23.

Although it needs to be updated (there are a number of missing links and we weren't able to sign up for certain services), I really really enjoyed the program. If it hadn't been for this class, I wouldn't have started a blog, nor would I have been able to say that I have 'tried' half of the online services that I have. All-in-all, I thought it was an invaluable learning experience and I hope that next year (when everything will change again) that someone has the foresight to recreate it.

22.

After working at a library with our own localized version of NetLibrary, I have a hard time wanting to switch companies or buy expensive audiobooks. By being a member of Rockford Public Library, you have open access to MyMediaMall. It's a pretty amazing online service that allows you to (for a short amount of time) download an audiobook. It's a lot like checking out an audiobook but involves a bit of work. The site is nowhere near perfect, but it does have a lot to offer. I just started using it because they just opened up access to Mac users. Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free??

21.

I have been a big fan of NPR for many years, so when I got my ipod and computer all set up, I was immediately getting the podcasts from all my favorite shows. There is actually quite a bit to choose from on iTunes. I have been downloading torrents for awhile, but it seems like the process of getting podcasts is pretty overworked. I don't understand why they don't just have them for direct download from the internet. I found something on travel, but I didn't like it as much as my NPR! I guess that I'm stuck in my ways on this one.

20.

Who doesn't love youtube???? One of the many reasons to be in awe of the Internet is how easy it is to find brilliant artists...from independent webisodes made by regular people, to learning how to do things from experts who are kind enough to post videos. I love me some youtube.

This is one of my most favorite videos. It never gets old.

19.

To be honest, I have been to a lot of these sites and there are some that are already integrated into my Internet habits. I use Mango, Google (of course!), craigslist, delicious, librarything, etc. I was trying to find something new that I didn't know about. I did find out about going, which is pretty cool, but I only go to Chicago like once a month. It may come in handy every once in awhile, but I'll pass it on to friends that live in the big cities. The NYC page looked pretty amazing. I mostly looked through photo booths of people that live in Chicago. I kindof wish that all the photos were Chicago specific, but I guess that the photographers are all from Chicago?? Anyway, pretty neat. Looking forward to next year's awards!

18.

Wowza.  I like this.  And I don't even have to be PC specific.  It took forever for me to find a copy of Microsoft Office Suite for Mac.  It's SUPER expensive, so I had to wait for an old version from a friend.  Anyway, I tried using the Googledocs at one point, but it wasn't user friendly at all.  I like this SO much.  It will really be useful for school since I am constantly having to email myself updated versions of documents.  I have definitely turned in the wrong version of a paper.  It wasn't cool.  It could have been avoided if this thing had been around.  It will let me work on my stuff in multiple locations, which is good since I have to switch desks all the time at work.

This was posted directly from zoho writer using the publish function. It was sooo easy.

17.

So I couldn't register so I decided to surf...I looked around at library-related stuff for awhile but just got sucked into a hilarious website called Go Fug Yourself. I'm hooked. I laughed out loud probably a dozen times on the first page. It's shameless and reminds me of British rags that don't deserve to be in print, but I feel ok with the blog because it's online. It's supposed to be trashy! Anyway, I did bookmark PLCMC for future reference.

16.

I started out my library career thinking the standard, "Wikis are bad. There isn't any proof!" Unfortunately, that is sometimes the case. But there are plenty of ways to use them efficiently. I love to use Wikipedia to learn about something I know nothing about. It serves as a really great way to compile lots of information without denying access to knowledgeable non-members. I took a look at Book lovers wiki and thought that it was a really great use of the technology. In general, Number 16 has been a really helpful learning experience. I think it's my favorite number of the 23 things. I want to set one up for my library!

15.

