Thing 47 - Evaulation

I just completed the online evaluation form.

This whole 23 Things Journey was fun and very educational.
Thank you!

Thing 46 - WebJunction

I've looked at WebJunction before and like the Minnesota WebJunction site because it's focused on activities around the state. I was a little disappointed that I didn't find more academic librarians on the site. Also, I wish the courses offered linked to some of the ones that Minitex offers.

Thing 45 - Cloud Computing

I like the concept of cloud computing especially the ability to access my resources anywhere and at anytime (where I have an Internet connection). My concerns are the same as what others have voiced about security and privacy of my data, files, information, etc. Also, how easy or difficult would it be to access my data, files, etc. if I change from one cloud OS to another? Would I have to convert my data and files each time?
I guess I am doing some cloud computing because I use sites like Amazon, Paypal, iTunes, and some of the accounts that I set up for these Stick Things. The ones that I use have helped my productivity a little because I can access my information from using various computers wherever I am.
An area of cloud computing that I'm going to investigate further for possible use will be data storage for my collection of digital photos.

Thing 44. The Economy

This "thing" was interesting. I thought the videos had good content. I looked at a site in each of the Learn categories. I liked what I saw on ClearCheckBook-- the visuals with the charts were interesting. I'm not sure if I'd use it though because I'm paranoid about giving too much information online. Under the Ways to Save area, I looked at the Feed the Pig website. Although promising, the Tween site was too elementary in graphics and content. I didn't think the "whack a mole" approach was very instructive for Tweens. The adult version wasn't very helpful either. The pig also seemed a bit creepy to me, maybe if they made him cuter more cartoonish. I really liked the GasBuddy site for finding local gas prices. Our family used this website when gas prices were really high. I also liked the "myrateplan.com" to find out about cell phone plans. I've been to some of the penny pinching websites before so the ones listed here looked familiar. Wisebread's website was a turnoff because the most prominent thing was to buy their book! Under the sell your stuff section, I've used Craigslist before for great deals on hobby items. The Yard Sale Treasure Map was interesting because it maps a route for you of available garage sales. The coupons sites were familiar. The self-sustainability websites were alright.
My favorite sites in this "thing" that I would use were: the GasBuddy, Cell phones, Craigslist, and the YardSaleTreasureMap.
Another site that I like to visit is WebStore. It's an online auction site competitor to eBay.
As for a tip, I try to bunch my errands together so that I don't have to run out as much thereby saving gas.

Thing 43- Online TV and Video

I've used Hulu before so I decided to try Joost first for this "thing." Joost had some
TV shows and music videos that I enjoyed watching. I watched a little of CSI: Miami, then a couple of music videos. While exploring the site I saw that they had some older TV shows like Gilligan's Island and Star Trek. Hulu is similar to Joost with TV shows, movies, and videos. On Hulu, I've caught up on some shows that I watch like House. The site also has older shows like The Rockford Files, Hart to Hart, Fantasy Island (but no Love Boat). On Hulu, I watched, a couple of episodes of the Celebrity apprentice. I really liked both of these sites both for the current shows as well as the older shows that they offer. These 2 sites will not change my current TV viewing behavior but will enhance it. If I miss an episode of a show, perhaps I'll be able to find it at one of these sites. Also, when I want to watch an older show, if it's available I'll have the ability to watch them when I want. I also like the idea of watching them online rather than buying DVDs of shows and movies since the technology is changing so quickly. How many people and libraries have lots of VHS tapes of movies, shows, and documentaries?
I think as more of this content becomes available online, there will be a shift towards integrating tv/movies and the internet. I can see broadcast moving to the internet as "channels" maybe like what online radio is doing.
The Internet video entertainment is already impacting my family. My daughter spends a lot of time online visiting sites such as YouTube and some other media sites.

Thing 42 - Music

Thing 42- Music

This was a fun and calming "thing" to do. I haven't used any of the services mentioned in this thing other than iTunes (which I use a bit). I really liked Pandora-- the organization and ease-of-use were understandable and easy. The user comments and forum threads were alright. I thought that the music selection was more limited, than the Last.fm. For example, I searched for Midori (the violinist) in Pandora but didn't find any recordings. When I searched Last.fm, I found several Midori tracks. Last.fm's organization was easy to learn and helpful. However, I did not like the posted "shouts" by people below the tracks. The comments weren't always constructive or objective. Depending on the artist/musician, some of the shoutouts were just strings of profanity.
I added the ShoutCast widget and as a lark had fun looking up Technopop music on it.
Although I usee Receiva.com to and found some Internet Radio stations, I was not able to open any of the stations to hear what they were broadcasting. Radio-Locator was just plain weird and not understandable to me at all. I couldn't figure out how to search for stations with it. I was a little skeptical when I went to the Live365 site since the other sites had been busts for me. It was a pleasant surprise when I could find a couple of nice Classical Stations that I could connect to. One station that I liked was: Classical 95.9 WCRI (Rhode Island). If I want to use Live365 regularly, it is subscription based.
What struck me about these music sites was that if you want to listen to the music in it's entirety or on a regular basis you must pay for it. It might be obvious but it's what I noticed.

