#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.