The End of the Road

Wow, it’s a little hard to believe it, but it looks like we made it!  Twenty three “things” have come and gone and here we are.  I don’t know about everyone else, but I feel more knowledgeable about technology in general and Web 2.0 in particular.  Dare I say it?  I am richer for having participated in this program.  Before the workshop I attended last year, I never thought about Web 2.0 or Library 2.0.  I left that workshop with a renewed sense of how my library could present more information (thus more options) to the community.  I had so many ideas about things we could do, but I never got around to them.  While doing 23 Things though, I began to remember all the cool things I wanted to offer up all those months before.  Yes, we have a FaceBook and MySpace page, but I learned there were other ways to bring our services to the community.  I have to admit, there are a few “Things” that I just don’t get.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever understand the purpose of widgets or how Flickr mashups can help us, but they’re still cool and worth learning about.  I have gathered from reading some of the perspectives on Library 2.0, that a lot of people who work in libraries long for the good old days of library work and look with disdain and apprehension on the new services that exist.  But for me, the connection we make with our patrons is more important than my understanding of widgets or comfort level using social networking sites.  If many of our patrons are using MySpace to get information about new music and new books, shouldn’t we provide the same service through our MySpace page?  Many of us (patrons and staff) use Web 2.0 anyway, so why not fully embrace the idea?  I, for one, am dedicated to providing the best customer service I can to the community.  It’s time for all of us in Libraryland to get with the times and rush headlong into all that Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 have to offer.

Here a Podcast, There a Podcast…Everywhere a Podcast

It’s official: I’m a geek!  More on that later. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I once starred in a podcast.  Okay, well, “starred in” might be a bitof a stretch.  I had an integral role in the sketch; we’ll leave it at that.  Anyhoo, before the Library 2.0 workshop in went to, I had never really given much thought to podcasts.  Afterwards, I began to think of all the ways they could work for the library and for me, personally.  Oh, the possibilities!  I have to admit, however, that I never gave a thought to how people find podcasts.  This exercise gave me some insight.  I actually searched each site listed in the explanation of Thing 22, so here’s what I learned. 

• podcastalley.com: This is a pretty cool site, I found a few different types of podcasts, but to listen I had to download a podcast aggregator (whatever the heck that is!), so I just searched and left.
• getapodcast.com: as a search engine for podcasts, I was not impressed.  I kept getting irrelevant podcasts to my search queries.  Besides, I foud the site rather boring and bland.
• podscope.com: I didn’t get it. The sites tag line is: “Podscope lets you search the spoken word for audio and video that interests you.”  Okay, I’m not exactly sure what that means.  I searched for a few things and got zero results.
• podcast.com: WONDERFUL!!  I absolutely love this site.  You can listen to or watch podcasts directly on the site; no downloading necessary.  There are also instructions on how to load podcasts on your computer, mp3 player, or ipod.  And I was able to listen to a podcast without even being a member.  There is also a way to add your own podcasts to the site.  If you’re looking for podcasts, this is the site to use.

Now, back to me being a geek.  One of the things I searched for was Battlestar Galactica.  Why?  Well, it’s the best television on earth and I was just curious about why types of things would be found.  Imagine my surprise when I found a podcast of a commentary on episode 12 of season 4 (Revelations)!  I listened to the executive producer, two writers of the episode and the editor talk about how the episode was originally written, why it was shot a certain way and all that good stuff.  <sheepishly> I listened to almost the entire commentary.  But what can I say?  I love BSG!!  So now I know where I can go to listen to podcasts by fans like me, or podcasts featuring the cast of the show, or just about anything BSG.  Isn’t the internet great?

Video is Helping the Radio Star…and Every Other Star, Too.

I love youtube!  I’m one of those geeks who searches for old videos, you know from Friday Night Videos and Video Soul.  I love finding a video I haven’t seen in fifteen or twenty years; I feel like I’ve found gold or something.  I also love searching for obscure TV shows that only lasted a few episodes.  The funny thing is, more often than not, I hit pay dirt.  I remember when I first heard about youtube; my sister was looking up old music videos and intros to TV shows.  I was hooked!  I have saved several old music videos and TV show intros to my favorites and my sister would send trailers for her films to me through youtube, as well.  To be honest, I have never considered any other purpose for youtube beyond what I do with it.  Take Crank That (Soulja Boy)  by Souljaboytellem, there are tons of videos on youtube of people doing the exact same dance….absolutely no different.  I believe that is part of what made that song a huge hit.  On any given day, there is a music video listed on youtube as a featured video.  I’d wager, as an artist you don’t even have to release a video to MTV or BET anymore; you can just upload it to youtube and you will have an instant hit.

