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.

Thing #17, Sandbox Wiki

So, I don't think I was really into this "Thing" because of how I messed it up. The instructions were to add your blog to the list. I thought it meant make a new page, and link that page to the main list. After about five minutes of staring, caveman-like, at the computer screen and scratching my head, I figured out that I just needed to add my link to the main blog list, and that's it. So there's now a blank wiki page just called "Jen's Blog"out there on the sandbox. A fascinating page, to be sure. It's just embarrassing that it has to constantly show up on the "Recently Edited" page because I kept trying to fiddle with it and change what I had written or figure out how to copy/paste it. I don't feel so bad though, because on the main page are people who have tried to link to their page, but somehow failed, and it's just text in a sea of links.

This sandbox is interesting, but all it needs is one rash of obnoxious kids to come in and delete stuff and add all sorts of stupid, false information, and it'd be ruined. It reminds me of a forum where people just get on and post things like, "I love puppies!" or, "I love sci-fi books!"Except instead of being in one long post, it's in short little bursts of wiki pages. Not very interesting, unfortunately.

Thing #16, Wiki's

I thought the wiki's were somewhat interesting, but at the same time, I'm so tired of wiki's. Since wikipedia came, everyone has piggybacked off of it and made their own variation. It's a good thing, but at the same time it has me wary because anyone can say anything about any subject, whether they're telling the truth or not. The honor system keeps a webpage mainly accurate, but at the same time, many different opinions can clash, so it's hard to keep it unbiased. The library wiki's seem to be trying to show a few things the libraries have to offer, but they don't have the same effect as going to an actual library. There are reviews of some books on BookLoversWiki, but there aren't a lot. Hopefully in time these sites will grow, but for now they don't have a lot of information on them.

Thing #15, Library 2.0

I read Rick Anderson's "Away from the 'Icebergs'," which discussed certain things libraries can do to keep up with the influx of information becoming available to people. I was a little disappointed to look at the three things libraries can do, because it just made me depressed. The first one was to get rid of your older collection so you're not wasting space, because people are going to find what they're looking for online. Part of me does agree, but at the same time, I keep imagining those paranoid movies about the future where the computer rules and books are forbidden. To me, print is something physical, that is hard to get rid of, and can continually be found and referred to. Something online is changing, and consists of 1's and 0's, so it can be easily discarded or lost. The fact that information can be so easily gotten rid of like that is scary to me. And where are the people getting the information from to put online? From books, in my mind. I was also a bit skeptical about the "Bring the library to you" approach. Libraries are places where people meet and talk and ideas are exchanged in person! To take that away from people just seems scary.

Thing #14, Technorati

I found that Technorati is basically a lot of searching through blogs, or like a blog search engine. Some of the blogs I saw were some favorites of mine, and I didn't even consider them as "blogs," just as websites that updated daily with interesting new things. In the popular searches part of the site, I saw some interesting names there. For instance, a number of people had done searches for "Skype," but it was because recently Skype had a service blackout for about three days. Also being searched for were some celebrities, including a Spanish celebrity I had never heard of, but was immensely popular on Spanish-speaking blogs. The favorite blogs tended to be technical blogs, which isn't surprising since a number of technical-minded people use the internet and look at these blogs.

Thing #13, Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us was pretty interesting, but I don't know if I can get used to the idea. The link to see the 12-minute tutorial was broken, so I pretty much had to just look around myself. I couldn't really get my head around just EXACTLY what it was until I read the helpful "learn more" button. It basically explained it as having bookmarks from your computer placed on a website so you can go to those sites wherever you want to, away from your home computer. This made sense to me, and it seemed like a nifty idea. My idea of "tagging" was from LiveJournal, where you could use tags to say what you'd talked about. For example, if you're a Dr. Who fan, any post you'd made about it could have a Dr. Who tag, so you could easily search for any Dr. Who references. This is how Del.icio.us looks to me. I am also having a hard time with it's name. Why the periods in the word "delicious"? I just don't get it.

Thing #12, Rollyo

To me, Rollyo was kinda interesting, but I lost interest quickly because its pretty much a search engine. If you're really interested in a topic, couldn't you just use Google to search for it? Maybe I've grown too dependent on Google and Wikipedia to look for everything I need to know about. Here is my Rollyo search, on cuteness:

http://rollyo.com/wonderninja/my_cuteness/

Thing #11, Library Thing

Here's another "thing" I love! I really love reading books and finding new things to read, so LibraryThing is good to know what I've already read and what other people who like my books would suggest. The only downside is having to input or search for every book you've read or own, and for a librarian, that can be a considerable number of books. But its lots of fun searching for good books to read! Its like shopping on Amazon.com and not having to spend anything. Here is my link:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Cobrani

Thing #10, Images

This was interesting! I liked playing with the images, and was able to make a few. I wanted to to the Simpsons generator, but you really need pictures of yourself online. I didn't have any available, so this is something to do at home, I think.

Thing #9, MERLIN

After all the fun websites like Flickr and Bloglines and stuff, I was disappointed with MERLIN. It didn't really seem all that special or flashy to me. It seemed like any other library website that had links to other technology-related information for customers. It had a lot more sites available than a regular website, but the format it was presented in was kinda dry and just seemed like it was a jumping point to better websites.

Thing #8, Bloglines

Wooo, Bloglines! This is pretty cool stuff here. Before I thought RSS feeds were crazy, convoluted things where you had to go to some specific web page to see what you had signed up for, and it was harder than just looking on the original web page you'd subscribe to. Bloglines is nifty because you can just click on the name of the site you've subscribed to and it shows you the top headlines. The only thing I don't like is that it kinda takes the fun out of just casually putzing around a website and clicking on things randomly, just to see what you can see. I hope to definitely use this in the future though. I chose to do the optional activity, and here's my public link:

http://www.bloglines.com/public/Wonderninja

Talking about Skype, Thing #7

I adore the program Skype. A friend of mine over in England introduced me to it, and now I have so many of my friends on it. It acts as an instant messenger, file transfer, and voice communication tool. It's completely free, and it's as easy as talking on the phone. Sometimes the quality is even better than on the phone, since the phone can cut out. You can also post a picture of yourself as your icon. Another aspect is that you can search for other people to talk to on Skype, so if you felt like talking to someone in say, Brazil, you can see who's available to chat in Brazil and just start calling or instant messaging them. While IMing a person, you can also insert fun little emoticons, which I love.

Thing #6, Mashups

Having recently come from a trip to San Diego, I was intruiged by Yahoo! Travels "Trip Planner" mashup site. You plan your trip with driving directions, hotel planning, nearby restaurants and such, and then when you come home, you can upload your pictures and show where you've been. You can comment on other people's trips, and get directions and addresses to where they've been. For my trip to San Diego, I didn't go to a lot of different places, so Trip Planner probably wouldn't be used to its full effect.

Corgi pic! Thing #5

Here is a picture of a Corgi in an Incredibles outfit. Crazy!

Week 1, Thing 2

The easiest of the 7.5 to me would be "Play." It's easy for me to play. Or rather, not work. The hardest for me I would think would be "Begin with the end in mind," since I get frustrated and daunted by The End. It's so far away! I can't get that far! Why even start if it's all that way. So, I'm going to have some trouble dealing with that one.