Minnemom on a Stick

The End of the Things

2009-06-12T17:20:00.001-07:00

I looked over the rest of the Things tonight, and I've decided I'm not going to complete the project. Some of these I've been using already and I don't have the energy to blog about them, and others seem pretty useless to me. Perhaps it's because I'm up against the deadline as well.

Something I didn't think to add to the survey is this: It might be nice to do a "pick 10" program, i.e. have 20 things to choose from, and pick the 10 that would be most useful/interesting to program participants. I ran into one or two here that I really didn't want to do, which affected my decision to do the rest of the Things.

Thanks for putting together the program--the multitypes have done a lot of work with this and I don't want you to think your work was in vain. I plan to return to the program pages when I encounter new things; it will serve as a good reference in that regard.

Thing 31: More Twitter

2009-06-12T16:56:00.000-07:00

I knew there were a lot of twitter apps out there, but Thing 31 really emphasizes the range of them.

I've used twitter through a variety of formats, including those for Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and iPhone. I used Twhirl for quite a while but now have settled on Tweetdeck, where I like being able to organize people into groups, so the tweets I don't want to miss are grouped in one column.

My husband still thinks it's crazy that my Twitter Grader score is 99.9. According to them, I'm the #20 tweeter in Minnesota. Aren't you proud of me?

I peek at twitter several times a day. Whereas I use Facebook to connect with people I know in real life, all but two of my twitter people are strangers. They are, however, people with whom I have things in common.

I use twitter to keep up with travel bloggers/writers, as well as with people who have a handle on local events and commentaries. I follow some local news personalities and stations and actually get some good information from twitter via that route. I've also used twitter to do something I was never brave enough to do by phone: call in to WCCO radio. Some of my tweets have been read on-air.

Twitter is a useful piece of my blogging arsenal. Could I live without it? Yes. But is it useful for me if I have the time? Yes.

Thing 33: Travel

2009-01-22T19:07:00.000-08:00

I was eager to get to this Thing, because my primary blog is a family-travel blog and I also do some writing for another travel site, Uptake, which should fall into the Travel 2.0 category, as it aggregates info from Yahoo travel, TripAdvisor, and more.

Notes from the Road is one of my favorite, if for no other reason than that beautiful blog layout/header.

I've used TripAdvisor many times in the past for trip planning. A new site that's similar for family travel (but doesn't yet cover the Midwest) is trekaroo.

The travel journal sites are interesting, but I don't know that I'd ever post my trip on one of them. Maybe that's because I already have my own travel blog.

Wines and Times is an interesting niche mashup; the wi-fi directory is user-submitted and therefore not very complete.

In a library setting, having links to these sites for people travel-planning would be useful. Seeing others' reviews, adding your own pictures, and viewing other reactions is very useful in planning a trip.

And of course, featuring my Travels with Children blog as a local resource would be an excellent idea!

Thing 32: Maps and Mashups

2009-01-22T18:59:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes, Google Maps. I've used them often, from vacation planning, to geotagging photos, and sometimes for fun.

The mashup I created was for a blog post I did last fall on 13 places with Halloween-ish names.

View Larger Map

Really, I did embed the map into this post, but it's stuck on "loading" for me. :-)

I did have a bigger plan in mind for Google maps, that of mapping locations for children's museums around the country, but I found one big limitation (after hours of input)--there's a limit to the number of places that will show up on the map. (I think it's 100.)

I also like the integration with Google Earth. When I geotagged some photos recently, I was able to see exactly where the photo had been taken by looking at the combination of roadmap and satellite image.

Thing 30: Delicious and Feeds (Hungry, anyone?)

2009-01-22T18:46:00.000-08:00

I read the article on seven tips for RSS reader and found it to be interesting, but I'm not sure how many of the items I'd actually use. I do agree with the first item, oversubscribing, as that's exactly what I do. I have my feeds in Google Reader categorized, and then I scan them periodically, skimming the titles and reading the ones that interest me. It's a lot like reading the newspaper: I don't read every article, but make a judgment based on the headline. I might read the Travel section one time and the Social section the next, and just mark some as read if I don't have the time to get through them all, while still continuing the subscription.

I did think it was interesting that Google Reader has problems with 1000+ feeds. I have trouble keeping up with the 250 I have.

Delicious still baffles me. I understand having bookmarks online for ease of access, but the social element of bookmarks--sharing, tagging for others, subscribing to people's bookmarks--still confuses me. I'm not sure I want anyone subscribing to my bookmarks. Maybe it would be different if I used Delicious for research projects, etc., but for my personal bookmarks, I don't get it. (Someone feel free to enlighten me on this subject.) I usually put my bookmarks in igoogle so I have access to them but no one else does.

Thing 29: Google Tools

2009-01-22T18:06:00.000-08:00

I've used Google Alerts now for a while. I have an alert for my "minnemom" moniker and another for my blog address. This allows me to see when people are referencing my "name" or blog on other sites.

Google Web History is kind of fun to look at, but I don't see it being particularly useful. I deleted my web history; I can put up with privacy concerns if there's a use behind a product but don't want that info available if I'm not going to put it to good use. (On a related privacy note, I have more problems with the info in the Google profile being so public and have stripped nearly everything out of that profile.)

I tried gmail's interface a few weeks ago after hearing many good things about it. I thought it was all right, but was frustrated that every time I deleted a message, it took me back to the message list, not to the next message. I played around with the theme and some lab items, but in the end went back to using Outlook for all my mail. If I'm going to use a web browser e-mail app, I still prefer Yahoo Mail's interface.