Enough about youtube.  After a few months, my sister began sending her films to me and the rest of the family through vimeo.  I couldn’t find any music videos on vimeo (at least none of the artists I like), but this site is a great place to find footage from concerts.  I found a few for the Coachella Music Festival and Lollapalooza.  I had never heard of Live Leak before this exercise, and it seems interesting, but not really for me.  From my understanding it is a site for news-oriented videos.  I question that, because a few of the videos I saw listed were from various traffic cams worldwide.  That’s not news to me.  I like the idea of Metacafe; if I were my sister, it would be great.  But, I’m not.  I don’t make videos, and honestly, the length of time my brain will allow me to sit in front of the computer watching something is about three minutes.  But, it sounds good if you’re the type of person who is into that.

Wait’ll You See My Widget

When I first read about this Thing, I thought: “What the heck is a widget?”  To be honest, I’m still not 100% sure I get widgets, but I know that I like what I see.  I went ahead and created an account on yourminis.com, because I’m a little nuts that way.  I began by exploring, exactly as instructed on the Thing 20 post, but I got a carried away.  I began adding tabs; I have a news tab complete with calendar, a calculator, and news stories from the likes of CNN.com and an entertainment tab with the iTunes top 10, a game dashboard, my horoscope, and Yahoo! entertainment news.  I don’t know why I have the entertainment news, I could care less about what’s going on in Hollywood, but it takes up space, so that’s cool.  I also added a tab that I named: Music I Love.  There is a cool gadget under “Multimedia” called “Cover Art”.  You can search an artist or actor’s  name and different cover art for their CD or DVD will pop up.  You can then drag onto your “board” (is that what it’s called?  I’m not even sure.)  I have my entire “board” covered with album art from some of my favorites artists.  I think I’ll do my favorite movies.  Oh, what fun!  According to the actually start page, you can make fan pages, do promotions, and that type of stuff, but I haven’t figured that out yet.  I’ll work my way to that….eventually.

http://www.yourminis.com/yourminis/teasleeve/musicilove

And the Winner Is…Actually Pretty Cool.

I scrolled through the short list of the Web 2.0 winners, because I found the format to be easier to read and understand.  I explored a few of the winners and second place winners, avoiding the sites I’m familiar with, and I have to say… I don’t know as much as I thought I did about Web 2.0.  Or maybe I should say I can’t see a way some of these would be beneficial to my life.  I did, however, find a great application; upcoming.yahoo.com. 

Upcoming is basically a list of upcoming events anywhere in the world.  Promoters can list events, but even little ol’ me can list events that I would like to let people know about.  For example, an upcoming concert that I plan to attend, was not listed, so I added it.  You can join or add groups based on events, locations, or interests.  You can also search events in other places.  Clicking on the link “Places” displays tags of local, national, and international locations.  I clicked on a few, like Australia, Canada, and Ireland.  I saw a ton of events taking place in these countries and I marked a few to attend!  Yeah, right; only in my wildest dreams.  Clicking on an event opens up all the pertinent information and allows you to tell the community whether or not you are attending the event.  You can also send invitations to friends and read blogs.  The best thing about upcoming is that it is a Yahoo! site; logging into my Yahoo! mail logs me in to upcoming.  Yay, I don’t have to create and remember another password!  I have too many in my head as it is.

I think upcoming could be a great tool for our library because it would be another way of letting our patrons know what’s going on in the library.  We could also use it to list and promote special events from the Heights Library Partners.  Events within the community could also be featured.

Does Being Organized Make Me Weird?

When I was pregnant with my son, I belonged to a website which tracked my pregnancy week-by-week. Back then, Yahoo! had a pregnancy tool with a calendar, so I used that one as well.  I love calendars, organizers, shopping lists, etc. so this exercise gets me where I live.  I have to admit it’s been a while since I’ve used an online calendar; my cellphone has a task and calendar feature which I use on a daily basis.  But, I can see the use of an online together the more involved in work I become and the more my kids do in school.  I put a calendar on my Yahoo! homepage and I started a Google calendar.  The plus definitely goes to Yahoo! because I log into it everyday (my internet service).  I have to make a conscious effort to log in to Google, just because most of my important information comes to my Yahoo!.  But, both are great.  Since I began getting more involved in various projects at work, I have been looking for ways to help me remember key things.  Having a service like this available on the web is great because I happen to leave most of notes at work.  After reading about some of these sites, I decided to get an account for stikkit.com and rememberthemilk.com.  I have had a chance to do much with either site, but I do look forward to exploring them.

Mmmm…Delicious!

