Monday, 7 June 2010

Better late than ...

So far my experience of Web 2.0 stuff has been patchy: I have a good deal of curiosity but not much staying power, so I've got some driving enthusiasms (Igoogle, YouTube, Google reader) and other things that I dipped into but stopped because I couldn't see the point of them (Facebook, Twitter). Google reader and Igoogle appeal to the organiser side of me, but YouTube is something else, my favourite country to travel in. You can instantly jump back to revisit your childhood, (1960s TV), or explore different versions of a song (so far I prefer Glee versions to the originals). And some quite inspired things are on it - I found out how to hook up my hearing aid to my ipod with a little gadget, they've put a video on YouTube to show you how to fit the thing together.

I had a brief flirtation with Twitter around General election time this year, I'd created an account last year but retired baffled as to what people got out of it. What persuaded me to try again was talking to John Naughton briefly while doing a library Tower tour: he was so attached to it as part of the political process that I was almost converted. I think I'd need a definite focus to tweet about.

Blogging- I've never blogged yet but I'm quite keen on reading blogs: Mary Beard's A don's life which has nothing to do with the mafia but has a lot of classics news (and Cambridge Uni gossip). The comments are actually almost as entertaining as the blog: the same commenters (?) appear after almost every post, they have a real engagement with the topics, and I get the impression they either know each other 'in real life' or have been sharing a virtual life for some time.

Also Joyce DiDonato's YankeeDiva: if you're not into opera you might be unable to cope with the breathless excitement of this blog. DiDonato is the opera singer who managed not only to break her leg while performing an opera (not part of the plot) but managed to continue and play subsequent performances without apparent effect on her voice. Although DiDonato's blog has a weakness for pictures of cute animals, her enthusiasm for writing about the process of opera-making, (rather than the three hours performance in the theatre) is outstanding. And her penchant for pink frocks I can share. If she can find time to blog - and say something intelligent - then nobody can say they're too busy, or that blogs are too trivial to say anything sensible.

And finally Random acts of reality, a blog by a London ambulance driver that gets inside all those houses and lives belonging to other people - the people you wouldn't choose as friends because they're ill, confused, violent or whatever - and writes about what happens. I like it partly because it puts my own working life into perspective but I think it's effective because it continually points out that society constantly fails on a domestic, everyday level, that the process of illness or injury should go Problem - ambulance - problem solved. But it doesn't, and this blog gives plemty of examples.

So, my plan for 23 things is that I don't just read stuff online but I actually get out and interact with what's happening.

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