Thing 47: Finished!!

I'm done and it's only a day late! I had a good experience with More Things on a Stick. I tend to shy away from new technology unless forced, so this program was really good for that. I know that some of the sites I discovered will be uber-helpful at the library, either for my personal use or that patrons can use for themselves.

Thing 46: WebJunction Minnesota

I thought I had signed up for Webjunction during the first round, but I couldn't remember what e-mail address I used so I signed up for a new account. This looked completely new to me, so it's entirely possible that I never had an account before. I went through and added some friends and started a course on Reader's Advisory.

I liked the calender of events. It was easy to follow and it would be especially useful if I were going for MN Certification.

Thing 45: Cloud Computing

I can see definite advantages to using some of the Web OS systems. If you were required to take a lot of business trips, it would be nice to be able to have access to your work computer and all the programs on it. For me, I don't really have anything on my computer at home that I would need anywhere else. I would only ever need access to documents and I save those to flash drives anyway.

Another thing to think about with Web OS is security. To me it seems like you're remotely hacking into your home computer. If you're able to do that, what's keeping others from doing the same?

I cannot ever see myself spending money to back up my hard drive remotely. Especially after spending time earlier today on the Economy Thing, even 50 bucks a year seems like a complete waste. I would rather run the risk of losing all my information, cause let's face it... it's not all that much. I could live without it.

Thing 44: The Economy

I didn't really enjoy this thing. I'm really poor so the bad economy doesn't really affect me. I looked that the mymoney.gov site, and while I thought it was a good idea for the government to have a website to help people with basic budgeting issues, it was really hard to navigate the site.

I looked at some of the other sites and really liked mint.com. It seemed pretty simple to use, but I'm nervous about giving all my account information to some random website. Also, I like the garden idea to save money (or at least I would if I ate more than 2 servings of veggies a week), but raising your own animals is not all that economical. I know people who raise some animals, they've done it for 4H for years. It's expensive, especially at the beginning to get all the supplies. Plus once you've raised the animals, you have to butcher them yourself. I am a huge meat eater, but I also like that my meat comes in packages and no longer looks like a chicken or a cow.

Thing 43: Online TV and Video

What can I say - its Hulu. I've used it occasionally to look up random videos, or to catch episodes of TV that I've missed. I don't have TV right now at my apartment, so if I don't mooch off other people (Kari) I have to find my television elsewhere. I've never used the queue thing, but I like it. If you find something, but don't have time to watch it right away, it'll wait for you. I have Fringe waiting for me because I missed last week's episode and the season finale is tonight! With Spock!

Thing 42: Music 2.0

Pandora is awesome. Last.fm is awesome. I've used both before - Pandora for a few months and Last.fm for about a year. I've never used the social aspect on either, though. I've also used The Hype Machine, but it got to be too much. If I'm bored, I'll sign on and look around a bit. I think online music sites are huge and are only going to get bigger in the future. People may listen to the radio in their cars, but any other time - they'd use internet radio or sites such as Pandora, because it'll always be geared specifically towards them.

Thing 41: Mashup your Life

I feel like I've heard of Lifestream.fm before, but I couldn't remember what it was all about. Now that I've looked a second time, it seems to be like an RSS aggregator, but specifically for social networking. I signed up, but the only thing showing up is my Facebook account. I signed up yesterday and checked back today, but still nothing. I did get an e-mail to activate the account that didn't work. That could be part of the problem. The link they sent me was a dud.

A few of my friends have linked their Twitterfeeds with their Facebook statuses, so that when they update one, it automatically updates the other. That's really not for me. Different people are on each service, so I would put different things up, or at least phrase them differently.

I'm gonna keep trying to get lifestream to work, but if it completely fails, I won't be all that disappointed.

Thing 40: Mashup the web

I admit I'm a little confused about what exactly a mashup is. I agree with the definition at the top of the Thing page and with the video, but then when I look at some of the links, I don't understand what makes them mashups.

I love both Pandora and last.fm. I really liked this mashup. You can add tags while the songs are playing + the love/hate/recommend buttons are there. Fantastic! I'm also going to try out bkkeepr.com This may be a way to keep track of the books that I'm reading.

The Crimereports mashup would be really useful, but it isn't set up for our area. For now I'll just have to stick with the dispatch logs and the state registry site to keep up to date with crime where I live.

