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.