Thing Twenty Three - Ding!

This is the end
My only friend, the end...

So this is it, I've finally reached the end of the electronic yellow brick road. It feels like only just 2 months ago I started this, and now it's already over, the humanity! I've learned so much since starting this, but all things must come to an end.

My favorite things I've learned about definitely have to be Facebook, which reunited me with a couple high school friends that I hadn't seen since high school, 38 years ago. I guess that's only one thing, but it's really the only thing I use now that I never intended to use. I've used it quite a bit since I signed up, it was probably worth it just for that.

I worked with a few people doing the 23 things blog at the Duluth Public Library, and a couple of us got together once or twice in person, at work. I also connected with another 23 things user, through email primarily. I would most likely sign up for any future programs of this nature.

Well, it's been fun.

Thing Twenty Two

Almost there...

My 23 Things on a stick blog of eternity, really shouldn't go to waste once I'm finished. Continuing to update my blog will be something I'll have to aim to do. Not sure what else I should be writing here.

Thing Twenty One

Beyond MySpace...

Well it turns out there's more out there then just MySpace and Facebook. I started by joining the 23 things on a stick ning. Starting my profile and updating my pictures was just as straightforward as everything else to this point. I did leave a comment for another user, regarding their slideshow they had posted. I did notice that there wasn't a lot of activity in this specific network, seemed like half the members didn't even have profile pics. Though there were plenty of pictures uploaded to the photo section. I can see why a library might consider using this, to avoid any stigma that may be associated with a myspace or facebook. I also joined another social networking site called flixter, dealing with movies. I started that by taking a quiz about a bunch of movies, rating them and leaving comments, then comparing your results with the results of your friends. They also have movie listings, a forum of sorts, and a horribly addicting movie quiz entitled "The Never Ending Movie Quiz" in which they actually suggest you not play, because of it's addictive properties. Of the social networks listed in this thing, Flixter would probably be about the only thing that would appeal to me in my personal life, as I see many movies.

Thing Twenty

Social networks

I've known about MySpace and Facebook for quite a while, but was never really interested or paid much attention until now. I was familiar with the term social networking, but I didn't really see the big deal about it and MySpace. I had the preconception that they were a breeding ground for stalkers, children and the guys that get caught on Chris Hanson's "Dateline - To Catch a Predator". And most of that's partially true, at least to an extent. Parents definitely should have some measure of control over these social networking sites, for exactly those kinds of reasons. You don't want personal information about your kids available to some of these people out there. But that's enough of the bad stuff. I decided (against my own misconceptions) to start an account, and decided to use Facebook, which seems to skews at least a little bit older then MySpace tweens.

It was pretty straight forward setting up an account with facebook. Starting up afterwards was a little intimidating. I had never used a tool like this in the past, so it was a new experience completely, but with the help of a fellow 23 things blogger I was able to conquer it, for the most part. Added some friends, sent a some messages, I added some applications, got a flower from a friend. There's a lot more to it then I imagined at first. I started playing this game on there called 4 in a row, which is just connect four and it's really addicting. One thing I noticed when I first started using Facebook is just how much time you can waste, without even realizing it. You're able to set up privacy settings to keep stalkers and unwanted guests from viewing your profile and such. I joined a bunch of groups, there was a local one called "Free Hugs" that I seriously contemplated joining, but I decided against it in the end. One of my groups is called "Babies of 1983" for people born in the year 1983. It goes on to list a bunch of things we have in common, such as being able to rap the entire theme to "Fresh Prince of Belair" - Now this is a story all about how my life got flipped turned upside down...

It is a good point to note that even though Facebook/MySpace would seem to have little use for libraries as it stands now, being knowledgeable on what our younger patrons are accessing on a regular basis, should be at least on our radar.

Photo of Me

Thought I'd just post of a photo of me, after a workout at the YMCA. Do my incredibly buff pecs make my butt look big?

Thing Nineteen

Podcasts, sweet sweet podcasts, nectar of the gods.

