Thing 11: Social Media

I looked at all 4 suggested sites and found Mixx to be the most intuitive to use. Diggit was also pretty easy to navigate. I searched each site using keywords like "Welsh Corgi" "Arthurian Legend" "web 2.0" and "Everquest." Then I tried more obvious keywords like "Obama" and "economy." I then went on to "Library" as a key word.

In none of my searching did I find an article of interest that I hadn't already found using my RSS (Google Reader) or my regular news searching. I'm afraid I just do not get the point of these sites. I do not see how I could use them for home or work. Sorry.

And then I tried looking at the comments. Since no 2 people are going to agree 100 % of the time on 100% everything, I expected to see discussion and perhaps some disagreement. I saw some limited foul language and disrespect. I also noticed a lot of people expressing their own opinions, but noticed little of people thoughtfully "listening" to differing opinions before voicing what they thought. I was not comfortable with the quality of the "discussions" taking place via comment. I guess maybe I don't trust "popularity" to tell me what's important. Maybe it's that road less traveled thing.....

I guess if you're looking for what's popular, trendy, or outlandish these are the places to search. I can't say that I'll be using these tools, though.

Thing 10: Tags & Delicious

I practiced tagging a couple of my blogger blogs and it was very easy. If I were to blog several times a day or over a long period of time tagging my entries would be necessary for keeping up. While Blogger's methodology is a little different from Flickr's methodology, both are intuitive and useful.

Before exploring Delicious, I wasn't too sure it would be useful to me, since I don't bother to use the bookmark function of my browser. However, exploring other people's bookmarks by tag is fascinating and can be useful in finding sites that I might have otherwise overlooked. I like using Delicious as a research tool, although I don't see myself signing up and creating my own tagged bookmarks.

Learning about tag clouds was also very useful. Until now, I always found those spaces of words of varying size rather blinding, annoying, and in the way. Now that I understand that the size and boldness of a word is an indication of the popularity of that tag, the usefulness & organization is suddenly apparent. 3 cheers for NEFLIN's 23 Things: transforming the annoying into the useful one lesson at a time!

Thing 9

Thing 9 has lots of options for library use. These tools would go great with Teens and Tweens, allowing website display of teen accomplishments in various teen programs, attractive ways of advertising teen programs on the local branch page, and even for Teens to use on the Teen Advisory Board blog or newsletter, etc. Since I used Big Huge Labs in previous Things, I wanted to try something different. I first tried to use Lazybase to create my personal database of books to read since I collect books I want to read faster than I can actually read them and since there are so many books and so little time. I followed the link easily, read up on the Lazybase site itself and tried to use it. Unfortunately, while it is easy to navigate and use, it must not have been working the 3 times I tried. I meant to try from home , but ran out of time. So I moved on to Picture trail with the above results. Lots of fun, easy to navigate, very intuitive to use. I highly reccommend it!

Thing 8

Oh boy where do I start....

I treid ICQ chat with family when it first came out and was not impressed (remember I can't spell). After 3 or 4 tries we all gave up on it. Later, I used AOL IM with a friend in another state. We ended up using plain old email too.

I have not tried texting before because it appears even worse: I have to learn a whole new language. I know, you'd think the lack of spelling rules would make this great but it doesn't -- it confuses me because I don't know what all the abbreviations mean. (I feel like Bones "What's that mean?")

Yes, I confess I am not a native to the online environment, I am an Immigrant. This gets me debating with myself, however. While I realize that languare is fluid and evolves(we don't speak Shakespearean english anymore), I still worry about the loss of spelling and grammer (and manners). Have you ever tried to read a letter or document written before spelling and grammer were standardized? No punctuation, the words and sentences running together and idiosyncratic spelling make it almost impossible. The speed at which technology has language (& us) evloving is getting faster and faster (remember Futureshock?). If the new evolution of writing is texting and chat then I am being left behind. Not a happy thought.

Manners is another thing -- is it really necessary to text someone else while you are attending a presentation, play, or whatever? How much can you possibly be taking in from the event you are supposed to be participating in if you are texting someone? (Of course I can't figure out why anyone would want screen on screen TV -- how on earth can you watch two or more shows at the same time?) I went to lunch the other day and saw two people sitting in a booth, each talking on their cell phones. They were not interacting with each other so why were they even bothering to have lunch "together?" If I am texting while (theoretically) doing something else, then I am not expericing the present moment of that something else and I not doing either task well.

I accept that texting and chat are very real and essential tools in our constantly evolving world and I am doing my best to Immigrate into this world to continue serving the people of my worldwide community well. Ask-A-Librarian is a fantastic and wonderful and important part of serving our community. I'll do my best.....

Webinars are wonderful tools for meetings and education, etc. I love these and use them as often as I can for continuing education. i have no reservations on this great invention!

Thing 7( again)

Thing 7

Online image generators are great and lots of fun! I explored ImageChef and LetterJames for Thing 7 and had a great time. I tried playing with image size, with multiple ways of putting an image into my blog, and even went online to search for other image generators. The resources listed in our 23 things were great. The ones I found were good too, but not quite a s easy to use. I will definitely be using these for fun, work, church, just about every part of my life..... Thanks for introducing me to these tools!

Thing 6

Flickr Mashups are amazing and so much FUN!!!! I created a photo mosaic which was fun and easy except one of my pictures does not fit the frame so it ended up with the head cut off. So I moved on and tried the FX tool on the Big Huge Labs page. First I used Radial Blur which turned out beautifully. Then, still using the FX tool, I tried Painting. By changing the brush stroke size I got a really pretty rendition. I'll be happily playing with these tools for the rest of my life! While uploading these mashups to my blog, I discovered sizing of the uploads. I think I will try correcting the mosaic by uploading a smaller size of the picture to see if I can get the whole picture in the frame. If it works, I'll upload the mosaic too.

Thing 5

I took this picture of a pictograph at the Honanki Ruins near Sedona Arizona on 11-3-2007. This is the first picture I have ever uploaded to Flickr. And then I uploaded it to my blog (another first)! :-)

Exploring Flickr is fun and I appreciate the sharing aspect of getting photos out there where family and friends can see them even if living continents apart! This is wonderful for staying in touch, and keeping up with what's going on in the lives of those important to us.

It would also be pretty cool for sharing what's new and what's happening at the library. Sharing Flickr images on the branch page is very fun and inviting idea.

I enjoyed exploring Flickr by tag. Picking non-concrete keywords leads to the most wonderful finds: keywords like freedom, ancient, Gaea, peaceful, eternity, etc.

I tried exploring by Geography, but found it overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. Perhaps it was not functioning properly when I was trying to use it, but many map places I tried to click on had no photos at all. And when I did find some with photos, the photos included were not necessarily of things/sites of the region, but of kitchens, backyards, pets, and people who happen to live or visit the region. While this is ok, I would prefer seeing at least something indicative of the region in the background instead of just a kid's birthday party shot around a kitchen table (Even if the kitchen and party are in Alice Springs Australia).