Week 10: The End

When I first heard about the 23 Things assignment, I was very excited. I love learning new and cool things that can be done with the computer. I thought I would learn oodles of new things.

Okay, so some things I already knew about (I’ve probably spent waaaay too much time on YouTube the last couple of years), and some things I had only heard about that I hadn’t given a chance (I’d roll my eyes at the thought of blogging). And some things I know that I had a strong preference for that were not on the list (I prefer slides.com to flickr and I prefer linksagogo to del.icio.us). But that only goes to illustrate just how many useful tools that we have at our disposal, if we can find them.

I did come away with many sites that I can no longer live without. Zoho is one of the ones that I think I will get the most use out of one a professional level. It is a very handy tool for those who did not bring a disk or flash drive. LibraryThing is going to be tremendously helpful in keeping track of collections. The HCPL eBooks site and Librivox will be great to recommend to those looking for audio books.

On a personal level, I love the avatars and some of the other creative sites. Some of us have bounced around the idea of librarian trading cards.

Oh, and blogging and wikis have turned out to be more useful than I thought it would.

I was not disappointed in the number or cool new things I learned. I made sure to bookmark my favorites, and have been sharing them with anyone I thought would be interested.

It’s been great fun! I hope that we don’t stop learning though, and that we share any new noteworthy sites that we might stumble upon.

Thanks. :O)

Week 9: eBooks

I looked at Wowio, LibriVox and the HCPL eBooks section. LibriVox was by far my favorite.

Wowio does not allow for anonymous emails such as gmail, yahoo, or hotmail. For most people, these are the only options available to them. Otherwise you can scan in your driver's license or give a credit card number. Neither one of those options sit too well with me.

The HCPL eBooks section has a lot of materials. Check out is easy and how to download the things you need to run it are fairly explanatory. However, and this is my biggest complaint, there doesn't seem to be an option for Mac users. Though this is a wonderful option for audio books, it leaves out people like me who only have Mac computers at home.

LibriVox has nothing that needs downloading and doesn't seem that it requires you use a PC only. An interesting aspect of it is that anyone can be a reader. Of course the drawback is that all the books read there are all in the public domain, so there will be no current books.

Week 9: Podcasting

My podcast exploration mainly dealt with looking at music.

I've been using iTunes for years, and love it. Instead of buying an entire album, I buy only the two or three songs I like off of the album. Plus I often find hard to locate songs with it. You can store the songs on up to three computers. I've downloaded songs, videos, and even some free television show episodes. Since iTunes is already on my computer, I've never looked at anything else. However, it looks like Yahoo has a decent site for buying songs too. The look is different, but it essentially does the same job.



I checked out http://podcastalley.com/ and http://www.podcast.net/ as well. I have to say that podcast.net was more enjoyable (and easier) for me to use. The way that the page is arranged makes it more user friendly.

It was interesting to see just how many different types of podcasting there are.

Week 9: YouTube

Way back in September I added a couple of YouTube videos. One of a video of the Librarian song. Someone showed it to me, and even though it is slightly... um... on the creepy side, I really liked it. I laugh my head off each time I see it. The other video I had loaded was Shhhh. It featured the Sleestaks (green dudes) from "Land of the Lost" (a 70's tv show) and a cell phone.

Now, the Librarian song can still be viewed. However, the Shhhh video cannot. That is one of the things to keep in mind with YouTube, you don't know how long the video will be available.

I decided to include another video.

Several years ago a friend sent me the Sand Art video through email. I hadn't thought about it in years. Then something sparked the memory and I decided to see if I could find it on YouTube. Sure enough, several people had loaded this video. It is absolutely amazing!

Koalas

Thanks, Grace, for sending me the link to such a great site! At http://sketchcast.com/ I was able to create a sketch online and publish. Of course, working with a mouse is a bit awkward, but still loads of fun. As far as I can tell so far you can just sketch in different colors, not use block in huge areas with color.

Since I just used Animoto to sketch out koalas, I decided to use koalas as my test subject for this one as well.

Week 8: Animoto

Animoto was easy to use, but I was disappointed that I didn't have more control over the video. It took several remixes until I found one where you could see the pictures in the order I wanted them seen. I'm sure there are more options if you upgrade, though.

Week 8: Zoho and Away We Go

I went to Zoho and created an account. I played with some of the options, but wondered if I would actually use this in regular life since my computer at home and my computer at work both already have similar applications. I did think it was neat that you can email a link to your page to a friend (I emailed it to myself to test it out) so that they can look at your page. Again, I can already do something similar with the tools I already have and are easier (more familiar) to use.

Then on my way to work I started thinking about it, and realized that this would be perfect for the many many patrons who come in and have forgotten a disk or a flash drive and only have a few minutes left before their time on the computer runs out. Since you can't save directly on the desktop, Zoho would be perfect to copy and paste your document on so you can access it later.

This is definitely one site I plan on recommending to others.

Week 8: Social Networking

I went to several of the sites listed. Actually, I think I visited all of them, though only a few stood out to me.

My.Space is a site that I joined a long while back. My sister bullied me into getting an account since she and her daughter both had accounts, as well as my brothers kids. It's actually the only way she will write me. With great reluctance I made one. Since I live so far from my family, it was helpful for sharing photos in a slide show or just posting information. Since I have the security settings set pretty high on there, it is doubtful anyone other than family will see it.

Ning could be a great resource. However, I wasn't able to get it to work successfully at work. Ah well. Can't have everything.

RateMySpace was interesting, but I quickly grew bored looking at everyone's spaces. Though likely that is purely jealousy. I did think it was very neat how one person used one of his pieces of art as his space. Which brings out interesting questions of what your 'space' really is. Is it a physical place, or is it any place you create that is yours? Well now, that discussion could go on forever, so on to the next site...

The next one I liked was Catster. I didn't mean to like it. I thought that it would be silly and was ready to roll my eyes. But curiosity got the best of me, so I typed in diabetes in the search box and found places where other people had cats with diabetes were having a discussion. I thought it was great! When my cat was diagnosed with diabetes most people I told laughed, since it seemed so odd. It was wonderful seeing people helping each other with advice and encouragement.

I can't believe that I liked Catster the best, but I did.