Week 4: Items 8 and 9

Big breakthrough in understanding the technology! Last week I read about RSS feeds and set up a blogline account. Okay, I haven't gotten to the point where I'm able to provide the URL address...

Rafe Neeleman's video was excellent: very clear and concise. The tutorial was also very comprehensible.

http://www.syndic8.com/ looks intriguing and I'll explore it more a bit later.

I posted three blots into my blogline and subscribed to six feeds. Topics ranged from the Caribbean, Australia and the South Pacific to the Red Sea, the best-of-the-best scuba sites. They're on my lifelong checklist of must do's (assuming the body holds out!).

And, since I was on a roll, I also explored MERLIN. My favorite aspect of it was the Web 2.0 awards which I looked through but certainly warrant a closer look at a later date. I checked out Ning to see if there were other scuba divers doing social networking. A couple looked as though they were created by one individual and they hadn't gotten any members. One, ScubaSpace, was much more dynamic. I would use ScubaSpace to get some firsthand information about dive sites that I'd like to visit. This is the kind of sport where it's important to hear from divers who've been to sites recently. Storms can really degrade sites by bleaching and breaking coral. Also, I like locations that have smaller inns and dive operators so that I'm not diving with a large group.

Week 3: Items 5-7

It's easy to spend a lot of time exploring Flickr, Flickr mashups and 3rd party site. I tried to limit my search to scuba: locations in the Caribbean, underwater coral and fish, etc. Nevertheless, I found myself losing focus and immersing myself in another tourist's visit to islands such as Saba and Bonaire, where I've been diving. There are some really nice photos and there's stuff that only your mother would appreciate! I needed a little staff help in posting pictures that I found, but after a while I did it successfully on my own. And, I could add captions and edit their arrangement too. Practice, practice, practice--that's what it takes. Doing one's own blog is making me appreciate and understand others' blogs.