You Tube

I love you tube! There are so many funny movies uploaded on there and its a really great way to share videos with people if I ever were to take any videos. I chose to share with everyone a hilarious video from blendtech called "Will it Blend" in this particular segment they blend an iphone! There is no great intellectual reason for picking this clip, its just fun to watch them destroy an iphone. I also like the one where they use glowsticks. The thing I really like about you tube is how easy they make everything. Especially sharing and searching for videos. Its quite easy if you would like to see all the "Will it Blend" segments to bring them up. I think youtube programs for teens would be great! Lots of teens already use youtube and perhaps you could have a short video contest or something. Or just teach them how to use it. The one problem with you tube is just about anything can be posted including offensive or inappropriate materials.

Web 2.0 Award Sites

I decided to check out some websites from Web 2.0 award winners. There were lots of them to choose from so I explored a couple. I really liked Yelp it was interesting to look up places and hear what other people have to say about them and could prove really helpful if you were trying to pick out a new restaurant or something. My only complaint is a lot of places weren't reviewed. I hope Yelp catches on so there is a more complete list of reviewed places.
I've had a Facebook account for over a year now so I didn't re-explore that website but it was cool to see it was listed. I like that facebook seems to me a more subdued version of myspace. You can still list people as your friends and create a profile and post pictures but you don't have music blasting whenever you click on some body's page and it seems fewer people put inappropriate pictures up on facebook.
I'd also used Zillow before but didn't recognize it immediately. Its a very nice way to get an idea for the housing market. However they seemed to be missing a LOT of houses that I know are on sale having looked at them on other housing directories or driven past signs advertising that they were for sale.
I checked out Fuzzmail and sent one to my fiance. And it definitely seemed like a interesting idea although I can't imagine using it on a regular basis. Overall the award winning websites were interesting and I think I may visit this page later at home to play around with even more with them!

Google Spreadsheets

I tried out Google spreadsheets doing a mock budget of the one I use Microsoft excel for at home. I was hoping that it would be easy because then I could keep my wedding budget online and make it easier for people (my fiance, father and myself) to access. However I wasn't happy with Google spreadsheets. It was easy enough to enter the information but when it came time to create a formula it took me awhile to figure it out and seemed very difficult to create a range. I tried for awhile but it just didn't work very well and when I finally figured it out I felt it was too much work. Anyways by keeping it on my computer its easy to manage who accesses it and the changes they make.
While online documents are cool I think I'll mostly stick to the normal Word just for ease of use because I already know how to do most things that I want the program to do. However if I ever need to create a document and don't have Word available or I am without anywhere to save it (which doesn't ussually happen since I have Yahoo! briefcase to upload files that I need to save). But I still thought this technology was very neat and fun to play around with and with time I may start actually using it on a regular basis.

blog post

I didn't really know about Zoho Writer. And I definitely like it because there are lots of fun things you can add to add to your document. And of course there is spell check, which is good for people with poor spelling like myself.  Zoho Writer is so much like Word that its easy to use.  And I do enjoy all the smiley faces.  And there is even an option to insert html and ♥ there are special characters and stuff.  I'm going to try to export this into my blog now.  Wish me luck! 

Harry Potter

I'm very excited about working tomorrow night for the Harry Potter release party! I brought in a costume today so I can dress up and tell people's fortunes. I even have coke bottle glasses to make myself look a little bit like Trelawney. I think this will be my favorite book release because hopefully I won't be out until 2 am (like one year when I went to Borders and only arrived at 11:30 so it was 2 am before I finally got my book) or anything. And I get to work and help create the fun for other people! I'm very excited. I completed the sorting hat ceremony in anticipation of tomorrow night. Here it is:



I'm a Hufflepuff!

I've done the ceremony before but tried it again and got the same result. I hadn't taken the Harry Potter character quiz before and it says I'm Neville, which doesn't surprise me too much.


Which HP Kid Are You?

Maryland Libraries Sandbox

I added my blog to the favorite blogs on Maryland Libraries sandbox. I may go back later and add some favorite books or any of the optional stuff. I had some trouble posting my link on the wiki because there is a bug and I kept trying to post it using html, which isn't working for some reason. Oh well I just put the plain link and that's a bit more descriptive anyways since it has my name versus "My Blog", which could belong to anyone. I really would like to think up a more creative name but still haven't. Oh well. Wikis are lots of fun and I think I might play around with them a bit more.

Wikis

I think wikis are really cool. Its a way for people to be able to make changes to a page without the technical knowledge normally required. When I need just some general information that accuracy isn't a huge concern I check out wikipedia for it. One time I helped a patron use it was for a project a second grader had on a type of moss. They needed some general information about the moss to help point us towards the right books because none of them had the type of moss the child was assigned. After checking out wikipedia we found that the moss had another name that was commonly used to describe it. Searching using that name provided us with plenty of resources and the resources supported that it was the same type of moss the little girl had been assigned. Of course I always feel cautious using wikipedia since you really can't always be sure who posted a particular piece of information.
I thought the booklovers was a great idea though because I love reading reviews of books. In my opinion this is the best way to apply wikis to libraries because allowing patrons to edit the catalog would concern me a little bit and be something we would have to constantly be watching over. But book reviews are just personal opinions so they are a perfect way to allow the public to put in their two cents and a wiki is a great way to go about it. However I was disappointed that the reviews are only arranged in one way. Right now there aren't too many books in any category but in the future browsing by author instead of title would be a good option and so would by rating so if you have a long list you can start with the best rated books and work your way down. I did like the 5 star category.
I think internal use of wikis is also a good idea for libraries. We use them at CCPL for teams. The summer reading team wiki has meeting minutes posted, which is an easy place to go to quickly retrieve past minutes. Especially since you can access the summer reading wiki anywhere versus if you saved or printed the minutes.