I have been listening and watching podcasts, really since the inception of them most likely. I've been a fan podcasts for years now, continuing to listen on a regular (usually weekly) basis. The very first podcasts I started listening to were solely technology based, TWIT (This Week In Tech) is one that comes to mind. As podcasts became more popular I started listening to more an more, so much that I actually didn't have time to listen to them all in a week and I had to stop listening to some. I primarily listen to game podcasts, which are done by professional game enthusiasts/journalists and are done on a weekly basis. Since I began work at the library, any off desk time where I didn't need to really pay attention to others (mending books for example) I would take out my MP3 player and listen to the podcasts. Time really goes by much faster, and makes alone time with kind of thoughtless tasks more enjoyable, at least in my opinion. I really enjoy having these podcasts available to me, and it's hard to imagine myself without them, now that I've gotten used to them. On the sidebar to the right, I put an RSS feed of a gaming site's Podcast releases, one of the reasons why rss is so useful to me. Though I didn't listen to and am not interesting in listening to any library related podcasts, I know for a fact they do exist and there are people out there who would gladly listen to them.

Thing Eighteen - Awwww

Adorable Baby Kitten - Awwww so cute

Well, well, well, we've finally made it to youtube. An incredibly popular site on the internets, made even more apparent by how often my Dad uses it, which is more then myself. I posted a video of an adorable baby kitten drinking a dry milk formula from out of a bottle, just like nature intended. I found it pretty easy to get the video up and working in the site, without using the provided instructions, mostly because I figured I could do it without. Though I can understand if people have difficulty, especially those that aren't as familiar with technology and the web. I chose this particular video, because more then anything, library employees have hearts, and anyone with a heart can't resist a cute baby animal. I'm not exactly sure how our library would be able to use a video site like youtube. Maybe to promote itself, or possible to have video instructions for common questions people have.

Thing Seventeen

Elm Productivity Tools

I hate to admit it, but I actually had a hard time with this. Far more then usual, or what I would have expected myself. Though I've worked full time at the library for over a year now, I'm not a librarian and I haven't had to deal with any of our databases like our librarians do. I went to the ELM website, and was really confused as to where to go to find things. There general layout when you first log on, sorted by categories seems nice if you're just looking around. But looking for something specific, wasn't as easy. I browsed around, and it did seem a little intimidating. I also tried to setup that RSS feed to track the search results, but it didn't work for me. All in all, I'm sure this is pretty useful to those that actually have something they're searching for specifically, or know what they're doing, but I didn't feel totally comfortable just browsing around with no real intent or purpose. Obviously lots of libraries use this on a regular basis, and many people are helped because of it, so I understand why it's one of the 23 things.

Thing Sixteen

Student 2.0 Tools

I checked out the University of Minnesota Assignment Calculator and the Research Project Calendar, both of which I found only slightly useful. They both allow you to input dates and a broad subject choice for assignment. While both give you guidelines on where you should be at according to the time line you entered, they're both just that, guidelines. I think it could be useful in the sense that it could get people in the habit of planning things out a little more thoroughly if nothing else. I don't know how useful it would be with library projects however. A library project can vary wildly from one library to the next, unless there was something made specifically regarding libraries I don't see it as being all that helpful, at least not at my library. I still like the idea, and with the addition of mostly user created projects, it could definitely be useful, if perhaps a supervisor could set up a timeline and deadlines and such.

Thing Fifteen - Waiter, there's a game in my library!!!

Oh boy!

There are very few subjects that I would consider myself an expert in and I was surprised to find one in the 23 things list, gaming. This could definitely be considered a generational trait. I'm 24 years old, and video games really only gained immense popularity within the past 20 or so years. I grew up with video games, and technology in general. To give a small example of the popularity of gaming in society, the video game industry has made more money then the movie industry by over $1 billion for several years in a row now. I have been playing games since I was a wee lad and is now definitely an almost daily part of life. Games have expanded from the "toys" for little boys in the 80's, to serious pieces of electronics and to some, centerpieces for home theaters.

I'm definitely no stranger to online games, MMO's, (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games) specifically the world's most popular one, World of Warcraft (WoW). WoW has now exceeded 10 million subscribers worldwide, which is unprecedented. Each subscriber is paying $15 per month to play the game, so to soar to over $10 million is nothing short of astounding. Now seeing as WoW has nothing to do with 23 things no library would have a practical use for it, I will stop discussing it, though believe me I could fill multiple blog posts just talking about my experiences.

