EnCompass Culture Exercise

I love this website! It's very easy to spend a lot of time trying all sorts of combinations of books based on the various genres you like and the "appeal" characteristics! In the intro to this activity we are told that the site has over 10,000 books on it's database - so that is very comprehensive resource for any ans all booklovers! On that basis alone, I would promote the website! On the LHS there is a comprehensive drop down list where you can quickly access Reading Groups, undertake quizzes to test your knowledge, read Author reviews and book lists. I was interested in the Book lists and I printed off the 2010 best books for Children & Young Adults to share with the Children & Teen Librarians/Library Assistants. I did notice as I went through some of the combinations that I chose that the majority of titles ranged in age from 1998 - 2004. There were on a few less than 5 years of age. The most current title I found was "The Ant Colony" which was published in 2009. The generated lists were pretty old titles and the covers looked dated, even if the stories may be very worthwhile. I came across a Margaret Mahy title, but most of the authors were British or American writers.

In the Reading Groups link I came across a few ice-breakers which could be useful i.e get students to collect 3 books in the library. One book must be for themselves, one for a freind and one for some-one they hate! Share your selection with the group and have a good laugh at what you discover! I thought this sounded like a lot of fun!

I was also looking for some ideas for a library paper I am currently doing and I liked the suggestion under the Creative Reading link - 100 words.
Basically this project was all about encouraging people to write at least 100 words a day using "creative" language.

Another feature that I felt was worthwhile for librarians was all the "related links." There is a whol;e page of them and as I scrolled down the list, my favourite ones were "The Big Picture" and "Booked Up'.

I believe that many of our patrons would benefit from knowing about this website and I will be making mention of it in the Teen Newsletter that I will be sending out this month.

Librarians and Library Assistants should also save this in their "favourites" as it would be an excellent R.A tool.

It was good to finish web202 with a website that brings us back to the reason why we're here and that is to make recommendations or match books with our patrons appeal characteristics. For teen who aren't sure what to read, I also believe that they would find this website very cool and appealing to their taste as it is very interactive and looks good to the eye!

Alas, I have now completed this web 2.0 part 2.

Sayonara......


Jesus Freak

Slideshare Exercise

I had a reasonable look at "Slideshow" last week but I didn't get around to completing the commentary. This site is similar to YouTube is some ways as you enter s keyword in to the search and you retrieve various home-made movies to view. In "Slideshow" I did a keyword search on "Christianity" and there were many interesting slideshows. One of them that cought my attention was a short slideshow on the challenges of Youth Ministry which I subsequently forwarded to one of our Youth Leaders! There were a couple of other ones that I thought were worth downloading also.

I think that this is a very useful site for all sorts of people. If you are wanting to get ideas about how to make a professional presentation on a topic or subject that you believe someone may have created, then it is worth checking out what has already been done! You may even want to access it and use it yourself -making sure that you acknowledge your source of course!

This site is worth while in a Library context as I could see myself recommending it to students who are doing class presentations, or recommending to teachers and students when I am doing outreaches to school. Adults who have commenced studies may not be aware of this site, so if I see any patrons using powerpoint for a slideshow I will check if they are aware of this site.

Often times we like to use slideshows for our church services and recently one of our youth leaders created one for the opening of our new church facility so I am always interested to find out what programmes they are using.

Looking forward to the next activity now......

Jesus Freak

Comment on PicApp Exercise

I remember attempting to put pictures on the Blog last year and I had some sucesses and some failures! You can see aloong my blogtrail various images which don't display properly! With a little help from my friend Tosca, I have found a a cool photo from a long way back. I decided to type in Youth Library to see whether there were any cool pics but there were only 2!!! Very disappointing! Anyway I liked this one because it reminds me of days gone by when libraries were very "traditional" and I imagine that these young ladies would have had to whisper! I also had a luagh because the caption said that the girls were filling out a survey - not so different from today afterall!!!

Another question I have about PicAppc is whether the caption should be showing on my post?

I found the exercise useful as I know that many people want to put pictures on their social networking sites and I am sure that I will have a question at some stage from one of our library patrons about this in the future. I will keep my instructions in easy reach for that day.... I think that this application could have some use for people who want to get overseas images for homework tasks. From my experience, most students use Google images for their projects. Our library currently provides great local photos on our website for students e.g footprints. There are also some great photos available on teara.net.nz

I may visit this site again in the future from time to time when I conduct Reference interviews. Meanwhile I may practise with a few more images to "pretty up" my blog!

