thing 23

Wow! Here's the last post.

My favorite discoveries: making a blog, wikis, tagging, rss feeds, del.icio.us.

Wish I'd interacted more with others doing the program. However, just making the discoveries and doing the exercises took plenty of time.

I will look for ways to integrate the Web 2.0 tools into both my personal and professional life. It'll take some rethinking and retraining of habits to make the shift into the interactive web-hosted environment. There are so many places to store things these days--web hosted sites, servers, desktops, flash drives, external drives. Sometimes it just gets confusing as to what is where and in what format.

Sayonara . . .

eAudiobooks

I love that the classics have been recorded first, and are available for free! It's a great way for those with reading challenges to access literature.

Personally, I'm not all that keen on listening to fiction. I'd rather read it, but that's me.

Also, I wish they would have professionals do the readings. The quality varies so much with the ones that are done by volunteers, and that makes all the difference.

http://librivox.org/railway-children-by-e-nesbit/

A great way for parents who can't read to have stories read to their children.

Podcasts

I like this site for locating podcasts: http://www.podcastbunker.com/

I subscribed to the NY Times Front Page. It's like radio on demand without the commercials. Very fast way to get updated on news, weather, comedy . . . from all over the country.

Not sure I have the time or the interest to create a podcast, but can definitely see application for it. What about a podcast on HartfordInfo welcoming and showing people around the site. Or podcasts that are available to go along with our How To? drop down list on the home page? Possibilities are endless!

Blogging You Tube

Well, that was pretty cool . . . so easy to put the You Tube clip in my blog!

In library land, I can see uploading clips of author and music performances, community forums, informational programs. CT Book Awards. What a great way to draw more attention to our online media recordings.

U tube

You tube is addictive! It's incredible how much time goes by just surfing around. I like using the tags to find recordings of a particular piece of music, particularly violin concertos. Some great black and white footage of old masters, who I have heard on recordings, but never seen footage of, like this one:

Menuhin plays Bruch violin concerto no1, the conductor is Ferenc Fricsay.
1st movement
I wish it said what year!

Web aps

What a great list of web apps. I've added it to my del.icio.us bookmarks so I can check out more of them (in my copious spare time between 1 and 5 a.m. Who needs sleep?)

I'm surprised by how many of them I've heard of and used. I like Pandora. It's a fun way to listen to some new artists, and fun to see who they classify as similar to someone I like.

Zillow is great for watching the housing market. Seeing what properties are selling for in the neighborhood. Recently, a house was foreclosed on across the street after falling into disrepair. Someone (builder?) has bought it and fixed it up. It'll be interesting to see if he/she turns around and sells it, and how much for.

I checked out colorblender for the first time, which is an app that lets you identify a base color, then provides five matching colors. It's an easy way to establish a palette, although the choices seem rather predictable. It'd be cool if the developer expanded this so that you could select complementary colors, or accent colors etc.

What's amazing is seeing the apps that are being bought up by Google. Be great to create one of those!

dear creator

Dear creator of Zoho Writer--

Will you make flash drives obsolete?  The possibility defnitely exists since people will no longer need to email themselves documents that have been saved to a server.

Not sure I'm into the tagging idea of filing.  I like my files in one folder, and keeping my folders clearly labeled so I can go back.  Rarely does my system frustrate me.

This is so amazingly similar to Word.  Microsoft doesn't have copyright issues???????????

Time to try saving, page view, and publishing this to my blog.

Oh, and I just had to come back and edit.  This can be saved as a pdf!!!!!!!!!  That's awesome.

Well, and then, I thought I'd try the tags, since it was one of the questions for posting to the blog.

Oh, and then I really like that you can just update the blog posting if you edit.  

---

And check that out.  An easy way to add a rule.
This could possibly be easier than Word.

What about print options?  Oh I get it.  That's only print as a pdf, not save as a pdf.


Technorati Tags     zoho,writer,making,pdf

Week 7!

Here a wiki, there a wiki, everywhere a wiki, wiki.