Technorati

I've been using tags for awhile on my blog. I think its an excellent way to keep track of posts this way when I want to see all of my posts about 23 things I can just click on that tag same for while I was doing orientation. I've claimed my blog on Technorati so if anyone feels like favoriting it they can and I've favorited a few blogs people I work with although there are some people I probably forgot.
I enjoyed exploring Technorati a lot. There wasn't too much that surprised me with the most popular tags and I enjoyed looking through the things tagged Harry Potter. I looked at a couple of the most popular blogs but none of them particularly interested me. I've added the mdlearn2 tag to this post.

Library 2.0

I think library 2.0 is a very good idea. The world is changing and of course libraries should change with it and embrace modern technology to its fullest. However I think most libraries are already doing this and eagerly embracing this philosophy and moving forward as fast as they can to better serve patrons. At least this seems to me what we're doing in Carroll County and while I know all libraries are different I don't understand why a library wouldn't want to use all the new technology since it makes life so much easier!

However I also think some of the suggestions of ways that a library can become a Library 2.0 are expensive, require a lot of staff training and in some cases an overhaul of the system. These things will take time for libraries to make the changes and for patrons to adapt to them. I think there are exceptionally high expectations for how many changes libraries should make in such a short period of time. While I think we should be working towards Library 2.0 as fast as we can some things such as using RSS to catalog records isn't going to happen overnight. Also patrons have be to be ready for the new technology while using instant messenger to notify some patrons would be a great idea for other patrons doing so would be impossible.

So while I like the idea of Library 2.0 I don't think it needs to happen overnight. But I think that's OK because its the philosophy behind Library 2.0 is what makes it so great. The idea of embracing technology and breaking down previous barriers to make libraries more user friendly is a wonderful one and should be used by libraries all over. All the various technology will be integrated at some point but for right now I think a open prospective to changes and working hard to utilize technology is a good place to start.

Del.icio.us

I've used online places to store bookmarks before. When I was at Towson a course I took on technology in education required us to find 5 websites for science, social studies, math and reading that could be useful for teaching children those subjects. And we stored those bookmarks online, although I now forget what the website was called. However Del.icio.us is a much better choice in my opinion to that website because it stored things in folders instead of by tags. Using tags would be much more helpful for a multi-faceted website. Such as one that math and reading things for kids. I really like tags to organize things. I created my own Del.icio.us account and added a few of my favorite websites including two Harry Potter websites, a site that lists historical fiction for kids and a site with tax forums. The last two are ones I've found very helpful at work. During tax season the one with tax forums was a great help and the historical fiction one helped me when I had a historical fiction display in the children's section.

I also liked the social networking aspect of Del.icio.us because its a great way to find people with similar interests and find similiar sites that you may enjoy. Such as following the tag Harry_Potter allowed me to find the Leaky Cauldron, another Harry Potter fansite. This makes this online bookmarking website even better. I plan to use it to hold onto important links. Here is my Del.icio.us:

Library Thing

This was fun and I'll probably work on this some more. I divided my books into three tagged lists reading, read and want to read. This is a great way for me to keep track of all the books I want to read and rate the ones I've read. Bellow is my widget of books. There are so many books I want to add but just settled for a few that stood out as really good books or recent reads.

Rollyo

The hardest part of this exercise was trying to figure out what I type of search engine to create. I just couldn't think of any specific type of resources that I wanted to compile for this search. After some thought I decided to use resources that I used when deciding which apartment complex to live in. So I put websites that contain apartment reviews by renters and management. Here is my Rollyo searchbox. It was very easy to create once I decided on a topic for the search.

Select Search Engine...ApartmentsSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

Avatars

I tried creating avatars on various sites. Here are my avatars and my feelings about the creation process based on ease and ability to customize.


The avatars you can create on Yahoo! are fun to create and you can customize them to a certain extent. However being an avid player of Sims2 it was disapointing to not be able to further customize every aspect of the face. I suppose the avatar I created looks somewhat like me but not that much. I also felt that too many of the pants were too lowrise and the shirts too high up allowing your tummy to show, which wasn't the look I wanted. But its free and everything is free so there is no disapointment of having it all set and then discovering that you can't actually use it without paying. Getting dressed was difficult because there aren't catagories so if you just want to look at jeans then you need to go through all the bottoms instead of just looking at the jeans. The ability to show emotion through your avatar was nice though.



Meez was a lot more fun the yahoo! I really liked the animations and the breakdown of catagories. It was a lot easier to dress this avatar and I liked that you could customize the nose. And there were more hair options that didn't look quite as overly styled as Yahoo! avatar's hair. The animations were fun to add but the coolest items cost money, which is very disapointing. But it was fun and you can save multiple looks for you meez so bellow is my meez trying to deal with the copier. I may have had a bit too much fun with this thing.

And just so you know what I really look like here is a picture of me: