Post 13 Some of my favourite blogs

This afternoon, Clare crowdsourced potential post topics, having run out of steam (aside here, don't you think 'cloudsourced' would be a good term too??). The suggestion I gave her was the post I had planned to write this evening - some blogs in my reader, under various labels.

Like many, the aggregator I use is Google reader. I did start off with Bloglines, but switched over to Google to simplify things - it was much easier to use one login for everything (good thing, as Bloglines died an untimely death but all of my feeds were in Google by then).

Bear in mind that these are just a few of the blogs that I subscribe to - I literally have hundreds, which is why my feeds constantly seem to be over 1000. These are in no particular order or preference, I am just choosing 3 from each of my labels!

Library related

Librarians Matter, by the ever wonderful Kathryn Greenhill
Libraries Interact - a blog for Australasian libraries
Jenelle

Scrapbooking

Write.Click.Scrapbook - lots of tips and ideas.
Paperclipping.com - love this site. Noell does a paperclipping round table podcast weekly which I bank up and then listen to. There is also one for digital scrapping.
Creating Keepsakes - like the magazine, lots of inspiration here.

Card making

For the love of life - some amazing work here
Daring cardmakers - I so want to make a wobble card
Passionately Artistic - lots of cuttlebug goodness

Peeking into the lives of others

Day to day - also a good craft blog
e - an Aussie living in the US
Attic24 - lovely, lovely stuff. Lots of crochet goodness

Crochet/craft/knitting

Sew ritzy titzy - I SO want to do this challenge - who is up for it??
Creativeyarn
Crochet with Raymond - a cat who crochets?
Hooked on handmade - more on the May challenge

So many more I can share, but think I will call it a night! What are some of your favourite blogs and why?

12 days of Christmas - Post 3 On blogs and keeping up with them

I feel like I am on a roll - 3 posts in 2 days is a pretty big achievement for me at the moment, considering how long it had been previously between posts.

So onto keeping up with all my blogs. I previously used Bloglines to keep up with my blogs, not that I had many that I checked on a regular basis. I eventually decided to switch to Google Reader, mainly for the ease of having one login.

What I like most about reading other people's blogs is the fact that they lead you to more and more blogs, more interesting reading, more things to read that are in my area of interest. Initially I was only adding library related blogs, those that I felt were professionally linked to my career. Over time, blogs related to my hobbies of knitting and scrapbooking were duly added to my reader. Over time, these additions started to spiral out of control! To manage these more efficiently, I added labels to every blog (I guess I catalogued them :) ) and started to cull those I had added on a whim and decided held no interest for me (I weeded them :) ). Any that did not show the full feed in my reader were removed too. I use my reader to save me time and save me blog hopping. If I need to go to a blog to read the entire post, then to me that defeats the purpose of having it in my reader in the first place.

Then came the task of 'keeping' posts that I liked and wanted to refer to later - aaah the beauty of starring an item! Then, of course, the dilemma of TOO MANY starred items! I go through these every now and then and remove stars if I feel a post has outlived its usefulness. It does happen. (Never with @polyxena posts though!)

Using Google Reader has enabled me to check my favourite blogs on a regular basis in a much more efficient and timely manner than previously. This is very good for me, considering how many more blogs I have added to my reader since the 12 days of Christmas challenge started :)

Out of curiosity, how many of you have added my blog to your rss reader?

Blogging workshops - National Youth Week

Well, I think I am just about ready - still some fine tuning details to get through, but the bulk of it is all done. For those of you just joining in, we will be running a series of blogging workshops during National Youth Week, which is from 14 to 22 April 2007. The workshops cover basic blogging, using blogger, and also an introduction to RSS feeds. We will be using Google Reader, mainly because of people's familiarity with the google name. I was hesitant to go down the 'google only' path - there are many others out there, but as I started using blogger and used my gmail account to login, thought it would be easier to keep going down this path. I did think of trialling some other email addresses to sign in, but didn't want to end up with millions of unused blogs everywhere (and hence clutter up cyber space - hate clutter, even on the net!)

Because (at the time), I was unsure if one could start a blog with blogger using a different email account, I then had to think of whether to say persons doing the workshop needed a gmail account or whether we would run participants through that too. Of course, I couldn't assume all had a gmail account, so now that is in the program too. Then we move onto Google Reader....

Another concern was the age. 12 and up? 13 and up?? Went to Google's terms and conditions and they say that anyone signing up has to be 13 years or older, no provision for parents signing for anyone under, so that settled it - anyone signing up has to be at least 13. Maximum age?? Still undecided. Perhaps 16?? They are probably already blog-savvy by then!

I have put together some basic steps on how to get a gmail account, then start a blog using blogger and using Google Reader as an aggregator. I have been told that getting people to understand RSS feeds can be quite a challenge, which surprised me, maybe because it is so logical to me??? time will tell! The idea is that everyone will start a blog (after getting a gmail account of course), put some posts on their blog, then everyone can use Google Reader to get feeds off the other participants’ blogs. It really seems too easy……

Now the biggest challenge- preparing and educating the staff!! The biggest barrier will be the mindset of this being something run by the Children’s Department – always a challenge! Then preparing something so that staff understand what a blog is, what RSS is and what participants will be doing. They need to understand so hopefully they will be more interested, but also so that they can answer any enquiries made and they can tell patrons what is required (ie an email address will have to be created) and what is also involved.

Had a brilliant flyer created by BoneyGirl – really funky, but very streamlined and classy (appeals to my nature of wanting less clutter!). Need to print these out in the coming week and distribute them. The bookstores have agreed that they will pass them on to their customers. Of course, over promotion can be a problem in itself…. We have just undergone a major refurbishment and the public access PCs are now in clusters, so I can really only give the workshop to about 5 participants. I didn’t want to be over ambitious and assume that we would fill 5 sessions (for the week) so have just put something like ‘Starting April 16, call for more details”. If there is more interest, then we can open up another session. Of course I have to remember to advise staff to take a waiting list…..