Second Life is an interesting title. Like they stated, it's really not a game, there's no goal or points and clear purpose. You kinda have to make a game out of it yourself, if you're looking to be entertained. As far as I could tell from using it, was people using it as a social tool, a place to gather in e-form. I can kind of see the appeal to it in that regard, much like chat rooms were fun and exciting for me when I first got the internet, I can see people have a similar experience and feelings in second life. Personally, Second Life to me is incredibly boring and pointless. I don't have friends that play this, I'm far past the point of randomly talking to strangers on the internet, so there's not a lot of appeal for me. Though from the videos, I can see the use of it educationally, to reach out to younger students that might not otherwise be involved. Putting assignments and challenges along with videos of teachers and information in this digital format was forward thinking kind of move, and I think we've yet to see if it's a practical use of our time.

Thing Fourteen - My Library Thang!

Hello,

I've never used Library Thing before, nor have I heard of anyone at the library using it, so this was a new experience to me. Creating an account with Library Thing literally just took a few seconds, extremely fast and easy. After creating my account I easily started adding books to my virtual shelf. It seems that it searches Amazon.com for the titles and images, so I can only assume almost all popular titles are going to be found.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/danbuckanaga

That link should take you to my catalog I've created so far.

After choosing some of my favorite titles and series for the catalog I looked at the details for all of them. I was surprised how popular a few of my books were with Library Thing users, the Harry Potter titles are obviously going to have a strong following, but I didn't expect that from the others.

I added the library thing widget to the side bar of the blog. Setting that up in the blog was pretty easy, and I like the effect of book covers.

If you had a really really small library, this could be useful for you, and easy to setup. Or if you're a larger sized library, I could see this being used to highlight a smaller selection. A series from an author, or a particular genre could easily be added to this and accessible from the website.

Thing Thirteen - Online Productivity

Hello,

I chose to use iGoogle as my homepage, mostly because I've used Google as my homepage for years now. It was pretty easy to setup, and it's convenient having this Blog, RSS reader and my favorite search engine all connected. Seeing how Google is my home page on my home PC, I setup the "iGoogle" feature available from google. It places your RSS feeds on the home page, as well as other widgets like local weather, the time and date, movie listings among other things, most importantly sudoku.

For the calendar aspect, naturally I chose Google calendar, staying with the theme of Google and one username and password for all their services. Setting up Google calendar initially was almost ridiculously easy, I just used the same username and password that I used for Blogger, GMail, and iGoogle. Also on my iGoogle start page I found a widget for Google calendar, which is a great addition to the iGoogle home page. I then created an account with the Try to remember the milk list site. A nice feature that offers is it's ability to integrate itself into Google calendar. Still, I don't really see a lot of use for it, if you're already using Google calendar. Also, I wasn't able to see the lists, when viewing Google calendar from my iGoogle home page. The Backpack site seems cool, especially if you don't already have any of the features it uses. If you do however have a calendar, or planner or to do list among other things, I don't see much of a need to switch over. Backpack does however offer more then just those features, so much so that it can actually seem a little intimidating with everything you can do. I went to Zamzar's site, which has a cool premise, converting one file type to another, which could be really useful anywhere. But, one of the most annoying flash ads/popup slowly slid across the screen in front of "Step 1" and I wasn't able to exit out of it, and I quickly left the site out of anger. The idea of easily being able to convert a file that library computers can read is definitely something that would prove useful.

In all, iGoogle is the one thing I might recommend to others. You can access your iGoogle page with your username and password from any computer, and depending how you customize it, gives you a quick glance at your calendar or weather or RSS feeds.

Thing Twelve - Can you Digg it?

Hello peeps,

Social news/media sites and I are no strangers to each other. I was there at the inception, when Kevin Rose from the now extinct TechTV "The Screen Savers", created Digg. Originally Digg was a technology news website that combined social bookmarking, blogging, RSS and non-hierarchal editorial command. They've now expanded to cover popular as well as world news, in addition to the tech news. Digg is one of my favorite websites, as you can see in my "Favorite Links" section on the sidebar of this blog.

I use Digg on a nearly daily basis as a way to learn about some news stories as well as many other tech related things. Due to the user submitted aspect of the site, there's almost never any downtime in regard to new stories hitting the site, though due to an algorhythm only the more popular and relevant stories hit the main page for the general public to view. Reddit, Newsvine and Mixx I'm not as familiar with, though I did look at each of them individually. But it's clear, the Digg is one of if not the most popular of the social news sites, by far.

