This machine kills fascists

How do they pick the artists that are on these sites? Cause I couldn't find one musician I'd heard of on the Smithsonian website. Oh wait, Woody Guthrie is on there. Okay one artist I'm vaguely familiar with. I listened to House of the Rising Sun and I have to say I think The Animals did it better.

I turned the volume up completely but still had to press my ear to the speaker on my LCD screen to hear. Apart from that, the quality and ease of use was good. I'll have to try this from my home computer and see if that doesn't fix the volume issue. I guess these websites are a safe alternative for the library to invest in, as we don't allow our patrons to download music.

I don't think most of my family has the technical savvy to start listening to music on the net. My dad hasn't figured out mp3 players yet and still uses a cassette Walkman. But then he also refers to my brother's Blackberry as a raspberry. My honest assessment is I would listen to music this way if I could find a site that catered to my sophisticated taste in music.

19 down 4 to go!

Hooray for LOLcats
Originally uploaded by mherzber

I explored the 43 things website which was the original inspiration for all of these learning 2.0 exercises. People post their goals on the site, then other people can cheer them on and offer encouragement. You can search for goals by keyword or even by city.

It was fun to see all the different goals people made. Also it was interesting to see what people in Spokane had to say. The one that made me laugh said that we get angry if you call Spokane a town instead of a city.

The top 3 most popular goals completed were: to fall in love, get a tattoo and to kiss in the rain. I tried to search out library related goals and found quite a few. People want to leave poems, love letters, jokes and secrets in library books. I myself have found pay check stubs, credit card statements, money and phone cards in books before.

Zohoho and a bottle of rum

 

Zoho Writer could be a useful tool to tell some of our patrons about. The fact that you don't need a flash drive or disk is nice. I always hated floppy disks and still have a bunch of them lying around collecting dust. I think anyone who has used Word could pick up Zoho in no time.

 

I don't know how much I'll personally be using it considering I only use Word about once every six months. After reading the comment some Zoho affiliate posted on page2peon's blog, I'm kinda worried about saying anything else. Eternal Vigilance! Isn't that from Harry Potter?

 

I also tried 30 boxes, an online calender web app which could be helpful for me. I do have a planner but am so disorganized I never update it. So 30 boxes is probably yet another thing I can procrastinate about. I'll have to look into what other web based applications are out there. Anytime you don't have to download something is alright with me. I'm pretty protective of my hard drive space and rarely download things.

Wicki Woo!

More Library 2.0 from Aurora
Originally uploaded by Travelin' Librarian

The resource I found most interesting was Using Wikis to Create Online Communities. The idea to make the library's intranet a wiki has merit. The intranet would become a place that staff could contribute their input and ideas. Also I think a community wiki would be a helpful and informative resource, particularly for people new to the area. The SPL website might benefit from a wiki where patrons could suggest and rate books that they enjoyed.

I've used Wikipedia before but never realized that anyone could post or delete entries. This makes information suspect; but since I'm usually looking up frivolous information anyway it doesn't make much difference to me. I can see where students would want to be wary of using it as a research tool. Mainly I find Wikipedia useful when I don't want to wade through all the websites a search engine brings up.

Coming soon to a knowledge spa near you

42/365: Of course, a librarian action figure must be able to shush. Duh!
Originally uploaded by piercecountylibrary

After reading all the articles I can see how important it is to stay informed about new technology. But at the same time it's difficult when technology becomes obsolete ten minutes after it comes out. However hard you try to stay on top of things I think there will always be a gap depending on what generation you belong to. These exercises have been helpful in pushing me to learn new things that I probably wouldn't have on my own.

Dr. Wendy Schultz's article went a bit over my head, biobot... umm sure. Did anyone else flash to Mary Katherine Gallagher when she brought up librarian superstars? The idea of librarian celebrity/popularity contests is a little much for me. I guess 'thought leader' would look more prestigious on the ol' resume than library clerk though.

Technorati Parti On

Technorati Anagram Logo
Originally uploaded by eston

Okay Technorati is not a website I'll be visiting often. I don't particularly see the attraction in reading total stranger's blogs. Am I alone in this? I guess if I had a friend with a blog I might look them up but on the other hand I could just ask them for the url. Just an old fashioned girl I guess.

I couldn't even find myself on Technorati until a co-worker looked me up. The complete randomness of my ranking 8,911,336 made me wonder how they came up with that exact number. Especially since my coworkers and I share the same ranking, is it cause we all have no authority and zero fans? After that beat down I refused to claim my blog and support their elitist regime.

But lest you get the wrong idea Technorati is a simple, functional website for those of you with the time to explore and the desire to read blogs. More power to you if you are such a person. I'm so slow I can't even keep up with these exercises let alone read my fellow worker's blogs.

Del.icio.us or fav.or.rites

water-moon
Originally uploaded by joaobambu

Well with the help of my bbff I am slowly but surely catching up on my assignments. The time extension was appreciated as well. Is anyone else getting midterm flashbacks?

