23 Thing'd

Huzzah! Huzzah!
This has been a very worthwhile program and I would do it all again. I have learned many things. Like what a wiki is. Like what an RSS feed is. Bloglines. Technorati. Del.icio.us. I know what they are now. The most exciting thing I take away from these exercises is the overall concept and resultant manifestation of Web 2.0.
The machine is us.
Our lives will never be the same. And not for the last time.

Read to me now

I have been listening to books on tape and books on CD for years. I love them. They saved my life for the years that I had to drive a long way to work.
I still love them. Downloadable audiobooks widen one's listening horizons.
I looked at Overdrive and Project Gutenberg. I didn't realize that Project Gutenberg offered audiobooks. I downloaded William Blake's "Tiger" and Lewis Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark." I listened to them using Windows Media Player and saved them to my desktop. "TIGER, tiger burning bright / In the forests of the night,..."
Great stuff!
Overdrive is a little annoying because you have to install their software and then perform a security upgrade that acts like Orwell's "Big Brother" to your audiobooks.
Well, sorry, that's all the time I have for now...off with my friends to hunt the snark...

Casting About

While there are tons of podcasts out there, it took some time to locate one to subscribe to. I decided on the Genealogy Guys where, you guessed it, they discuss all things genealogical. Very useful for work in the Maryland Room. As far as libraries go, podcasts are another cool way to get content, information and instruction to patrons and staff.

ITube

I had never spent any quality time on YouTube and thought it was mostly pet videos and people acting stupid. After doing some exploring, I come to find there are all kinds of really interesting and creative videos out there just waiting to be found.
By searching "book repair," I located a number of clips demonstrating simple book repair techniques. I particularly liked the video (playing above) in which Molly shows us the contents of her book repair tool box.
I think it could be very cool to be able to post short videos on our library's website -- like of the Harry Potter party or book reviews or blurbs about new databases.

Out of the Box

Pandora is a music Web 2.0 site. The folks at Pandora have created the Music Genome Project in which they have analyzed tons of different music and broken it down into its "genes" thereby enabling them to create an entire "radio station" based upon a song or artist that you like. It's fun, easy to use, and works well. You pick a song or artist and the site starts playing songs for you that are similar to your pick. You then have the option of saying "yes, I like" or "no, I don't like." The only slight criticism I have is that their analysis of songs can yield some odd choices in your "radio station." Doesn't really have a library application that I can see since we tend to discourage, if not negate, sound capabilities.

Word on the Web

This is great! Being able to word process and use other applications on the web is a terrific idea. This has real potential for our patrons as well. I tried both Zoho Writer and Google Docs. Both were very easy to use but neither would let me post the document I had created to my blog. I tried over and over with no luck -- kept getting the same error messages. Very frustrating!

Playing in the Sandbox

For some reason, unknown to me, the wiki would not let me link the title of my blog to my blog's URL when I was trying to add it to the Favorite Blogs page. It kept saying in the lower left corner: "error on page" or something like that. So I had to settle for listing the URL. (From the note at the top of the page, it looks like they had been having this problem earlier in the month but it was supposedly fixed??) Maybe it's me.

Wouldn't Jefferson love wikis?

It is amazing to me that Wikipedia works so well -- that all hell doesn't break loose. Wikis rely on the inherent goodness of people. If wikis had been around in the 1700s, they would have been a tool of the Enlightenment with its beliefs that humans are basically good and that reason can solve most problems. I think Voltaire would have been big into wikis. And the Founding Fathers -- particularly Jefferson.

The Machine is Us

Web 2.0

After reading all five articles on Library 2.0, I wasn't sure what to think or what to write. One thing for sure is that libraries must keep moving forward. Alvy Singer said that relationships are like sharks--they have to keep moving forward or they die. I think this is true for libraries as well. I also think that libraries need to be increasingly adroit at making decisions in a timely manner and confronting issues quickly and effectively.
I found the video by cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch haunting and profound. Library 2.0 is, and will continue to be,
an extension of Web 2.0. Libraries will ride the same wave as
Web 2.0 and ultimately become the wave.
If the Machine is Us, then Libraries are Them.
(Them = Users.)

Let's make up some words

One thing that is strange with the Technorati webpage is that the search bar shown in the Technorati tour video is not what actually appears on the page. It didn't matter whether I used Explorer or Firefox and whether I was signed in or signed out. Yes, I actually created yet another account thinking that maybe you had to be a member of the Technorati club to get the real goods. But no deal. The video shows a drop down menu right on the search bar which does not exist when you actually go to the Technorati page. I found that I had to go to the Advanced Search to find these specific searches.