Although Digg is my personal favorite of the sites listed, I don't really see a lot of uses for that particular site in a library, aside perhaps from reference staff scouting out what's popular today for a potential heads up. It's definitely geared towards a younger tech savvy kind of audience, and the news stories can definitely reflect that. There's definitely more of an emphasis on "popular" stories, over stories that might be more relevant in society. I'm not saying that's always the case, cause there are certain world events like the presidential election that are very popular with the users. That being said, it makes sense that some stories get more attention due to the users being entirely the source of whether or not something hits the home page and flares in popularity.

As much as I like these sites, I'm not so sure they aren't a productivity detractor. Sure, they give you cool news stories and information, but is that really going to increase productivity for most of us? My guess is no. Also as a user of Digg for many years, I have submitted stories on a couple of occasions, none of them gaining any kind of popularity. For every really popular story out there, there's another 10 of the same subject that didn't get picked up for a number of reasons. I love the sites, and will continue to check it out as I've done for years now, though I'm riddled trying to figure out any practical applications for use with the library.

Thing Eleven - Mmmm D.El.iC.o+u-s!?

Howdy,

I have to first say, that the placement of periods in delicious is more then a little confusing to remember. Del.icio.us, it doesn't really roll of the keyboard, so to speak. But in any case it's an interesting tool at our disposable, and actually one I really had no knowledge of. I had however heard of tagging, even if it's not something I was actively doing myself.

The first thing I did for this, was go back to one of my old posts and added tags to it. I tagged about the pictures that I added to the post, which if you click on the links, shows you all the posts that used those tags, or labels as blogger calls them.

I then created an account with del.icio.us, which was very easy and quick to setup. During the account creation, it's suggested that you install the del.icio.us buttons to your internet browser, clearly stating that firefox is the preferred browser. After doing so, adding web pages to your delicious account or viewing pages saved only takes one click. Now I have to be honest, to me personally the ability to bookmark web sites and access that list wherever you want is more useful to me then the tagging aspects. I don't have a strong interest in what's popular with other users, or searching through them in that way. That being said, it could still prove useful in some libraries, most likely among the library staff. Now our library at least, already has a website with links to resources and other such things. But I think that the bookmarking abilities of delicious would make the site more user friendly, in a sense. Just for example, you could be reading a library blog and then look at their list of sites that they keep, using delicious, and find extended information or something entirely new.

Thing Ten - Wikis

Hello people,

So I looked at some of the library related wikis. I'll state first off that I wasn't able to do any editing myself, which is probably a good thing since I don't really have anything useful to add, but the reason for this is due to verification necessity. All of the wikis that I looked at, required you to either have an invitation to edit that specific wiki, or create an account and have email verification to make any edits. What I did see looked promising though. A book lover's wiki with book reviews, would really be useful and practical to an extent for libraries to give recommendations and get user input at the same time. There was a wiki that had links to many other library blogs. I didn't see our library in that list, and I may actually add to that wiki in the future. One blog in particular that seemed really interesting to me was the library staff wiki. A wiki that's totally and only accessible to all the library staff, a sort of web 2.0 version of a bulletin board. I really think that could be a good idea looking to the future for our library.

I checked out the 23 things on a stick official wiki. I read in the comments that people were hesitant, even scared to change anything. So I took the bull by the horns so to speak and did some editing myself. I added a section called "Blog Contributions" and added a link and plugged my blog. The editing was very simple to do, basically if you're doing this blog yourself, you can easily edit a wiki.

They say that some teachers ban the use of wikipedia as a source of student research. Personally I have to agree with them to a degree. The way wiki's are setup, if you let just about anyone edit the information things are going to happen. People are going to lie, make stuff up to be funny or just to cause trouble. Obviously not every wiki is going to suffer from it, but having the chance of using misinformation as a source is reason enough not to allow it, at least academically.

While I believe wikis would be very useful internally at libraries, or the workplace in general, there is always the inherent risk of some people adding inappropriate things or change factual information around. There are pros and cons to every thing and this will likely have to be a case by case basis.

