Prezis, Doodle and Survey Monkey

Overall, I've found that I like prezi very much and will continue to use it in the future.  It's novel to me, as I had not heard of it before I came to City.  I enjoyed playing around with it and experimenting with the different effects you can achieve.  However, I think to really come to grips with it will take me quite a long time, as I didn't find it that intuitive.  I found the tutorials useful and I thought Ned Potter's advice to position your materials sympathetically to avoid motion sickness was particularly wise.  When I watched the first prezi I made (before reading any tutorials), the effect was dizzying and a bit horrible. I haven't included a prezi in this blog post, but will put one up once I have thought of a good topic.

I've also become fond of Doodle.  I have used doodle before as a participant, but I have never created one for an event myself.  I was very pleased with how straightforward it was and I think it is a useful tool that I will continue to use from now on.

 

Sock monkey photo by Rocketeer made available under the CC BY- NC-ND 2.0 licence

Survey Monkey: why is the 'Seriously Blue' theme grey?  Or have I misunderstood?  Apart from this, I liked survey monkey.  I found it fairly intuitive and straightforward to use.  Again, I haven't included a survey on this post, but will do so sometime in the future when everyone least expects it.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is one of those things that I have never liked, but feel as if I have never given a proper chance.  So I signed up to it for 23 things to double check.  I still feel quite sure I don't like it.  I don't really like the way it looks, I don't like the emails it keeps sending me, and I don't like the way I can never remember my password to get into it.  I still think I am being unfair.  I'm sure it can be a very useful tool, but for some reason, it just makes me feel uncomfortable.  I think it is like Library Apocalypse and Librery Bloggery say; it just feels too 'schmoozy'.

With thanks to Aimee Ray for the 'crowded' image under this licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic  (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Twitter

I'm feeling very happy to have this catch up week, as I was starting to fall behind a bit, and still have several cool things to investigate.

I set up my twitter account last week and so far have been pleasantly suprised.  I never really saw the point before, but now I think I'm starting to get it.  I haven't tweeted anything myself yet, but it's interesting to read what other people think about things that are happening in the world.  I've been following a few famous people, and have been suprised by how different some of them seem in twitter land to how they come across in other media.  Some talk more rubbish than I expected them to! But it makes them seem a bit more human, which is good.

Hen by StevenW. Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic  (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Badger

I made the most of last week's task by spending much time looking for a picture of a nice badger on flickr.  This picture was taken by Tatterdemalion!, and I have been able to add it under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence.

I have enjoyed learning about Creative Commons this week, and feel that it can only be a good thing to attempt to protect people's rights over their creative works, while at the same time providing a means for others to use pictures without a lurking fear of being caught infringing copyright.  Many people don't seem to worry about it too much, but it used to worry me so much that I would simply go without using images at all rather than use one I wasn't completely sure was legal. But I wonder what happens if you do get caught?  What would happen if I got caught using someone's image on this blog that they didn't want used?  

Like For Your I.A.s Only, I noticed that lots of people on Flickr were using the most restrictive form of the CC licence, but I didn't think that even this was too restrictive really.  I suppose I might find it annoying if I wanted to use an image for a commercial purpose, but I kind of feel if you are going to do that, its best to use your own images anyway!  I had used flickr before a tiny bit, but will definitely use it a lot more now that I know how to do a search only within Creative Commons licensed content.

A tiny Kindle update (I hope I'm not becoming obssesive): Kindle has behaved pretty well this week and there have been no more tantrums.  I'm currently trying to work out how to download audio books, as there are lots of free ones available on Project Gutenberg.  You can actually get Kindle to read any book out to you (if the book has the right permissions and such), but the voice it uses is very robotic and I find myself listening out for the robot's odd pronunciations and pauses in strange places, rather than listening to the actual content.