Mendeley again

Thanks to Nicki Clarkson for pointing me to this link http://blog.mendeley.com/start-up-life/how-our-name-evolved-from-b-movie-monster-to-mendeley/
so I now know why it's called Mendeley, i.e. based on the names of two scientists:  Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleyev (alternatively spelled Mendeleev), who developed the periodic table of elements, and geneticist Gregor Mendel. I much prefer their original idea of calling it “Literacula” because the creators "imagined how our software would sink its teeth into literature and automatically (supernaturally?) suck the metadata out of it.”

...and in no particualr order, Twitter

I'm now very confused about the 23things, as I got left behind and I didn't do it in order. I now have a strange feeling of deja-vu (apologies for lack of accents, not sure how you include them in a blog) and realise I have already blogged about Twitter. Nothing much has changed, I'm still just a follower and I feel like I'm missing something, but perhaps I should be thankful for small mercies as thsi social media stuff is all quite time consuming.

Facebook

I set up my Facebook account several years ago and look at quite a lot of friends and family's pages. I confess to being a bit of a lurker though., as defined by Wikipedia "a lurker is typically a member of an online community who observes, but does not actively participate" - that would be me then, apart from the occasional post, comment or "like".

Mendeley

I'm one of the Endnote team so know quite a lot about bibliographic software as a result.  I've never felt inclined to try Mendeley, as we don't really encourage our staff and students to use it. The instructions pointing to the Mendeley tutorials saved me a lot of time as they reinforced what I had been told i.e. Mendeley does roughly what Endnote does, but not as well. A great service though for anyone looking for free bibliogragraphic software. Still not sure why it's called Mendeley...

QR Codes

I have a QR Code scanner on my phone. It works, but I hardly ever use it. What will it be like in a year or two's time? Will there be QR Codes everywhere or will it be somthing else?

I can see that they might well be useful on our new Access Discovery system if we adopt them. I think the students will use them. I'm yet to create a QR Code. I don't want all my fun at once!

Did Flickr a few weeks back, but never blogged.

I registered for Flickr but don't really feel the need to post my photos on it. If I want to share my photos with friends I would do it on Facebook or email them. Good to see how it works though!

Linkedin

I'm well behind now and just working through the things I've not looked at yet. I've long know about Linkedin but not felt I need a profile. I decided to follow the advice in the instructrions that you just take a look and decide whether you might use it. I found that to see anybody's full profile you really did have to register fully.
I was quite interested to see that linkedin seem to know about me though and, like Facebook, bombarded me with people I might know. It was interesting, for example I saw an ex music student who came to see me to talk about becoming a librarian, and I could see enough of her profile to see she has worked in two libraries. I was also led to the profile of Donna Flake a librarian in Wilmington, North Carolina who worked in the University Library on an exchange. I searched for Peter Maggs who some may remember worked here in Cataloguing and is now Deputy Librarian at Durham. His profile informed me he worked here 1993-1994. It doesn't seem that long ago...

From the above you can see my main interest in Linkedin is finding out about what has become of people in my past. I've got no real interest in setting up a profile, but would look here if I wanted to find out more about someone's professional interests

Doodle

I'm now a bit behind with the twenty three things, I can see that Doodle might be very useful and I will probably use it if I have to organise a gathering where I want to offer people a choice of time etc.I knew anbout it already as I've been on the receiving end of a few doodles.

I've also set up a Twitter account and have done a bit of following, but I've yet to tweet, and may never...who knows? Twitter didn't really grab me I'm afraid.I have at least discovered that it's not really something you can just dip into. You probably need to get into it properly to appreciate what it offers.

Netvibes and RSS Feeds

I have now got to grips with Netvibes and RSS feeds. I'm not sure how much I will use Netvibes as a "personal dashboard". Most things seem to be easier to get to in other ways. I did experiment with it about two years ago and have not touched it since. As it's  working on my mobile I will probably use it a bit more, as I can look at the RSS feeds etc on the way to work.

Blogging

Well I'm pleased I managed to get here through the snow to learn about blogging. Ric's session was very helpful despite the fact he had to deliver the whole of a shared session on his own, poor chap.

My attitude towards 23 things is that it's a good chance to try new things, but I don't want it to take up too much time. For example, I didn't spend too much time choosing a clever name, as you can see! Just to clarify, I had to spell blog with two gs as some other Nick somewhere had stolen my web address!
 I'm going to concentrate my efforts on the "things" I might actually use at work and personally. Good to know about all the rest too, of course.

As far as blogging goes, for the time being, I'm going to keep it simple!  So no prizes for me!

Me and the Northern Lights last February.