About the LibraryThing

A couple years ago, I tried to build up a library catalog for readings/collection using MS Access. After a while, I gave it up because I cann't access it remotely, in another words, from Internet. Here you are, the LibraryThing, an online personal library catalog. There is no doubt that I like this idea. After playing around with all kinds of tools in this online catalog, I found it quite useful. There is no need to mention those standard fields for the book catalog, but I am really glad to see the fields of date, including Aquired, Started, and Ended, which are helpful to me to track down what I have read. Also the Comments field is good for writing down some notes about the book. Last thing I want to mention is the tag which help on grounp things/books together in a non-traditional way.

By the way, a link to my catalog at the LibraryThing is posted at the top this blog.

Flash Clock

Hi, this is cool. Actually, I tried to get some background image from the background generator. But I found the Flash clock application from the main menu. After selecting the clock style from the sample pool, you just need to copy the code and paste it to your webpage, or your blog, like what I just did on this blog. So, right now I have a clock on the top of this blog and I don't have to check the time on my cell phone now.

Here is a list of websites I used in this exercise:

1. http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/
2. http://toolshell.com/clocks/

Something simple

It was always a pleasure to enjoy the Saturday morning coffee with some newspapers along the chair. Life can't be more simple and more luxury than the five minutes lost or wondering of the mind from the traffic light and the "greetings" from one of your morning commute "friends".

So, may we have something simple and enjoyable? Yes, you can. The Topix clearly is trying to bring the new tech to you as simple as possible. Typing a zip code is all it takes to bring your the local news or talks to your screen. Also you can become a member of the talks editors in the forum. Try it and have fun!

What about RSS?

Hi, is this really cool, or not? I think it is cool. You select what you like to read in the future and you read what you have selected before. Sounds really fine to me. How about you? If you are still think it is just another fancy tech word, please let me share with you about how I use RSS in a "real world"?

I am a yahoo.com user and set up my.yahoo.com years ago. Since RSS started to make buzz on the Internet, I checked it out. Then I designed my yahoo home page with a lot of RSS feeds from several major newspaper. So everyday I opened my yahoo home page, I will find preselected news on my yahoo home page. Of course, I put my email preview on the home page too, so I can check it the first thing in the morning.

When I find somethings interesting, I will add them to my yahoo news feeder if they are RSS ready. Therefore, next time I will get all the updates for that new added item and don't have to do my search again.

In one really simply sentence, RSS provides a way for me to manage my online information resources. I like it.

For the purpose to accomplish our Learning 2.0 exercise, I set up a bloglines account and published my bloglines account. Here is the link to my bloglines page: http://www.bloglines.com/public/masonyang.

Enjoy it, I hope!!!

iPhone?

Do you really want an iPhone? No, I don't.

I have a cell phone to make phone calls and take pictures once a while. That is it, a simple, boring, and regular cell phone user. I know there will be a market for the fancy and sexy iPhone, but I am not looking forward to this so called "new generation" cell phone. Please, if you have the money to spend on new technologies, find something really useful and creative, not a new package of old things.

Let's talk about "retrievr", an application of Flickr

Hi, it is really funny. Check this out: Retrievr at: http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/.

I thought it was a great and exciting idea to have such a system to retrieve images from a sketch. But, actually, it just a great idea, not a real image retrieve system, at least not up to my expectation. When I tried to draw a sketch of flowers, it did return 3 pictures of flowers out of 20 results. Not too bad though.

Sony eBook reader

Sony eBook reader
Originally uploaded by TeddyTheBear.

Is this the future of the book reading? I really doubt about it.

I won't deny I am a old fashion guy, but I do have an open mind to all kinds of new stuff. While this is not my type. I can read, actually browse, a real book and get what I want in twenty mintues. But I can't do it with this fancy thing. I just don't know how I can flip pages to scan lines while I am trying to figure out what I am really looking for. Anyway, I might need to get use to it in the future. But right now, it is not my thing.