Statement of disclosure: I am employed by the New South Wales Government as a part-time casual TAFE teacher in the New South Wales Department of Education and Training. I offer no opinions on the matters following concerning my employer's business.
This weblog is not a techie blog; heaven knows that there are enough of those (including the rare good one).
But as the WWW moves towards Web 2.0, I thought I'd make occasionally some observations about my experiences and observations of this as this blog progresses.
- The screenshots from "Morris Iemma" on Twitter are reproduced from builder.au
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Lijit indexes your other online material and foregrounds it in results available to searchers. Sort of like a personal recommendation.
The 2 big benefits are:
- The progressive cloud list of search terms that people have used to get to/from this site (and you can see these at the top of the right-hand column in this page)
- The nice map of the world pinpointing the broad locations of visitors to this site (and you can see these at the top of the left-hand column in this page)
You can also see where my own micro database draws its material by clicking on the funny little 3-circles logo at the bottom of the search widget at the top of the right-hand column in this page.
This function is called the "re-search" function (not to be confused with research). Its particularly useful to the casual reader who does not know else what I might have placed (and therefore endorse or show interest in) on the WWW.
The mild drawback to point # 1 above is that sometimes some rather risque search terms land on the page (and this weblog is a family show, folks!).
One innocent-looking search term in particular, when combined with 1 or 2 other terms, produce some rather raunchy results which I have had to squelch via the "Naughty Words Filter" that Lijit provides with this service. (So don't look too hard through the list - the Naughty Words Filter is doing its job in not displaying those search terms. The post itself is quite innocent - about the cricketer Shane Warne's battle with thinning hair. (Yes, that's right - you're probably dealing with chronic illness, and this bloke is getting all upset about his hair.)
I don't use the micro-blogging service Twitter on this weblog, but I do use it in 2 blogs I write in connection with my work.
The Twitter messages (or "Tweets") are used for quick /urgent messages to my students where
- I don't have time to log in to the full administration area of my Typepad site, or
- I don't have access to the Twitter website at all (and this includes at work - the computer network of the New South Wales Department of Education & Training blocks Twitter as well as a large range of social networking sites including Facebook and MySpace). In this case, I send the message via SMS.
The disadvantage of point 2 above is that I have to send the SMS to an international number (although this is still relatively cheap at about 50c - cheaper than phone calls to students! And some of my students are now following the class blogs via the web access on their mobile phones.)
You can see Twitter in action in the above context on my Term 3 blog.
Web 2.0 in action
As a by-the-by, there is a rather amusing story in builder.au concerning a fake Morris Iemma operating on Twitter.
Morris Iemma was until 2 weeks ago the Premier of the Australian State of New South Wales; for the benefit of American readers, this is roughly equivalent to a State Governor (although the parliamentary system behind it is quite different).
Iemma lost his job when he was deposed by his own party. He then decided to retire from politics.
A "Morris Iemma" then set up a Twitter account to offer commentary on this situation. You can view this commentary in the following screenshots.
Screenshot # 1
Screenshot # 2
I must say I particularly like Mr Iemma's summation of his fall from grace:
Gone. For the meanwhile. I shall be back. NSW [New South Wales] will be mine once again!! Oh yes. It. Will. Be. Mine. Muahahaha!
and to another sympathiser, "Morris" wrote:
Wine? For sure. After this terrible chain of events, I'll plunge into unbridled alcoholism for a few years then write a book.
The Twitter people very quickly pulled this account (I presume) when it became apparent that maybe it wasn't fair dinkum (I wonder why they thought that?).
But for a short amount of time, web 2.0 brought us a view into a world the public never sees.