I've also had good experience with inbox.com's e-mail as a free pop3 provider.

While I don't use Google's calendar for my personal use, I can see good applications for group projects or calendars for special tasks. I was hoping to find that I could sync Google calendar directly to my iPod Touch, but it looks like the only way to do that is through Outlook.

I use Google Toolbar and Google Desktop all the time. For the toolbar, I specifically like the Autofill element, which saves me from retyping my name and address on website forms. I use a few Desktop gadgets, but what I really like is the ability to search my hard drive from the interface. It's much better than XP's search, in my opinion.

When I looked at my account, I was surprised to see how many Google products I currently use, and how many I don't.

Thing 28: igoogle, you google

2009-01-22T17:40:00.000-08:00

For this thing, I chose igoogle because . . . well, because I already have and igoogle account and I'd rather look for ways to enhance it than to start all over.

I had set up an igoogle page quite a while ago and used it as my home page for a while. I had a twitter feed on it, several bookmark gadgets, weather, etc. I'm not sure why, but I seldom use it any more.

I tried the Blidget thing to put on my Ning page but it wouldn't accept it using the Ning code. I have an existing feed widget from springwidgets so I'm going to stick with that. I did get the Blidget on my igoogle page but it's not sized correctly for the space. I do like RSS feed widgets.

One way that I have used igoogle is for my kids. I set up a separate igoogle account for them and have it installed on the computer they are allowed to use. It has parental controls on it, so they can't search for things, but I can set up safe sites for them as an igoogle bookmark and it's accessible to them with each of their logins.

I also made the Show Yourself widget and put it on my ning page. Not sure why I'd put it on my igoogle page, but it could be useful for social media.

One thing that I do like in igoogle is having a section for Google Docs. I find that it's an easy place to keep track of the Docs I've created.

Thing 26: Tweet, Tweet

2009-01-22T15:05:00.000-08:00

With 2,391 followers, I think I've figured out twitter.

I've used twitter to get recipes, tech support, book-read ideas, travel tips, discount codes, and more. I've asked random questions (What is your favorite apple?) and gotten a ton of responses.

The key to twitter is to follow people. If you follow, most will follow you back. Follow as many as you feel comfortable with. 20-50 you can probably keep up with all their conversations. A few hundred you can glance through once a day. More than that, and you can jump on as often as you wish and catch a few minutes' worth of the twitter stream.

I recommend using a twitter app like twhirl or tweetdeck to help you organize and keep from having to refresh the screen constantly.

I'd love to see more libraries on twitter. It would be quick and easy to send out a tweet: "Don't forget book club tonight at XYZ Library!"

If you have twitter-newbie questions, let me know and I'll try to help. Follow me. Send me an @ reply. I enjoy twitter conversations.

Thing 26: The Ning

2009-01-22T14:38:00.000-08:00

I joined the 23Things Ning back before I figured out how to register for the actual things. (Yeah, the learning curve... I'm much better at this now.)

I hope the Ning becomes more active/interactive this time around.

I'm a member of two other Ning groups that have great conversations. Nings that don't move seem to die out, but good ones can be very useful. One thing that worked well on another Ning that went from 0-5000 members in a few months was to have a welcome wagon. Welcome posts from other members were received very well and added to the friendliness of the group.

I tweaked my page, added some feeds, and jumped in on a discussion. Don't worry, I'll be back to the Ning!

Thing 25: Gotta Have Tools

2009-01-22T13:46:00.000-08:00

Ah, yes, widgets and gadgets. In Wordpress, there are plugins. They can be useful, they can be fun, they can be annoying.

Here's what I looked at:

Disqus: Looks like a neat thing, but clunky install method. Made me nervous to be messing with my entire template file.
Click Comments: I've never seen this used on an actual blog. It seems very juvenile to me. I don't care for canned comments. I'd prefer real written comments, or none at all.
Outbrain: Could be useful in some situations (review blogs, for example). I don't want people rating my posts here; there's really no need for it.
Clustr Maps: OK for the curious, but decided not to use it.
Typealyzer: Interesting. I got different results for my own blogs than for the group blogs I write for.

Didn't bother with:

Snap previews. I used these in my blog once, but as I visit more and more blogs, I find them to be highly annoying. They just get in the way. If I want to check a link, I just open it in a new tab to look at later.
Things that talk or have video or play music. Unless my blog has a real need for these, I won't use them.

Ultimately added:

RSS feeds from my other blogs. I used to wonder what good this would do, but now that I write more blogs, I get it. It shows post titles from other blogs I enjoy and/or write.
Subscription buttons, to make it easy for people to subscribe.
Google Analytics. This is a very powerful tool, and I use it on my other blogs already. Am waiting to see if it's configured properly, however. Only downfall to this one (besides configuration) is that you can't see current-day stats.
Add This: Another one I've used before, is useful, and easy to install.
Recent Comments: Surprised that this isn't in the layout choices. This was very easy to install.

One hour of widget-hunting and I'm done unless I come across something else that looks really good. The benefit of reading a lot of blogs is seeing new things in action.

Thing 24: What's Changed?

2009-01-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

Wow! Has it been almost a year since I did Thing 1? At that time, I had a little baby blog, hadn't even tried Flickr, and didn't know a thing about Ning.

