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.