysia (lots of current events listed--especially political), Angelina Jolie, Heroes and David Caruso. The top blogs were Engadeget and Gizmoda, both tech blogs and Arriana Huffington's Huffington Post was among the most popular. The search for the word Heroes brought up the popular tv series and made note of Hayden Paneterra's comments that if she were a lesbian, she would like to meet Angelina Jolie. There were several other comments about the tv show, but there was an interesting post by someone called "cmdsalamander" who posts military items. He had a posting called "worth a prayer on Sunday" about how two women in Britain demanded that wounded British soldiers who lost limbs in the middle east & who were having physical therapy in a public pool, should be kicked out because it may scare the children! Apparently, war heroes in Britain these days are not treated with respect and gratitude. Too bad...
Technorati blogs can be searched by authority (number of times cited) or by freshness. Everything in the site is linked and can be called up by blogger or key word. Very topical and current.