Hello. I just learned about Del.icio.us, which I hadn't heard about before. I didn't find looking at the site today very exciting, but I can see how on other days it might be very much so. I think that if I had my own del.icio.us account I would use it often. I like it as an alternative to both browser bookmarking, since you can use it on other computers, and to a reader like bloglines, which isn't really necessary unless you check a ton of different, difficult to navigate websites a day.
Del.icio.us seems like a very valuable took for research, and I think it would be great for teachers/professors to have an account like that which their students could access and share resources and which could grow more rich in one area or topic that a student's account would not. In the same way it seems like a good tool for graduate students, librarians, historians, and business owners.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Generators
For my play day I make this sweet superhero using HeroMachine 2.5 a generator I found on the generator blog. Her name is Legola and she's descended from Tolkien's brand of elves. She's lives in modern day America, but fights crime the old-fashioned Middle Earth way.Please don't remind me how cool I am.
Hero Machine was pretty fun, since I like superheros so much, BUT it was a pain to get her picture onto my blog, since I can't just cut and paste it and since this computer I'm on doesn't have Paint (or any similar program).
If you do, however, you can make a non-colored one and print it out for coloring pages. I think this is a good generator to show kids, especially if you're having a superhero themed event or storytime...
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Social Networking 1
What do I think about social networking?
I have two conflicting opinions about it. One, is that I love it. Several different social networking websites have kept in touch, or at least knowledgeable about, friends with whom I would have otherwise lost contact. Even if I haven't spoken with my old college roommate for a year, I at least know where she's working, what her "relationship status" is, and what she looks like now. Suddenly I feel better about myself. A few college friends - now separately in Michigan, Idaho, New York and Washington D.C. - and I have also kept in touch by sending group messages through Facebook. This "thread" tool is great for letting everyone you want to know about your life know about it all at once. Facebook is also the medium through which I found out one friend's engagement and another friend's stroke - and how I've kept up on her recovery, which is going well.
My other opinion about social networking is, you guessed it, I hate it. The kind of communication through these sites is often polarizing - wouldn't I have rather heard about my friend's stroke from another friend in the old-fashioned social network, the phone? Certainly, I would have. Social networks give us the veil of keeping in touch and being inclusive without actually being so. Mass invitations to parties and well wishes for birthdays aren't the same as personal phone calls or cards or even emails, and we all feel it. MySpace - and text messaging too, I think - give us the opportunity to be lazy friends. I am guilty of it, for sure. Social networks are also a great medium for time wasting and unhealthy egoism, if that's your thing (and admit it, it is).
BUT... If my favorite thing about Facebook is keeping in touch with college friends, my favorite thing about MySpace is MUSIC. I think MySpace is a fabulous medium for advertising. I never buy a CD now without listening to a few of the band's songs on MySpace to make sure that I like it. I know bands and bars that book shows now exclusively through MySpace, and it works great. For a business or a group or a library, I think MySpace is a wonderful tool - free advertising, free website for offering information, and a great way to connect directly with fans, customers, patrons, what have you.
I read the arguments against groups/libraries using MySpace and Facebook and I thought they were poor. We don't want to intrude on teenager's spaces? People do scandalous things there? There are predators there? That sounds just as much like a reason not to go to college. Anywhere information is people create niches and there are bad things and things we don't agree with, but that's no reason not to participate in the general field of information, and that's what these websites are becoming.
I have two conflicting opinions about it. One, is that I love it. Several different social networking websites have kept in touch, or at least knowledgeable about, friends with whom I would have otherwise lost contact. Even if I haven't spoken with my old college roommate for a year, I at least know where she's working, what her "relationship status" is, and what she looks like now. Suddenly I feel better about myself. A few college friends - now separately in Michigan, Idaho, New York and Washington D.C. - and I have also kept in touch by sending group messages through Facebook. This "thread" tool is great for letting everyone you want to know about your life know about it all at once. Facebook is also the medium through which I found out one friend's engagement and another friend's stroke - and how I've kept up on her recovery, which is going well.
My other opinion about social networking is, you guessed it, I hate it. The kind of communication through these sites is often polarizing - wouldn't I have rather heard about my friend's stroke from another friend in the old-fashioned social network, the phone? Certainly, I would have. Social networks give us the veil of keeping in touch and being inclusive without actually being so. Mass invitations to parties and well wishes for birthdays aren't the same as personal phone calls or cards or even emails, and we all feel it. MySpace - and text messaging too, I think - give us the opportunity to be lazy friends. I am guilty of it, for sure. Social networks are also a great medium for time wasting and unhealthy egoism, if that's your thing (and admit it, it is).
