thing 23

it's so hard to choose a favorite thing. I loved del.icio.us, google docs, and finding out about upcoming.com. I also think that wikis can be so useful when working in a group.
what I liked the least is that sometimes there is so much crap to look through before you find the good stuff. also, sometimes I think that sites would be more useful if they were designed better. for example, I hated technorati because it was a bland looking page, jam-packed with text. I didn't want to spend any time at all looking through it. if it was designed better, I might not have felt that way.
I think that google docs and wikis are the best ways to do colaborative work. I also think that we need to promote things like listenNJ and NetLibrary to make our patrons more aware of them.
I tell everyone about del.icio.us because I think it's a great way to back up your book marks and it's convenient if you work on multiple computers.

So that's the end of the web things challenge. it's been fun and interesting. thanks!

thing 22... the end is near!

I think this is a great service. The only thing that really bothers me is that it doesn't work with macs/ipods because that's what I use at home. I was glad to see that the parent company is working on fixing this.
Overall ListenNJ is easy to use and I think we need to make our partons more aware of it. A little while ago I helped a gentleman set up an account and asked him to let me know how it worked for him. He came back yesterday and told me that in order to get around the file expiring in 2 weeks, he just changed the date on his computer. He also had purchased an mp3 player just for books (he has one that he uses for music) and said that 2gb is plenty of space. I'm really glad that he came back because I had only used it at work and not on an mp3 player.

thing 21

I found a podcast called comedy4cast it's entertaining and never more than 4 min. I think podcasts work best when they're not too long.
It was interesting to see how many podcasts there are and how big of a variety there is.

thing 20

this is possibly the cutest thing I've ever seen.
it's a video of 2 otters in a zoo, floating around while holding hands. seriously, this is some major cuteness here. watching it may make you want to hug someone.
you have been warned.

thing 19

I'm a little bit in love with upcoming.com. It's a calendar of events for whatever region you are in. People can browse through and see what events are similar to ones that they already like. I could use this to publicise programs that I'm having at my branch. All you need is a yahoo account. This could be a great way to reach people who are not regular library users. I'm really excited that I found it!

thing 18

I used google docs when putting together the summer reading list for TR middle schools. It was great because several of us could view and edit the document, It was much easier than if we had had to email an updated file to everyone in the goup every time it was changed. If we didn't use google docs, there certainly would have been confusion as to what was the most recent copy.

thing 17

I had fun playing in the sandbox. It was interesting to see the variety of interests of the other bloggers. The crazy fonts gave it a playful feel.
I think a wiki could be useful to coordinate any project that a group is working on. Like the video showed, email is not efficient when you're dealing with a group.

thing 16

The Library Success wiki had some useful resources, but it was so plain and boring to look at. I think there's a fine balance when designing a website. It shouldn't be too busy and flashy, but it also shouldn't be boring.
I'd guess that the edit to change to web site address was done by an OCL employee. I like that wikipedia cares enough to make sure that information is not coppied without permission. I had never looked at the discussion and edit tabs before. It was interesting to look at various articles and see how they had been changed.
I'm a big fan of wikis. They are so useful for any kind of group work. I like the idea that many people have good ideas and can contribute.

thing 15

One of the articles I read was Away from Icebergs. I like Anderson's point that rather than focusing on teaching patrons how to use the technology, we should focus on making the technology easier and more user friendly. I also read the article Into a New World of Librarianship. I thought that article made a good point that we should not want technology just to have technology. It should be useful and meet the needs and wants of the patrons.
I think library 2.0 is great. The internet is so much more fun and interesting than it used to be. It's active, not passive. Everyone has something to contribute. With the programs available now, people can connect with each other and build communities. I'm really happy that web 2.0 has made it possible for everyone to contribute and connect.

thing 14

I found Technorati to be so busy and text heavy that it was a real effort to use. It's like they jam as much text as possible onto every page. I felt so overwhelmed looking at it. I browsed around, but didn't find anything that jumped out at me. I don't know if I'm missing something, but I don't understand the point of this site.

