Addendum to the End, or, the End is in Sight

I have been writing holiday letters to European relatives in Google docs - it has a spellcheck that automatically senses the correct language! Not perfect, but charming. I also have a series of trip checklists going for an upcoming vacation to visit our studying-abroad daughter, and the aforesaid relatives. It's convenient to be able to access them from any computer. And encourage my husband to log in and contribute. Google calendar is next!

And then what was the challenge question? Can't locate the APLE newsletter (yeah, yeah, I should know where to find it, but...), so I seem to remember that it involves revealing 10 things about ourselves. Scary, since anybody can access this! OK, here we go: 1) I'm addicted to Minesweeper, 2) I love to knit, read, bicycle, garden, hike (I could go on), 3)we have a labyrinth in our back yard, 4) I am of Swiss descent, but the name Jain comes from Spain via France - there's a whole province named after me! Jaen! We're going to check out the family chateau on our upcoming trip. 5) we have 3 cats at present, and they are all crazy, 6)I ride a recumbent bike with underseat steering. Kids tend to stare, then yell "cool!" as I cruise by. 7)One of my kids is studying in Switzerland, and just called 5 minutes ago to say that her flight to Greece for Thanksgiving was cancelled cuz Alitalia is on strike. Much unhappiness there. 8)The other child could be delivering your mail - watch for tall, handsome & silent. 9)My husband & I are anachronisms: we have both worked for the same employer for almost 30 years, and are working on our first marriage. I tell my kids this is ok. 10)I pick and choose among technological innovations as needed to make life workable, but am basically a luddite at heart. I could easily be a hermit. I don't really want everyone to know what I am doing at every moment, or vice versa! And here I am, throwing it all out into the internet. Doncha love it!

This has been fun.

The End

But not the last word, I'm sure! This has been a fun trek, from knowing nothing, to having nibbled at a multitude of online goodies. Certain ones tweaked my fancy: Flickr, Youtube, MOLDI, Delicious. Others less so: Twitter, wikis (loved the Google online tools, tho). What I need at this moment is 2 weeks of dedicated time to explore and become proficient in all this stuff!!!!! My opinions on what is fun or not might change if I had lots of time to get into each Thing. But that will come.
I am more than happy to have taken part in/completed the 23 Things. Now I know what it means to "Follow us on Twitter", embed a video, etc. And better yet, I can help customers when they ask questions about it.
Oops, I'm due out on the floor - there will have to be an Appendix to my End!

The MOLDI Thing

Even after taking an Overdrive webinar and going through the tutorial, I still find this needless complex. Maybe the problem is that I have been unable to download anything that I've checked out. I had hoped that I could use my phone, since it's usually in my pocket & I could listen to books during my lunch walks. But so far I haven't figured out that it's compatible. And I don't have another mp3 player to try on. OK, next I tried downloading a book onto my work computer - learning Spanish as I cruise email would be great, right? Hmm. Got a message saying that a problem had occurred in retrieving the Digital Rights Management machine identification, & I should contact Microsoft support. Like that's going to happen! Guess I'll keep trying, though, cuz this is a wonderful resource. I want to be able to use it myself, as well as helping our customers!

Podcasts

I am typing this as I listen to an NPR podcast - what fun! I have listened to political podcasts of all stripes, and some just for fun. With this, as with other products, spending time searching for exactly what you want is the biggest issue. Wow, winnowing down the selection is a daunting task. Being able to listen to a show when you want, though, is hard to beat. This could be great for a library to get its message out to the community, with regular broadcasts. At least to those savvy enough to find and subscribe to the podcast...

YouTube

This is a favorite of mine. So much cool stuff, and all for free. I chose to embed a book cart drill team, cuz 25 & 24 did such a fantastic job with ours for the 4th of July parade this year. We rocked! So take a gander at this one and see where we could be next year!!

Toolbox

Lots good stuff here. I tried StumbleUpon & got lost trying out scads of cool sites such as Moderncat, HopelessGeek, etc. I have long wondered where people came up with the fun sites they sent out, & this is one good way to search to hold up my end of it! Worldcat is always helpful, too, and we've tried many of the other things in the toolbar.

