Thing 23

What a terrific opportunity this program was. Now that I'm at the
end of the "official" part, I see that there are many things that I want
to return to for a more in depth look. As I mentioned on my very first
post, the challenge will be finding the time. I will try and integrate
as much of these technologies, as I can, into the work flow. I now
have a much better grasp of how other libraries are using these technologies
because I have used them, even superficially. This will enable me to follow
the blogs and articles and try and see if any of this makes sense in our library.

I was surprised at the sheer number of people who have blogs. I will always
be looking for ways to filter out the stuff I don't want and find those diamonds in the dust.

My favorite discovery was bloglines. This has already reduced the amount of time I spend bouncing between websites to catch up on things.
Now I can find it in one place.

I would definately participate in a program like this again. The perhaps, unintended consequences of teamwork and learning about staff were appreciated. I can't believe how much I've learned in such a short time. The time involved was perhaps
underestimated. This should be considered if and when we offer another great opportunity like this.

A big thank you to Jim DeArmey and Ellen Ward!!! You guys rock!
Thanks for checking the blogs and for the encouragement.

Del.icio.us

I'm enjoying delicious (forget the periods - the name is silly enough)as an easy way to save links to things I"m interested in.
Why not give customers the ability to add their own tags to items in our catalog?
Not everyone thinks like Melville Dewey did.
I need to spend more time with this to get the feel of it. I set up an account and have the bookmarklet on my toolbar.

Thing 21 - podcasts

I have i-tunes on my home computer and regularly get updates to podcasts.
I've been looking about the free podcasts sites. Podcast.net is a bit overwhelming. I
am having trouble evaluating the podcast based on the description. There doesn't seem
to be alot that is compelling to me on this site. I've been unsucessful in getting the feed
onto my blog. I'll continue to work with this and also check out the other sites.

Thing 22

The Big Sleep
Originally uploaded by exLondoner

I've used the BCPL account for Overdrive and have borrowed two videos. After having some issues with the security on my machine, I was able to download Pulp Cinema with Humphrey Bogart. I started watching the Big Sleep. It's opening scene takes place at a Public Library with a Librarian type person providing reader's advisory to Humphrey Bogart. Bogart and Bacall, "that man and that woman" together again, as the trailer reads.

I also looked at Project Gutenberg and was able to start reading Jane Austen's biography on my screen. I suppose there must be folks out there who like to read huge chunks of text on the screen of their computers, but I am not one of them. However, it is wonderful to have access to all this material.

I won't mess with the audio books right now because I can't load them on my I-pod, although I could burn to CD those that allow this and then upload them to the I-pod. Too much trouble right now. I'll have to investigate the titles more closely. I only have a tape player in my car and this may be an alternative source of audio books for me as less and less tapes are published.

Of course I could spring for a CD player in my car, but hey, that would make it too easy.

The Simpsons Star Wars

I found this on Google video.

You tube

I placed the video into my blog by putting my blog address onto the YOutube site. I will
try and place it using the "embeddable player" as well.
I can see using Youtube for training. This would help to get us off the beltway.




IT WORKED!

Week 9 thing 20

I've posted this video to my blog from YouTube. THese are clear wing moths. They are dead ringers for hummingbirds except for the antennas. They have very deep green and red colors, which this video is not doing justice to. They have started showing up in my garden.
One note. WHen I go into my blog and edit this text, the video seems to disappear.

Week 8 thing 19 exploring Web 2.0 awards list

I've been mucking aroung the sites on the awards list. I like color blender and I can possibly see some application for this in my own creative endeavors. I wonder if graphic designers find this tool helpful. I've also been looking at the widgets sites. National Geographic has a pretty cool widget. I found this through the Spring Widgets site. Most of the widgets were about things that didn't interest me and seem to suck minutes out of my life that could be better used doing just about anything else. For example, do I really need to know how
many seconds until the release of a new movie?? Okay, maybe some political wonk wants to know the exact number of days, hours, minutes and seconds until the presidential election, but even that seems like a stretch.

Week 8 things 1, 2 & 3

This is a test of Zoho Writer.

Centered

Different colors fonts and size

Here is what I imported from Zoho word processor directly to my blog. Very nice. I can see many applications for the shared documents, especially in our teamwork environment where we are in different locations.

Week 5, #11 Library Thing

I've catalogued some books on Library Thing. I like the ability to see
how other folks have added tags. Cataloguing by the "people". Very
powerful. What would Melvil say?

The link to my page is: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bmischel

Week 7 things 16 & 17

sandbox village #2
Originally uploaded by Eric K.

I've got sand in my toes. I've been to the MD wiki sandbox. I added my blog address and created a new page. It took awhile for me to link the title to the wiki page, but I finally got it.

