Reflecting

I am glad I was forced into the world of Web 2.0. I learned a lot. Each thing could be useful ... whether I end up using it or not remains to be seen. I'm sure I'll use some things like Flickr, streaming music & video, Google Earth and Del.icio.us. Though probably not daily or even monthly. Yet. Until it all becomes second nature because "everybody" is doing it. If nothing else it's excellent to know that if someone mentions blogging or streaming video I know what they're talking about.

I liked the program...liked being able to do it when my schedule allowed and at my own pace to a certain extent. I was glad not to feel "judged" as to how well I was doing with any given thing. I do think that if some employees are doing it it's probably good for all to do it -- so no one feels left out or left behind. It might be nice if there were mini-courses given the same way as new technologies come along.

Gaming

For the Gaming I did a crossword puzzle that took me a bit longer than 5 minutes. I'm not good at crosswords. It was fun though -- getting the instant feedback to know you have something wrong worked well for me. Then I played MahJong and, since I used to play this at home, I was better at that.

Interesting to think of the workplace expectations the gaming generation will have. Expecting rewards (other than a paycheck and continued employment) for a job well done may leave them disappointed, depending on where they end up working and with whom. The "gaming" and "non gaming" generations may both need to compromise -- and learn from each other -- if they're going to work together happily.

Maps and Geotagging

Google Earth is fun. I looked at Mount St. Helens and a few other landmarks. Interesting to see which areas would come in clearly and which would be a blur for lack of data. I did always find the areas I searched for (some places in Scotland and Maui and my house of course) but could only zoom in to a certain extent before most of those became a blur. Oddly, my parents house was very clear... and they live five miles from the nearest town (Snohomish).

I did cruise around San Francisco for a while and it was fun to see just how clear it can be. I have looked a little at the geotagging thing on Flickr. Haven't tried it yet but it would be a fun way to spend spare time if one had some of that.

Avatars

I had fun creating my Avatar. I tried Doppelme and Tektek ... they were cute in their own way. But the Meez came highly recommended by a trusted source, Jazzergigi, so I ended up there. And now my Avatar alter-ego is installed on my blog :-)

I do not currently live in Second Life but I did take a look and there are some interesting things going on there. I think it would be fun to try... someday... when time allows in the regular life. Or who knows, maybe it would be a fun place to get away for a while. With the current price of gas it would certainly be less expensive than most other kinds of getaways right now.

Online tools and applications

Theoretically I guess I should be able to type this on Zoho (or on Google Docs) then post it to my blog.  Not sure I see the advantage over just posting in my blog but that's probably because I haven't used it enough.  The other kinds of applications that are available are nice.  Quite a variety.  Good to be able to share information where everyone involved has access.  Well, everyone who is computer literate and uses their computer constantly, that is.  It's nice that it's stored online, too!  And it is interesting that they're available free of charge.  I think that the online tools and applications may be something I would use -- Remembering to use them will be the tricky part.  

Search Engines

I had almost forgotten there were search engines other than Google out there. I used to use Dogpile on occasion and have used Mamma a time or two. But lately it's just easier to go to Google for the everyday kind of searching I do.
Now that I've been reminded there are others, if I'm really researching something (rather than just looking for quick info) I hope I'll remember to try the other search engines.

I probably haven't used the others enough to really judge them yet. Probably because I'm more used to Google, I feel like their "sponsored link" listings seem easier to ignore than those on Rollyo, Dogpile, and Mamma. And I like being able to ignore those if I want to.

And I always found the Ask.com layout to be very confusing in the past... couldn't tell which links were the articles vs. which were links to ads. My simple test search came up with the same main results on each. A more complicated search gave me a different set of results on each. Interesting. I'll try these others over the next few weeks when I need to search -- to get a better idea of what each has to offer.

Podcasting

Podcasting is another thing I had heard of but never tried. I subscribed to "LibVibe: The Library News Podcast." Sort of like a mini news report with the only subject being news about various library related things.
I also ended up listing to the Denver Public Library Podcast of "Oliver's World" -- a cute children's book, just the first part of the book actually.
And the Grand Rapids Public Library book review by "Amy" of "People of Paper."

The personal interest podcast was harder to accomplish. I tried for one on Scotland, one on Maui, one on Hawaii, even one on Garth Brooks. One wouldn't let me subscribe, two I subscribed to but they had errors with a note from Bloglines that they'll "work on it." I did successfully get subscribed to one finally but not really my first choice.

