Blackbird Pie vs. Election

why exit polls are shitey http://bit.ly/9SSWPi #ge2010less than a minute ago via TweetDeckben goldacre
bengoldacre

Totally agree with the speculative nature of exit polls. My problem here is that silly Blackbird Pie doesn’t seem to display this tweet properly! Even though my wordpress blog cannot possibly be any more complicated than @robinsloan’s.

Anyway, happy Election day and keep tweeting

2010: Year of working socially?

Hello-sorry for the hiatus. Too much to do to devote the proper care and nurturing of this young blog. I just filled in my renewal form for my Cilip membership. As we know, the fee has gone up to 184 pounds and I have mixed feelings about this. If you look at the extras, the avenues for getting involved, gaining skills, being more fulfilled, meeting like-minded folks, etc, you will certainly get value for money. I am looking forward to the Big Conversation that we keep hearing about by email. I am hoping that some of discussion leads to further developments in social media use in Cilip HQ. Charities are tweeting, doctors are blogging, surely we should be at the front of the pack?

I recently tweeted my dismay at Camden Libraries not being linked in to WorldCat. Having been on WorldCat recently, I was very impressed with the coming together of reviews, tagging, a personalised area-it is neck in neck with Amazon (and does indeed link to booksellers).

I bought an iPhone a few weeks ago and I’ve been vastly enjoying it. Especially after three and a half years with a very basic (but reliable!) Nokia. I don’t mind falling behind again as the ‘iPad’, Apple’s new tablet, was launched today. Some are tweeting the death of the ebook already.  Anyway, I finally understand what people say about the great scope for usefulness of apps but the daft purposes for most. The amount of pointless duplication in the App store bruises the eye. I do like TweetDeck, eBay (very dangerous), and AroundMe. More practical apps, please!

Mr. Tweet…that name again is Mr. Tweet

Thanks to a recent tweet by @Laikas, I am now aware of a recommendations engine by the name of Mr. Tweet. Upon finding an interesting, knowledgeable or diverting person on Twitter, it allows you to recommend him or her by tweeting with the hashtag #MrTweet or use the text box on Mr. Tweet’s website.

Mr. Tweet purports to work by adding value to the recommendee as well as the one who recommends as the #MrTweet hashtag is followed by those looking for recommendations. A Firefox experimental add-on called Mr Tweet 1.1 allows you to see a user’s Mr Tweet stats, such as how often a user tweets and who they like interacting with.

Perhaps in the near future we will be asking our HR departments and colleagues for recommendations in this style?  I wonder if Mr. Tweet’s opposite is in use yet-the dreaded ‘Mr Pariah’ that draws a red X against the name of any unsavory or lacklustre Twit.

Diigo for highlighting and annotating webpages

I want to call this ‘dingo’, the Australian answer to the fox, except a bit more doglike. Diigo lets you highlight, sticky-note, tag and of course bookmark webpages. I imported bookmarks from FireFox. It encompasses websites that I’ve given a thumbs-up in StumbleUpon (as well as ‘regular’ bookmarks), including ‘StumbleUpon’ and whatever tags were applied in SU as tags. You can add more tags.

I’ve only used this for a bit and I am finding it fun. They seem to have thought of a lot of eventualities. Naturally Diigo has the social aspect of sharing bookmarks, but I am happy not to share at this stage.  Perhaps if I had friends who were collaborating, but honestly, the random folk of Diigo can do their own work for now. Mashable highlights Diigo and other enticing ‘back to school’ web apps.

New blog for all things not health

The Health Informaticist still rocks my world, but I felt that some of my stuff was definitely not healthy, and I need a place to spew it. I am fascinated by social technology, libraries, psychology, evaluation and suchlike and feel they would work better here. I hope this is the start of something fun and interesting!