It is interesting to see how libraries are using Wikis. Although the down-side, as far as the integrity of the information, is that there is no control over who can add content. This is good for some applications and not for others. That is why I always take Wikipedia with a grain of salt.

week 6 #14 Technorati

I've done the discovery exercise and entered "learning 2.0" in the various categories
on Technorati. The results were different each time. I've also explored the other options
available here. I feel as if I'm missing something with this site. I can't see the usefulness of it.
I'm going to move on and come back to this later.

week 3 #7

Back tracking a bit. A post about anything technology related. I don't have the time or desire to utilize all of the things that I am learning, however, I'm enjoying leaning about it all. 7 years ago I received a gift of a digital camera and went kicking and screaming into the digital arena. I think back to almost 20 years ago when I was working for an organization that was trying to get it's members logged into the Usenet, which was what the internet evolved from and before it became the world wide web. I had to find universities, in the member's city, who would be willing to provide an account for the person to dial into. I was working from home and it was all very "brave new worldish". Times have sure changed quickly. That is the bottom line. Change is quick and if you want to keep up you need to, well..., keep up with it. It is impossible to stay current with all the new technology. Picking and choosing what I want to learn in greater depth seems to work for me.

Danielle Steel & Blog generators

I decided to go back and look at some of the blog generators. I can't
see where I would use these generators, unless I give up eating, sleeping,
seeing my family and daily living skills. Who has the time? But... one can always, always use a good laugh.

For libraryland, I thought the following was appropriate:

http://ds.hnldesign.nl/

Lib 2.0

I am having a blast reading about libraries and Lib. 2.0.

With the recent bandwidth issues and blocking of MySpace, it is
rare to see a teenager in our library or on our computers. If this
isn't a wake-up call, I don't know what is.

There are so many applications and implications for us.
Off the top of my head:
For our avid readers and book club afficionados - set up a blog and have our community contribute the content. Link it directly to our catalog, set up tags so that material can be found in an addtional way besides the subject headings. Let's
start to engage the users who utilize these technologies the way people used the telephone 50 years ago.

Have what we do on RSS feeds. Let's push the content out there to those who
want it. Calendar of events - RSS. Had a program? Let's get feedback online from our community. Keep the dialog going.

rolly-o

I've been playing with rolly-o. I created a search roll for books.
Duh! This is just a test to see how it works. Here is the URL:
http://www.rollyo.com/dashboard.html

RSS feeds redux

I've delved a bit deeper into RSS fees. I spent some "quality time" with topix and feedster. I found feedster harder to use but have gotten the hang of it now. Not all of the sites that were linked had RSS feeds available. I liked feedster because you could select the format for what you were looking for, i.e., news, blogs, podcasts. I searched on polymer clay and found some very interesting info. that I don't think I would have found in any other way. I have a Bloglines account set up and am checking it every day. What a terrific timesaver it is!

I've located a few library-related blogs: Librarian's Internet Index, which can be overwhelming,
but it's worth it for the occassional gem it delivers; Library Garden, PLA blog and Shifted Librarian.

Here I experimented with Dumpr. I took a pic from flickr and "dumpred" it. Pretty cool.

" Here is my Yahoo Avatar. I played around with the image generators, but had some trouble posting the results to my blog. I will work on it during my next visit to "23 thingville".

Happy 4th

Happy 4th
Originally uploaded by doofusdave

Happy Independence Day

Week 4, Things 8 & 9

I've had a great time with the RSS feeds. It was very confusing at first took awhile to "get it".I think I am now there, where ever that is. I subscribed to some library feeds and some news sources that I check on a regular basis. I also found a blog about polymer clay that looks very interesting. Now we'll see if this is going to make my life easier.

Gotta love the flingos.

Here I've used a 3rd party app. to

make a postage stamp. The pic

was found on flickr. Notice the postage is still 39 cents in this image.

This was fun to do.

lego of my trading card week 3 thing 6

What I find in lagoons.

Here I am in thing#6 coming in with my trading card. This wasn't hard to do at all. I tried to muck around with the font and color of type but I couldn't find a way change it. No problem. I'm going back to the 3rd party sites to see what other trouble I can get into.

Fred & Ginger

TOP HAT
Originally uploaded by mueredecine

Of course where would Fred be without Ginger?
And she had to do the same things Fred did but backwards
and in high heels. This photo is from the film Top Hat. How elegant.

Fred Astaire

Fred Astaire
Originally uploaded by {bela}

Ah Fred Astaire! He could add class to reading the yellow pages. He made it look sooo easy.

Angel fish week 3 thing 5

Angel fish
Originally uploaded by o0xsophx0o

I used to raise angel fish. This fish looks a bit like the ones I raised.
Pretty white with the red marking by the gills. They are not very nice
fish and can be very territorial. I had a male angel that was really
nasty to the females. They had to be separated. Overall it was a remarkable experience to breed these fish. So much for life in the fishbowl. This is thing 5 and it's taken me more time than I anticipated. The technology seemed to conspire against me. (I'm not paranoid)
However, I will revel in this accomplishment.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Lifelong learning

The biggest challenge for this program is finding the time to devote to this. The 2nd biggest challenge for me is to keep up with the technology, because I don't devote enough the time to it. I am so happy that we are able to participate in this program, giving me a structure to learn the things I'm interested in - Play with the technology. How much fun is that?

And away we go... week 2, thing 3 &4

This is my first post. Making the time to do this will be the biggest challenge.