Jesus Freak!

PicApp image lesson

Tastespotting....ummmm!

Tosca was right when she said that you need to have eaten recently, before visiting this site! Dominoes came to my rescue - but after looking at all the beautifully presented gastronomical delights, the pizza leaves me rather discontented!

What recipe did I choose.....(drumroll) "Chocolate Fudge Pudding" - Of course! I did have a quick squiz at a cheesecake/brownie recipe, but when I looked at the ingredients - my excitement quickly exited! Lots of ingredients that I doubted I could buy at the local supermarket :(

The Chocolate Fudge Pudding that I selected, incidentally, was one of Jamie Oliver's first recipes! Cool! I like Jamie Oliver and what he is trying to promote - home cooking with everyday ingredients that we can afford!

The site was pretty easily to use. You could spend a long time on that site and I supspect that many of the recipes have overseas ingredients - so you may find that annoying after a while. I am not sure whether I would use it again so I have subscribed to the site using "Feed my Inbox" so I can continue to see if I want to use this site over the next few months.

I don't mind looking at sites that are non work-related as a lot of the people I mix with enjoy cooking, and it is good to be able to share the "good recipes" with them - especially if they have a computer and the time to check the sites that I recommend to them!

What did I get out of Tastespotting? A beautiful cook book that I don't have to pay for!


A BIENTOT!


Jesus Freak

Web 2.02 - Feedmyinbox

This was a straight forward task and the dvd was easy to understand and execute - easier that picapps! I have left that until I can talk to some-one who has had some success in copying the image into their blog!

I added several feeds to my inbox - Youtube/CNN and Christchurch City Library. I chose this library because they have a better teen site than most of the others in the recommended list - apart from Manukau City libraries! :-)

I woudl probably use the site again if there was a site that I wanted to keep up with. I did try some other sites like amazon.com and ebay.com and BBC News, but I didn't have any success with those sites. Perhaps they aren't set up for feeds??

I am not sure if there would be too many opportunities to recommend this site to our patrons, but it may be worthwhile to suggest it to teachers or parents who may like to subscribe to news sites or blogs. Personally I get enough email that I don't really want too much other stuff coming into my email. When I did the RSS feeds exercise last year I got so much info coming in that I couldn't keep up with it and I deleted the feeds after 6 months!

I guess it will probably be a similar experience this time around as well!

Ciao!

Jesus Freak

Web 2.0 - Part 2

Box.net - Online Storage


I found this site useful and I have used it. I created an account and I have invited members of the church's Worship Team to join so we can share the lyrics and chords of the songs that we are learning as a team.

In view of it's application in the library context - it would be great for many of the different teams e.g Y.A Librarians and Children's Librarians in terms of sharing activities amongst ourselves for our teen clubs to created a shared "group" resource. At the moment we can do this via N Drive - but this would be another way in which we can share information as well.

Would I recommend it to library patrons - absolutely!

Catch you again soon!


Jesus Freak!

Finishing Web 2.0

Well, I have taken a little while to sign of the last part of Lesson 6 - only because I really wanted to explore another library site to see what they do with FaceBook. I thought that I would check out Christchurch City Libraries to see what features they have on their website. I noticed that they have a Library blog for customers to use to commmunicate to other patrons about the books they have read or anything that may be of interest to people who use this site.

They also provide patrons with the opportunity to download Audiobooks - a feature that I know that we will be adding to the new Auckland Library website.

They had a link to Flick on their website and on their Home Page they had a "category Cloud" which is a great tool to interact and engage with anyone who may be wanting to find a quick way to navigate your way around their website.

At the bottom of their Teen's Page I noticed that they had a link to MAXOS Music so the web designers have thought about the types of links that Young Adults would use.

Patrons could submit feedback info such as the NZ Post Book Awards "Have your say" on the website.

I didn't see any shortcut link to "Facebook" or "Twitter" like we now have on our website.

When answering the question, "What would our customers get out of Facebook?" I am sure that they would appreciate the opportunity to be able to connect with people "online", view their photos, and participate in various "gimmicky" tasks such as Farnyard and Treasure Island. I am of the opinion that these types of activities are for people who have too much time on their hands, or don't have a life!

Rarely do our library customers ask for Facebook. They are more interested in using Bebo. Personally I prefer Facebook to Bebo. I like the layout of the site better and I find it a place where there are more people I know to connect with.