Thing Nine

Hello,

This online collaboration thing is a cool idea, with the word processing editing software available for multiple people to use at once. This is really a great idea for people on the go a lot, especially if you forgot or just don't have a laptop of your own, you can get on just about any computer with internet access and work on a document you've already started, or start a new one entirely. I can really see this only getting better and more useful as time goes on.

For the first part of this thing, it asks you to edit the famous document first using Google Docs. Now, unless I was doing something wrong, my accound didn't have any permissions to edit the document as it was presented to us. Obviously you can cut and paste that text into Google Docs and edit it there, but I wasn't sure if that's what they wanted. I went ahead and pasted it into Google Docs anyway and did some editing. It's pretty similar to blogger, it has most things you need, ability to save, spell check, change font and colors etc. Now I didn't spend a significant portion of time with Google Docs or Zoho writer, so I can't say this conclusively, but it certainly felt like Google Docs had far less features then Zoho. Zoho writer, is probably what I would choose as an online word processor, over Google Docs, with the amount of time i've spent with it thus far. There's a lot of options in the form of buttons at the top of the application, that looks like it gives you even more options then most traditional word processing programs. It allows you to place Emoticons, or smiley's as the kids call 'em these days, which we all know takes top priority when writing documents, and just a bunch of other formatting options that you might not normally expect from an online application such as this.

All in all, the founding fathers would be shocked and terrified by our talking picture boxes and transportable telemaphones. But after that, they would be greatly impressed by our Quill-less writing methods, and the ability to edit from anywhere in the world.

Thing Eight - Sharing my creations, IT'S ALIIIIIVE!!!!

Hello,

Well, sticking with tradition I started a Picture Trail account and created a jigsaw puzzle slide show, something they call "Flicks".

There's a picture of my nephew when he was a baby, my mom and I holding a guitar shaped cake and a couple pictures of my grandma and myself. Good stuff.

It's an interesting tool which gives you a new way to present what would otherwise be a regular slide show or photo album. It was easy enough to setup and customize the different presentation options. I'm not sure if it's necessarily better or not, but it's certainly another option to consider.

Thing 7 - Communication Tools... OF THE FUTURE!!!

Hi,

Electronic mail, or E-mail as the kids refer to it as these days has clearly made an impact on today's society. Personally, I've used email myself since my family first hooked up to the internet, and haven't been without it since. Back then, it was only used for entertainment reasons. I would email friends, relatives, sign up for this and that using my email address. Now it's become much more useful, and really neccesary in many ways at work. While it's not impossible at work to walk down to the first floor and personally give someone a message, but you've gotta admit it's far faster and more convenient to send them an email. It really becomes neccesary when messages to all staff members need to be notified on a particular subject. Instead of trying to gather everyone around and hoping everyone hears what you say, a simple email can inform everyone in a simple manner. At work I use email everyday, mostly receiving from supervisors passing along information to the masses, but I also receive it from co-workers at branches among others.

Instant messaging. It's a sentence an and of itself, to me anyway. I talked about IM'ing a lot in one of my first posts, and everything I said about it then, still holds true. It is SO useful to me in my everyday life. I've been using it since my family hooked itself up to the internet and I've never looked back. Enough about my own personal experiences, regarding libraries I think it's a new frontier that will eventually happen at my own library. I think it's a matter of 'when' rather then 'if'. That short video showed just a glimpse of how useful IM'ing is. I think of it almost as an equivalent of the phone, but with text. It's real time communication, a level of customization with the individual clients, you can usually change your Icon/Avatar or the skin of the program. File transfers are also common among IM clients. The ability to send a file to whoever you're chatting with, whether it be a picture from your digital photo album, a report you're working on or a new song you've been listening to. While being able to have the staff in order to offer a service such as "Instant Librarian" is always an issue, those libraries that can offer this service would be making their services even more available. It's hard for me to say enough about IM'ing, I've spent many an hour using them, to me, my IM client is as common and useful as a TV or a Stove is to others.