Since I've only created webpages in html and now on a wiki, this is a dramatic change in the ease of the process in a short time! How wonderful to be able to add content to a webpage so easily. I can see a page for staff picks/favorites (wouldn't that be fun!) Or what about the computer instructors having all their lesson plans on a wiki?

We produce so many documents where multiple people are contributing--reports, budget preparation work, etc. How much easier to put it all up in one place and edit it rather than emailing files back and forth.

I must admit that the actual doing was harder than I expected in the Sandbox. Once someone has done the set-up, then I think it's easy to add. But obviously someone has to do some thinking about setting up the overall organizational and visual structure of the pages--or as some of the pages on the PLCMC wiki demonstrate, it can get very messy, very quickly.

Library 2.0

I think Library 2.0 begins for Hartford Public Library when we open our online services to customer interaction--it could be on our website, or on HartfordInfo or our OPAC. The options are plentiful. The challenges will be how to balance the input with the need for control. We've always maintained patron privacy . . . what about if patrons elect to be public with user profiles? And seek to share their reading interests with other customers through booklists? What if users want to tag in HartfordInfo and locate other customers who share an interest in the same tags?

Something else that seems to have gone by the wayside is permissions . . . is there any discussion about seeking permissions to post information/photos/videos of others? It appears not.

And advertising . . . . the Library has kept its distance from advertising. Customers do not need to question if a commercial interest is pushing the information. Is it possible to integrate the 2.0 tools without the advertising?

Food for thought. Not barriers to implementation. Just proceed with caution.

Techo . . . rat

Can't say that Technorati is one of my favorite web apps . . . . can't say I've run across too many blogs that held my interest for long (perhaps someone can enlighten me?) Ads drove me completely nuts too -- too many flashing this and that.

simply del.icio.us

Today, I explored del.icio.us--created an account and saved a bunch of links on Vermont, where my daughter will be this summer. Not many people tagging the same links that I am. Maybe others aren't using it to create travel itineraries yet! Can definitely see that this would make bookmarking so much easier, and also the networking feature can help find new sources of information.

I'm trying to think how it would look with hundreds or thousands of entries . . .

Enter the tags Shelburne Art Museum and you will find newmoontofullmoon--

Rollyo yo yo

I can see how this would be useful if you wanted to do the same search repeatedly to save from having to go one by one to a bunch of different sites every day. Not sure if it's possible to integrate sites that already have their own search features e.g. I created a rollyo to search car dealerships for a particular style of used car. Using edmunds or cars.com is probably easier, but if I wanted to limit the search terms in a different way from those sites, say to just a few dealersherships, then this would be good.

Select...new moon to full mooncarSearch The Web

Library Thing

Wow. Now I can quit trying to keep track of all those little pieces of paper on which I've written down books that I want to read. It's interesting to see who else has read what I've read, and to get suggestions of what I might like. Not sure the conversations have much to offer--not many erudite comments from what I've seen so far.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/newmoontofullmoon

Spring Break in Texas

I am hoping that by simply copying and pasting the link here that I can get my flckr work, which I made a separate blog, to appear!

http://txspringbreak.blogspot.com/

RSS land

Well, I think I've completed the RSS feed excercise. I've been ambitious, adding RSS feeds from a range of sources--blogs, Youtube, a podcast, book reviews, a news search term, Flickr, a couple from Bloglines, and even Sandy's helpful hints. What a great way to keep up with a lot of information in a variety of formats.

Here's the link to my feeds: http://www.bloglines.com/public/newmoontofullmoon

Now to see if the link works!

a book of walks

So, now that I have the colors and type face set, I'm ready to go!

This is almost as trecherous a journey as Sunday when I decided the paths at the reservoir would have melted enough to walk on. In places, I had to test the ground with each step, setting my boot down and making sure the surface was firm before moving on. Along other stretches, I could appreciate the view and listen to water gushing down the ravines. Sometimes, fog obscured the path. I could feel the warm air meeting the frozen reservoir and see the fog forming from the surface of the ice.

Cool trip, as I am sure this will be.