reflections

I was aware of what these "things" were, but hadn't tried them all. I may have just been impatient, but was disappointed that some of them were not too user-friendly. For example, I never did figure out how to actually do anything in Second Life. It's good to know about these things to respond to patrons more effectively, but I can't envision using most of them myself.

gaming

I play Yahoo games a lot and find them very relaxing. It's nice to know where some good kid games are too.

mapping

Google earth looks promising -- may even be helpful for visualizing terrain changes for hikers. I was disappointed that I couldn't zoom in really close on different locations--it seems to lose focus at a higher level than I expected.

avatars and second life

I'm sorry, but I don't see the point of second life. Why not just do the same thing in the real world? My teen avatar is one of the ones used for the instructions for this unit, so I didn't create another one.

online apps

Well, Zoho wouldn't let me in so I can't compare the 2. I would have a concern about privacy if I was to use this, but it's probably nice to have if you can't afford the software.

search engines

I was surprised to only get 1 hit for my search on Rollyo, maybe I need to study it more to use it to its full potential. The other 2 gave me the number and type of results more like I expected, but you wouldn't need to use a metasearch engine to get the same results. In other words, I got very similar results from Google.

Podcasting

I listnened to some teen book reviews. We're already doing some podcasting--seems like folks must be listening in. I would think the ones that are programs or that are spoken books or book reviews would be most interesting to the public. In my experience, the public isn't that interested in general library or library instructional info. I have listened to a few podcasts, just to see what they were about. I don't see myself making a lot of use of them, but if needed, I'd rather just find one on a topic I'm interested in than subscribing to them.

Image manipulation

Fun, but time-consuming!

Overdrive is driving me crazy

I like the "burn to CD" graphic. I don't like not being able to search the non-fiction books by subject and don't like not being able to search the music by song. When I tried to download a movie, it was only partially done after about 20 minutes--this is way too long to wait. The movie selections are pretty limited; I'm not sure that I would really promote that collection as it stands now.

I do like that we have some classic books in the collection that students might be able to use when all the copies are checked out.

the delicious one

I think this is a great way to share info over the Internet, either with individuals or with our public. If we have classes of kids coming in with assignments that we use websites for, or for virtual reference, being able to direct them to a delicious account with that info would be nice. I haven't used it enough yet to get how this is a better bookmark organizational tool for myself.

Here's my account.

wikis

Anyone who's flown into one of the bigger airports in Hawaii knows about wikis as the shuttle buses are called "wiki wikis". (I just love to say that.)

I think wikis would be especially good as a collaboration tool. The examples we looked at from other libraries looked useful too, both with info for the public and for internal policies, etc.

Streaming video didn't stream well for me

I looked for videos about libraries on YouTube and found some, but none of the ones I tried would play properly. I found the video called The Book, which is really funny, but that also wouldn't play properly. I had the best luck with hulu, which would play segments from The Flight of the Conchords, one of my alltime favorite shows. I just tried to upload it here, but perhaps that isn't supposed to work from that site. None of the things I tried to watch on Fancast would run. So, I'm feeling a bit frustrated right now.

I can't envision making much use of any of these sites for myself. I've seen some clips that others have pointed out to me that are funny but can't see spending my time seeking this stuff out. I did get some instructional clips to run on hulu and might either seek that type of info out for myself or with patrons.

the social networking thing

I went to eons, which is for the older set. It looked like a lot of people had created pages and then not used them. Almost everyone had Suzy as a friend, but I discouraged her seriously.
I know libraries use these sites to connect with patrons, in fact, I'm the manager of my branch's MySpace page. I'm not convinced that patrons (including teens) find these library pages, or care about them. To me it just seems like a lot of duplication of effort from the library's website to a separate blog or social networking site, without much, if any, return.

Yeah yeah yeah

This is a cool picture of the early and later Beatles. I once had someone laugh at me for referring to their periods this way since they actually didn't record for that long. But, oh the places we went!

the music thing

I'm finally caught up! Yay. I was so disappointed that the finetunes site appeared to include some Beatles songs but they weren't actually available to use. Must be Michael Jackson't fault. I can see this being useful personally and it's good to know how to help the public with this. I hope that our weekly instructions remain available after this so that all the links are findable.

Personally, I'm not sure I really want RSS feeds at this point. My interests are so narrow that I can just go to any website I'm interested in at the time I have the interest. Libraries can certainly send feeds to interested parties to deliver relevant info to them.

The IM

I finally did the IM thing. It was fun doing it with others. We all went into a room together so several of us could talk together. I do virtual reference and have done IM in conjunction with that. I was surprised that setting this up and actually starting to IM was not as straightforward as I expected. We used Meebo to join together for a group chat.

I've been looking at some of the other SIL blog postings and I'm finding it fascinating trying to figure out who everyone is. There's a mention in the "crazed bunny" blog of a simple way to help feed people at the same time as you increase your vocabulary. It's called "Free Rice".
Now I'd like to know how to make the words Free Rice link to that site. Help?

Help! I can't stop blabbing...I mean blogging. Someone give me a laryngectomy, stat!

First time

I'm finally taking the second step...only 8 more...oops I mean 18 more to go. I used the band name generator to come up for a name for the blog. I'm quite happy with what it suggested. I had my first email message to the 20 for 2.0 email bounce back even though I'd copied and pasted it in! Second time it worked. Isn't technology wonderful?