Now SMS/Text messaging is another story. Up until last year, I never used a cell phone, so I didn't do any text messaging at all. But that all changed when I finally made the jump and got my 1st cell phone. There is a cost associated with using text messaging, so it will never compromise my #1 position of Instant Messaging. However, it's still useful at times. Personally I only use text messaging with girlfriends or family (mostly so they can contact me whenever they feel like it no matter where I am), while I communicate almost entire with regular friends through IM. There are certain things regarding text messaging that irriate me. You're limited to the number of characters you can use in a given message. It's not always instantaneous like IM is, depending where you're located at what service you're using. Obviously it costs money, to get a plan with a set number of text messages and even more money for unlimited text messages. I also can't stand the "lingo" or language that's allowed in the text messages. "R U rdy 2 go?" I understand it makese sense to replace entire words with a single letter for space reasons, but I still don't like it and never use it myself. One last thing, on most phones it's clunky typing messages to people. There are 3 or 4 letters assigned to a number key 1-9, say 1 has the letters a, b and c assigned to it, if I wanted to spell the word "cab" I would have to hit the number 1 three times to get "C" wait for the cursor to stop blinking, then hit 1 once for "A" wait for the cursor to stop blinking and hit 1 twice for "B". I realize there are word recognition programs that assist your typing messages, but all in all it's a slow experience. On the plus side, if you're away from a computer and inside your phone's coverage area you can send a text message. Also, many IM clients allow you communicate with cell phones with text messages, though the phones have to support this option themselves by already having AIM (Aol Instant Messaging) or one of the other clients on the phone to begin with.

I've only experience web conferences since I started working at the library, in the form of webinars. During our webinars, there would be a number of people connected to the host's phone and we would listen to him on speaker phone, as well as be connected to his desktop so we could see what he was doing on our computer. While this is only conjecture, the webinars I've experienced can test your ability to maintain conciousness. Perhaps, given more excitable subject manner, personal opinions can change. Though on the technical side, things never always work how you expect. Most likely due to the speed of the library's online connection and slower computers, the online aspect of the webinars were laggy, sometimes minutes behind what the host was actually doing. Such a lagging online experience really negates the learning, because the person is always talking in real time, but seeing that translated on our computers minutes later really detracts from the presentation on a whole.

In all, most of the communcation tools listed, are here to stay.

"R U 4 REALZ???"

"Yes... Yes I am."

Thing 6 - Pick up sticks!

Hello,

Image generators. Sounds a little intimidating at first, but as I've found it, it's actually pretty cool and a lot more fun that I would have imagined.

For this Thing, I used a couple of the image generators that were suggested on the 23 Things blog. I had a lot of fun with the options you had for creating these things. I probably spent far more time then is required. I created a trading card for my own drawing of Cosmo from the Fairly Oddparents.


It's a little hard to read the text, but if you click on the image itself, then you can make it out.


I created a bunch more, but I'll just post these few. I'm not sure what else to say about these image generators. It's fun to fool around with them, and create these things, perhaps libraries could create some posters and such to post. The trading card is a cool idea, and makes me want to create a game involving trading cards of all my friends and their "Talents" and "Abilities". But that's neither here nor there.

Thing Five - Super Happy Funtime!

Welcome again,

As you can see, I used a Flickr mashup to spell out the name of my blog, and it's incredible. I also made one of my pictures into a jigsaw puzzle. http://www.flickr.com/photos/23383940@N03/2240612009/



I think it turned out well, given the quality of the small image to begin with. The site that made that jigsaw puzzle, actually offer an option for you to order a real life jigsaw puzzle with that image of your choice. Perhaps this is something I would use as a gift of some sort in the future. I don't personally see a lot of use for these mashups in the library that we'd actually use, but you never know.

Having setup a Flickr account and used it for a brief period, I can see it's appeal to those into digital photos and online images. Also, just for backing up your photos, it would seem priceless for those with a lot of photos on their computers. As for me, it's not something I'm really all that interested in. I don't do digital photography, nor do I have many pictures that I've scanned into my computer. So unless I actually get into some sort of digital photography, I really don't see myself using this program in the future. My personal feelings aside, I think it could prove useful and convenient for libraries with large photo collections to share.

Thing Four - Flickr

Yo,

Now I have to admit, Flickr is something I've never really dealt with. I have had a very basic idea of what it is, but have never sought out to learn more... until now!

One of the first questions I had regarding Flickr, is why didn't they put an E in the word? Anyway, one of the first things I learned about Flickr is the ability to tag images with keywords to search for photos. This is a really smart idea, especially for people with a lot of pictures to look through.