I could see Sno-Isle using podcasts for patron instructions on how to use library services, booktalks, taping of programs for customers to listen to at their convenience. Could be helpful in allowing one librarian to sort of be in more than one place at the same time. Interesting.

Images

I'm not sure how this will look once posted but it's what I came up with from the image generator thing. If it turned out right it's a picture of my Dad on Field & Stream. :-)

Overdrive

Overdrive Media Console is downloaded...and with surprisingly few problems. Actually -- no problems -- imagine that :-) And I have checked out and downloaded an audio book. It wasn't a book I normally would have chosen -- because I didn't find my favorite author available. But it's a book I'd have read if I was stuck somewhere where the selection were limited -- which, of course, it is. But the process of downloading seems pretty easy so that's good.

I'm not much of an audio book listener in general... I find myself distracted and the next thing I know the story has moved on without me. But for those who need/like them this would be a good service. For some reason my first thought of audio book customers are those with vision problems... which made me wonder if those with vision problems could easily read all the instructions for downloading ... but I'm sure there are ways they can.

I took a look at the music offerings. Other than the classical, I didn't find much I liked. Seemed to be a lot of, to me, obscure stuff. But that's probably the nature of the "rights" situation. I imagine the more mainstream artists aren't as interested in this sort of set up...maybe not financially logical at this time. I was happy they had the excerpts you can play... some that "looked" good didn't sound good when I played the excerpt. It'll be interesting to see how the world of downloadable audio evolves over time.

Del.icio.us social bookmarking

Not sure if I'll end up using Del.icio.us much or not yet. Probably I will more and more as I switch over to thinking of using it instead of computer bookmarks. I did a search and got results. While some results were just what you'd have expected in a regular search engine type of search... others were sort of strange and obscure. Which could be fun in the right circumstances. I ended up looking at blogs and websites I wouldn't have. So that could be good. Or bad, depending.
Doing the same search in Google gave me information I found to be more useful. I'm thinking that would depend on the type of search though.

I have set up a Del.icio.us Account, did some searching and added some favorites. I'm starting to see where it could be very helpful for all kinds of research. I also looked at the 20 for 2.0 Sno-Isle page.

wiki wiki

I first heard the word "wiki" (or actually "wiki wiki") on a trip to Maui years ago. Who knew then that the term would be "borrowed" for a web 2.0 concept. Learning all about the "wiki" concept was interesting. I was already familiar with using Wikipedia but hadn't ever added to any wikis or edited one. As I watched the film and read the info I envisioned there being a lot of problems with the "edit wars" depending on the type of wiki. But that must not be a big problem, considering how popular they are.

To me it seems like a Wiki would work best in cases where the people using it are working in cooperation rather than competitively. So often when working on group projects the group members seem to just want to get their points & opinions across to the rest of the group. Maybe that's just been my experience though. I read in one of the articles that a wiki wouldn't work well if someone felt a need for "control" -- and I guess I feel like I always encounter one of those in any group project. (Sometimes it's even me.) :-)

I can definitely see where the use of a Wiki for planning something would be great in cases where it wasn't a "competition" though. Especially for people like me who are much more at ease sharing ideas in print than speaking up in a group setting. But this may be one of those things that I'd have to see in action in real life and participate in before I'll believe they really work well.

For library-specific use, it does seem like the book review wikis are really useful -- and fun.

Streaming Video

I do love the streaming video. YouTube is so dangerous, though, because one video just leads to another and the next thing you know you've been there an hour! Or two!!
To see if I could figure it out, I embedded a You Tube video of a song a like by a band I like. Fun stuff!

Though I've watched many full episodes of "Lost", "Grey's Anatomy" and "Eli Stone" on the ABC website when I've somehow managed to miss one, I had not heard of "HULU" or "Fancast" before.

On HULU I found I could watch full episodes of "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." Pretty cool, though why no episodes of "Angel" to go with it :-(

On Fancast I found out I can catch up on the episodes of "How I Met Your Mother" that I always miss when "Dancing With The Stars" is on at the same time. And they have "Big Brother" episodes... and "Alias Smith and Jones" which I LOVED when I was a kid. It's not like I don't already spend way too much time watching tv -- but now I can make tv-watching an artform!

