Google Reader

Its really weird that this was the next task in the Amazing Challenge because i just saw the 'reader' link on Google the other day and had a quick look at it because it was a topic discussed in my current Library paper.

I guess I need to have a better look at how to read it, and if i looked at it every day i suppose there wouldnt be so much stuff to read, but just having 5 or 6 subscriptions meant a lot of scrolling, or to click on the "mark all as read" buttong.
Its good that its just like Gmail which is the email that i use the most, so i know the basics of how to use it. Is it not just like going to those websites yourself tho, I need to find out how to manage the subscription so it only returns those items that actually interest me, cos at the moment it is returning for example from the NZ Herald website all the top stories. I could just go to that website to view those.
If i figured out how to manage these subscriptions it would be good to subscribe to library blogs, websites etc so i can keep up with the latest, it may take a while to trawl thru the internet and find RSS feeds to subscribe to!

I'm really not sure how libraries can use this. can the library subscribe to certain feeds and show that information on their website without having to actually be logged on to the net? Maybe Ellie can enlighten me on that one!

out

Addendum: Just noticed that Library Elf provides RSS feeds too, but they do warn that some readers show these to the general public even if you have set your profile to private. There is a use for RSS feeds for librarians and libraries!!

Microsoft Excel

Today I was doing a project on Excel for my Information Systems paper. It wasnt going well, but once i got some help it went fine. Did i get any of that help from my tutor? NO! I got it from Dad who got it from someone else. My tutor seemed more interested in making me feel like a school child than giving me any helpful advice! He said i should treat it like an exam and any "collusion" between studens could result in our assessments not being accepted!

what a plonker. The instructions are NOT as clear as he seems to think they are. Each step is broken down into bullet points and what confused me is it seems you dont follow thru each bullet point one after the other, but look at the whole lot together and then do it.

And another thing, they gave us a template to work from to do a report in Word. I HATE using documents that other people have created. I consider myself an Expert Word User and i would format the document differently, so it takes twice as long to type information in, because you have to circumnavigate someone elses bad formatting!

All this is a waste of time, but I am really just practicing blogging!