I decided to create a free Flickr account myself just to see how easy to use it was to setup and upload any images I have. I was able to sign up with just my Yahoo ID which I've had for years, so that part was easy enough. Logging into my account, it was easy and pretty obvious as to how to upload images from either my computer or a digital camera or another device. I put about 40 pictures or so into my free Flickr account, which has a 100mb limit of photos, so I had plenty of space to spare, though for people with a digital camera that take many more then my 40 pictures, 100mb may not be enough. Here's an image from my Flickr account I setup http://www.flickr.com/photos/23383940@N03/2240480937/



This was taken right before my graduation, with my grandma. As you can see, I have an enormous head, so big that apparently they don't make graduation caps in that size, which is why it's perched on my head. Suffice to say, it's probably the least cool I could have looked. Also at the top of the blog I put a hand drawn picture of Cosmo from "Fairly Oddparents". As well as a picture of my wearing a suit standing next to my dad, in the darkest building of all time.

One thing, not related to Flickr, but about Blogger instead. Putting images in this blog, they go to the top of the post by default, with no way (that i've seen) inside of blogger to move the image to wherever your cursor is. Instead, I had to place it at top, select the image, cut and then paste it to where I wanted it. While I have no problem using this work around, there are those not as familiar computers in general that wouldn't necessarily know how to do that.

I thought that Clemens and Alcuin libraries of the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University's Flickr page was a really cool example of what you're able to do. They used a photo of a bookshelf with books on it, and each book was it's own link that you could click on to get it's link to Amazon and it's availability at the library.

This could be a great way for our Library to share photos that aren't always easy to find and view from our site. There are many events that the library is involved in, with many pictures being taken. I'm sure there people that would be interested in viewing those pictures, and having a Flickr account would be a way to share them quickly and easily.

Thing Three - RSS

RSS Feeds!

Such a great idea, and implementation into so many popular websites. I just can't say enough about it, it's fantastic. It takes so many of my own shortcomings, and compensates for them. A usually terrible short term memory, procrastination and bouts of laziness. With RSS feeds, I subscribe one time and all my problems are solved. I listen to and watch a lot of podcasts and video podcasts, that come out on a weekly basis and some on a multi weekly basis. It's difficult to remember everything that I"m into on the best of days, what with going to every single website every single day looking for updates. Having RSS feeds bringing all the information that you want, into one place automatically is so convenient. I no longer have to remember every site and podcast and it cuts down a lot of time. I know I sound like an infomercial, and maybe rightfully so, because when it works it works great.

A funny story regarding RSS feeds happened last year, to a video podcast I watch called DLTV (Digital Life Television) about current technology stories and such (I put a link to it in my "Fav Sites" section). I believe they've offered an RSS feed for the show since it's inception, which is great. I have to also say, that in addition to RSS feeds bringing you the news all to one place, there are programs that also allow automatic downloading as well. So it not only informs you of the new information, it downloads it to your computer for you, taking away any manual downloading. Now DLTV screwed something up one time, where instead of sending you the single episode of the show, it sent every single episode the show has ever made. A single video for this show could range anywhere from 50mb all the way to 200mb+, needless to say they unintentionally filled up people's hard drives to the max. It only happened 1 time to my knowledge, and they apologized for it, and everyone had a good laugh. Anyway, I thought that was a funny story when it happened, and I wanted to share it since it ties into RSS feeds.

I chose to use Google RSS reader for this portion of the program. It was pretty easy to setup, and it's convenient having this Blog, RSS reader and my favorite search engine all connected. Seeing how Google is my home page on my home PC, I setup the "iGoogle" feature available from google. It places your RSS feeds on the home page, as well as other widgets like local weather, the time and date, movie listings among other things. Now on my blog, I've added a few feeds from the Duluth Public Library's blogs as well as gaming website I frequent. I didn't add any news feeds regarding non library related news, but I may in the future.

In all, RSS feeds are really convenient and save me a lot of time. Perhaps if our library ever decides to make our website "Web 2.0" compatible, people could customize the site not just for library news, but any other information they might be seeking through RSS feeds and other widgets. We're not there yet, but there's always the future to look forward to.