Thing 41- Mashup your life

I signed up for Lifestream.fm. I didn't like it because I felt like I had to give them a lot of information to set-up the account. I linked up only a few of my accounts.

Thing 40 pt..2 - Mashups on the web

I looked a a few of the suggested mashups. I finally got the Spellr with Flickr photos to work and put it on my blog (see below). LazyLibrary was OK. I found an interesting book on it but wasn't happy with the rest of the results since the majority of them referred to crib note books and summaries of the classic work. LibWorm looked like a book club forum thread because most of the listings were for book club meetings/events. I really liked the food mashups --I must've been hungry! I got a kick out of the Wheel of Food. I typed in the zip of my hometown and it came up with the eateries in my neighborhood. The LunchBox was also good and I liked reading the reviews attached to the recommendations. I typed in the zip for WDW and got some useful info for dining there. I thought that Visual Headlines would be neat but it wasn't for me. I didn't like that letters for "visual" faded in and out. For some reason, I thought the images would appear by the words and fade in and out. MashFace looked fun but I'm burning out on creating another online account and it crashed my Firefox. Last.fm+YouTube was uh..ok. It wasn't what I thought it would be like. CrimeReports was disappointing because it listed crimes in larger towns but not smaller ones like mine.

I was able to use Bubblr to make a comic. It was fast and easy to do.

I searched and found some interesting mashups. LivePlasma was interesting but didn't return the results that I expected with my searches. I wasn't sure if it was concatenating earlier searches to subsequent searches. Census Dashboard was neat. I really liked seeing the stats for my neighborhood.

As for uses, I could really see using the LunchBox mashup when I travel to other cities/countries especially for the restaurant reviews. The Census Dashboard would be useful at our library. We could use it to help students when they have some census questions about their neighborhood.

Thing 50 pt. 1- Mashup the Web

Here's my Bubblr comic.



Images are from FlickrCC

Thing 39 - Digitial Storytelling

Ok, I got my digital storytelling layout on my blog but I had to add it as a gadget not a post. I took me awhile fiddling with the software and the links before my layout actually displayed. I ended up using ScrapBlog rather than VoiceThread because one looked Free while the other seemed like it was subscription based. I used some FlickrCC photos for a few of the layouts and a video promo for the college that's on Youtube. As for uses in our library? This might be useful on the library's blog as a supplement to special events on campus or special displays in the library.
At home, I could see myself possibly migrating to this medium for scrapbooking.

Thing 38 - continued

Yeah! After a bit of tinkering, I was able to get the screencast sample to work! I used Jing because I saw a brief demo of it at a conference and it looked fairly easy to use. Although it's easy to use, they leave a few steps out that you either already know how to do or you have to learn how to do. I believe it's the "intuition" part that I wasn't good at. I fell into the "had to learn how to do it" first group. Once I figured out those parts, putting it all together was alright. I can definitely see this as a useful tool in our library. It could so easily be used to help in library instruction for distance users and for helping distance users at the Reference Desk.

Thing 38 - Screencasting

Did my sample screencast work?

Thing 37 - Photo Tales

For this Thing, I started with Animoto. It was easy to create an account and upload photos. Unfortunately, I got hung up on trying to load some music or sound and ended up abandoning the project on that site. I decided to go back and upload photos on my Flickr account. After exploring my Flickr account a little, I figured out how to create a slideshow, then cut and pasted the HTML into a blog posting. Voila! I can see the benefits of using these types of features for sharing photos of vacations or special events with our family and friends.
If our library had a Flickr account, it might be interesting to create short slideshows of service points in the library, or of new books.

Thing 37 - Photo Tales

Let's see if this works.