Thing #18

Food sounded like a likely topic, so I launched into that area. I tried UrbanSpoon, which allows people to rate/evaluate restaurants in their area. When I clicked on the logo, I went straight to Columbus -gosh, they know me! It was fun, but had many failings. Not many reviews, very few menus loaded, and at least 1 listing for a restaurant that has been gone for years. But still, it was interesting to see what is in my neighborhood. Customers sometimes ask that very question - where can one eat around here? Is there a coffee shop (mexican restaurant, whatever...) around here?

Thing #17

Google Docs has possibilities! I tried calendars & word processing. Being able to work on/update stuff from any computer is amazing stuff - very wiki-like. Also very like the other things, in that I need massively more time to truly explore and get my brain to cooperate in learning the features well enough to make them useful. Little by little, though, I'll get there.

CML wiki

Hmm. I added my blog to favorite blogs, but it doesn't show up in the list. But if I click on favorite blogs it goes there. So go figure. I guess it worked, but I'm not sure. Maybe it would all make more sense if I did it at one sitting instead of in 5 minute spurts here and there throughout the day! The other things i added appear as they should. I also snatched a lock from somebody who hadn't used it in over 5 minutes. That was interesting - I had been wondering what would happen if more than 1 person tried to modify the wiki at once.

Wikis

I like the sharing concept. It would be wonderful for working on drafts of a joint paper, for example, instead of emailing the thing 'round and 'round. I spent some time on the library wikis, and especially liked the SJCPL subject page. I don't exactly know what makes it a wiki - can librarians just change/add stuff to the page? Having information/signups, etc. be easily modifiable would be a definite plus.

Library 2.0

This marks the generational divide between the young folk leading a 'connected' life, and those who are being left behind. Over time, most people will crawl into the boat, but for a while lots of people will sink. I appreciated Rick Anderson's article on 'icebergs'. We have been struggling with this for quite a while - what resources can we give up on and find online, and what do we need in print anyway - either because that's the format customers want, or to have available when all the computers are full (not uncommon). We are also trying to find the happy medium between leaving customers completely on their own online, and being able to offer guidance but not actually do all their work for them. But then, this has always been a point of tension; simply a new format.

Del.icio.us

Today I am happy! This is useful! This makes sense! I want this! I created an account and imported my bookmarks. Now to make time to organize them... Just think of all the times someone emails around a wondrous site they've discovered about some topic. You bookmark it, then can never find it again on a staff wan. Since these can be gotten to from anywhere, and others can find them...WOW. Happy, happy.
I also have a tendency to get interested in a topic, and the research it to death. Right now I have my regular bookmarks organized into folders, but they can each only go into one folder. This is much better! Happy!

Twitter

This application gives me the creeps, plain and simple. I already feel exposed enough with the blog, but why in hell would I want everyone to know what I'm doing every second!!!! I can see it for sudden events notification (ie, rally in the park in 1 hr), or spur of the moment get-togethers. IF you're in the habit of checking your iphone every 2 minutes for updates. If it's not coming on your phone or portable device, it would't be of much use - and some of us get charged for every text message. Sigh. I feel SO 'last-century'!
Then there is the simple issue of not understanding how to 'follow' and do anything with this, despite having read all the tutorials. Apparently nobody I know is on Twitter. Help!! What am I missing???
Oh, my twitter URL: http://twitter.com/SPIRALDANCER

LibraryThing

Ah, an other application I will enjoy exploring further someday when I have more time. I was recently invited to join GoodReads & it will be interesting to compare the 2. Lacking time to join a book group, this could be a good way to explore and discuss good reading. http://www.librarything.com/catalog/fjain

Cool images

OK, kinda cool. Voici my perfect phone, curtesy of http://www.phonerator.com/ .

I also made a cute ALA mini-poster:

http://www.ala.org/ala/productsandpublications/READ_Mini_Posters.cfm

I can actually have a lot of fun with this one!!

Thing #9

Finding feeds turned out to be fairly straightforward. I have to confess to a certain lack of interest, but perhaps I just haven't found the blog of my dreams yet. Oh, if I only had more time... I liked the search tools like Topix that gave a variety of choices. Just putting in a word may work for the passionnate, but left me wondering what to ask for. I have some sites in my email that send regular updates - I'll try to take a closer look at them and see if they have RSS streams. That would be really helpful, I must admit!

