Thing #23, DONE!

Woo! Finally finished! I enjoyed the 23 things, but my biggest problem was being pressed for time to actually do this. The circulation staff is usually shelving or being on the front desk, we always have something expected of us to do, and if one of us isn't doing it, the others feel it. So, finding time to get the 23 Things done was difficult, to say the least. The actual Things themselves we alright, but in my free time I enjoy putzing around online, so I already knew some of the Things. Getting to more about RSS feeds and Bloglines was really interesting though. It would've been nice to have had more time to actually sit back and appreciate what I was looking at, but I was usually just trying to complete the activity in the few moments I had. While enjoyable and definitely a learning experience, I would suggest different ways of giving this to circulation and information staff. While information staff has scheduled time off the desk, if perhaps the circulation department would be given each day at a specific time to do just one Thing. That would've been helpful. I tried to squeeze in a few Things at a time. So yay! All done, no more having to steal a moment or too in! *cheers*

Thing #22, Overdrive

I found this pretty interesting because I know that we get a number of patrons who like audio books because they have a long commute, so they appreciate our audio books section. I also have a friend who I constantly try and recommend books to, but he can only listen to them because of his job (he fixes watches for a living, and likes to listen to books while he works.) Something that is difficult though is I enjoy series books, and for our audio books, we'll only have like #3 in the series, so its hard to recommend the series if they can't listen to the first one! Here, there seems to be all the books in a series. I wasn't able to find the Harry Potter series though, which may have to do with licensing. I was able to find, however, the George R.R. Martin series "Song of Ice and Fire." A fantastic series. Something interesting is that when searching for an author, you have to do Last name, First name, which isn't specified anywhere I could see. At first I thought they just didn't have him because of that. After a bit more searching, I found what I was looking for. They have a lot of information on the book, and even part of the book ready to listen to if you're interested. I thought this was very helpful.

Thing #21, Podcasts

I actually have an iPod at home (but now I actually use my 23 Things MP3 player more! So much easier to use than iPod and iTunes) and I subscribe to "Ask a Ninja" podcasts. I heart the Ninja!. Anyways, I went to Podcast Alley and looked up library podcasts, and subscribed to one for my Bloglines account. Pretty easy. Since I'm at work on a public computer, I can't actually *listen* to the podcast, but I know what they're like. I'm not really a big fan of podcasts, to me, they're kinda more for people who listen to MPR and get lots of non-fiction books on CD out. You know, the serious people who enjoy listening to serious things. I tried once subscribing to a Harry Potter podcast, but I am a more visual person I've found. With Ask a Ninja, he bounces around and talks about silly things, whereas for the Harry Potter podcast (Mugglecast), it was just people talking. My mind wandered after a bit. So, yay for podcasting, for the serious people.

Thing #20, YouTube

Ah, YouTube. My guy friends LOVE YouTube, and are always trying to find gross or outrageous videos on it. I know if my guy friends have sent me a link to it, I shouldn't watch it, unless I really do want to watch a video about a gigantic centipede that could eat something twice its size in the most disgusting way possible (which, you know, I never do.) What I love about YouTube is that I'm able to search for commercials that people make references to, so that I can finally get the "in-joke" with my friends. The only problem is that searching for a video can be hard if the person hasn't tagged it correctly. I tried searching the other day for a video of Britney Spears' infamous VMA performance, and couldn't find the whole song, or people were making their own parodies of it, but not the whole actual performance. Finally I was able to find it on MTV's website. But here is a great video I saw one time called "The Evolution of Dance."

Thing #19, Web 2.0

At first, I wasn't too into Web 2.0's site. Its a list of really great sites, woo, isn't it just like every other blog out there? However, I dutifully clicked on the third place winner for "Games" and found "Guess-The-Google," which is too much fun. You're shown a number of thumbnails of pictures, that all have a common theme. When searching a word in Google, they all came up for some reason. For example, there's a picture of some hearts, cupid, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and statues. What do they have in common? The answer is, "Love." Type in the word, and you win that round. Some are harder than others. I think the people in the top scorers list have played so much they know all the words used. I got about a 200-something. I'm pretty proud of that! I saw some of the websites featured on 23 things under some of the winning sites as well, like del.icio.us, and rolly-o. This kinda seems like a site of links to other good sites, which a number of other websites have, but at least you know these are "official."

Thing #18, Google Docs

Here is a webpage that lets you do word processing away from a computer with Microsoft Word on it, or something similar. While its a good idea, its a bit confusing. It reminds me of how AOL Instant Messenger has AIM Express, so you can log onto your Instant Messenger account away from the computer you have it loaded onto. Here, you can make a word document away from your home computer as well. However, I do prefer doing word documents on my own computer. I'm sure if I got familiarized with it, it would be great.