Thing 23/Yeah I Made it Through!!!!

WOW I finished and did it before the deadline.
I'm glad I took this "journey". I had my reservations at first since I'm not really into technology and don't really spend much time on the web...but...this experience and these "things" were eye opening. I really didn't realize how vast the web is and what you can find out there. Now I do, and even though I felt some of it was junk (particularly on YouTube) it has a great deal of applicability especially in our jobs at the library and for my kids. Now I have a better idea of what they do when they spend so much time on the computer.
I know I just scratched the surface but at least now I won't look crossed eyed when a customer asks me about "wikis" and if someone mentions the term "mashup", I know they aren't talking about potatoes. These "23 things" gave me a good general knowledge of many useful tools and hopefully I can pass some of this on in my day to day interactions. As time permits, I hope to explore further. I am enjoying the RSS feeds I subscribed to. It is a great way to get news and information without jumping all over different websites and it saves time.
Whoever thought of "23 things" should get the pat on the back. Thanks for making this available and thank you HCL for giving us the time to play and learn. This was a great learning experience!

Thing 22/Learn about Audiobooks

I especially liked this section. I enjoy listening to audiobooks on CD as I drive and would like to listen while I clean or garden but never took the time to figure out how to load them. This exercise clarified many questions and I hope to start loading some books to my new MP3 player. I even printed out instructions so I have them handy.
There were two problems though. First, all the books I was interested in were not available and second, I still need to figure out how to use the MP3 player. After I do this I'll put some on hold.
I'm basically a techno idiot but by working through 23 things I'm starting to catch on. Yeah!

Thing 21/Podcasts

I found a great deal of overlap with podcasts and videos on YouTube. I was also a bit confused at first because the definition under Thing 21 is a "podcast is a non-musical audio or video that is distributed over the internet..." The first audio podcasts I listened to all had music. One of my favorites was the Origin of the Lone Ranger and of course the theme song was playing.
I especially liked some of the clips from old shows and I found some videos of show horses for sale. My girls show in the hunter ring so we are always on the look out for a good show horse at a good value. By viewing these we can easily eliminate some horses and only go view those that pass the initial screening. This has great applicability for us.
I had trouble finding my way around Yahoo podcasts. Maybe with more time I would have better luck but I thought the categories were too broad.
I did not find a podcast that I wanted to add to my Bloglines account. Many were just junk. As I play with this in the future, maybe I'll find some.

Thing 20/YouTube

I really don't see the draw for this site. I just spent my lunch hour wandering through YouTube and clicking on things I thought would interest me and all I really found was junk. I can't believe people would spend time posting some of this stuff. Sorry...I didn't find any video that I would like to add to my blog. Some of the animal ones were cute but nothing of real merit. Maybe I'll venture there again when I have time.

Thing 19/Web 2.0 Awards

I really liked this site. It gave me a good list of web sites that I didn't even know existed. It could certainly be helpful to customers.
I like to travel so the first sites I visited were about Travel (Forecast, Kayak, Realtravel). I did some flight comparisons for our upcoming trip and it was so much easier here because of all the comparison capability without going back and forth among more specific websites. These also gave the cheapest dates to fly. If you're flexible with travel dates you can really save.

I also checked out Social News, Classified and Events. I liked the Upcoming.Yahoo.com for finding things to do in the area including concerts and sporting events. You can also get to ticketing. Overall, great informational sources in all areas. Wish I had more time to look through all the sites.

Thing 18/On-line Productivity Tools

We already use Open Office which is an on-line application. They certainly have their merit since no software is needed and you don't have to constantly worry about updating. I was reluctant to let go of Microsoft Word but after using Open Office I really don't miss it except when I try to do a spreadsheet. I have gotten familiar with Excel and even though I don't use it often, I could figure it out. OpenOffice Calc has a few quirks that I still haven't worked through.
I did sign up for Google Docs and played with it for a while. I created a document and edited and moved it etc. and it works pretty much the same. The layout is different but it would just take some getting used to. The calendar feature was easy to navigate too. The best part about these Web tools is that they are a great cost saving and you avoid the hassle of updating. I give them a thumbs up. Here's one of the documents I created with Google Docs.

I'm trying out this new on-line application for creating documents.
We currently use Open Office and I found that OO is very easy to use.
I'd like to play with Google Docs to compare.
The layout is certainly different but let's see what it does.

Thing 17/ Sandbox Wiki

I played with the PB Wiki as suggested. I added my favorites titled "so here goes", read some of the other posts, and posted my blog with the others. It was fairly simple to do.

Thing 16/WIKIs

I looked at most of the tutorials to get a feel for Wikis. This would be a great tool to share knowledge in certain circumstances but having the ability to change anything someone else wrote bugs me and I'd tend to be reluctant to do this . I guess I'm just old school. I did look at numerous Wikis and liked the Book Lovers Wiki. Great way to get reading suggests with reviews.

Thing 15/ Library 2.0/Web 2.0

Didn't realize these terms have been around as long as they have. I read several of the articles until my eyes started to hurt. Basically the message was we just need to move with times in order to accommodate our customers. I liked the term in Icebergs, "just in case collection". Yep I can see that librarians will be reluctant to let go of printed staff. I witnessed this not long ago when we got rid of the pamphlet collection. Some just didn't want to throw out even though it was outdated and all this info was on-line. I see the future as making libraries relevant.

