Extra Super Secret Bonus Sets 1 & 2

Social networking has blown up so much in the last couple of years it's just insane. I remember signing up on Facebook when it was just college students (you had to have a university email to join) and look at the behemoth it is now. I have a MySpace page but I'm hardly ever on it, and I rarely use instant messaging anymore, although I have a couple of accounts. Twitter is the one thing that I've totally resisted, although sometimes I peek at my witty friends' feeds.

Facebook-- I waste entirely too much time on this site, but it's fun. I've been a little leery of posting too much info there; I tend to err on the side of caution. It's such a great way to keep in touch, though. I have tons of family and friends in Japan and Seattle and it's awesome to see their pictures and chat with them online all in one place.

And currently I'm beating Michael in Scrabble on FB, which is of course awesome. I welcome all challengers, except Stacey (your reputation precedes you!). From my page you can also see a video of several staffers at the Medical Lake Founders Day Parade, working our Book Cart Drill Team magic. Worth a look.

#23 Final Thoughts (that sounds morbid!)

I've learned alot doing this program. Much of it I was already familiar with, but it was great to be exposed to stuff I hadn't used like Technorati and DIY search engines. I hope I can keep up with emerging 2.0 ideas and programs. I'm sure my seven year old will clue me in when I start to get behind the times.

I feel it's very important for me to keep learning about stuff like this-- I want to be able to give customers the best assistance possible and that often includes some of the topics we've covered. I wouldn't mind having a Learning 2.0 part two. :)

#22 Overdrive

Another thing I've been using for a while. I listen to audiobooks while I clean my house-- makes it go by much faster! Currently I think my favorite thing I've downloaded from Overdrive was the His Dark Materials series, read by Philip Pullman. Tim Curry reading the Lemony Snicket books is pretty awesome, too.

I've never had a problem using Overdrive, but I know how hard it is troubleshooting for people over the phone when they're having issues with it. I think it helps that I'm fairly familiar with the process.

#21 Podcasts

I've been listening to podcasts from NPR for a couple of years; if there's a program scheduled that sounds interesting that I know I won't be able to catch I'll download it. When I lived in Seattle I'd listen to them while riding the bus (headphones are a must unless you want all kinds of interesting folk chatting with you).

I checked out Podcast Alley and found few book and library related podcasts to peruse. Book Snark sounds particularly interesting. I've noticed that many of the podcasts listed haven't been updated in a while-- I wonder if the trend has sort of peaked.

#20 YouTube

I think I already posted about keeping in touch with my little brother via YouTube (he posts lots of goofy videos with his friends). I use YouTube alot, probably too much.

A couple of months ago there was a gentleman at ML who wanted to get a CD in with a particular song on it. He knew the title of the song, but there were several different versions of it sung by various people, so we logged on to a software station and went through the YouTube vids of the songs so he could hear them until he found the right one. Luckily we had that artist's CD and he was so happy to have it come in a few days later, and not have to order them all just to find the song he wanted.

This is one of my all-time favorite vids:



Gah, that still makes me sniffle.

#19 Award-winning Web 2.0 sites

Most of the sites listed on the Web 2.0 awards page are great. One I haven't seen before is Fixya, a tech support site structured somewhat like Yahoo answers-- people post questions and then answers are given by both regular users and registered 'tech gurus'. I could see this being a useful resource for library customers having trouble with devices like mp3 players and digital cameras, or even their laptops. Fixya also features the manuals for hundreds of thousands of products. You can search for specific products or browse by manufacturer to see manuals and posted questions. I could see this being a good resource for when customers have questions about their devices beyond our knowledge.

#18 Web-based productivity applications

Another thing I use fairly frequently. I'll save stuff to my Google Docs account if I don't have a flash drive with me. I also have this laptop that's about a day older than the Dewey decimal system, and by not installing any programs on it and using purely web-based applications I can save tons of space.

I wonder sometimes about the safety of saving very personal info to one of these thingies-- I suppose they can be hacked just as easily as anything else.

I created a Zoho account and imported my (somewhat disorganized) storytime theme spreadsheet, if you want to see:

http://sheet.zoho.com/public/zeldapinwheel/storytime-themes

#16 Wikis

Wikis are great. I use Wikipedia all the time, with a healthy dose of skepticism, of course. In college my study group spent a year reading The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (supposedly the world's first novel, and definitely the world's longest and most difficult to understand novel!), and we made a wiki to keep track of the characters and plot elements. It was so incredibly useful.

At ML a teen customer was having trouble understanding the more complicated bits of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows after it first came out, and we had fun going through The Harry Potter Wiki for the answers.