36 Thing., pt. 3- Comic relief

This Thing was a lot of fun to do. I enjoyed playing with many of the different generators. The most useful generators that I saw for our users were Password generators like FreePasswordGenerator, PDF Generators like FreePDFConvert (enables you to convert a Word document into pdf format if needed which is especially good when you want to post works to D2L courses, Illustrations/Image generators like the Trading Cards at Big Huge Labs, and the Citation Generators like Son of Citation Machine to name just a few. I haven't really used any Generators at work and any that I've used at home have been for fun. I enjoyed playing with the generating Dewey numbers, and the Braille generator, and making concert tickets of events. I thought that the Cornell notetaking sheets generator was interesting and maybe some students would find it useful.
The comic generating sites were interesting to play with. ToonDoo was fairly easy to use, the quality of the comic strip that I created was hindered by the limited creativity of the author (me). I could see how comic strips might be effective at teaching some basic library skills if it was done with input from our target users (students).
Another generator that I saw of interest on the Online Generators site was a free Business Card creator.

36 Thing- pt. 2 Comic relief

Here's a cheesy comic that I did on ToonDoo:

36. Thing , pt. 1- Comic relief

Today's a day to play...with image generators and other fun apps. What fun!

Here are a couple of comics that I liked on ToonDoo. The first is 23 Kazoos by floridasue2:

The second cartoon is Library Joke by mjohland

35. Thing - Books 2.0

I've noticed that the majority of student book use is on required texts whether these are on Course Reserves, or are books in our collection that faculty list as required or recommended texts. The computer lab in our library is very popular and crowded during the day with students reading and writing on them.
I think some of the Books 2.0 tools are fun to use and might be useful in our library. For example, I really like the online book clubs and BookGlutton's concept would be great to use when our campus adopts a common book. I'm not sure if any of the Book 2.0 tools would hinder someone's reading experience unless they were using a tool that didn't jive with their reading style.
I visited Bookjetty (didn't care for), DailyLit (liked the Classics area--list and forum threads), Reading Trails (way fun!!!), BookGlutton (interesting concept but limited free books to read), Bookvideotv (interesting, might be useful if I was taking a current lit class), OpenCulture (liked the audio language lessons), BookCrossing (felt like a tag and release program), OneMinuteCritic (uh...ok), Lookybook (closed shop), Facebook apps

I enjoyed many of the sites that I visited. A couple were a little weird for me but I could see how some people would like them.
I don't know of any other book 2.0 sites yet.

Thing 34 - Online Answer Sites

I think that the appeal of online answer sites is that you get a quick response to ready-reference-type questions. I saw a wide range of questions on the answer sites. For example, on AskExperts, I looked at tennis questions which tended to focus on techniques and skills. The person answering the questions listed who he was and his credentials. When I looked at an American history question, I wasn't as happy with the answers because the information given could be subject to discussion AND the person answering didn't give his credentials. When I looked at the answer site Mahalo Answers, many of the questions seemed to be practical like finding an architect in Santa Monica, or timely like when will a tv show finale run? I think that the more research-type questions would be best answered by libraries or known experts in the field (as long as they identify themselves). The questions seeking information that ages quickly like tv show listings and stock quotes would find the answers on the web.

I think the people who use these sites are a mixture of types. There are those who want to socialize with others by asking questions, those who don't know that their library has a "virtual front door," those who don't know or aren't affiliated with any library, and those seeking immediate answers because they feel the library's response will be too late.

I looked at the Slam the Boards website. I won't be able to attend the next event in time for this "More things on a stick" because it is after these activities end. I did not answer any questions on the site, I spent my time exploring the site and the threads.

Thing 33- Travel 2.0

Wow, what great sites-- just in time for summer and vacations! I had fun with this "thing" and used it to do some research on possible places to go on vacation this summer or in the future. I think some of the Review Sites like TripAdvisor or Virtual Tourist would be useful links that would be helpful at the Reference Desk. We sometimes get questions that could be answered from looking at a travel website. My favorite site in this "thing" was VirtualTourist because it had a lot of features to it. I liked the travel guides, book travel, trip planner, and forums. I used the book travel section to get an idea as to hotels and their costs.

Another site that I liked was under the Travel MashupAwards, called Cost2Drive. You type in your origin and destination, your car, and it tells you how much it will cost you to get there. I typed in a trip and it said that it would cost $192.99 in gas.

A new site that I found of interest is HopStop.com. It has some of the major cities in the U.S. with public transportation but not all of them. Another site that I liked even more was Xe.com --it's a currency converter site. Just type in the currency you want to convert with the currency you want it converted to. It was a very quick and easy site to use.

Thing 32- Google Maps and Mashups

What a blast! I really had a fun making a walking map of some sites where I grew up. It was really easy and quick to do. I liked the ability to add photos and video of the sites (though I didn't use any in my map--yet). I could see this as a really neat and quick way to make some maps of our library. Perhaps we could make one as a tour of our library, and several others for specific collections or services within the library. What a neat tool!