thing 13

one of the things I like about del.icio.us is that is can be used as a search engine. you know that every site that comes up has been viewed by a real person and deemed valuable enough to bookmark.
I also found del.icio.us to be useful when doing group work for school. you could bookmark useful information and then look at what other poeple in the group had found.
then there's the convenience factor. we all work from multiple computers, so this is a nice centralized way to store out favorites. also, I recently had problems with firefox and needed to uninstall it. I didn't loose any of my bookmarks because they were stored externally.

thing 12

WOW
I didn't know about this before. It's great and so easy to use. I could definitely show someone how to use it. The only thing I don't like is that you need to use a library computer to set up an account. Why is this? Other than that one complaint, I think it's a great site. I think my favorite feature is the dictionary. If you come across an unfamiliar word, you can look up the definition easily.
I don't think it's difficult, although it might not be so easy for older patrons. I wouldn't have a problem explaining it to a patron and showing them the basics of how to use it.
I searched for The Host by Stephenie Meyer. It is owned by the OCL, and many other libraries in the area. I have used worldcat before to fill out ILL papers. It makes it easy because it has all the information you need, such as publisher and ISBN.

thing 11

Here's my LibraryThing
I like that there are multiple ways you can display your list of books. However, I wish there was a way you could indicate books that you've read, plan to read, own, want to buy, like you can on shelfari.
I wasn't sure what the popularity number meant and I couldn't find an answer. I guess if I poked around more I could figure it out, but I don't think it should be so much effort.
The books I listed were all pretty popular, and had some good discussions about them and similar books. For example, one of my selections is Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer and one of the discussions was about people's favorite takes on vampire mythology. This gave me some good suggestions for what other vampire books I might want to read.
I think LibraryThing is easy to use, but I'm gonna stick with my Shelfari account. Shelfari is just prettier and I like the organization better.

thing 10

a post about technology huh? ok here goes
I really like twitter . it's sort of an im/texting program. you can choose to "follow" people you know, and they can "follow" you. you can choose to recieve a text message when someone you follow posts to twitter. each post is limited to 140 characters, so whatever you write has to be concise. I think it would be a great way to keep teens informed of events, because most teens text and don't like long emails. I'm taking an online class this semester and everyone is on twitter. it's a great way to get to know the people in my class.

thing 6

I think flickr is great and really easy to use. The only think I really do't like about it is that you need a yahoo id. I didn't want yet another email address.
Anyway, here's the pic I posted:

it's from a karaoke event we had in march. there's nothing wro0ng with the camera... we had a fog machine going ;-)

thing 9

I think the easiest way to subscribe to a feed is by clicking on the orange icon. I also liked that bloglines has a list of popular feeds that you can browse through. The different ways of finding feeds are all a blur to me. Because I don't like RSS I can't see myself using any of them. Also, if I did want to use feeds, I think I'd just subscribe to sites as I found them, rather than seraching through tools. I wouldn't want to miss a good site that happens to not have a feed.

thing 8

I'll get to things 6 & 7. I'm just going a bit out of order at the moment.
anyway....
I can't say I'm a fan of RSS. to me, going to bloglines and logging in is more effort than just clicking on sites that are in my favorites. I just don't think it really saves much time. does anyone else think that clicking on your favorites one by one is all that time consuming? maybe if there were a tone of sites that I kept up with regularly, I'd want to subscribe. for now I just think having to go to bloglines is an extra step that I don't need.

flickr fun

tomato dance!

The dancing tomato in this picture is a woman named Sarah Bunting. She (along with 2 friends) created the entertainment website Television Without Pity and she also writes my favorite blog, Tomato Nation. Every fall, she runs a fund raising contest for donorschoose.org She sets a goal, and if her readers reach it, she does something outrageous. Last year she shaved her head, this year she put on a tomato costume and danced around rockefeller plaza. I was there to see it, and it was hysterical! If you want to see more pictures from this silly event, go to flickr and search using the term "tomatonation."

7.5 habits

ok, so I'm a little late to the web challenge party, but I only started with ocl about 2 weeks ago.
so here's my very first post
habit 6 (the one about using technology to your advantage) is something that comes pretty naturally to me. having grown up with computers, I'm not really intimidated by them and I know how helpful they can be.
I'm not optimistic enough for habit 3 (view problems as challenges) to come naturally to me. I don't panic or anything, but I don't tend to think, "yea! a chance to learn something new!"
my favorite habit by far was the last one. play is such an important part of life and I don't think enough people make time for it.