Del.icio.us was actually one of the few 2.0 technologies I'd already come across and conquered on my own in my vast web travels. And by conquered I mean I know what it is and how to use it but hadn't bothered to set up my own account yet. For me seeing what other people have bookmarked is more interesting than using it myself. I've already been trained to use favorites and can't see switching over at this point.

However I do see the potential for those of us who want a record of all the websites that aren't visited frequently enough to make it into our favorite bookmarks. OK I guess it could also be a helpful research tool as well. Also the word on the street is del.icio.us will shortly become plain old delicious, according to Wikipedia. Whoohoo then I don't have to know where all those dang periods go.

I have the bestest Roll-Yo

What can I say about Roll-Yo? It was easy to make one and has a catchy name. What more can you ask for? After the pointlessness of LibraryThing, it was a relief to learn about something that I would actually use in real life. Here's my roll-yo, http://rollyo.com/jpanther/the_best_roll-yo_eva/ .

Generators rock my world!

I loved this assignment and had way too much fun playing around with it. Here are two links for generators I enjoyed: http://www.peacefire.org/staff/bennett/autodave/ and http://www.becomeanmm.com/. I put my m&m creation Miss Crazy Legs with my other pictures because she refused to load in this post. But here is my Dave Barry column.

Recently in Preston, ID (motto: "I like your sleeves"), residents reported an outbreak of tater tots. Perhaps you think there are no tater tots in Preston. Perhaps you are an idiot. As the French say, au contraire (literally: "Go back to funky town!"). I have here in my hands a copy of an Associated Press article sent in by alert reader Pedro, whose name can be rearranged to spell "POERD", although that is not my main point.

LibraryThing rhymes with bor-ing

I read a lot of books but for some reason I had a hard time coming up with titles to add to my library. I also thought there should be summaries of the books so you knew which one to choose, which would be especially helpful with series.

I don't really see the purpose of LibraryThing and doubt I'll be using it much or at all. Apparently I'm just one of the masses because my picks ranked right up there with everyone else's. I never realized I had such mainstream tastes. So then I had to go back and pick more obscure titles. Anyway here's my link to LibraryThing, http://www.librarything.com/catalog/jpanther .

Yet more feeds

My two faves were Technorati and Topix. I liked the layout and more importantly when I typed in a topic, the search actually yielded pertinent info. The polls and comments people posted on Topix made me laugh. Feedster did not seem to return results with any resemblance to what I was looking for.

I found the Bloglines search tool simple and easy to use. Syndic8 was probably trying to go for the minimalist look but I thought it was just ugly. C'mon websites should be functional and inviting. But then I guess I'm pretty much burnt out on feeds at this point.

RSS lives up to its name

Setting up my bloglines account was easy, getting it to pick feeds I was actually interested in was a whole 'nother story. Bookworm was one of the quick picks I selected and yet 90% of the subscriptions it picked for me were book related. I just don't have the time to read about what other people like to read. So I ended up deleting a bunch of feeds and just adding websites I visit. While doing this I realized my web browser has a RSS button to detect feeds on a page, how handy.

The main thing I like about newsreaders is the consolidation factor. When I have too many open tabs or browser windows I get frustrated trying to go back and forth between them. Stop the madness I say and with RSS I can. I doubt anyone will be enthralled with my feed picks, they are pretty generic, but here is my url nonetheless. http://www.bloglines.com/public/j-panther

Technology makes our lives easier except when it really doesn't.....

While trying to do the exercise on mashups I ran into several road blocks. The Mappr site didn't come up at all. Then Montagr would only load one photo at a time and I couldn't seem to create a mashup. I also wasn't able to create a trading card because none of my photos would load. But the games on flickr made up for my frustrations somewhat. I played one called fastr with my co-workers that was fun.

Mashups....say what???

Okay I played around with flickr color pickr because it was the easiest API I found. After reading wikipedia's entry on mashups I was more confused about them than when I started. I'm just not good with all that technical jargon. The one example that made sense to me was google maps on craigslist. That is something I've used before and appreciated. Here are two pictures I found using color pickr, that I thought were cool mostly cause my favorite color is green.

John Muir Woods

I flew to San Francisco last weekend and one of the places I visited was the Muir Woods National Monument. There are several trails you can hike, the one I chose passed right by where this picture was taken. I was lucky enough to find a picture on flickr that I recognized from my hike.

Testing, testing......

Okay this is my first post to test out my new blog. It was much easier than I thought to set up a blog. I've had trouble with MySpace and anticipated more difficulties. I actually enjoyed playing around with setting this up.

As for the 7 1/2 lifelong learning habits, the easiest one for me is using technology to my advantage. The hardest habit for me is accepting responsibility for my own learning. I have no problem learning about something that interests me; but when it comes to a subject that bores me I usually avoid it.