Thing 31- More Twitter

I chose the calm blue stars pattern for my Twitter background. I chose it to mirror how I was feeling at the time. It might also be interpreted as a bit boring, but that's alright with me. I believe that I've given the bones of who I am and what I do. I have a bit of paranoia about letting people know too much about me online.

As for how I'm using Twitter, right now I am in my exploration and experimental state. I'm using it to correspond with others in the library world. As I learn more, I might create 2 personas online: 1 for work and 1 for personal use. When I looked at the Twitter directory, I was amazed at the wide range of people on Twitter. It opens up a whole new world!

What is Twitter? I see it as a mixture of things, a place to send mini text-messages, a social community, and a gadget for your blog/webpage/social network site.

Thing 30 - More RSS and Delicious

This "thing" took me a couple of days to do because I did it in small increments. I guess it's better for my retention--lol. I haven't been going to my RSS reader on a regular basis but I have it linked to my iGoogle blog so I see news updates there. I've organized my feeds into: News sources and Databases. Feeds that don't fit into those categories stay in the default unnamed area.
As for Delicious, I like to see what others in my areas of interest are finding on the web.
I feel like I'm still a newbie at all of this so I don't have any recommendations or suggestions at this point.

Thing 29- Google Tools

/Search Tools/ - For this section, I looked at Google News. I found several articles of interest in the News Archives and was frustrated when I was only able to read the headlines and short blurbs below the headline. The main Google News area was easy to use. My topic was swine flu which retrieved a lot of results. Customizing the page wasn't difficult and I liked skimming through the headlines. The nice thing about the main Google News area is that when I found an interesting headline, clicking on it brought up the whole article---yeah!

/Google Calendar/ - I had fun with this application and used it to set up a calendar of family activities. I added a link to it on my iGoogle webpage.

Thing 28 - Homepage

This thing took me a little longer than I thought it would. I chose iGoogle because I had set one up for the first group of 23 Things though I will probably try making a homepage on Netvibes when I'm not in such a time crunch. Setting up my homepage on iGoogle was "fairly" easy to do. I even liked the background templates that were available and chose an Asian-themed one. It goes well with my customized Firefox browser. Adding gadgets like the To-Do List, the clock, and my email were fairly easy to do. The thing that took me the most time to do was adding an RSS feed! I saw so many gadgets that looked fun, were cute, or informative. The only must have gadgets for me would be the news sources and the calendar. The only ones that . I beginning to think that I'm learning a lot but there are still large gaps between figuring out how many of these Web 2.0 tools mesh together!

27th Thing - Twitter

I already had a Twitter account from the first 23 Things on a Stick assignments, so this time I focused on learning more about what I can do on Twitter. On Twitter, I'm rctclibrn. I am now following the Mnmorethings account and an account from a co-worker. I'm ambivalent about microblogging because I didn't see a lot of useful information being shared. However, at the last ACRL conference in Seattle, I attended a presentation by someone who is using Twitter to send out his New Book Lists to his faculty. I'm not sure if I'd use Twitter at work unless it was linked to the library's blog or Facebook account.

Thing 26 - Ning

I really liked Ning because it has a lot of areas to network in AND I was able to interact in it right away. It was very similar to several forums that I currently belong to. I joined the 23 Things Ning in this latest round (so would it be Round 3?). I just signed up today and spent my time exporing the site so I haven't joined any groups yet. I think this Ning is great because it seems to be focused on libraries primarily in Minnesota? I could see this Ning useful as a professional networking site. I'm not yet sure what uses it would have as a gateway between our library and our students.

Thing 25 - Spiffing up my blog

For this assignment, I added: a Google search box, a YouTube search box, a clock in the shape of a robot, and a gadget that generates a quote of the day. The games looked interesting but I didn't think they went with the theme of this blog. If I create another blog, maybe I'll add a game or two.

For some reason, this "Thing" took me several days to complete. I actually worked on it in same segments of time like 1/2 hour to 45 minutes at a time so it really didn't take me 3 whole days to do. There's a lot here that I think I'll explore when I have more time. I'm hoping the other "Things" don't take as much time to do since I'd like to finish by the deadline of May 20th.

24th Thing- Updating my blog

Yeah! I'm now starting on the 2nd group of stick things! I have blogged a lot since late March into April as I was working on the first 23 things. I've liked blogging when I finish a Thing on a Stick. I do follow a couple of blogs in a couple of hobbies that I like to do. I think I've made about 2 comments on other people's blogs. I read more than I comment.