Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Flickr

This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Thing 10!

I am pretty familiar with the SPL website and have also downloaded books. I wasn't able to download one from home however, because I have Mac. Despite this obstacle, I enjoyed browsing the digital books and noting how many were checked out! I do plan to download a book from itunes, which I will have to pay for (unlike the library selections) just to have one to listen to on my ipod.

I think the website is becoming more and more popular with patrons. Many are quite excited to learn about its features when I have the opportunity to show it to them.

Thing 9!

I have an iGoogle home page on my home computer, and I have a lot of Google tools loaded there and I look at them frequently (way too frequently!). I have movies, maps, directions (not as good as MSN in my opinion), weather, news from several sources, and assorted other information (dictionaries, blogs, calendars, etc.) and pictures at a glance. I looked through some of the other tools and decided that Google finance is a good one to add to my home page. It has stock quotes, market summaries and business news all neatly packaged, in one place.

I tried Google Docs and thought it was a neat way to jointly work on a document or to save it somewhere always accessible, which could be very useful to me and my school projects that I am always e-mailing to myself from work or home, depending on where I will be next. I did however spend an inordinate amount of time trying to upload a picture from my home file into my document and failed miserably. I am going to call in my home tech support (otherwise known as Andy Ratoff) when he gets home.

On to Wikis - Thing 8!

I enjoyed reading everyone's posts in the wiki. I posted to favorite movies - I only picked two that I like, not wishing to put you all to sleep. And I also posted to favorite restaurants. My favorites seem very similar to a few others.

Radical trust is an interesting concept. It differs from trust in individuals, which takes time to develop. Radical trust requires instant trust in an entire community. I suppose that it is not quite instant, in that people have been getting used to and relying on online communication for quite a while now. I have been slowly getting accustomed to the idea, although I have to admit when I enrolled in an online program for my MLIS, I went there first, in person, to check it out!

Still, it is encouraging that a site like Wikipedia, although not without its issues, is so terrific. I use it often for popular culture and current topics, and it seldom lets me down.

Podcasting - up to number 7!

I spent this afternoon at home exploring adding more podcasts to my various accounts. I have already been downloading podcasts of Fresh Air to my ipod, but wanted to add some new ones. I subscribed to the Slate Magazine podcast through Podcast Alley and the Rough Guide Podcast through Learn out Loud and put them on my Google Reader. I listened to a Rough Guide podcast interview about separating fact from fiction in the DaVinci Code for a while and then decided to see what looked interesting at the Itunes store. I subscribed to a Meet the Author podcast from Apple, but will have to wait to sync my Ipod to listen to that one.

As far as what we could do at the library, I think patrons might enjoy a link to a Meet the Author type podcast or one we do ourselves on the website. It would be nice to feature authors that are visiting SPL or ones that tie in to a display we are having.

All in all, it was fun to add podcasts. Now I hope to find the time to listen to some of them!

Friday, October 12, 2007

Flickr and Social Blogging

Yesterday I explored Flickr, but posting photos will have to wait because they are all stored on my home computer. Soon I will post a few here and at Flickr.

Today I checked out the del.icio.us site where I posted one of my favorite sites: http://www.pedaling.com/ This is a site that shows favorite bicycling routes in every state. I like to look at it, even when I don't have plans to travel there, just for fun. When you are trying to go biking somewhere unfamiliar, it has recommended routes with levels of difficulty and other useful information. But, I digress.

Using del.icio.us was very easy and fun. I checked out one cloud for shoes and found some of the sites I shop at bookmarked there. I could see how this site can be useful (and possibly expensive!).

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Facebook - Signed up!

Hi everyone. I signed up for Facebook and even looked for friends. I am looking forward to playing scrabble with my daughter online. It will be a pleasant way to avoid things I probably should be doing instead.

Saturday, October 6, 2007

New RSS feeds and IM ing

I set up my RSS feeds and they are a pretty cool set of aggregated sites. I just don't know if I'll every have time to look at them! I also set up my instant messaging accounts and had fun playing with the emoticons.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Blogs I read

I have been thinking about the blogs I regularly read and I think I can categorize them (with the exception of my daughter's travel blog from Australia) as Food and Whine. I look at a couple of food blogs, I like to read the blog "Domestic Disturbances" in the New York Times and I read the blog "My Cancer" on the NPR website. He really has something to whine about. If I can figure out how to post the links to all of them here, I will do so.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Hello from Terry

Hi. This is my first post on my own blog. This should be fun.