Twitter is also good as you can "follow people" and when people add stuff, you can instantly pick up from where you left off last time. On T.V recently they likened Twitter to a postcard becuase 140 characters are about the smae number of characters that you would be able to reaslisticallt fit on a postcard - good analogy!

"What can Facebook do for us as a public library?" Good question and I am stiull trying to figue that one out. It really is just like and email but you can limit who you want to hear from, because you have to be "invited" to become a friend on Facebook to communicate!
At the moment it is free to use Facebook so if we have the opportunity to have a conversation to some-one who has not yet started this "social networking buzz, then this would be the better way to go. Having a shortcut to FACEBOOK, hopefully our patrons will find it much easier to access a social networking site and they may even convert from using Bebo! I believe that having FACEBOOK on our Computer Desktop also assists in re-inforcing that libraries are still at the cutting edge of "forefront" of the new computer age. If we are using the site regularly, as librarians, then we will also be more likely to promote the benefits of Facebook to our patrons.

I also thought that the tags "Community Services", "Business", "Learning" were a really good idea. Again the designers had thought about the different types of "patrons" using the site, and provided quick links to useful websites to suit these users.

Well that's about all I can think of at this point in time. It's getting late and it's time for my final "sign out!"

Until next time......


Jesus Freak

MP3 and Music Downloads Exercise

I haven't got and iPOD yet, but my husband got one given to him for Christmas and he is loving it! He has downloaded lots of songs to listen to when he goes to the gym!!

I had a look at a couple of the sites listed and have already told my husband a whole lot of songs that he can download onto a CD for a 70 year old friend of ours who loves his jazz - free stuff - wahoo!

The first site I visited was Amazon.com. This was really easy to navigate around and there was a list of music genres to choose from so it is quite easy to see what is available in each genre. Because I chose "Christian" as a genre, there was too much selection but I did see a couple of artists' albums that I would probably download being Fred Hammond and some jazz titles such as Easy River Drive by Grover Washington Jnr, Original Jazz Classics and a free sampler of Jazz Legends.

The next website I looked at was AmieStreet.com
This one, I felt was even more user friendly that Amazon.com. The tags along the top gave you options such as " Music you love", "Top 25 Playlist", and "Create your own playlist." As a new browser I found these tags straight forward and easy to understand. It had a drop down menu with all the different music genres amd the How? for Creating a Playlist, on the R.H.S of the website a useful guide for a novice like me.

Click "Options" button
Click "Add to playlist" next to any song
Click "Create playlist"
And then continue.... until you have a playlist to enjoy :)

Apparently this site is just like iTunes when it comes to creating, managing and listening to songs.

I wouldn't know, but that what the website tells me! One day when I embrace this musical frontier, and I will be able to check this out more thoroughly for myself.

Until then... I will just have to refer my customers to these sites when they are illegally downloading material! If I can understand the instructions, then I will have no trouble navigating them around the site - in fact, our patrons may not need my help at all!

It would probably be a good idea for some one to design a template with all these Free and legal sites listed on it, so that we can leave them to it. Perhaps that could be a small task that I could do when I am next rostered on the Learn.net......

That's me signing out for another week - one more to go....

Jesus Freak

Good things about "Good Reads"

Well - it's week 4 now with the Web 2.0 Challenge and I am making good progress! Good Reads is essentially a "Book Lovers" social networking site.

I listened to the tutorial and it all seemed pretty straight-forward when it comes to signing up and setting up a profile - similar to other social networking sites like Facebook or Bebo. You can upload photos, add widgets, join different groups (book clubs) and you can find friends and follow what they are reading or reviewing. As the old syaing goes, "You can learn a lot about a person by the books they read - or have on their bookshelf!

Key features:

* Create your own custom profile
* Track what you have read and rate the books (like a review in My Library)
* Find out what your friends are reading
* Get good book recommendations
* Join Reading Groups

GOOD READS is a great social networking sites for librarians. There are some very useful features on this site such as the ability to click on a book and view cataloguing details e.g ISBN number, what the average score for the book is, as assessed by readers, and all the editions of the book that have been printed, along with the Literary Awards the book has received, where applicable.

I like the "explore" tab feature which allows the viewer to browse everything from "popular" titles to "unpopular" titles, events, trivia, quizzes and quotes - very useful for Book Club stuff!

Similar to "My Library," you can write reviews and you can also see the reviews your friends have written. There a more options too, that you can add to your review, such as commenting on who recommended the tilte to you, how many times you have read the book, and whether you actually own a copy of the book!

