Week 6: Item 14

Technorati is another useful tool for scuba divers because it's organized by format. Divers like to see videos and photos of sites, besides narrative. It really helps to get a better understanding of what a dive site is really like. Of course there's the usual extraneous and downright silly, useless stuff too. Example: A man posted his video of his cat, Hawkeye, scuba diving. That's right, a cat went scuba diving in his owner's swimming pool. The man created scuba equipment for the cat and and the cat went diving in the pool with the man for over an hour. Crazy...
There is valid and interesting information too, though. I read on Technorati that the world free diving (NO scuba equipment, just using lung capacity) championships were held last week in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, a world class dive site. The winning man has free dived to 112 meters--phenomenal.

Week 6: Item 13

I've learned about Del.icio.us and can see that it would be very useful to use it when I'm on a scuba diving trip and have access to the Internet. There's so much travel information one has to carry in paper form. It's cumbersome and annoying to carry books and printouts. If I use Del.icio.us I could reduce the weight in my suitcase and organize my travel information in a much better format. Good idea!

The explanation about tagging was very good and convincing since, I admit, I was a skeptic at first. I found a site called divesitedirectory that I hadn't seen before. It had very useful information.

Week 5: Item 12

Hah! Things are picking up! I created my own "Red Sea Diving" search engine with Rollyo. I had no idea it was so easy. What a great way to find very relevant sites and group them together. The only trouble is...now I REALLY want to go diving in the Red Sea (sigh).

Week 5: Item 11

I'm fascinated with the whole concept of Library Thing. I went through the site but did not want to sign up for it. I have yet to catalog some books. I think I'll check some participants' sites first to see what they did. More later...

Now that I've had a chance to look at Library Things on other participants' blogs, I decided to sign up and create my own list of scuba books, in keeping with my diving theme. It's great fun! Check out my (albeit short) list at www.librarything.com/catalog/m-ann.

Week 5: Item 10

With some help from a colleague, I created a specialized ticket for diving in Saba. I used ticketgenerator.com because it didn't require a user name or password.

I had looked through the online generator sites and really preferred to created a little scuba avatar. However, I'm somewhat reluctant to do so because of the need to download Java or other software and to sign up via user name and password on specific sites.

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.