iGoogle therfore iAm

I have set my gadgets as time, world clock, book of the day and a to do list. I'm supposed to be able to share the gadgets but I don't think it's working here.

Google Books

Looked for my favourite book and discovered I could search within the book for favourite passages. I could link out to online bookstores to buy the book. If I don’t want to purchase I looked for what libraries in my area had it. Firstly putting in my postcode and discovered other libraries which held it. As much as I’d like to be in London this weekend, I don’t think the British Library would loan it to me.

I Love Google Maps

My journey starts at my in-laws house on the NSW coast and I travel all the way down to the coast. I take myself to my home town and start at the ubiquitous water tower and travel down to the old port and up the coast.
Here is my office tower.

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and the map.

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This is great, I like the ability to be able to have access to documents where ever I am. This could have saved hubbie from a very bad night when he was working from home. Went to email some important notes but the email crashed and all his hard work ..... In Google docs I created a file for him and have uploaded important files

Facebook

When I think of these social networking sites , I think of my nieces and nephew who use them. Usually it appears they are connecting with friends they see at school. What's the point? I ask myself. Coming from a small town though, they are connecting with friends they don't see alot too. They are introducing their friends to each other who live 70 km's away and 300 km's away. So I can see how the site does connect people instantly where previously it was expensive long distance phone calls or snail mail. They are sharing photos of each other, puting faces to names. I worry about privacy and predtors. Pessimistically I remind them of the dangers (I'm not the only one to) they roll their eyes, looking bored, "we KNOW" they respond. 80 million users of Facebook., I think it's here to stay. Optmistically I can see how using this technology in public libraries bring people with special community interests together. Ning is an excellent site. So this technology is of benefit for special interest groups like Ning users.

RSS Feeds

Don't let the image fool you it's a link to nowhere. After reading the Oprah description, I think I like it best, "Ready for Some Stories". I have had discussions with a colleague on using RSS feeds as an alternative to sending out journal table of content alerts. This could be difficult as our alert service we provide goes to thousands. Also our clients/staff would not have the time, library staff need to be the ones delivering the service. I'm not sure if this makes sense. Well I can see that I have shared a few stories from my local newspaper feeds. Not sure why you seem them twice, I'm blaming google. I have also setup feeds for journal table content alerts from our supplier/vendor.