Allow me a quick digression...It annoys me how these people just make up words. Like favorited as a verb OR an adjective as in "He favorited this blog..." or "100 top favorited blogs." Of course, the word blog itself is pretty offensive. I guess the adjective favorite just isn't good enough somehow. And the verb favor just doesn't cut it. I know, I know, they have their self-important construct where you add a blog to your favorites and so it is favorited etc....It just really gets my goat.

Back to searching on Technorati...
The results were very different searching "Library 2.0" in the three searches. Makes sense. Exploring the "top three" reveals that most of the sites are about, not surprisingly, technology and gadgets!
Gadget, huh, where did that word come from...hmmm, looking it up in the dictionary...what's this, origin unknown...

Hold That Tiger

Wow! Del.icio.us reminds me of descriptions of the human brain whereby new connections are constantly being formed and reformed. Interesting, because I feel like my brain is doing what del.icio.us is doing while I am watching del.icio.us do it. Exhausting isn't it!
Del.icio.us is a muscular tool attempting to tame the tiger that is the internet. (But I hate typing the name! It's like hiccupping.) While it is useful to be able to access your bookmarks from any computer, the real power of del.icio.us lies in its potential for connecting people and information. I could see professors routinely using del.icio.us in their courses. I'm sure plenty already are--not to mention librarians.
So...hold that tiger!!!

Searchrolllll

Select...Bookplate searchSearch The Web

I could not figure out how to remove the general web search from my searchroll??!
I can see that this tool would be good for searching multiple websites at the same. However, I have not had the need for such a tool myself thus far.

Bookworms Infest Cyberspace

Fun tool! Deserves more perusal on a cold and cloudy day.
(Click on the worm to see my LibraryThing catalog so far.)

The Password is "Export"

Instead of online image generators some of them should be called lowest common denominator generators, but I did have fun with Yahoo Avatars. And after I found the Export feature, it was a piece of cake.

Material Girl

I found the Bloglines Search the most straightforward way to find feeds. Subscribing by copying the URL and adding it to Bloglines was the easiest way for me of subscribing to feeds.

I can honestly say that there is a lot of mindless static out there, as well as very worthwhile information and cool stuff. I must admit, however, that I have never been too enamored of the virtual world. Give me the physical world. I like to feel the sun on my back and the rain on my face and the dirt between my fingers. To quote Cole Porter: "...give me land, lots of land under starry skies above. Don't fence me in."

Go ahead, PUSH it

Whew! I feel like I just biked the entire Western Maryland Rail Trail -- all 45 miles! Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but that RSS feed thing was a work out. Check out the fruits, I mean feeds, of my labor -- if you dare.
Kidding aside, it is actually very cool and I might actually end up using Bloglines. I feel like I have my finger on the pulse. Or maybe on the trigger. Either way it's a position of power!

Remember when...

Remember when you used to have to think about how to find really simple information like the hours of the National Gallery or the address of the American Cancer Society or who wrote a particular book or...I could go on and on.
Remember life before the internet? I don't know about you but I just take it for granted now. But there was a time when all this stuff was not just at our fingertips. Pretty amazing.

Color Wheel

I have always loved color so it's not surprising that I would be drawn to Flickr Color Pickr like a bean beetle to a Kentucky Blue. One feature that is really useful is that you can change the value of the hue from lighter to darker and so retrieve, for example, darker yellows or very bright yellows. It is also cool that it lets you pull images from different categories like flowers or architectural details.

Uploaded on July 1, 2005
by Gianni D.

Our Trip to the Swamp

This is a excellent drawing depiciting many swamp celebrities.
I particularly like Toad. The centipede pictured here may actually be a millipede, a very benign creature compared with the aggressive and predatory centipede. But for the sake of this blog we will pretend that it is in fact a centipede. The mix of critters in this jar will most likely prove to be a fatal melange. Hard to say who will be left when Marie-Tangerine gets home. Spider and Centipede may engage in their murderous grappling. Gnat's days are probably numbered. Toad might eat everybody but Snail.

To fully appreciate this drawing go to http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=517673342&size=l&context=set-72157600272648780

photo credit: Uploaded on May 28, 2007 by MarieLynn

Lifelong Learnin'

Hardest: Viewing problems as challenges.
It can be difficult for me to have a positive attitude when things don't go right.
Easiest: Begin with the end in mind.
I don't have too much trouble focusing on a goal and sticking to it.

First Post

While we go about our daily lives (eating, sleeping, working, composing weblogs), things are happening that we know nothing about. Silent conflicts are being played out behind walls and under floorboards. And in the dense verdure of nature.
Somewhere, spider and centipede are battling.