Since then, I've:

Grown my blog, Travels with Children, enough that I'm becoming known in the travel-blogger world. I moved from a free Wordpress setup to a self-hosted blog with plugins and theme variations. I've learned about SEO and monetization and other things that go with having a serious blog. Instead of random posts, I have a pretty strict posting schedule of 4-5 times a week.
Begun blogging for Uptake, a travel aggregate site. It's nice to get paid (a little bit) for blogging.
Started a review blog that complements my travel blog.
I'm also writing for Midwest Parents. A group blog is an interesting thing to work with as well.
Joined two other Ning sites, and jumped in with both feet. I was one of the first 200 members of Twittermoms, a Ning group with 6000+ members now. It made my day to be named Twittermom of the Week a few months ago.
I've also grown fond of Twitter, as my twitter grade shows. I've found Twitter to be useful for throwing out those tidbits that I just want to tell someone, as well as for gathering information. Twitter has been useful in a variety of ways.

What do I like about blogging?

Sharing information with other people. I'm not a this-is-what's-on-my-mind-today kind of blogger. My blogging is primarily to inform about things with which I have experience, like taking a 3800-mile, 17-day road trip with four young children in December and January.
Making a little money. Not much, granted, but enough to pay for hosting fees and Flickr memberships.
Having a written record. Since much of what I write is experiences with my kids, we'll have a permanent record of our adventures.

Have I found other blogs to read?

Um, yeah. I currently have 254 blogs on my RSS reader. . .

Do I comment on others' blogs?

Yes, daily. I don't comment on everything I read, but I do comment on things that strike me as interesting or useful. As a blogger, I enjoy getting comments, and I like being part of the blogging conversation. A lot of networking has been done through comments.

I guess I'm walking proof that the 23 things were useful. I came, I learned, I put into practice.

And I'm excited to learn a whole lot of new Things!

Another Thing . . . or more accurately, Another try at some Things

2008-03-09T12:05:00.000-07:00

In the Flickr Thing, I got really frustrated that I couldn't get my Flickr Photos to go into Wordpress. I've been cutting and pasting code from Photobucket for a while, but today I ran into a glitch with that. (It was due to a new camera and a new method of uploading and had absolutely nothing to do with user error, I assure you.)

We took our kids on an outing yesterday and I actually had a lot of photos that I wanted to include in the post about the Firefighters Museum. I was then met with some challenges. 1) Did I want to have 18 photos lined up vertically at the bottom of the post? 2) I uploaded the photos to Flickr, but I couldn't find a way to resize them, nor code to add them to my existing post. 3) I figured out Flickr's "blog this" feature, but that made a separate blog post for each photo and muddied up my "recent posts" listing.

The answer: a slideshow, which I had learned about in the earlier Things and wasn't as difficult or scary as I thought it would be. But how to do it?

I put the photos in a "set" in Flickr and could view a slideshow there, but I couldn't find a way to embed that into my post. Through some help screens in Flickr, I found Flickrslidr and made a nice slideshow, but when I put it into Wordpress, the code was stripped out. So I turned to the Wordpress FAQ's, where I found links to three slide programs that will work with Wordpress. Since my photos were already in Flickr, I chose www.slide.com because it would grab my Flickr pics. Then, to my delight, I found that it would also make a slideshow of that particular set, and that I could customize the size so it would fit appropriately into my posts. The code was simple to embed in Wordpress, and it worked like a charm.

So I did it! I found a real-world application for some of the Things, and got it to do exactly what I wanted.

Now I just have to remember how to do it again next time.

The End . . . or is it The Beginning? (Thing 23)

2008-03-07T12:41:00.000-08:00

Overall, this was a very good experience. I learned a little more about some things I'd tried before. I tried some alternatives to things I was comfortable with. I looked at some things I'd heard of yet not tried before. I heard of some things that I didn't know I needed to know about. And once in a while, I found that I wasn't as far behind the world of Web 2.0 as I thought.

There was frustration--sometimes the instructions were unclear (to me, anyway) and sometimes too specific. That's life, and something we have to get around.

In a perfect world, it would have been nice to have feedback from someone "in charge." It was nice to get occasional comments from fellow Thingers, but a note or two now and then from those "teaching" the course would have been useful to let us know if we were on the right track, or that our frustrations were being heard. Alternately, a centralized help or discussion board, read by leaders and learners alike, would have been good for finding answers to our problems. I realize there were comments at the bottom of each Thing, but again, I wondered if anyone was reading them. So, I guess my best suggestion would be to provide more feedback to the learners as they go along.

I enjoyed reading others' blogs. Early on, I added some that looked interesting to my Bloglines account, and I haven't been disappointed. This is probably the most "networking" I've gotten out of this exercise.

I would definitely do another program like this in the future. Learning from my own home whenever I can squeeze in the time is the best thing at this point in my life.

Thanks to all who put a lot of time and resources into this project. I'm glad I had the opportunity to participate.

Staying the Course (Thing 22)

2008-03-07T12:25:00.000-08:00

I think the RSS aggregator will be my biggest tool in keeping up. I've got a lot of feeds on there now, but they don't all have new information every day, so it doesn't take much time to read the new articles.

As for keeping up with my 23Things blog, I don't know that I'll do that. While I'll continue to learn, I don't necessarily feel that I need to write about it. I'm a reader and love to learn new things, but if I feel I have to write about it, I'll see it as a chore and be less likely to try new things.

I'm certain I'll play around with some of the Things more in the future. Photo sites, slideshows, and Youtube come to mind. And who can say what else?

