23 Things in Summary

I'm actually surprised to say that I did actually learn several things on this assignment. I learned about RSS and podcasts. I'm somewhat disappointed that we didn't cover some things that I expected the survey to cover. However, I think that we are all capable and now presumably encouraged to explore some of these things on our own and I myself have perused the 43 things website to see what our program was based off of. I would have like to have seen more things that would have enabled me to perform better in our daily work; we did have an exploration of overdrive and webfeat but as far as PBCLS goes that was about it. I mean most of us use YouTube and Flickr and such now or before but we don't use them at work and aren't supposed to. I would also like to see feedback on what happened with this project. I think a little more hands on could have helped many people who fell behind due to confusion. I know this is a self guided exercise but I know that many people needed a little extra guidance for directions in black in white are good but a lot of the time it doesn't compare to the aid of a coworker. Also.... the bloglines tutorial sucks. :) I think so many people got confused by it that I started telling people not to read it. At any rate I had fun and would be willing to do something similar again, I just don't know how many of my coworkers would be willing to do so.

Overdrive

I really like that you can listen to an excerpt, sometimes the reader's voice can irritate me so it's nice to get an idea of the voice before I spend the time to download it and sit down to listen to it. It's kind of disappointing that there are only a few copies of some of the titles. You would think that a digital book would have an unlimited number of copies. I also wonder why you can't return them early and check out a new title... ah well more mysteries to add to the collection.

Podcasts

I think that being able to subscribe to the podcasts via RSS feeds is really nice. Here I thought it was all just websites and they go and throw me more information to adapt to. Ah well the joys of learning. I really haven't paid much attention to podcasts much like RSS feeds, they're both things I heard about but dismissed. It's good to learn about these things though, it keeps me on my toes. I think much like other things, that podcasts are subject to the interests of those who like those sort of things. While I might want to share my passion for Harry Potter with others I don't know if everyone else really wants to partake.

I subscribed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/mugglecast on about the former topic and this one http://feeds.feedburner.com/LibrarySurvivalGuide on library type stuff. I'll continue perusing until I find more that I'm interested in.

YouTube

This brings back memories... Sesame street and libraries. I never saw this particular skit or at least I don't remember. YouTube is great for things like catching old clips, episodes and such. YouTube is a resource we've used throughout the project and I think that it could be very useful for the library system. Using it to guide patron's visually through checking their account online, setting up an ecard account or even giving them a tour of library features.

I also really like this one that I saw in a class for library school:

Library Humor Anyone?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/13/AR2008041302172.html

Check out this link to an interesting article from the Washington Post!

Web 2.0 Awards List: Yahoo! Pipes

I was exploring Yahoo! Pipes which is some kind of web development site used to filter and get RSS feeds similar to Bloglines. It seems to be more specific however, allowing you to control exactly what is fed through the "pipes" and what is not. I think its kind of neat but it seems very complicated. I will have to play with it some more before I truly understand it. I don't see this used in libraries really. I think also because it is meant for web development it isn't very user friendly yet. I would have a hard time trying to explain it in this blog let alone to another person.

zoho blog

So, this is online word processing. And theoretically I could allow my friends to edit my document, which reminds me a lot of the wikis. So I imagine wikis and online documents have some similar basis. I think that not having to struggle to match up document file types on different computers is a wonderful thing. Especially as a student! I've often had trouble because I use word perfect and teachers most often are using Microsoft Word because the school gets a package deal. Some of uss use what we get for free instead. At any rate I think this is a great benefit and wish I had known about it years ago. But perhaps I shall still make use of it now. So anyway I'm going to try to post this in my blogger account because it says I can do that... so let's keep our fingers crossed shall we?