Although the articles could have used some less pretentious vocabulary and needed to get to the point more quickly, there were a number of masked tips on how to use the library in conjunction with all of the tools provided by new technology. Many of them are practical and logical steps in combining useful tools to make the searching process easier for patrons. My favorite example is this:
Libraries should get much greater mileage out of the metadata they create. For example, if geographic names embedded in the middle of subject headings are mapped to latitude and longitude coordinates, it becomes possible to present users with graphical means of searching by place, new ways of easily asking for materials about nearby places, and hierarchical browsing by place.

I would think that google maps works just as well as latitude and longitude, the concept is the same. It's the next logical step in the development of easy-inter-library-loans. I hear that on average, every inter-library-loan costs the library $8. This price is totally unacceptable as it is possible to BUY books on amazon and have them shipped to your house for that price. If the process of finding and ordering the ILLs became more manageable, the cost of each would significantly drop.

This was not nearly the only useful suggestion made in the Library 2.0 articles, but the process of making them a reality is another story altogether. Changing the make up of our bibliographic records is a time-consuming and expensive process. Many (board members) may believe that it is a superfluous step in the process of becoming a more technologically integrated library system. Who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and administrators would jump at the chance to evolve. I hope that that's true.

14.

Wow. Technorati. I've never seen this site, but I have seen something similar on Flickr. Flickr has it's own built-in version of it. It's pretty interesting stuff to say the least. I have a friend who took a picture of some graffiti on a garage and titled it "What do you 'spose this means?" Well he had about 10-20 answers from supposed thugs all over the country. It's turns out that that photo (because of his expert tagging skills) was number three on the list of hits when searching for "Latin Kings." I know that to some, that little tidbit isn't that interesting, but I thought it was pretty cool.

One cool thing that I learned on Technorati was the edutweet phenomenon. I guess that there are a whole pile of people that (using Twitter) will send you links to valuable internet tools for learning. So, that's pretty cool. And I really like the word edutweet.

Of the top searches, I was mostly surprised at my surprise that Jennifer Garner and cheat-codes were somewhere around the top of the list. It just figures that young teenage boys are taking up so much surfing time to post/search about girls and video games. Hilarious.

13.

I've had a delicious page for quite awhile now. I wish that I have been organized enough to use it how it could be used! I just need some time to really compile all my useful (and not-so-useful) sites into bundles. I love the bundling tool! It lets you create a pile of similarly tagged links together to make life easier. So, if I was, for example, working the reference desk, I could have my delicious page opened up to the "adult reference sources" bundle. Ideally, I would have so many bundles that I would never need to think about where to find things. I may not have started my library career as a highly organized person, but I do want that to happen. I will keep working on it. Everybody wants life to be simpler, right?

12.

Although I can see why a service like this is appealing, it was really difficult to come up with something useful that I would want to rollyo. I decided to try knitting, because I would rather be searching from sites that have patterns that I like, rather than old fashioned stuff that happens to be free. But, I would rather use it for the library. I think that it's a great reference tool! You chould put all your adult reference sites in one spot, so you can be sure that you are searching documented sources. I think that this tool is best used in conjunction with delicious. I could serach by tag and create a different roll for each tag. As long as I was tagging correctly, I think it would be really useful. Here's something cool I found while looking for knitting stuff:

11.

I love library thing. I haven't really used it that much, but I have put in about 20 of my favorite books. I've decided that all the books that I actually own do not represent my taste very well...I tend to give away my favorite books to make other people read them. So, instead of putting in a literal library, I entered an ideal library. I put in about 20 of my favorites, and low-and-behold, I have a list of libraries that are similar to my own. One of which is called littlegeek who has over 200 books in her library. We share 12 of the same titles, and we feel the same about them. As I was looking through her library, I found other titles that she gave five stars that I had not read yet. It's a great way of finding something new to read!!!

10.