I agree that it's good to try to keep up with the new things, and I'll do my best.

Socializing in Web 2.0 (Thing 20)

2008-03-07T12:15:00.000-08:00

It seems that there are a lot of social networks available. When I searched on some things that I would find interesting, I was surprised to see groups with two or three members in them. I think the groups may either thrive or starve. It takes a good group of people, who actually share with each other, to keep a group going.

I suppose the Yahoo! Groups also fall under this category. I've been involved in a Yahoo group of friends for over a year now. We e-mail back and forth every day, share photos, etc. The page layouts aren't quite as sophisticated as some of the ones listed in this Thing, but it's content-rich.

Again, it comes down to time. Do I want to go looking for more groups to join according to my interests? It's good to know they're out there, and maybe someday I'll look again.

No, this isn't Star Wars (Thing 19)

2008-03-07T11:30:00.000-08:00

For some reason, the word "podcast" always makes me think of Star Wars. I'm not sure why, but it's an association I have a hard time dismissing.

I've subscribed to podcasts in the past; there's a segment on WCCO that I like to listen to but rarely catch live. So I subscribed to the podcast, and found . . . that unlike glancing through a list of feeds, it takes a lot of time to listen to a podcast. So I would see the list of topics, and think, "Wow! That looks interesting. Maybe I'll listen to it someday." And someday never came. So while I don't doubt that there are interesting and/or useful podcasts available, I don't think it's something I'd be inclined to take the time to do unless it was something I was very specifically interested in (like the feed of my husband's parents when they were interviewed on the radio).

I looked at some podcast directories as well as the library and Minnesota ones listed. I was disappointed that it took a lot of time to load the podcast of Wanda Erickson but found it to be interesting once it had finished loading. Like so many Web 2.0 things, the availability of resources and Internet speeds may affect usability.

For all the world to see (Thing 18)

2008-03-07T10:51:00.000-08:00

I chose to search on carseat safety, which is a topic near and dear to my heart. I am trained as a Child Passenger Safety Technician, and I've previously seen some of the videos that popped up with my "carseat" search, but this one was a good one I hadn't seen before.

I also like how this one (below) has several short segments that relate to each other--the difference between a forward-facing and a rear-facing child safety seat, for instance. It's very compelling in showing the advantages of keeping children rear-facing in their carseats as long as possible. (If you don't believe me, look at the difference in the crash tests for forward-facing and rear-facing seats.)

And the next one is very nicely made, providing accurate information along with compelling footage:

I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to embed the videos into the blog. Although it might take some time to sift through the videos to find ones with good content, it would not be difficult to recommend them to patrons or students via a website by embedding them. Recording book talks on Youtube (or embedding ones that others have done) could be another library application.

The "related videos" section is helpful. I could get lost going from one to another, but it's useful to be able to see related content.

Finding Friends Online--Thing 21

2008-03-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

I had a Myspace page once upon a time. I even had the username and password written down. But now I can't log in; I get nothing but error messages. I used the Myspace page exactly . . . once or twice. Now and then I still get a message from some stranger wanting to be my friend even though there was never enough info on my page for a person to know if they'd want to be my friend or not. I thought of creating a new account, but why have two that sit idle. Maybe when my kids are older I'll jump back in; I've heard of parents joining the social networks and requesting to be their kids' "friends" so they can keep an eye on things in cyberspace with their kids.

My first thought about the library websites was, "They're really grasping at straws to get the teens involved in the library." But then I looked at some of the comments that had been left, the "thanks for giving me the add" remarks, and I wondered if a teen might make a friend of the library via its social network just as easily as walking into the library and finding a place of comfort.

Both the Denver and Hennepin County pages are set up similarly; I suppose the templates don't allow a lot of differentiation. They both have a lot of information available about events that teens might be interested in.

I wonder how their users find the site. Do they promote it in-library? Do kids just happen upon it? Might there be teens who specifically look for their library to have a Myspace or Facebook page?

Regardless of the benefits of having such a page, it will probably often come down to the fact that it takes resources (mainly time) to maintain them, and many libraries don't have the resources to be adding additional tasks to their job list. If a social networking site becomes a priority, something else may have to give. Do we reach out to teens and tweens at the expense of senior citizens or young children? This is a difficult question, as always.

Ahoy, matey! Thing 15

2008-03-06T13:33:00.000-08:00

The video of the Info Island made no sense to me. I'd be lost on that island for sure. I suppose I should have delved into it further, but I chose instead to look at the pirate game.

The puzzle pirates game was interesting. I liked the tetris-like puzzles as I played them with my 4- and 5-year old children. I can see how a person could spend a lot of time gaining status, so I am choosing to personally keep a distance from these games.

I have a question about the computer resources required for online games. It took something 45 minutes to download onto my computer in order to play the puzzle pirates. If one wants to play on another computer, do you have to re-download everything? How do libraries handle downloads in general, even if they're activex controls, etc.?

2008-03-06T13:00:00.000-08:00

Wow! For the first 16 things, our instructions were to "play around with this" or "see what you can do with this" or "try one or two of these 12 things." Now, suddenly, we're given specific things to search for and lengths of time to keep track of them, and the number of people to e-mail them to? This kind of guidance would have been more helpful at the beginning of the Things. Now that I'm used to going through this somewhat blindly, I'm not so happy to have to do such specific searches. I'm sure I could come up with something interesting to look at in each of these databases without being told what to search for.

