Evernote

Once again, this looks like a good piece of software, very useful and functional, especially for people like me who are prone to forget things, especially the more mundane things. Once again, we’re back to the same old problem of it not being available on my Trust network. They have a ban on online storage systems, which I remember from the fight I had to get my Skydrive unblocked.  I may just have to use it at my other trust site, which is far more open about what you can log into, or even access. However, this kind of takes away the point of having Evernote! I suppose I could use it to remember things for when I get home without having to send myself masses of emails and clogging up my inbox, though. I’d just have to remember to check it when I go home each day.

Having used it a little bit more now, I can immediately see its uses. I’m now bemoaning even more my inability to reach a lot of stuff online because of Trust rules. It could be very useful for reminding me to do things between sites, as well as reaching information from home and even sending information from home to work. I wonder if I could build up a business case to get it unblocked, to be used alongside my Skydrive?

Online networks

I like getting to know new people, so you'd think networking would be easy for me. No. I get shy. I prefer others to make the first move, though once they have (especially in person), I'm usually easy to talk to. I prefer getting to know people in person, rather than impersonally online, but sometimes, needs must.

I’ve been using social networks now for many years – I first joined Facebook back in 2006 – but I’ve only recently been thinking about how I can use them professionally. I must say, I have to agree with Reid Hoffman (check the Thing 6 blog) in that LinkedIn is the office, Facebook is the barbecue in the back garden. In which case, I’ve only just started working in an office.

I really can’t see many people using Facebook for professional networking. In my own mind, it’s for keeping up with friends, for outside-of-work stuff, and I don’t know many people who’d use it in a professional capacity (I certainly wouldn’t want to like too much stuff that links with my job, but then I try to keep my work and home lives as separate as possible). Granted I’ve made friends there from previous work places, but once again it’s meant to be in a social way, not a work way.

We’re also back to the old problem of access to the sites. I have joined LinkedIn and LISNPN (though I don’t actually remember doing that one), but I’m unable to access them from one of my work sites due to social network restrictions. My other site is more lax, so I can update things as and when I remember, but that’s the crux: I’ve got to remember to do it. On the other hand, given that I have joined them, please feel free to find me and join my circle on LinkedIn (or whatever you call it). Regular readers of my blog will know my real name from Thing 3. For everyone else, and I’m assuming that’s everyone else in the entire world except for me, it’s Steve Collman. Or you might try searching for Community Outreach Librarian.

Now that I’ve got a Google+ account, I tried to search for people that might be good for networking purposes. However, once again I keep forgetting to check, so the one person I’ve put feelers out for, I don’t even know if he’s responded. And I don’t know if it really matters, because he’s been a Facebook friend of mine for about a year or two now, and if he’s got anything interesting to say, he usually links to it from there. There’s also the problem with Google+ that it just isn’t very widely used, as far as I know (it was marketed as the main competition to Facebook, but it hasn’t quite turned out like that). Again, if you want to find and add me, please do so!

I haven’t really tried joining any other networks so far. Mainly because I tend to forget when I’m at the one work site I can get to them (and obviously I don’t bother at the other one), and I just forget when I’m at home. I’ve got far more important things to do, such as play games, and try to finish the novel I’m working on. It’ll come, one day.

Technology, and being unable to use it.

It's occurring to me, having read a few of the other blogs available, that doing CPD23 is going to be difficult. Now I'm not a technophobe, far from it: I like getting to know new technology. Well, when I can afford to, that is. But I work in NHS libraries, which I'm finding are notorious for not letting you use a lot of stuff online (mainly social networking such as Twitter and Hotmail). I had to fight to gain access to Hotmail so I could use their skydrive, which was useful because I work between two different NHS Trusts and there's no communication between the two systems. If I saved a document in one, I simply couldn't access it from the other (without filling up my email in/outbox with lots of pointless emails). Having a Twitter account would be a great idea as well, and my main Trust has one, but no one can read the tweets while they're on Trust property because it's blocked.

I'm also having the trouble that I can't download a better version of Internet Explorer. I have version 7, which is rapidly becoming obsolete because Google no longer supports it for iGoogle so it crashes and makes Explorer simply close down. I've tried updating it, and downloading Chrome, but I don't have administrator rights. My head's against the metaphorical brick wall, and my skull's rapidly developing a dent.