I didn't create my own mashup, because I'm still a little unsure of what it means. I did copy Janine however and created a map of the places I've been. Since I'm not a world traveler like she is, I made mine just of the United States. Notice how even then, it's a little clumpy. I need to leave North Dakota! I just love it so much :)

Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

Let me first say that I don't like scrapbooking. It takes a lot of time and if I wanted to save pictures, I'd just put them in a photo album. For this thing, I decided to try scrapblog.com. It seemed very pink which again made me a little nervous. Now, I realize scrapbooking is "girly" but couldn't they have tried to pick a more gender neutral color? Especially if they're going to call it digital storytelling?

That's getting off the point. After I got over the pinkness it seemed generally simple to use. I would've liked more "themes" to choose from but again, that's just me. As I was thinking of different applications to use digital scrapbooks, I thought of the fact that my youngest brother is graduating high school this spring. He was also the only senior on the swim team. During this past year, my mother has had to make so many different "books" for the team. For the banquet. For the parents. And now for his graduation. I stole some pictures of him off my mother's Facebook page (Yes, my mother has facebook) and tried to put together a page.

Most of them worked ok, but a few of them were really blurry when I tried to put them into the template. They were originally bigger and clearer, so I don't really know what happened there. When I was finished I noticed that scrapblog has an automatic publishing feature that will put it on your blog for you. I hit that button and wham! It worked!

awesome awesome awesome. it worked! I am amazing! awesome.

Thing 38: Screencasting

I didn't have any idea what screencasting was before starting this Thing. If we did online tutorials at our library - this would be perfect. Right now, we just offer regular computer classes, but we'll have to keep this option in our minds in the future. One small thing - if we were to have them, someone else would have to do it. I have a bad habit of highlighting whatever I'm reading on the screen. People can always tell when I was the last one on any of our staff computers because whole paragraphs will be blue. :)

I watched a few different tutorials. The screencast-o-matic seemed pretty simple, but I didn't like the red dot. Jing's tutorial was entertaining, but the product itself seemed harder. I couldn't watch more than a minute of the skitch tutorial. Wow - that was a lot of pink.

I decided to try screencast-o-matic and it was easy! I didn't know what to use as an example for my screencast, so I just signed into my blog and went into the Edit Post option. I think it worked. And I think I embedded it into my blog correctly. (crosses fingers)

Thing 37: Photo Tales

I think I signed up for a flickr account during the first round, but I don't own a camera and usually hide when other try to take pictures, so I didn't have anything to put up there. I went to flickr and searched through the Creative Commons pictures and found some that I could use to experiment with. I tried animoto and it seemed pretty easy to do. The only thing I had trouble with was adding music, but if I were using my computer at home with all my mp3s it would be a whole lot easier.

I can see us using this in the library to promote activites. We could have pictures of events and have them in a slide show. These sites would also work really well for montages at a wedding or graduation &c.

Thing 36: Comic Relief - Generate Some Fun

Wow! After Thing 35, this seems extra dumb and a complete waste of time. I'll look through these, but I don't see how I'd be able to use them in the library. And I'm not touching the Tartan link. Too many of our computers are down with viruses to screw up any more.

I managed to find 3 that were useful. Turning web pages or word documents into PDF files is by far the most useful generator on this page. Also I really liked the Son of Citation machine and EasyBib. Easybib was awesome because you could just put in the ISBN and it would automatically put it into the right format.

My random names are:
username: Mechanical Princess
Fairy name: Columbine Elfwitch
Vampire name: Demon of Wraiths

Megan Richardson's Dewey Decimal Section:

581 Specific topics in natural history

Megan Richardson = 357148938184954 = 357+148+938+184+954 = 2581


Class:
500 Science


Contains:
Math, astronomy, prehistoric life, plants and animals.



What it says about you:
You are fascinated by the world around you, and see it as a puzzle worth exploring. You try to understand how things work and how you can make them better. You might be a nerd.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

And because I got this song in my head working with all these generators:
The Holloways - Generator

Thing 35: Books 2.0

I warn you in advance. I really liked this Thing and looked at almost everything. This post is going to be long and rambling.

I haven't really seen a large change in our library regarding electronic books. We have e-audio books available for download through our library system, but no book books. I would be really excited to have a kindle for myself, but they're really expensive, so I don't see it happening anytime in the future. If anyone wants to buy me a present, I definitely wouldn't turn one down. I don't know of anyone who has a kindle, but a few of the people I follow on Twitter have them and really like them. They haven't caught on in this part of the country, but we're normally a little behind the times :)

I don't want to put anything on my phone. I have a cheapo phone without Internet capabilities. If I had an iPhone though...... too bad iPhones don't work in North Dakota. TwitterLit is a cool idea and you don't have to involve your phone. I signed up to follow them on Twitter, we'll have to wait and see if it pans out to anything fun.