So yes, I'm sure I'll be making use of these sites now. As to whether they'll be useful for libraries -- maybe libraries won't need to buy quite so many tv series on dvd in the future? Might just be able to tell patrons to check the streaming video sites?

The Paperboys - Fall Down With You

Social Networking

Signing up on MySpace was interesting, easy ... kind of fun even. I made a profile, added a picture, located a friend. I tried to personalize a bit by adding a song by a band I like and adding some apps. (well, one app.)
I think people like having a page on MySpace as yet another way to be creative and show their personality a bit. To me it would just be another fun way to communicate if I felt like using it. The jury's still out on that though.
I wasn't wild about all the ads on the site but I guess if they're not going to charge users (yet) they've got to pay for the site somehow. I think it would take a bit of time to make a really interesting/different page. Maybe I'll do that if/when I ever want to take the time. I also had signed up on Facebook earlier but somehow it didn't seem as dramatic or interesting. I'll have to check that one out more later.

Flickr

Denise at Edinburgh Castle
Originally uploaded by Denise Lynn W

I'm not sure if I've done this right but I guess I'll know in a minute when I click on "post entry". I did end up signing up for Flickr and uploading a few pictures from my computer at home. And I THINK I have connected my Flickr account to my Blogger account somehow. Having actually had a computer crash a year ago, and not being able to recover any of the 100s of photos that were on it, I definitely can see that having photos stored on something like Flickr is not a bad idea. Live and learn.

Streaming Music

I went with Finetune for this one. It was fun and easy. Though I haven't yet tried out the sharing part... I feel like I have a little better idea of what the Streaming Music concept is all about now. I have listened to radio stations on the web in the past. I'll probably try out Pandora and some of the others for comparison sake on my own time later on. Maybe even the Sno-Isle Streaming music :-) That way I'll be able to speak somewhat intelligently about all of this, should the subject ever come up.

RSS Feeds

I've been meaning to try using RSS Feeds for a while now. The set up was simple enough. Adding the feeds was easy. It was equally easy to unsubscribe -- which was good because I realized right away that having too many feeds to read would be a bad thing.
At work this could definitely be helpful as I think of sites I tend to refer to frequently for information. At home I'll probably un-subscribe from a few e-mail newsletters and switch to the RSS feeds instead.
Libraries will undoubtedly find it helps their customers to have an RSS feed they can subscribe to. It's a technology people are beginning to expect to find available on a website.
So now that I'm signed up I'll be interested to find out if I actually find it useful -- or not.

Instant Messaging

I waited til the end of last week to finish my web 2.0 "thing" of the week ... so this week I thought I'd get a jump on the instant messaging and do it right away. And thanks to a couple of kind and cooperative co-workers, I was able to successfully IM. Yay!! I even managed to share a YouTube video's url via IM.

I have done all this before on AOL... so I'm not being all that adventurous. But somehow all of this stuff seems a bit trickier when doing it as a project at work. Must be a version of test anxiety :-)

To answer the questions posed about this ... as I mentioned, I have used AOL instant messenger. I'd have to say I wasn't really surprised by anything on this one. My thoughts on IM as a mode of communication are that I think it's great! But then, I'm much more at ease talking to people via e-mail, etc. than in person. At least until I get to know them. I can definitely imagine it being useful in libraries for reference -- as mentioned in the article.

Week three... continued

So... I started week three's "Thing" on Monday, got interrupted -- and stayed that way until Thursday afternoon. Such is life. Anyway, I have finally managed to spend some time checking out a few more of the blogs. I've added comments to a couple. One on the blog of someone I know pretty well. And more adventurously, one on a blog I just happened across and enjoyed reading. I'm feeling pretty bold now :-)

So far this training has been fairly painless... even fun. But I'm envying those who have done all this before. Still, I'm not as nervous about it all as some people I've talked to -- so I guess I'm somewhere in between. Now on to seeing if I can figure out how to register my post's url in the progress log -- or something like that anyway.

In general I feel like the instructions are mostly pretty clear. Some not as much. My new standard reply when people ask me if I understand all this is "I'm sure that if I do something wrong someone will let me know."

Week three

Looking through the other blogs has been fun. Some people out there really seem to know what they're doing. Makes me think that I'll have to try to be more creative ... but maybe later on that. And interesting to see that many have the same reservations I do about it.

Another post

Thought I'd better see if I could find this again. It's still here - Yay!

Blogging

So far so good :-)
(guess I'll keep it short for now til I see how this all works)