For Evil or Good...

Hey folks,
Today we are talking about a classic topic: What should we use the internet for?

Mashups and 3rd Party's
I think that once someone comes up with a wonderful application, like flickr, the masses feel compelled to add little ancillaries to it. Whether this is helpful or a hindrance depends from widget to widget. Looking through these various widgets I ask myself what would be fun and cool to add to this blog and what is actually helpful. Through one 3rd party affiliate Librarything I can include book covers of what I'm reviewing. Librarything links the covers to Amazon and any one who's interested in the book has a great link to get a copy themselves. Pretty awesome right? However I also find an affiliate like Mappr where I can visually show which states I've been to. Whereas this is a fun little thing, unless you know me personally, it really has no application to helping readers find the books I write about. The best widgets in my mind actually combine fun and functionality.

Topix, Synd8, and more on Technorati
So here's some more search sites to ponder. I saw very little difference between Topix and Technorati. Each employ similiar search engines using tags, however I would only use these to search for current events/pop culture topics. Again very little application to library usage beyond that. I did search each site for info on the new Watchmen movie (March 2009 yay!) and each gave 5 different sites for a total of 10. Please note that none of these were the official site blog.

So onto Synd8. This site was incredibly helpful when it came to finding RSS feeds. What are RSS feeds? Either they are incredibly awesome or an amazing time suck. You be the judge. For me I like using RSS feeds to be able to know when the blogs and websites that I follow have updated. I don't need to check those websites individually and I can sort out articles I actually find interesting. At Synd8 I was able to find several great RSS feeds on any subject. However I was completely turned over by the bare bones/very little graphics appearance of the site. Maybe this makes me shallow. I just need my sites to be somewhat pretty. Library applicable? Not really. Kinda fun? Yes.

Again this shows us the two sides of the internet. There are applications that are simply there for fun and time suckage. (This is a preview to next weeks entry which is all about time suckage) A website/application can exist solely to entertain or feed into our base hedonistic needs coughporncough. However there are great applications that can be used to facilitate the search for information. Apparently both now have a place in our lives forever, like television. Whether you use it for good or evil is up to you.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Erin go Bragh! Book Slave.