Thing 14/Technorati

I had looked at this site before when I was setting up my own blog but I spent time exploring it further. 51 million blogs at this site. This is overwhelming and without tags there would be no way to limit your search. I worked with this in areas of interest and was able to narrow my searches down with multiple tags but it took some time.
I did the exercise and looked for Learning 2.0. Using "posts" for searching there were 6353 blogs. Using "tags", it came up with 1980 blogs and using "blogs" to limit, there were 796. So it appears, using blogs will narrow the hits the most.

Thing 13/Tagging Del.icio.us

I can certainly see that this would be very helpful if you have boatload of bookmarks. Great way to organize. I personally only have a few bookmarks at present so didn't feel the need to use Del.icio.us. This "thing" also helped me to understand tagging better.
As for application in Libraries...this would be an efficient way for Libraries to help customers with important and/or popular websites that are used frequently for research or answering questions. Each library could just add to the list as sites are discovered and make it available not only to staff but to the customers as well.

Thing 12/ Rollyo

Couldn't get to this site on the two days I tried. Will come back later and then edit this post.

Thing 11/ Library Thing

The Library thing was easy to register and use. The site was simple to navigate. I'm not a techno genius and I signed up and used it without looking at the instructions. I think it's a wonderful tool for keeping track of what you read. If you like to read series like me you can check for the next one and check out the reviews. The tags and ort function gave quite a number of options which would be helpful as your list grows. I especially thought the unsuggester was clever. I started my list with a dozen books and found some in a series that I had missed. So now I'm going to request them.

Thing 10/ Image Generator

If this is your thing, you can really have fun with this. I went to MEEZ and created a "me" but unfortunately I used things that cost money (didn't realize this at the time) so when I went to save it, I was in debt. Since I was out of time I just canceled. Hopefully I'll find time to recreate me. It was rather coincidental that the day I was playing around with this and learning about avatars and second life, that CSI New York had an episode revolving around avatars and second like. This was very helpful with my understanding. What I don't understand is how people find time to have a second life. I think they would be better working on their first life.

Thing 9 Library Related Blogs/News Feeds

I think I did the News Feeds in Thing 8.
I search through numerous Library related blogs and even visited Merlin.
I liked the Librarian Internet Index for finging information but the one I thought was more on point for HCL was called Library Marketing: Thinking Outside the BOOK. Some good ideas. If they can make mammograms fun I'm sure we can make all library visits fun. We might want to adopt some of their ideas.

Thing 8 RSS feeds and Bloglines

I already knew a little about RSS feeds because we use them here at HCL so customers can get information on our collection and get alerts about new items. I just didn't realize there was such a vast number of feeds. You can spend hours scrolling through them. I subscribed to about 8 that interested me or were related to my hobbies. Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed in the quality of the information I have been receiving so I may have to unsubscribe and find others. This is time consuming, so I'll put it off for another day. On the other hand, I like the 3 or 4 news feeds I captured. I may never have to read a newspaper again. I like the highlights and it does save time. It could get quite overwhelming if you subscribed to a lot of them though. It comes under the heading of too much information. The Library feeds I looked at were informative.
Setting up the newsreader with bloglines was fairly simple. I have one with Yahoo that was set up some time ago but I don't remember how that set up compared.

Thing 7/ Technology Blog

Digital Camera Technology
I got one of these for my birthday last year and up until this point, all I could do was click and shoot. So now I have this card full of pics and have no idea what to do with them. After exploring Flickr, I decided it was time to organize them. So...my goal is to learn how to delete the poor ones, crop the ones I want to save, organize and save to a DVD so we can look at them. What's the point of taking pictures if you can never look at anything other than a 2"x2" image. The real challenge is deciding which ones to save and getting my husband to agree.

Thing 6/Flickr Mashups

It was fun to play here too. The Librarian trading cards were a hoot. Our newest sport! I clicked on numerous other sites to get a taste. It is amazing what you can do with the computer and pictures. The comic bubbles are a cute touch and the montages were great. It gave me a neat idea for all the family pics. I know I just scratched the surface but there were two sites I happened on that I really liked. The Trip Planner and the Daily Word. The Daily Word was a cute play on words and the Trip Planner had super travel pictures. You could see the world from you computer and help you to decide where you would like to travel.

Thing 5/Explore Flickr

Flickr is mind boggling. The number of pictures and number of members was unbelievable. You could play at this site forever. I spent time learning how to navigate but it was overwhelming. Personally, I think, I would rather store my pics on a disc.

Thing 3 Set up Blog

Wow!
That was easy and fun!

Thing 1 & 2 Program/Life Long Learners

I heard a quote on the radio recently that said, "we all live on the edge of fear when it comes to technology". Except for the computer geeks or those who are "techno" savvy this is probably true for the vast majority of us including myself. I am very proficient with those things I use on a regular basis but those I don't use, I tend to avoid. So this is why the sixth habit (technology) will be my biggest challenge. I am hoping the 23 Things Program will serve to get me over this avoidance hurdle. I am looking forward to this program and intend to have fun with it.

I enjoy learning new things and I don't think a day goes by that I don't pick up some tidbit of new information. My day usually starts as I wake up to a FUN Fact on the radio. And...if I remember this fact and happen to be the ninth caller at 8:40 AM, I could possibly win concert tickets or airline tickets. So as you can see Life Long Learning can be profitable as well as informative.