So, I know that these things are out there, but does anyone else feel like they are being forced to use Powerpoint against their will? It's nice that it's a simple way of creating images, but I don't know if I will have much use of it until I have a work-related issue where I need to make one. Like, for example, if I get a job at a middle school or something, I could think of lots of ways to use these or to just show the kids how fun it would be to waste a study hall on making these things. It would be fun too! But for the moment, I'm not very impressed. When they figure out how to imitate oil or watercolor painting on the Internet, I will have more fun. Right now, I just feel like they are trying to teach me how to paint-by-number.

9.

I have officially decided to stick with Newsgator. I just like it better.

From there, they have a "find feeds" tab which takes you to a subject based search (or just a plain old search where you type what you want...). They have one called "Education/Libraries/Reference." So, this "thing" was pretty easy. They had a bunch for both reference and libraries. The one I liked the best (from a first impression point-of-view) was librarian.net. It has a bunch of random stuff that I found really interesting. There was a post about a really cool personal library (isn't it funny how we all geek out about places where we keep books??) as well as a post about a new page that explains how to create online functions for your library's website:

“The My Kansas Library on the Web project is an attempt to allow small public libraries across the state have access to high end web-based tools to facilitate easy web development."

I like that. If I was going to look for something cool to put on our website I would have to go the long and annoying route. Now, someone has kindly put together a easy-to-read package for us!

8.

I'm really glad that this is one of our projects. I signed up for a news aggregator but never got around to using it. I know in my head that it would save me oodles of time, but I'm a habitual person, and couldn't stop myself from automatically typing in my URL routine everyday. Jeesh.

Originally I had signed up for newsgator.com. I liked the format and the design and found it pretty easy to use, but I went WAY overboard on the initial sign-up. I had like 50 feeds that all had 10 old messages to read. Talk about information overload.

This time around I signed up for bloglines.com and thought it was ok. I think that it's actually a bit more confusing and could be scaled down quite a bit. There is a lot of self-promotion on the site (and who really cares since I've already signed up for the stupid service?) and it would help them a lot if they simplified the site.

Another reason I like newsgator better is the headline function. It will take all of the recent headlines from a folder of RSS feeds (like "news" or something) and give you a quick peek at what people are writing about. It's really helpful when you are speeding through your news intake.

Blogline simply lists all the RSS feeds so you are required to actually select the feed to see what it going on. Some feeds are set up so that you only see the headline and then after selecting the link you will go to their website. But the blogs are harder to deal with. I found myself trying to find the time to read every single blog that sounded interesting. Too much. Also, the saving function on Blogline is a little complicated. It allows for lots of cool options (like copying the entire post and posting it to your own blog for your friends to see), but again, it could be so much easier. I feel like sometimes programmers are punishing their lazy fans by making them click a few more times than absolutely necessary. I hate that.

7.

So, we're in a recession.

Well, maybe not technically, but it's a comin. I have quite a few friends that have money spending problems (oh my gosh, no, I'm not referring to myself in any way....) and really like mint.com.

It's a pretty awesome free service that asks takes all your bank accounts and figures out exactly what you are spending money on. It makes GRAPHS. It is very hard to argue with numbers and it has really made me think of how much money I spend on food outside of the grocery store. It's my biggest vice. I really like it when other people cook for me. I hate cooking.

I was a bit afraid of it at first, but they don't take your name, address or phone number, and there is no way to make a transaction from the site. I was pretty convinced that it's safe. And the best part: It will tell you when your bank is charging you for fees that don't make sense. I have found that when you argue with your bank about random fees, they are happy to make them disappear. Give it a try!

6.

This is one of the coolest mashups I've messed around with. (I found it on the list here.) It's really creative. I liked using the sketch tool to find other flickr photos that "looked like the sketch" but you can also use photos to find similar photos! (Which, in my world of friends, is halarious because then we can find out if someone is using our photos on their own flickr pages.)

5.

Flickr.com is awesome. I've had an account for a few years now...mostly to put my Europe photos in. If any of you want to check it out...be my guest!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mlemorgan/

4.

Even though I could use a new laptop, that's probably not going to happen right? Boo. Guess I'm not registering.