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