The Reader's Advisory sites would be really useful in the library. We use the What's Next Database all the time when people can remember an author, but not the order of the books - or if they have 5 books checked out by they're all in different series. Our catalogue doesn't have an easy way to print out a list of the books in a certain series in order, either, so it helps. What should I read Next could be really helpful for Reader's Advisory as well, especially if it's a genre you personally don't read much. I also visited BookLamp. It's similar to Pandora (which I love and am listening to while typing this). I really hope it gets developed into something real.

For Online Book Communities, my favorite was Reader2. I read way too much and I'd like to have a record of it. I tried to register, but it was disabled because of spammers. I'm going to have to try to remember to go back and sign up at a later date.

I don't do much with Book Groups, but I liked the Reader Group Choices site. It would give your group a good jumping off point. The music aspect is interesting, this week it's for the book "The Soloist" which was a really good book even though the movie is horrible mis-cast, but I love Classical music and it had good suggestions to get you in the mood for the book. I wish they had an archive of searchable Music by the Book segments rather than just the feature of the month. It surprised me that they didn't, but if it was on the site anywhere, I couldn't find it.

Like I said earlier, our library does subscribe to Netlibrary for audiobooks. I personally don't like people reading to me, so unless it's Neil Gaiman - I don't listen to audio books (I can't help but listen to him) but I really liked the idea of Podiobooks. I hate that name. It's all free, which is good, and there was a wide range of books. It gives participants an opportunity to listen/read things that they otherwise may not see in the audio book collection in their library.

I had iRead on Facebook, but I had a hard time keeping it up to date. Plus I usually had too many books at once. Never mind, I just checked and I had the plain books application because I had looked at iRead and didn't like the setup. I like a little more anonymity with the books I read and with Facebook it would pop up on everyone's Newsfeed whenever I started a new book. I still think I'm going to try Reader2.

When I looked through the Book Review websites, the only one that seemed like it would be better than the reviews that pop up on Novelist was Book Browse. You have to subscribe to it, and it's not cheap which pretty much puts it out of my mind.

Thing 34: Is this our Competition?

I tried reading the article "Future of the Reference Desk", btu I couldn't understand most of what she was talking about. "Triage technologies"??? I also disagreed with her saying the Reference is a librarian's term. Our library got rid of "reference" librarians and reference desks years ago, but patrons still ask for it.

The Slam the Boards idea is awesome. It gives us know-it-alls a chance to use all of our useless knowledge. :) When I looked through some of the different answer sites, there was a wide range of question quality. I looked at Wikianswers first and really liked the way the site was set up. Some of the questions seemed really random, but that was only until I looked at the other sites. I'm not sure if the people who ask questions on Yahoo!Answers speak English. A lot of questions weren't even recognizable as questions. I really liked Mahalo and the fact that you could ask questions through Twitter. Plus, their pictures were all cute Hawaiian cartoon kids.

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

I don't travel much myself, so mainly I need to keep up with sites in order to help patrons. So far, we haven't had much demand for travel 2.0 sites; they stick to the booking sites.

Looking over the sites, the only one I was familiar with was TripAdvisor and I'm sorry to say, that's from an episode of "The Office". I looked at mykugelhopf.ch which was pretty cool to look at, I don't know if I would read it on a regular basis, but it's about food and based out of Switzerland, what's not to like?

I also looked at "The Cranky Flier" which I probably wouldn't use for travel, but so I could keep up to date with what's going on in the airline industry. I went to UND, so most of my friends are pilots, ATCs or TSA employees and sometimes I get left out of conversations.

My 3 favorite links in this thing were: Vcarious Wines and Times, and Greenroutes I could definitely see myself using them in the future.

Thing 32: Google Maps and Mashups

I don't know if it's because I haven't been keeping up to date with the thing or what, but I was really frustrated by the time I was done making my Google Map. I watched the video on how to use Google maps - but most of that information I was already aware of. I've gotten frustrated with Google maps before so usually when I want directions I use Mapquest, but I did use Google maps when I was looking for a new apartment to see what the neighborhoods looked like.

Even though I knew that you could zoom in on Satellite images, when the video showed me how quick and easy it was to find a major airport "You can even see the planes parked at the gates" it seemed wrong. There's some information that probably shouldn't be on the internet. Major airports especially - national security issue, anyone?