I can admit it: my memory isn’t what it used to be.  As a result, I have to use bookmarks.  Of course, my bookmarks at work are a lot different from my bookmarks at home.  And when I’m over my parents’ house or visiting one of my sisters, it would be great to just click on my bookmark to pay my bills.  Although I can access my bookmarks if I sign in to Yahoo!, I like the set up on delicious.com a little better.  The tagging is genius, I think.  I don’t have to scroll repeatedly through my list to find what I’m looking for.  That sure saves me some time.  I also like being able to share my bookmarks with friends and family, rather than sending a link in an e-mail.  It’s supposed to be easy to import your bookmarks from your browser, but so far it’s not so for me.  So, I have to go through my 63 bookmarks and save them one-by-one; if someone knows a way around this, please let me know.

MyFaceSpaceBook….I’m Usually on Both at the Same Time!!

I don’t know much about the other social networking sites, so I won’t even bother talking about them. ;} Myspace and Facebook…what can I say!  I love them both; almost equally.

Myspace (http://www.myspace.com/caprabbit)  : I have been a member of Myspace for about three years.  Initially, I didn’t really want anything to do with it, because it seemed like a place for kids.  I ended up getting an account because my daughter was doing so many things with her account that I had to try it.  (Side note: my daughter was only able to get a Myspace because both of my sisters had an account and they could monitor what she was doing.)  You get “friends” by searching for someone by name, and asking them to be your friend.  Right now, I have over 300 friends, but that’s nothing compared to some people.  You can friend musicians, actors, organizations, T.V. shows, authors, politicians, and many others.  You then select a certain number of Top Friends and they are prominently displayed on your profile.   I only have a few actual friends on Myspace, that is, people I know personally.  And they are my Top 10.  One great thing about Myspace is that I can use the site as a way to find out when my favorite performers are coming to town; I am friends with several musicians and comedians.  I even comment on their performance via their myspace page.  My favorite thing about Myspace is the fact that you can find HTML codes to give your profile layout a cool look.  It’s called pimping your layout.  I change mine up every couple months or so.  I also like being able to add other items to your profile.   For instance, I have a customized playlist (right now, it’s all Prince all the time!), a slide with pictures of my kids, and quizzes I have taken on blogthings.com that I feel express who I am. 

Facebook: When I first heard about Facebook, it was only for college kids.  I remember trying to create an account and being refused because I didn’t have up to date school info.  After a while, they began allowing old heads like me to join and I think it’s great.  I have joined an OU alumni group, a Stephanie Plum fan group, and I have even been able to become a fan of some of my favorite musicians, T.V. personalities…even Barack Obama!  You can also add a playist to your Facebook profile; my playlist for this site is music I loved in junior high and high school.  The one thing I don’t like, is in order to participate in some fun quizzes, you have to download applications, which eventually make your page junky.  But I have a lot of friends on Facebook; only one of which I don’t know personally! 

I use both Myspace and Facebook as a way of staying in contact with family and friends I’m not able to see very often.  They both may be a smidge adolescent and silly, but they work for me and it’s all in good fun.  Plus I really looooove flair!

Mixx and Match!

I can’t say that I’m much interested in the web.  Let me reiterate, I’m not as interested as I used to be.  My family got AOL almost as soon as it came out.  I have to admit, I explored so much I find it quite boring to use the internet today.  I had never heard of social media sites before this exercise, so I was bit confused by what they are.  Rather than read the wikipedia article(I’m not very good with instructions), I clicked each link and read up on each from the actual sites.  Of all those listed, I like Mixx the best.  I think it’s cool that I can customize my mixx so that I see exactly what I want to see.  I created an account; so far my mixx is about video games, music, and T.V.  Yay!!  I doubt that I will submit my info though; who has that kind of time?

Google Map? I Do Need a Stinking Google Map!

Before Google Maps there was Mapquest.  And I would get lost EVERYWHERE!! Well, to be honest, Google isn’t always the better option.  Sometimes it will tell me my own address doesn’t exist, but I’m thinking about the bigger picture.  If I need to know where something is, I go to Google Maps to find it!  Imagine my surprise when my sister told me that I could see my parent’s house using Google Maps!  I couldn’t believe it, so I tried.  And sure enough there it was; insanity! 

This past May, my sisters and female cousins were planning a trip to Chicago.  Everyone had all these things they wanted to do, all these places they wanted to see.  How could we make sure everyone would be pleased?  My younger sister made an itinerary using Google Maps!  I had no idea you could do that; and guess what: we used it and it worked. Well, for the most part, but that’s a blog for another day.  The point is, there are so many applications for the Google Maps that it boggles my mind.  For this exericse, I decided to make my own map.  A map of all the places I’ve been.  Don’t rush to see that map; I haven’t really been anywhere.  I haven’t even been west of the Mississippi!  It is pretty interesting how many places I’ve been to in Ohio and West Virginia.  I didn’t even mention Akron and Canton!  Maybe I should make a map of places I want to go; that could be my incentive to travel more.

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