I am going to enjoy seeing the answers to my "challenge" question, when I build a set of "friends."

TTFN!


Jesus Freak

Lesson 2 - Zamzar

I found Zamzar a really useful tool. It took a wee while to convert my word documen into a pdf either, about 3 -5 minutes. but I felt it would be worth the wait if I was in the predicament of trying to get access to a document that was saved in format that couldn't be opnened.

In terms of use in the library, I can confidently say that it will come in use. I had a customer come in last year with a document that our learn.net computer couldn't recognise and obviously open. All I could do at the time was suggest to her that she go back home and save the document in a different format. From memory I think it was a .exe file. It would have been very helpful if I had known about Zamzar back then...!

I am sure that I will have other opportunities to share this online file conversion tool with other library patrons and with my friends. In fact, I have already shown my husband this site and saved it in our "Favourites" for future reference!

I particularly like the fact that you don't have to create an account to be able to use Zamzar.

2010 Web 2.0

I am excited that I have an opportunity to refine my understanding of all the great new programmes and features available "online." Some I will be familiar with, and some will be completely new to me. I haven't "twittered" as yet, so that will be something I know that I will be learning this time around.

The lesson on converting files will definitly be useful in the library setting. Just the other day my husband asked me whether I could convert a PDF that he had recevied into a word document so he could select some pages to print. I was not able to do so. I asked some staff at the libary whether this was possible. I was told that you can convert a word document to a PDF, but you can't reverse the process, which I already knew, but I wasn't sure why I could get into the document. Perhaps after completing lesson 2, I may discover that this can actually be done! Alternatively I may discover what online tools will enable this to be done - Zamzar hopefully?!!

One time in the library a patron came with a C.V wasn't able to opened because it was in a file that windows 7 didn't recognise. I imagine that this lesson will help me resolve this type of problem so that we can assist patrons to access the information they have on their USB.

I would like to know more about music files and using MP3 files as I know nothing about this at all! My husband was given an IPOD for Christmas and he is doing all this type of stuff so I need to "catch up!" Young people are into this in a big way these days so any learning on this will be very useful in assisting patrons. As a library professional I want to be able to talk "intelligently" about this to our patrons and able to make recommendations of other sites or tools available to assist them to get the stuff they want to listen to without breaching copyright (hopefully)!

Social networking sites continue to be a hit with many of our library patrons. I have had queries from new users about downloading pictures onto these sites and I would value some more practice with this. I have downloaded photos onto my "Facebook" site, but I haven't done so with Bebo so I look forward to trying some new feature and techniques to beautify my site! I wonder what is in store for me in this lesson?

I am ready and willing - Web 2.0 2010 - here I come!

Jesus Freak

REFLECTIONS ON THE 23 THINGS....

The online Web 2.0 learning has been a very worthwhile experience. It has been great to explore so many aspects on the web that I would probably not venture in the normal course of life as a librarian.

I enjoyed the session on e-books and kindle and finding out about websites such as Technoratti that keeps surfers up to date with all the new advances in web technologies. Learning about flicker and having a "play" with some of the programmes where you can "doctor up" photo's to make them look older or give people a "face lift" was a laugh!



Learning how to use RSS feeds to send new postings of articles was very useful but it now is a bit burdensome as you also have to keep up with reading them as they soon pile up quickly!



Exploring the social networking sites was a useful exercise as highlighted the unique features of these sites. So many people come into the library to use "bebo" and I was curious as to the differences between bebo, myspace and facebook as there are different friends of my who use these vehicles to communicate. I have found the "Old Friends" network a useful vehicle in which to catch up with folks but it is limited in ways that bebo and facebook aren't.



Exploring Web 2.0 online tools was one of the most relevant tasks to our field of work . Sites such as Library thing are fantastic. I enjoyed publishing my reading interests and hobies on our blog using widgets. I particularly like the way that the book titles are rotated around so that everytime you log on to the blog you get a different selection - very cool!



YouTube will always be a favourite site as there are limitless vidoclips that you can view! Many young people spend all their time up on the learn.net looking at clips of their favourite hip hop artists. It is also a very easy way to publish movies you've taken from your mobile and "show it to the world." There are lots of "exhibitionists" publishing clips, but there are excellent training videos that we also watched courtesy of youTube. There are some really funny animals clips and "bloopers" that are great to cheer you up on a bad day!