Thing Eighteen - Awwwww

Adorable Baby Kitten - Awwww so cute

Well, well, well, we've finally made it to youtube. An incredibly popular site on the internets, made even more apparent by how often my Dad uses it, which is more then myself. I posted a video of an adorable baby kitten drinking a dry milk formula from out of a bottle, just like nature intended. I found it pretty easy to get the video up and working in the site, without using the provided instructions, mostly because I figured I could do it without. Though I can understand if people have difficulty, especially those that aren't as familiar with technology and the web. I chose this particular video, because more then anything, library employees have hearts, and anyone with a heart can't resist a cute baby animal. I'm not exactly sure how our library would be able to use a video site like youtube. Maybe to promote itself, or possible to have video instructions for common questions people have.

Thing Two - Point O

Hey,

First of all I have to agree with Stephen Abram regarding one of his favorite web tools, instant messaging, better known as "IM'ing". As someone that's kinda grown up with technology, IM'ing isn't as much of a tool for me as it is a way of life. I have a hard time thinking about what life would be like without this technology, the ability to instantly send messages to people throughout the world, it's remarkable. It's something I literally use on an almost daily basis for regular communication with friends and other people I know. As soon as my family was connected to the internet at age 14 or 15, I immediately was drawn into instant messaging. I've used just about every client at one point or another, from ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, AIM and now currently use a client called Trillian that incorporates all of those IM clients into 1, that allows me to communicate with everyone I know regardless of the client they're using. And while the change in language people use to communicate though IMs may leave something to be desired, LOL, the technology itself I believe is moving in the right direction.

Personally I'm glad to see the Library 2.0 revolution coming to fruition at my library. The quote in John Blyberg's blog

“Library 2.0 simply means making your library’s space (virtual and physical) more interactive, collaborative, and driven by community needs. Examples of where to start include blogs, gaming nights for teens, and collaborative photo sites. The basic drive is to get people back into the library by making the library relevant to what they want and need in their daily lives…to make the library a destination and not an afterthought.”

is appropriate and seems to hit the nail in the head. At our library we've been driven by our community needs, by having internet computers people could access for years now and in recent years adding word processing software among others to the computers. Actually, the first time I used a chatroom was at the public library where I now work. Upgrading from VHS to DVD's was a big thing for us, and is one of the more popular reasons people visit the library that ordinarily might not have. The recent addition of Sound Media Players which function like a stand alone mp3 player with a single audio book are gaining notice and popularity. The newest addition of downloading audio books for free directly to the patron's PC or MP3 player is sure to an interesting feature to keep an eye on as well. We've recently also started using blogs on our website to recommend staff favorites among other things. And most exciting, for myself anyway, recently developments of possibly setting up a gaming night for teens of our own, using the Nintendo Wii.

Thing One - One Thing to rule them all!

Hello all,

So this is my first relevant post regarding 23 things on a stick. And boy have the times changed, back in my day we didn't have color pictures, let alone the internet and blog s to keep people updated with our daily thoughts and opinions. All kidding aside, interestingly enough, this is my first time personally dealing with a web log, or "blog" as the kids call it these days. As "tech savvy" as I like to consider myself, there are some holes that needed to be filled.

Now, I've known about blogs and what they were for years, but up until now I've just never gotten around to doing anything with it. I knew that they've gotten easier and easier to create and manage over the years, yet still I stayed away. I guess I figured, who and why would anyone want to read what I've got to say, and after this project is over I may well have proved myself right, but until then I'm sticking with it.

As easy as it was to actually create this blog and get to posting, I still found myself taking a lot of time in the customization aspect of the blog. Ultimately I ended up sticking with a pretty regular template, nothing fancy, but playing around with all the aspects of what you can edit and put on your blog still ate up a bigger portion of time then I imagined it would. I put up a couple pictures and edited my personal profile as well as tried changing some color schemes and placement of sections of the blog.

Our library has semi-recently started using blogs on our website http://www.duluth.lib.mn.us/Blogs.html I can see using blogs as a way for staff to quickly get their thoughts out to the public with immediate responses. It's also a way to personalize the library with our patrons, a side they're not necessarily used to seeing.

All in all, blogs are here to stay and I think we're the better for it.

First of many

Welcome all to the first blogpost for "23 Things On a Stick Blog Of Eternity". Nothing new to report. Over.