I couldn't add the Gale feed in Bloglines, so I added the XML feed to another aggregator.

I suppose the ability to set up web pages would be good for directing students in their research.

Being able to e-mail results of searches to myself is a useful tool I have used before.

Sometimes it's easy to forget about ELM. I forget that the Star-Tribune is on there and instead go directly to the Star-Trib website to look for articles, and so on.

I am getting really really tired of having to create an account (or five) for every Thing, especially if they're not sites I'm likely to return to in the future.

Thing 16--Student 2.0 tools

2008-03-06T12:47:00.000-08:00

Both of these tools look like they would be useful for students. In some ways, they remind me of the research guides we got in high school (back in the dark days of paper Readers' Guides and typewritten papers), but with the added benefit of a personalized timeline.

What could make these even more useful would be the ability to check off the parts that you've completed. Sometimes I get ambitious and do a lot of steps at once; it would be nice to mark them off to show my progress, and perhaps readjust the timeline. They also seem to be limited to research papers or similar projects. Thus, I was unable to tweak it enough to use it as a timeline for completing my 23Things.

It seems that requiring students to go through these steps would very useful in teaching them research and writing skills and in developing good habits. This is perhaps one of the most useful Things yet.

LibraryThing, or Thing 14

2008-03-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

Now I'm starting to confuse myself. While I couldn't care less if people use the same tags as me, or like the same news articles, etc., I think it's really cool that I can see how many LibraryThing users have the same books as I do. I took strange enjoyment in being unique enough to be the first to have a book, and found it interesting to see which books that I thought would be popular had hardly any copies in others' libraries.

This would have been really nice when I was cataloging/inventorying our small parochial school's library a few years ago. It didn't take me long at all to add 98 books to my library. I like the display option that allows comments, as I plan to use this field to indicate which books I've read. I probably won't use LibraryThing as a tool to catalog the books that I own, but it will be useful in keeping track of books I've read, finding books by authors I like, and so on.

I think the review section is interesting. It is so easy yet so difficult to find reviews of anything these days. For electronics, I head to Epinions and Cnet. And then to Amazon. Or are there good reviews in the shopping comparison sites or Circuit City? For books and toys, there's the same dilemma. There are so many review sites available that it's hard to know where to start if you really want to delve into reviews on a product.

I also found the book swap links to be helpful. I've sold books on Ebay and to the local used bookstore, but it's nice to know of some other book swap services.

I'm not sure of the library applications--currently a lot of catalogs have tools for listing new books or bestsellers in the collection. Perhaps a community or library could start its own book-swap site; people could enter the books they have and trade with one another?

Off to set up a link to my library. I was surprised that the best match of other LibraryThing users was only 3 of the same books that I have.

To be (productive) or not to be (productive)--Thing 13

2008-03-06T10:45:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure that most of these tools aid in productivity. Sure, you can set up your iGoogle page and have all kinds of neat stuff on it. The gadgets are fun. Several months ago, I organized mine very nicely with tabs like Home--Tools--Weather--Bookmarks--Feeds--News--Shopping. I used it for a while and then took it off my homepage link. I think load time had something to do with it. Perhaps I'll give it a try again, as there are some things on there that could be useful all in one place.

Something similar that I do use frequently are the "toolbars" that one can download into a browser. I have (and use) toolbars for Google, Stumbleupon, The Weather Channel, Upromise, Yahoo, and more. These allow one-click access to websites, search boxes, shopping discount reminders, and more. Because they don't take any extra time to load and are out of the way of my normal pages, I like these better than the other site-type productivity tools.

The Zamzar document converter could be really useful. Our board recently had trouble with a Works to Word conversion and this would have been a nice tool to use.

In the past, I also used Yahoo's calendar. It had the benefit of being accessible from any computer, but it seemed to take a lot of time to enter things into it. A neat tool that we (my husband and I) have discovered for sharing our Outlook calendars on two computers is a little product from 4team called ShareCalendar. It's the only way we found to share our calendars without an Exchange server, and it's been really effective. An online calendar would have been our next option, but it's much easier to use our Outlook calendars since we also use Outlook for our e-mail and contacts.

Again, these things are interesting to know about, but I don't know how useful they'll be. If I needed to accomplish something specific, I'd look for these types of tools, but I likely wouldn't use the majority of them.

What are all these funny-sounding things? Thing 12

2008-03-06T10:26:00.000-08:00

I'm just a wee bit proud that I discovered some of these things before I got to this Thing. I've been putting a lot of time into my Travels with Children blog lately (sorry to keep mentioning it, but it's something that's near and dear to my heart) and as a result, have been looking at ways of increasing its readership (somewhat successfully, I'm happy to say). So, in reading and learning more about the wide world of blogging, I came across Stumbleupon, Reddit, and Digg.

I'll admit that I wasn't a fan of the Reddit and Digg type sites. I think I have the same reaction as I do when the news magazines publish what their top 5 online stories of the past week were. I really don't care what the rest of the world is interested in.

Stumbleupon, however, is another matter. I really like this one. Stumbleupon allows you to give a "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" for any site you visit; if you're inclined, you can write a more in-depth review of the site. When you register for Stumbleupon, you tell it what categories you're interested in. Movies? Agriculture? Gardening? Computers? Travel? Children? and so on. Then, when you've got a few seconds, you can click on the Stumbleupon button and get a "random" site to pop up, random in the sense that it's based on the categories you've chosen, what you've thumbs-upped or -downed previously, and how many other people have thumbs-upped the site. I use Stumbleupon when I have a few extra seconds--during a commercial break on TV, while I'm waiting for something else to load, etc. I've come across some interesting sites, ranging from blogs to author sites to a geography quiz that my son loves. You can also set up a network like in Technorati or other similar sites and share your liked and disliked sites with others. I'm not so much a part of the social side of things, but I do like Stumbleupon for finding new and interesting sites.