The exercise on wiki's was very informative and it clarified for me that wiki's are a useful way of publishing information on any number of topics. I was interesting to find out how easy it was for anyone to publish infomation and comment on other people's entries. Students comonly use wikipedia to get information for homework tasks and teachers frequently encourage students to use other websites because the information provided can be too "long-winded" or complicated for most students.

The lesson on podcasts was useful as many schools have their own websites and are making podcasts to show their community what they are learning. Many pastors enjoy the convenience of listening to their favourite preachers via podcasts. This technology is rapidly becoming the favoured was for students studying "long distance" so having a knowledge about what's available and some of the most popular sites where you can access podcasts was very helpful.

I found this course of study a novel experience and I am grateful to have been given the opportunity to undertake Web 2.0 training as a reasonably new librarian.

Jesus Freak

e-books

Here we are..... the last lesson for Web 2.0 training. This has been a GREAT experience and it has opened up many new worlds for me to discover. There are still aspects that I am trying to master but I know that I have benefitted from this training and will be able to put a lot of the new learning to good use in the library setting.


I was interested to see on the home page of ebooks.com the book "The Shack" as this was the book that we bought for our pastors and leaders in the church for Christmas. I heard that this book was a #1 New York times best seller, so it must be a good read! (I haven't read it yet!). Apparently there are 130,000 popular, professional and academic ebooks from the world's leading publishers available for the reader to access.

I was quite chuffed when I was successfully able to post an excerpt of this book onto the blog! It was easy to post on my blog as it supplied some straight-forward guidelines about whether to use a small widget and large widget and even the fact that some blogs don't recognise Java script - which was a very useful comment.


I clicked on to Project Guttenburg and decided to investigate the "Top 100 EBooks. What did I discover? On the 2 February 2009, 96,000 odd EBooks were downloaded! WOW!



Top 100 EBooks yesterday - 3rd February 2009 :


The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) by J. Arthur Thomson (955)
Manners, Customs, and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period by P. L. Jacob (676)
Illustrated History of Furniture by Frederick Litchfield (509)
Searchlights on Health by B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols (367)
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana (347)
History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary Ritter Beard (326)
Our Day by William Ambrose Spicer (310)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (307)
Ulysses by James Joyce (274)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (269)
The Beginner's American History by D. H. Montgomery (266)
General Science by Bertha M. Clark (266)
Woman as Decoration by Emily Burbank (258)
The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English by Ray Vaughn Pierce (257)
Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany by Douglas Houghton Campbell (234)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (229)
The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed (222)
The Mafulu by Robert Wood Williamson (218)
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome by E.M. Berens (218)
Discoverers and Explorers by Edward R. Shaw (215)



Very interesting to see the types ofbooks people are downloading. There are real "classics" such as Pride and Prejudice, Huckleberry Finn, and Alice in Wonderland, as well as books on American history, science and even the karma sutra! Very interesting!

When it came to the most popular authors it was a closely fought race between Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, followed by Sir Arthur conan Doyle, William Shakespeare and Jane Austen.

Our last optional discovery exercise is to find out about Amazon's kindle. As I am one of the trainers with the "Best Sellers", I am already aware of the features of the Kindle. It is a wonderful gadget that combines the features of a book in terms of it's dimension and shape with the convenience of a computer where you can download a book to read and scroll down the pages. I haven't seen anyone with one in New Zealand yet, but give this invention a few moe years and it may become as popular as the personal computer - who knows!

If you want to check out this new innovation click on the link below:

http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA

That's it for now! Signing off.....

Jesus Freak

More Web 2.0 discoveries!

Podcasts

I enjoyed listening to a YouTubevideo on podcasting which I found on ipodder.com from our "friends at commoncraft". I have wondered where the name "podcast" came from, and I now know it means "Personal/On/Demand." A podcast is defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player. There are thousands of podcasts are available at the iTunes Music Store, and websites such as iPodder.com and Podcast.net track thousands more.

When I was exploring podcast alley it was great to see that podcasts are categorised just like books are categorised and you could see the top 10 podcasts downloaded (mostly about sex!) and those that were more recently added to the list. I decided to have a look at the "Religion and Spirituality" genre out of curiosity to see if there were any preachers that I was interested in. There were 2545 to selcet from! WOW! Very impressive. The podcasts were listed by their title. No. 10 on the list sounded interesting and when I clicked on the title a brief descriptor appeared which outlined what the podcast was all about - cool feature! Pray-as-you-go was not a sermon or a bible-study, but provided a framework for your own prayer, combining music, scripture and questions for reflection (10-12 minute prayer session) that you can receive every day. At No. 273 was a "Drive time Devotions" from Saddleback church. Browsing down the list there seemed to be a lot of Catholic based stuff and pagan stuff which doesn't interest me at all.
Podcast.com looked much more appealing and it was neat how they showed a selcetion of podcasts on their homepage as well as an index on the RHS for you to select from e.g "What's in the news " and "digital planet".