BUT... If my favorite thing about Facebook is keeping in touch with college friends, my favorite thing about MySpace is MUSIC. I think MySpace is a fabulous medium for advertising. I never buy a CD now without listening to a few of the band's songs on MySpace to make sure that I like it. I know bands and bars that book shows now exclusively through MySpace, and it works great. For a business or a group or a library, I think MySpace is a wonderful tool - free advertising, free website for offering information, and a great way to connect directly with fans, customers, patrons, what have you.
I read the arguments against groups/libraries using MySpace and Facebook and I thought they were poor. We don't want to intrude on teenager's spaces? People do scandalous things there? There are predators there? That sounds just as much like a reason not to go to college. Anywhere information is people create niches and there are bad things and things we don't agree with, but that's no reason not to participate in the general field of information, and that's what these websites are becoming.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
IM
Before I began this program, I stopped using instant messaging about the same time I started using blogger (then I stopped using blogger about the same time I started using Facebook; I guess I have a one track mind for online tools). I'm interested to see if anything has changed. Back in the day I used mostly AIM, but I also had a Meebo account (was it Meebo?) that let me talk to friends with MSN as well. I tend to think of IM as a teen angsty kind of thing, because that's where I was when I used it. But I always knew, somewhere back in my mind, that people used it for things other than gossip and flirtation.
When I think of IM and work my mind flashes to those messages between Bridget Jones and Daniel Cleaver, however, I very much like the idea of using IM as a librarian. Other than people comfortably using their anonymity to prank IM hardworking librarians, I think that it would be a great tool in our system both between librarians and patrons and between branches. IM is much faster than email and in many cases much faster than the phone, with the added benefit of being able to send links and enter chats and transfer patron questions to another library. How exciting!
When I think of IM and work my mind flashes to those messages between Bridget Jones and Daniel Cleaver, however, I very much like the idea of using IM as a librarian. Other than people comfortably using their anonymity to prank IM hardworking librarians, I think that it would be a great tool in our system both between librarians and patrons and between branches. IM is much faster than email and in many cases much faster than the phone, with the added benefit of being able to send links and enter chats and transfer patron questions to another library. How exciting!
More RSS
I was just kidding when I said on to the next thing.
The next assignment asks us to look at feed searches. At each site I used the same search words and only Google Blog Search came right up with what I was actually looking for. I love how Google seems to read my mind. Topix.net came in second place followed by Technorati and then Syndic8. Aside from h8ing their mashup of letters and numbers, I didn't like Syndic8's look, which was so boring and outdated that I wouldn't trust it to find the latest news. The Feedster link didn't work, so I didn't go there.
I don't know if I will use these searches in "real life," but it's nice to know that they're out there. What helped me most when finding feeds I wanted - like from The Columbian - was to search bloglines for the feed. I looked at The Columbian's website and didn't want to try as hard to find it as they wanted me to.
As far as use of RSS goes, I can see how it would be really beneficial in the workplace as a substitute for mass email and for newslettery-type information. As far as library patron use, I think it would be a neat to have library updates and events information. Honestly, though, I think that other websites hold more possibilities. I get feeds on Facebook and MySpace anytime any of my friends touch their pages; I know if there are new pictures, new comments, new blogposts, and I think that kind of social networking could be more helpful for patron outreach than RSS feeds. Then again, I'm not yet sure how these things are all related nor am I up to the social networking part of the course yet. So...Cheers!
The next assignment asks us to look at feed searches. At each site I used the same search words and only Google Blog Search came right up with what I was actually looking for. I love how Google seems to read my mind. Topix.net came in second place followed by Technorati and then Syndic8. Aside from h8ing their mashup of letters and numbers, I didn't like Syndic8's look, which was so boring and outdated that I wouldn't trust it to find the latest news. The Feedster link didn't work, so I didn't go there.
I don't know if I will use these searches in "real life," but it's nice to know that they're out there. What helped me most when finding feeds I wanted - like from The Columbian - was to search bloglines for the feed. I looked at The Columbian's website and didn't want to try as hard to find it as they wanted me to.
As far as use of RSS goes, I can see how it would be really beneficial in the workplace as a substitute for mass email and for newslettery-type information. As far as library patron use, I think it would be a neat to have library updates and events information. Honestly, though, I think that other websites hold more possibilities. I get feeds on Facebook and MySpace anytime any of my friends touch their pages; I know if there are new pictures, new comments, new blogposts, and I think that kind of social networking could be more helpful for patron outreach than RSS feeds. Then again, I'm not yet sure how these things are all related nor am I up to the social networking part of the course yet. So...Cheers!
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