Thing 11--Tags and social bookmarking

2008-03-06T10:15:00.000-08:00

Regarding tags: I have a hard time with tags. Perhaps it's because I like controlled language. I'm afraid that if I start tagging things, I won't remember what tags I've used before, and therefore they won't be of much use to me. This is one reason I prefer Wordpress to Blogspot for my other blog; in Wordpress I can set up hierarchical categories, whereas in Blogspot I can only use labels or tags. (Wordpress has the advantage of allowing categories and tags so I have even more flexibility.) Tags in bookmarks don't help me that much because I already have my bookmarks set up in folders.

Regarding del.icio.us: When I first looked at this site, I didn't like it, but I thought I'd try it for a few days and see if I changed my mind. I still am not a fan. For me, it took a lot of time to add bookmarks to it, think of tags, and switch between the windows to get back to what I was doing. I prefer to just use my bookmarks in Internet Explorer. If I know I'll be using another computer and will need my bookmarks, I upload them to iGoogle so I have access to them. Perhaps del.icio.us would be useful if I were doing research on a particular topic, or if I often used shared computers. Maybe.

Revisiting some Things

2008-03-06T10:12:00.000-08:00

I found a new photo editing site that I really like: www.picnik.com. With Picnik, it's easy to edit colors, add some interesting effects, and crop a photo to the perfect size for an avatar or social networking site. Once you've transformed a photo, you can upload it to Flickr or Photobucket or other sites, save it to your computer, or e-mail it to friends. I really like the e-mail feature because it shows the picture in the text of the message rather than as an attachment or link to be clicked upon.

Wiki-wiki-wiki (Thing 10)

2008-02-10T19:00:00.000-08:00

The Commoncraft on wikis was informative, a good primer. My only previous wiki experience was with Wikipedia entries I came across occasionally in Google searches.

The first thing that popped into my head when I watched the Wiki video was this: I wish they would have had Wikis in 1996 when my friend and I co-wrote "BC for Dummies." After our first year of teaching, we wrote a manual for the next year's newbies that told them of things like how long it really took to get that first paycheck, which items were not-to-miss in the school cafeteria, and who to talk to to get things fixed quickly. We put a lot of effort into it, but once it was "published" (photocopied), it was difficult to keep up-to-date. Yet it was a good enough resource that veteran teachers wanted to get their hands on a copy of it. A wiki would have allowed hints and tricks to be shared by anyone, and anyone could easily have benefited from it.

After that nostalgic trip, I took a look at some real wikis.

The first wiki I took a look at was Library Success. Right away, I noticed a problem--a lot of the information, particularly about conferences, is outdated. There seem to be a lot of phrases like "2006 SLA Annual conference will be held in Baltimore, MD, June 2006." As a potential user of a wiki, that would throw up red flags for me right away. I suppose it's because everyone is a writer but there are no editors to check up on things, but when I visit a website with outdated information, I'm always hesitant to believe much of what it says.

On the other hand, the section on "Social Networking Software" includes links to various libraries that are using such software. I can see where this would be useful, as anyone using these types of applications could add their name to the list.

The Blogging Libraries wiki led me to this interesting blog, which is exploring some of the same things we are in 23Things: http://newtrierlibrary.blogspot.com/ Their header: Let's begin a discussion of powerful web tools that may change the way we teach and learn.

I looked at several wikis, including the 23Things and MN150 wikis, but I really didn't see that I had anything useful to add, so I just played around with the Meta Sandbox.

I think wikis can be useful, but unless I happen upon one that I'm knowledgeable enough to add to, or am a member of a group creating one, I think they're going to be a mostly "read-only" endeavor for me.

Edited a few minutes later: I did a quick Google search on "travel wiki" and found http://wikitravel.org. I went down through the levels until I found something I was familiar with, and I edited the entry on New Ulm to remove three restaurants that are now closed. http://wikitravel.org/en/New_Ulm_%28Minnesota%29#Eat I think the tea room is now closed as well but I only took off the ones I was sure about. I can see a site like this being useful, but there are a lot of flashier, more popular sites, like TripAdvisor that provide similar information and allow user reviews to be shown rather than having individuals edit the posts.

Online Collabor-what? (Thing 9)

2008-02-10T18:41:00.000-08:00

Well, this Thing actually looks like it has real-life use potential! As secretary for our library board, I've sent minutes and other documents as attachments, but invariably one or two members couldn't open them. Sometimes it would work if I sent them again individually instead of to the list, but it was frustrating and time-consuming to send them, learn that they hadn't worked, try to re-send them, and so on.

I looked at both Zoho and Google Docs and tried Google Docs for a few reasons.

It seemed easier to use, meaning I could look at the screen and figure out how to upload a document, invite people, edit, and so on. Zoho's screen had a lot of stuff on it and it overwhelmed me. I figured that if it wasn't user-friendly for me, it wouldn't be user-friendly for others.
I already have mailing lists set up in Google so I didn't have to type in a bunch of e-mail addresses again.

