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.