As part of 23 things we were asked to reflect on a piece of reading gleaned from our Google reader.
My subscribed blogs fall mostly into the following categories:
- Library related blogs from both blogging librarians and library blogs (e.g. The Distant Librarian ; ad-lib; CJBS Information & Literacy blog ; Libraries of the future ). Such blogs keep me aware of what is happening at other libraries and gives me ideas for things I might want to blog about. Though mostly I get this sort of information by following libraries and librarians on Twitter, rather than via blogs.
- Westminster Uni blogs (both the Academic Liaison Librarian blogs and the 23 things blogs).
- Blogs from the suppliers of some of our main e-resources (Warc blogs ; WGSN News ; Mintel's Market Size blog). Again these blogs are most useful for getting ideas for our own business blog and for getting alerts for new reports that we might want to tell staff/students about.
- Personal interest blogs (Ricky Gervais' blog, Shepherds Bush blog- often worrying reading, and xkcd (a brilliant webcomic, see picture above).
The post I have chosen is one from the blog "Beyond the Reference Desk". I can't now remember where I found out about this blog, I have a feeling it may have been one Google reader suggested for me based on the fact that I subscribe to several library blogs. It is written by an academic Information Literacy librarian based in New York.
A recent post concerned the hacking of her Google account and subsequent loss of access to all her vital Google services and the information therein. She was locked out of her Google account for 5 weeks. I think it's fairly clear from my own blog that I, like this blog author, have a heavy reliance on Google and all its various functions. However, I tend to be one of those "it'll never happen to me and I'll just deal with it when it does" type people and I do tend to back up most things too. The thing that most worried me from this post was learning about the questions Google asks you to regain access to your account. If I got these questions I'd be struggling big time, they'd be marking me down as the hacker before I could whimper "I can tell you what my favourite Google Doodle is though".
A recent post concerned the hacking of her Google account and subsequent loss of access to all her vital Google services and the information therein. She was locked out of her Google account for 5 weeks. I think it's fairly clear from my own blog that I, like this blog author, have a heavy reliance on Google and all its various functions. However, I tend to be one of those "it'll never happen to me and I'll just deal with it when it does" type people and I do tend to back up most things too. The thing that most worried me from this post was learning about the questions Google asks you to regain access to your account. If I got these questions I'd be struggling big time, they'd be marking me down as the hacker before I could whimper "I can tell you what my favourite Google Doodle is though".
It's so easy to set up new accounts that I have probably signed up to way more than I can count, let alone remember. Also for every service you want to use online you have to have a new account; I had a letter undelivered yesterday because it required extra postage. Pay online, it said. So simple, I thought.
......Fill in all my details, what the 'sorry this wasn't delivered card' said etc. Choose a password. Hit Enter. You already have an account. Right, OK. Enter several of the passwords I use most often. You have now been locked out of your account, a new password has been sent to your email address. Sign into email account. Go back to Royal Mail with new password. Your account has been locked. Start to get tense. Create a whole new account with different email address. Fill in all my details again. Pay £1.10 to get mail delivered (inclusive of £1 admin charge). Consider that this whole charade could have been avoided by visting the post office down the road...........Our 23 things so far has been quite Google heavy (coupled with the fact that we all have a University Google account) so I thought this post was quite an apt reminder of the potential stormy nature of The Cloud.
Thing #3 summary: a good way to information gather and get useful updates. Having said this I do prefer Twitter as an information gathering tool and I will discuss that when we get to the Twitter Thing. Re-looking at my Google reader account for these 23 things has allowed me to discover the bundle function which I think could be really useful to collect together subject blogs (i.e. Marketing blogs or Retail blogs) and forward them on to interested parties.
Image credit: XKCD licensed under the Creative Commons by-nc
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