Thing 20 - Creating a Google document and sharing it

Google Docs are not new to me so I'm back on more familiar grounds here, although I'd not shared a document before. Google Docs on the whole are very straightforward, convenient tool for storing documents on the Internet rather than on a hard drive.

My main concern, as mentioned when blogging about Thing 1 a little while ago, stems from questions teased out by Prof. Lilian Edwards during her Arcadia seminar talk regarding privacy settings and ultimate ownership of any documents housed on a Web 2.0 platform: can we really trust that Google does not take a peak at them (spy?)? I don't believe that. And what happens more specifically in the case of confidential documents? Or when someones dies, which was the basis of Prof. Edwards' talk?

All in all, I'll carry on using Google Docs as a convenient emergency measure but wouldn't be happy to use it for sensitive documents, despite the ease with which it allows us to share working documents with colleagues.

Thing 1 bis - Setting up an iGoogle page

I enthusiastically set up my iGoogle page a few weeks ago, and promptly became addicted to it; while the idea of getting all the information I'm interested in in one place and customising this page isn't new to me, the 23 Things programme actually prompted me to investigate this a little deeper and set it up. The main drawback I've encountered so far relates to Google itself: I already use Gmail and as all Google applications hang off the same account, I regularly log myself out inadvertently. Annoying but not life-threatening, and practice will sort it out I'm sure.

As far as using iGoogle in a library context, I suspect I would find something like Netvibes more useful (pending further investigation!), but I'll definitely use my iGoogle page to gather various RSS feeds on professional matters... until I come across a better tool that is...

Thing 1 - Setting up a Google ID

Well. There we go then. The pressure's on... now that I have finally registered my empty blog and therefore am officially registered with the Cambridge 23 Things programme, I "only" have 10 weeks' worth of Web 2.0 discoveries to catch up on and blog about. Better get going!

Thing 1 itself was a bit of a cheat for me, since I already have a Google account as I use Gmail as my personal email. I do like it a lot although some of the comments made at Prof. Lilian Edwards' excellent Arcadia seminar on “Death 2.0: What Becomes of Digital Assets after Death?” gave me a lot of food for thought (the good old privacy issues that keep popping up, and the importance of knowing where a online company is based for legal purposes... all sorts of things I'd never actually thought about before).

Not sure yet how Google itself can have a useful, viable application in a library context - I'll be exploring this a bit more in-depth later on I imagine, and will come back to that one.