I had an enjoyable time viewing the host of sites and RSS feeds that I could select from to fill up all my waking hours! All I need now is the iPod! Now which one will I start with......

Bye for now

Jesus Freak

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Hello there once again to another year full of new opportunities to learn, grow and discover a whole lot of things that I still haven 't yet found out about!

As I mentionned in my last blog, I am looking forward to becoming an "Any Questions" practitioner as it will enable me to assist students more efficiently with their homework questions and also help me assist my own children at their homework! It was funny just the other day I took a call from a young teenager who wanted the number for the NZQA website and it took me less than 2 mins to find the info (they were holding on the phone) and relay it to them! It was like a "practice run" before the practice sessions which take place over the next few days at Botany Library!

Had a GREAT break over the holidays. The highlight was definitely the trip to Melbourne in January. The weather was fantastic and we were staying at a hotel at St Kilda which looked out over the beach. It reminded me of the Napier foreshore, but much better! Getting to understand the tram/bus/train system around the town was a bit of a challenge, however! Some of the places we visited included the Weribee Zoo where we saw lots of African animals - kind of like a real safari; Scienceworks out at Spotswood which was like MOTAT - but heaps better; D.F.O - the shopping outlet store - lot's of good bargains; The Pancake Parlour - very yummy; an authentic Italian restaurant near Flinders Street where I enjoyed a homemade lasagne; and "Luna Park" the funpark just down the street from where we stayed.

It was also great to catch up with lots of friends - 4 Phillipino families who shifted from NZ to Melbourne 2 years ago; Peter & Shirley who work with Asian students in a church in North Melbourne, and Geoff & Glenda who my husband & I met at Bible College who shifted to Melbourne recently.

There were a few things we didn't get to this time around, so we have some good reasons to return, hopefully in the not too distant future!

Signing off for now!

Jesus Freak

Discovering Web 2.0 online tools

For Lesson 19 we have been asked to explore some of the useful web tools available. There was a great selection and I recognised many of them as we have explored them in previous lessons. I had a look at the 3 listed below:

Yahoo! Answers.com
This is a useful site. I am going to be one of the "Any Questions?" operators in the New Year so this site will be added to "My favourites" for future reference. I like the layout of the site with subject categories listed on the left hand side for ready reference. However, when I aked a question regarding New Zealand's new Prime Minister they did not have the correct answer! Some-one submitted "Michael Cullen" as a suggestion and then there were other older comments about Helen Clark!

ROLLYO
Here are some useful Reference Search Engines for future access:http://www.rollyo.com/index.html

iFoods.TV
This is a great site as you get to view videos of how to make a variety of diffent dishes from iFoods.TV or from members like me!

I like the table where you can click on a "main ingredient" and it will provide 3 iFood recipes e.g for "Tomatoes" I got the following useful recipes - Guacomole and Tomato salsa, Tomato and pepper bread and Tomato soup.

On the site you can also view the iFoods blog or other food blogs, you can enter competitions and their are other related links for interest. An interesing feature of this site is the League Table. How does the league work? The league table is updated daily but the competition lasts over one month where a member of iFoods can add one sizzling recipe per day per blog and the other members get to vote on the recipes. You get to see a snippet of the members blog on the left hand side, their ranking and members comments about the recipe.

Go on... why don't you have a look! I know those digestive juices are starting to flow..... Perhaps you're short of recipe ideas for Christmas? Check this great site out!

Well, it's time for me to sign out. I have enjoyed this task and I have some good sites to access over the coming months....and some good recipes to try out for all those yoummy summer B.B.Q's!

Catch you later....

Jesus Freak

King of Kings Church on YouTube

Our church is on YouTube!
http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=vqYpbjjWd_g

Thought you might be interested in viewing some of the great times we have as a church enjoying the presence of God! Have a look at the great video that Jo (one of our church drummers) put together with many of my special friends! Our service times are Sunday 10 am and 6 pm.

Blessings!

Jesus Freak