I actually pulled in my entire library board to help with this Thing. I put up a Word document that is a work-in-progress and invited them all to be collaborators on it, and offered this up as a possibility for future sharing of information if it turns out to be easy to use. I'll post back later if I get any feedback.

Go forth and be creative. (Thing 8)

2008-02-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

When I first looked at the possibilities in this Thing, several of them seemed to be pretty showy. It reminded me of being in college, with my tiny little 2/40 Mac Classic and its dot-matrix printer that was so COOL because of all the fonts it had available. So, naturally, I felt I had to use as many of those fonts as possible, until I learned a thing or two about presentation design. Taking all of the fun things and actually making them useful and effective can be a trick.

I'm on some Internet bulletin boards and I've seen a lot of slideshows in people's "signatures," and now I know how easy they are to create. I might have to change my boring little text-only siggy to something more exciting. Creating a slideshow on Picture Trail was amazingly easy. My pictures uploaded very quickly, I chose the pictures from my album and a presentation style I wanted, and voila! I had the code in hand. Let's see if it works: (I don't quite trust the auto-code yet.)

The online presentations could be useful in many ways. I was recently part of a church committee where we had to share information and not everyone could open attachments in e-mail, so I ended up copying and pasting text into messages, which was less than ideal. Putting it in an online presentation would have been a good alternative. On the other hand, I wouldn't rely solely on it for a face-to-face presentation because I never trust that there's a good Internet connection where I'm going. If there's a way to create it online and then save a copy to my computer, that would be very useful. Perhaps that functionality is there and I missed it.

Similar to the database tool (and maybe it will be coming up in a future Thing) is the "My Maps" feature of Google maps. I'm in the process of creating maps of children's museum and science museum locations. I can overlay them, and when we're looking for a vacation spot, I can see where they are at a glance to get more bang for our membership buck. Here are the children's museums where we have membership reciprocity. Here's a link in case the preview doesn't load: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=102450997014433187097.0004455cd6b4e73c6d166&ll=38.410558,-96.503906&spn=28.26142,82.265625&z=4&om=0

View Larger Map

Something like this will be useful on my Travels with Children blog. (Yes, another shameless plug. You really ought to take a peek, dear reader.) ;-) I can see how a database could also be useful. Once I've done the legwork to compile information, I'd enjoy being able to share it with others.

In the library, it might be possible to have a database where users could enter their book requests, or program ideas, possibly even online sign-up for special events. Having something available in a web-based format rather than requiring each user to have the same program in order to share seems to be very useful.

Talk to Me! (but not face to face.) Thing 7, Web Communication tools

2008-02-10T16:28:00.000-08:00

Thoughts about this Thing.

A lot of the e-mail productivity tools can be double-edged swords. They're pretty useful once you set them up, but they take time to set up. If I actually take the time to set my spam filters or Outlook rules, or to set up mailing lists, they do save time in the long run.
Maybe I'm showing my age, but IM's make me a little nervous. The lag in time always seems odd to me. I'm furiously typing away while someone's on the other end waiting for me to finish. Then I wait while they type their answer, wondering if they're still there (depending on the interface used). I've used "live chat" customer service forums and have found them to be frustrating because the time is not as "live" as I wish it would be. In libraries that use IM services, do they have someone manning the line full-time? Where does it fall in the realm of "what to do first"? E-mails can be answered at a convenient time, but people who want to IM need a reply right now. The article on this topic is interesting and considers some of these same drawbacks.
I can see SMS being useful for things like receiving library notices. My local library is still trying to figure out how to send my notices via e-mail, so although I think a lot of these tools have uses in certain circumstances, in a lot of areas we need to take smaller steps and not spend too much time catering to our young population at the expense of our older patrons who may not be familiar or comfortable with these technologies.
Web conferencing looks like it would solve a lot of the time and financial difficulties of professional development. Being able to record and watch later, and not having to travel to far-off locales could be really helpful. It could be especially useful for libraries in greater Minnesota, which are farther apart, and which generally have very small staffs making it difficult to take time away from the library for workshops.

I joined the 23things Google group. This looks very familiar to a Yahoo group I'm a member of. There are 10 of us in that group, and we send 50-100 messages between us daily. We have databases set up--addresses, birthdays, etc., and sections for file-sharing and photos. The Google Librarian group looks utterly useless. There are hardly any messages there and most of them are spam. A group is only as good as its users make it, so merely setting up a group doesn't make it successful. It takes some intensive work on the part of a few to get its momentum going. While the 23things group is interesting as far as seeing what's available, there are so many different things to join in these Things that we're being spread pretty thin as to where to put any comments we might have.

Online Image Generators. Or, I've done too many Things today and can't think of any more catchy titles.

2008-01-31T17:28:00.000-08:00

I didn't look at the whole list of 23Things before I started this venture. It seems that as I go down the list, the things are getting to be less useful in the real world. It's nice to know these things are possible, but how much time should one spend on these "extras"?

In the real world, would you say, "Gee, I need to make a poster/picture/logo. Let me go online and see if there are some cool tools that I can use?" Or would you just go to Word, Publisher, or another program that you're well-versed in and patch something together even though it's not the newest or coolest idea ever seen?

I suppose there will be times when we'll want to show that we're with the times and can do some cool stuff. But to do them just for the sake of saying we can seems to be rather useless. It reminds me a little of classrooms 15-20 years ago where we said we had to have a computer in ever classroom even though many teachers had no idea what to do with those computers. So they came up with things to do on the computer, even though the wasn't as real as it might have been without the computer.