Anyway, I went to make a map of my own. It was hard. I kept getting confused between how to zoom and how to move the map north and south. The computer also kept trying to change which roads I was using. This was a map I was creating and there was a reason I was taking certain streets. Some of the times it switched the routes, it tried to go the wrong way down one-way streets. I didn't find it very intuitive.

Thing 31: More Twitter

It's been awhile since I've posted anything, so if I re-make points here, I'm sorry.

Twitter is awesome. I've been using it consistently since I set up my account. I'm following some famous people (well, famous to me) and some work friends. I've also started following a couple random people. This was a weird, stalkery step, but made easier by the fact that they started following me first. I still haven't set up TweetDeck, but I mean to. It's the one that looks the most popular. My only problem is that I only remember while I'm at work and I want it to be on my computer at home....

I signed up for Mr. Tweet right after I made my account, but so far it hasn't really been helpful. Maybe I'm using it wrong. I've used the text-tweet feature a few times. It's awesome. There are lots of times when I feel the need to share a thought and am nowhere near a computer.

I've been thinking lately about the whole issue with security on Twitter. As of this post, I have my full name and where I live. I wanted it to be easy for other people to find me. But we had a presentation here in the library by a policeman last week talking about all the creepy on the internet and how easy it was to stalk you. Now I'm paranoid. I did add my name to the Twitter directory though...... we'll see.

Other than that, Twitter has been fun. I've found a good site for sharing the songs that are stuck in your head - songza.com and have figured out most of the little twitter nuances. I still have no idea what hashtags are used for.

Twitter questions

What's correct etiquette for Twitter? I know how to not be annoying, but are you supposed to follow people who follow you? All of them? Are you supposed to send a message to people thanking them for following you? What's the deal?

Thing 30 - More Ways to use RSS and Delicious

I love RSS. It has made my life so much easier over the past year, I can't imagine living without it. I looked back at my posts from the first round of 23 things, and apparently I thought it was stalker-ish. Twitter is way worse, and I love that! My RSS is through Bloglines and I still find that easier to use than Google Reader. I check it at least once a day to make sure I don't get overloaded with posts. I don't really sort my RSS. I follow some other 23 things participants, and I do have those in a separate folder. And during primary season, I had all my political blogs in a separate folder (they were taking over). The others I just keep alphabetical.

I tried using the RSS locater. Maybe I was doing it wrong, but it didn't seem to come up with anything useful. I looked at some of the examples that were on the thing page, but none of them fit with what I use RSS for. If I lived in a city larger than Fargo, the Travel updates would probably be pretty cool.

Delicious. well.......... I haven't use it since last time. I tried to sign in and apparently didn't remember my password, so I had to set up a new account. Then I realized that I don't use bookmarks. I did in college, but haven't in years. So I didn't really know what to do. I'll check with some other people here in Moorhead and see what they use it for.

Thing 29 - and another thing

I haven't tried Goog-411, but I'm putting it in my phone. I may need it someday. I wish it had a less-annoying name...

Thing 29 - Google Tools

Looking through the options for thing 29, I'll admit I wasn't all that excited about this thing. I didn't want to use Web History because of the privacy issue. I clear all the private data off of my home computer at least once or twice a month. I don't necessarily think that anyone's gonna steal my information, but I just don't like having it there in plain sight.

The Google calendar has been really useful here at the library. We use it to set up a schedule for the use of our meeting rooms, since it's easy to access at any of the staff computers. In my personal life, I have a pocket calendar that's always in my purse. You don't always have access to a computer when trying to schedule things, so for me - a hard copy is better.

I already had a Google account that was automatically created when I signed up for Blogger last year, and I've used gmail for a computer class before. Thing is, I've been using hotmail since 1998. I'm usually resistant to change, but hotmail has been acting up lately and has big ads all over the place, so I'm giving in and switching to gmail. Everyone here at work tells me that this is a good thing.

I've also set up Google News. I already use an aggregator and have both CNN and InForum feeds, but I'll use both and see which one wins out.

Thing 28 - Customized Home Pages

I set up an iGoogle page during the first round of 23 things, but I have not used it a single time since then. One of the reasons I love Google so much is that it's so simple. Google is actually my homepage at home, but just the plain one. I get distracted very easily and usually when I go to look something up, I'm doing so right away so I don't forget. If I have tons of applications on there, I'm going to see something else and read that instead.

I signed into my google account, just to see what the page was like. I put a lot of really stupid stuff on there last year. I figured it was probably going to be easier to start over with a new site than rebuild my Google page. I tried Netvibes first, but I couldn't figure out how to modify anything and all the news applications were through CBS. I would rather get my news from almost any other source. I gave up on Netvibes and tried PageFlakes. That was really easy. I could move stuff around. It was very customizable. At first I couldn't figure out how to make applications go away, but I figured it out.

I'm going to try to use it more often this time around. We shall see.

Thing 27 - Twitter!

I've heard of Twitter before; some of the blogs I follow have mentioned it every once in a while. Personally it seemed like a waste of time. Now that I've tried it, it's amazing!! It's like updating your Facebook status, but better. This is stream-of-consciousness blogging, which works really well with my ADD. I can put random thoughts on there or use it to make a to-do list or some other thing that I'll just need to be reminded of later.

It was unbelievably easy to use; you just sign up and go. I was even able to add a widget to my blog! I'm still trying to see how this could be useful in a library setting, so I'm following the Hibbing Library to see what kinds of tweets they're doing. Maybe if I were attending a conference, I could use Twitter to put up quick thoughts on different presentations.

A hint to other users: if you want to share links, but your tweets are getting too long, try using tinyurl.com I've seen a few more experienced Tweeters? twitterers? using it to make long URLs fit within the 140 character parameters.

Thing 26: Join the 23 Things on a Stick Ning

I signed up for the 23 things Ning during the first round, but didn't really use it. I played with it a little more this round and I think I have a better understanding of how it works. I added another video to my page, commented on a couple others, changed the layout of my page, and joined the NLLN group. As a whole, I think it's a good idea to have a place where people can go and discuss issues that arise while they're working on the different things, but for some reason I can't see myself using it much. There doesn't seem to be much organization throughout the site. I'm going to try to keep going back to see what's been added.

Review: CORALINE

Review: CORALINE

Posted using ShareThis

Thing 25 extras

Just for fun, I took the Blog Readability Test and the Typealyzer. I'd be really interested to see what results other people got......

Typealyzer = ESTP - The Doers

The active and playful type. They are especially attuned to people and things around them and often full of energy, talking, joking and engaging in physical out-door activities.

The Doers are happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus. They might be very impulsive and more keen on starting something new than following it through. They might have a problem with sitting still or remaining inactive for any period of time."

Movie Reviews

Thing 25 - Bloggers Toolkit

I looked at the videos about widgets and there was a lot of good information included. I looked through Widgetbox and Google to search for some widgets to put on my blog. I found that both were easy to navigate, but I liked Widgetbox a little better - it had better categories and it gave you live previews of how the widget would actually work in your blog!

I've used some widgets before. I had LibraryThing on my blog during the first round, and then added RSS at the beginning of this round. I also used Clustrmap on a wiki that our library set up for Teen Read Week. I added 2 new widgets for this Thing, a digital clock on the bottom of the page and a movie trailer widget. I took the movie trailer one off already as it took you off the page. Isn't the whole point of widgets to get people to stay on your blog?

The best widget I've seen looking at other peoples blogs was a Super Mario widget on Shane's blog. Although I lost right away, it was fun!

Finishing Thing 24

Alright, I finally found a template that I like (mostly). It bothers me that there are gold flecks in my avatars face, but as you scroll down they go away - it's something I can live with. I was also able to replace all of my widgets that disappeared when I was playing around with how things looked.

gah!!!

This is frustrating! I tried to switch the template of my blog, but then it erased all the widgets I had from last time, including my avatar, my librarything, etc.

grr

Thing 24: Refreshing your blog

I've been lazy since we finished the first round of 23 things; I haven't blogged at all. That's a lie - I did set up another blog with some people at work, but we failed at updating that one as well. Part of my problem is that I don't have anything interesting to say, so people won't read it. And if people aren't reading it, what's the point?

When I logged into my blog (for the first time in a long time) the template that I had before no longer worked. I'd been using one that I found through Pyzam and my guess is that it just became inactive or something. There were a couple other people who were using similar templates and there's didn't work anymore either. I picked one of the templates that Blogger had, but they were all boring, so I'm pretty sure I'll be spending some time looking through some fun sites to find a more interesting background.

I looked through some of the new Gadgets Blogger has added and most were ho-hum, except for the RSS feed!! That is an awesome update! This well make it much easier for people to keep track of when other people have updated their blogs. It'll make communication a lot easier.

I liked the way my avatar looked and I had the ultimate perfect background for it, so all I did was change my outfit. I'd played around with the Yahoo avatars a bit during the first round, so I was going to use one of the other sites, but none of them really caught my eye and you would've had to register with a new password. Since I already had one I could play with - I just stuck with what I knew.