More Time

Sheese. This is fun, but am definitely not going to spend my life cruising. As I mentioned in my last post, this is complicating my life, rather than streamlining it. It is clear that feeds are in important way for groups to send out current information & keep people hooked. Fabulous! But I can't help this nagging feeling that I've got plenty of other things to do. So I continue to hope that by the end of these 23 exercises I will finally understand how to organize all this stuff into a workable 'community'.

Time is of the Essence

This is getting more complicated, and it's harder & harder to find time to squeeze it all in. The RSS feed thing is amazing - but it still takes time to find and read them. My Bloglines site: http://www.bloglines.com/public/florencejain. What I'm finding is that we are creating more and more locations to find information that we are in theory consolidating. Now I have a Facebook page, a blog, a bloglines account, a Flickr account, and soon a Twitter account. How do we tie all this together? I need a personal megasite!!!

Blogging

I'm curious how people keep up with blogging and blogs. There must be 2 billion of them out there, many with vast followingings (how do you find them?!!), and others that seem dead in the water (do they ever go away?). Just setting up the perfect blog, attaching the perfect mash-ups etc., is a continual and massive undertaking. Maybe it's a generational thing - I have so many other things to do with my time. I look to technology to make my life easier, not necessarily to complicate it by joining other 'communities'. And I'm not comfortable with the idea that absolutely anybody could be reading my words. My hope is that with time, this will feel more natural.

Dead duck

Hmm, I don't get how to save my specific montage. Anybody know?

Rubber Duckie, you're the one!

http://www.deviousgelatin.com/montager/image.php I tried a photomontage of ducks. It's pretty cute. There are so many mash-ups... Once I have loaded more pictures into Flickr, it will be fun to try cards or badges or whatever. Really making use of these things requires a lot more time than I have to spend. Guess it'll be exploration by inches. Is that like being nibbled to death by ducks??

L&P@CML

L&P@CML
Originally uploaded by ZenGoddess

I've got it, I've got it; by George I think I've got it!

Flickr

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

Flickring right along

This was a little more complicated, but I think I've got the hang of it. This New Book display is untouched by me - it just happened to have books on some of my favorite topics sitting right there! It took 2 tries to get this right. First, I loaded the picture and realized that it hadn't been saved on Flickr. Clearly, I had missed a step somewhere... So I went back and figured how to pull the picture right off the camera - sweet! But I'm not sure whether the picture on my blog is traceable to Flickr?

Life in Dr. Seuss World

Thing 3 and Thing 4 knock on the door, cavort on the floor, always demand more! The blog is up and I'm figuring out stuff like adding gadgets & pictures. I can see how people can get sucked up in this & count their time in hours online. Then of course the Tracking Log has 'issues'. Honey, we all have 'issues'! More time spent. There it went. Heaven sent. Hell bent. I don't know - if people read this, it could get embarassing!

Play & Learn @ CML

This is fun! I keep going in circles, but at least it's making more sense. And I did find 'compose' again, so life is good.

Plan & Learn has stimulated a lot of interest at the branch. We're chatting about our blogs and thinking how apply what we're learning. And some of us are still a bit glassy-eyed. Of the 7 1/2 habits, #1 is the easiest for me. I know where I'm going, but the roadmap isn't always clear. #5, creating my own toolbox, initially seems it will be the most difficult. I work well on my own, and reaching out to others on the web for help doesn't feel comfortable. But there is hope! My daughter helped me create a Facebook page, and even agreed (with a little coertion) to be my Friend. Now she's tutoring me on fun stuff like embellishing my page, using SKYPE, and IMing (when I said luddite, I meant it). So, this will be a grand adventure, and I look forward to entering the 21st century in style.

Brave New World

This all seems easy, but the complexities are creeping in: OK, I have the blog, now what? What on earth can I say that anyone else would care to read? How do I get my page to look the way I want? This is a little nervewracking to a luddite like me. But lead the way - I'm excited to be taking the plunge!