I bid you adieu!

finally completed all the web2.0 learning activities!!! yay for me!!

thanks to all of you who took the time to read my blog, i know towards the end (like now), i've gotten really slack with grammar and not doing proper capital letters and stuff, but you can forgive me, it is after all the internet where the wild roams. ha!

that's all fro moi. aideu! :D

Ebooks

google has that free online book thing, what is it called again? google scholar? google books? well its google something and I've read some reference books on there doing research and the university library has electronic resources aka ebooks that i've accessed before. so i know ebooks are basically just books without spine, without pages, without physical presence, just some virtual text you read out of your browser, on your computer screen. no fun at all.

but still i've got to say, its really handy for research. i mean you can search key words in there and it'll lead you to the page with what you're looking for and you can skip pages by just typing the page number. i went to project gutenberg (what does gutenberg means anyway?). i looked for Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal (Flowers of Evil) and 'lo and behold! they have it! pretty cool hunh? I can read it at home now, but still i'd prefer to have an actual aged copy of baudelaire's work in my hands than reading one on the screen.

An illustration associated with fleurs du mal. i recommend you to read it if you get the time to. why? i'm not going to say well Les Fleurs du Mal is such a dark and erotic collection of poems that explores human's deep dark subconscious. just read it coz baudelaire wrote it. haha


Image credit: Wikipedia

Podcasts

I've heard of podcasts, knew that they were kind of recorded audios or videos by people and can be about pretty much anything. i just never bothered to check them out.. (i'm obviously not the go-get-them type of person)

So after having read the techtutorial on podcasts, i went to iTunes to check them out, good thing i already have iTunes installed, i absolutely loathe (i say that with passion) installing new software on my computer. i have this paranoia that one of these days, one too many unnecessary software will bring about the unfortunate demise of my increasingly obsolete computer (its running on windows XP, pentium whatever-edition-they-were-up-to, so not too bad. but still you never know what could happen.)

there i go off the tracks again. back to the topic at hand. I downloaded a flight of the conchords podcast (they were right on the podcast page on iTunes, i had to click on it), it pretty cool, all these extra bhs stuff that i could watch. only thing i didn't like was the it took a while to download the podcasts, but oh well at least they're free.

here's a screen shot of how it looked:

















(i couldn't resist drawin on the pic like Perez Hilton does.. its fun)

Youtube

oh boy, i've been waiting for this. the 9 weeks of (ok, more like 20 weeks for me) web2.0 exercise building up to this.... YOUTUBE!! lol just kidding. but i do have a obsession (healthy one, i assure you) with youtube, mainly just that i spend too much time on there. Anyways continuing in the the veins of exploring web2.0 technology, let me present to you, a vid about Facebook, another web2.0 technology that we've explored.




Hilarious, isn't it? loved the "poke!" part. right, time for picture of the week again! (ok, more like picture of the month, but you get the idea.)
























I chose this picture coz I just love Iekeliene's expression (the girl on the right) in this ad campaign for sonia rykiel, fw08/09. her eyes are all glazed over, her visage's got that vacant look, there's snow flying around her and irina, her hair's all dolled up and pretty.. it just looks totally amazing, to me even though you can say she looks a bit out of it. haha.

WEB 2.0 tools

Hey, good to be back after... hmm.. i actually can't remember how long its been since i've done a post. Anyways, good to say that my exams are all over, only 3 this semester, thank goodness. All of them were kinda hard.. maths108 was a SOB (ok, not really i'm just complaining coz i was slow, ran out of time and didn't get to finish),

marketing201 was WTF, as in our new lecturer of the course wrote a completely off the wall exam, as opposed to just following what our old lecturer have been doing for the past few years. (he asked why causal statements are better conceptualized logically rather than proven statistically.. what?! we weren't even given any calculation questions and this was basically a stats course. i know, he's so gonna get sh*t for it).

French was the better out of the three, even though still hard, as to be expected from Kevin, our french lecturer. but since he's such a nice guy, he wrote in a little encouraging comment in the exam to keep us going.

Ok, enough of my ranting on exams, back to my journey traversing through the web2.0 technology. i'm suppose to be exploring some of the web2.0 technology listed on the Web2.0 Awards. I've decided to check out craighslist, an online classified website. You can advertise anything on there (and by anything, i mean absolutely anything), in different locations, america, europe and asia.

Here's just one of the more random (for the lack of a better adjective) ads that I've come across on craigslist.

best of craigslist > SF bay area > Nemesis required

Nemesis required

---

Date: 2008-05-07, 2:49PM PDT

I've been trying to think of ways to spice up my life. I'm 35 years old, happily married with two kids and I have a good job in insurance.

But somethings missing. I feel like I'm old before my time. I need to inject some excitement into my daily routine through my arm before its too late. I need a challenge, something to get the adrenaline pumping again.

An addiction would be nice, but, in short, I need a nemesis.

I'm willing to pay $350 up front for your services as an arch enemy over the next six months. Nothing crazy. Steal my parking space, knock my coffee over, trip me when I'm running to catch the BART and occasionally whisper in my ear, "Ahha, we meet again." That kind of thing.

Just keep me on my toes. Complacency will be the death of me. You need to have an evil streak and be blessed with innate guile and cunning. You should also be adept at inconspicuous pursuit. Evil laugh preferred.

Send me a photo and a brief explanation why you would be a good nemesis.

British accent preferred.

• Compensation: $350 up front

Seriously, I swear there are people out there with too much time on their hands... (as in too much time spent on writing up hilarious craigslist ads. Nobody in their right mind would advertise for an nemesis to spice up their life right? right??)

Online Productivity Tools

I've come across Google Doc before, for some work at university so I know how to work it. Basically you just sign up for a Google email account and its pretty straight forward from there.

These editors are really good for file sharing and editing, you know, so after several rounds of editing between colleagues, there aren't 100s of different copies lying around.

Here's a screen print of what it looks like. You can do word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and databases with Google Doc. Quite convenient hunh? No wonder there are talks of the desktop being eliminated by the the browser.. everything you need is on the internet!

WEEK 7

This week's about social networking, think Facebook, Myspace and Bebo. Even though I consider myself slight anti-social, I actually have accounts for all three of those sites. Ha, just shows even I can't escape common trends of youngsters of today.

I added the the Auckland City Libraries bebo account as a friend (2 days later they accepted. Whoo i've got one more friend! lol what an accomplishment) and went onto Myspace to check out Maroon 5, one of my favourite bands.

I just visited the Hennepin County Library Facebook. I loved how they put the catalogue search on their page, what a good idea. But um since Facebook changed their layout, i find it really confusing navigating the pages.. don't you think that everything just looks so sparse? No more random bumper stickers, super wall posts or anything, just the basics. I miss the old layout..

Time for Picture of the week again!

























Image Credit: Flight of the Conchords Tribe

Flight of the Conchords' this awesome kiwi comedy duo/band that's making a name for themselves in the States. Check out their HBO series of the same name. It's hilarious! Here's a little scene from the series.

Mugger: What is this? Why does this phone have a camera glued to it?
Bret: It's a camera phone. Jemaine wanted one for his birthday.
Mugger: (To other mugger) Look at this. (To Bret) Oh yeah? Where'd you get it?
Bret: I made it. It's homemade.
Mugger: Yeah, it's a piece of shit.
Bret: Well, how come Jemaine likes it so much?
Jemaine: You can have it.