As for library-related wikis, the possibilities seem literally endless. A storytime wiki might be useful-- new books, songs, suggestions, etc. Princeton's BookLovers Wiki is a great example of a review wiki, which could be fun (obviously I like reviewing books; see the staff blog).

Plus it's just fun to say. Wiki. Wiki wiki wiki. :)

#15 Library 2.0

Everything that I've heard mentioned as being under the vague umbrella of Library 2.0 seems to me to be just modern business-- adapting and changing as necessary to stay relevant and competitive. I liked Michael Stephens' statement about straddling the line between embracing new technologies and utilizing them to maximum effect versus jumping on every trendy techno bandwagon that happens by no matter the cost (both pecuniary and temporal).

There is so much written on this subject that it's a bit overwhelming!

#14 Technorati

So I took a look at Technorati and I have to admit I'm not crazy about it. After reading some articles on it I see that it has a rather checkered past and somewhat of a bad reputation with many bloggers. Still, I can definitely see how it would be useful. Someone mentioned they used it to find cooking blogs, which I thought was a good idea. Also the 'popular' feature is interesting, seeing what lots of people are reading.

I don't think I would take Technorati too seriously as far as statistical purposes go. And I've opted not to register my blog, even though I know that by using Blogger it will show up in searches anyway.

#13-B Delicious

Delicious seems pretty cool; I can see how useful it would be to have your links in a place accessible from anywhere.

In a side note, I noticed that this, like Rollyo, is another site powered by Yahoo.

#12 Rollyo

I was slightly familiar with Rollyo and swickis like Eurekster, but I'm with the others who've said that just a good ol' Google search will usually suffice. However I can definitely see the usefulness of the tool. I made a search engine with a few sites that I'd be okay with my 7 year old visisting, such as National Geographic Kids and FactMonster. I did a search for 'dinosaurs' and it came back with oodles of results, so it seems to work. The only thing I didn't like about it was that it features 'sponsored links' at the head of the search results, so if I was really concerned about him clicking on unknown links that would be a problem.

#11 LibraryThing

I think LibraryThing is quite useful, and I've actually recommended it to customers looking for ways to keep track of what they've read. However I've failed to keep up with my own account there. If you want to friend me, my username's g00dnightm00n (zeros for o's).

#10 Image Generators

I played a bit with the image generators on says-it.com. :)

Thing #8 & 9: RSS

I love using RSS feeds, I've got one set up on my Yahoo page and it's so convenient. While there is something to be said for viewing certain sites in their entirety, I definitely end up following updates more closely with an RSS feed. And like someone else posted on their blog (Sonia, maybe?) I now notice the little orange square everywhere.

Since I was already familiar with and using RSS feeds, the search function on Bloglines doesn't seem too relevant for me (I'm already subscribed to pretty much everything I want to be!). I did however find some interesting sites by looking at the most popular feeds, including a library-related one. Pretty cool.

Thing #7-- Playing mad catch-up

Hmmm... blog about anything technological....

Okey dokey, I suppose one of my favorite things to do online is share music with friends (legally, of course!). I have lots of friends & family who are musicians and it's so awesome to be able to hear their new stuff instantly. Also my little brother and his girlfriend are really into making goofy videos and putting them on YouTube, and it's fun to keep up with them that way even though they live in Oklahoma.

Here's one of their vids ("Batgirl and Spiderman"; 500,000+ views, holy cow!). The embed function isn't working right now (routine site maintenance), so click to see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S86n_FYR4Kk

Flickr mashups

I had fun playing with the Badge Maker.

Flickr

I'm fairly familiar with photo-sharing sites; I've been using photobucket for a couple of years now and our wedding pictures were hosted on ofoto. Flickr is somewhat new to me though, and so far I've really enjoyed poking around on it and perusing the numerous features offered.

The above is a picture from The Flickr Commons (the collection of public domain photos, mostly from libraries and universities). This photo is from the New York Public Library and is of Nagoya Castle, in Nagoya, Japan, where I grew up. Nagoya is a big city, the third largest in Japan with about the population of Chicago. Nagoya Castle was bombed to the ground in WWII, but was rebuilt and now has amenities like elevators and air conditioning. I don't know if it's the angle of this photo or what, but the castle looks deceptively small; it's actually quite large. The information on the Commons says this picture is circa 1890, which means obviously it's the original building. Pretty cool.

The Seven and a Half Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners

The hardest habit for me is the first one-- beginning with the end in mind. I sometimes tend to get caught up in inconsequenital minutiae, and I start projects and don't finish them. Planning something all the way through to the end would be much more effective.

Testing

Testing, testing 123....