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!