On the other hand, if the computers had not been put in the classrooms, the better technology uses that we have now would probably not have come about. So maybe all these "fun" things will end up being useful in the future. Only time will tell.

Off to publish this post and see where my "no peanuts" lunchbag showed up when I sent it directly from ImageChef. My little food allergy guy will think that's pretty cool.

It didn't automatically post, so I'm back to cutting and pasting code.

More Flickr Fun. Or is it?

2008-01-31T16:29:00.000-08:00

After my last "thing" was pretty unsuccessful, I'm hesitant to continue on with Flickr, but I'll give it a whirl. If I don't try, I can't succeed, so I might as well at least try a little.

The color generator is kind of interesting, but I don't know how useful it is. Since this is a photo sharing site, are we allowed to copy others' photos and use them? (I had thought the color thing could pull up some interesting avatar pictures, but I don't want to steal someone else's work.) What are the rules for these things that are posted for all the world to see, and can be easily copied?

Next stop, the BigHugeLabs Framer. This is actually kind of interesting, but I hit another brick wall. This time, my Flickr account was easily linked and the program worked well with the Flickr photos. But the picture I really wanted to try was in my Photobucket account, and it failed to upload or connect or whatever it has to do. I really don't want to be uploading photos to multiple sites, so it would be nice if I could get one to work consistently for several different purposes.

I can see the palette generator being useful with scrapbooking, to choose a theme and/or background papers to use. I've always been doing this manually, but I'm sure I'm missing some good color combinations.

The Spell with Flickr thing is neat. I can think of some fun things to do with it, but for now I'll just show off this:

Fun, yes. Useful, maybe? It's good to be aware that these things are out there, because it seems that too often I'm thinking, "There should be a way to do this." Now I'll know a few more of the possibilities.

Flickr and Dropshots and Photobucket, Oh My!

2008-01-31T14:30:00.000-08:00

Online photo sharing is not new to me. My brother introduced me to Dropshots.com several years ago and it's what our family uses to share photos. That site is password protected, and I paid for a "premium" account, so I've got a lot of pictures there. I've found that I'm using it less and less, however, as either no one's looking at my photos, or they just don't leave comments. I don't like putting things out there if no one's going to look at them. On the other hand, my sister-in-law's family has a great network and they leave lots of feedback for each other. It's more fun that way.

I also use Photobucket.com for public posts, such as Internet message boards and my Travels with Children blog. It is not password-protected, includes no identifying information, and I've tried really hard to keep all the pictures there very anonymous, including not showing my kids' faces in any photos.

I don't have qualms about using the Internet for most anything, but I really do try to protect our privacy, especially that of our children. They have enough to worry about without their mom putting pictures of them on the Internet for all the world to see, steal, and alter.

Any photos I post to my Flickr account will also be very anonymous. If I can get Flickr to integrate with either Blogger or Wordpress, I'll try it out for adding blog photos, but for now, Photobucket works well so I'm not too eager to switch horses midstream. I do like Flickr's easy tag-adding but that's the only real benefit I've seen to it compared to the other sites I've used.

Am I the only one who's just a little disconcerted about the amount of detail available about my photos? Not only is the type of camera shown, but the aperture, date and time, and resolution. I suppose for serious photographers this information is relevant, but for my snapshot life I'd rather have an option to repress that information.

Hey, at least Blogger tries to brighten my spirits.

2008-01-31T14:27:00.001-08:00

My frustration post without the flickr pictures was met with "Your blog post published successfully!"

At least I accomplished something. For about 2 seconds.

This post's response to the "publish" button was. ERROR: Your request could not be processed. Please try again.

Will I ever complete Thing4? I'm not so sure at this point.

Flickr. It's not everything I wished it would be.

2008-01-31T14:06:00.000-08:00

First of all, the assignment was to take pictures, add them to Flickr, tag them appropriately, and add them to the blog. If you see photos below, I was successful at that part.

OK, so you don't see them yet, do you? The "automated" way of setting up the Blogger account in Flickr makes no sense.

So, here's the process:
Head to google.com and if you aren't already logged in you'll be asked to do so.
On the page you end up on, you need to "Grant Access" to flickr.com.
Return to Flickr, finish setting things up

Yeah, that makes no sense. I'm logged into google but I don't know what page I'm supposed to end up on, or how to grant access. Grrrrrrr.

Let's try this the old-fashioned way, by copying and pasting the url's of the photos from Flickr into the photo-adding tool in Blogger.

As you see, it put some blank pictures in my post, and it didn't put them where I wanted them, just above this post.

Time to get really ancient and attempt it using html.

That's not working either.

Let's try a picture from Photobucket.

As you can see that one worked. Photobucket provides several different lines of code, which are easily copied and pasted into a post. It looks like the Flickr-Google-Blogger thing would be great. If it worked.

If anyone has tips on getting it to work (like which page exactly I'm supposed to end up on, and how to grant access to it), a comment to this post would be much appreciated.

Until then, I remain frustrated.

Feed me!

2008-01-30T13:24:00.000-08:00

I've actually used RSS feeds before, using Google reader. I came up with a nice list of feeds that I liked, subscribed to them, and . . . quickly got so far behind at reading and listening that I gave up on it.

So far Bloglines seems a little simpler to use. I've added it as a home page so we'll see if I can keep up with it. I added some of the other 23things blogs that look interesting; it will definitely be easier to track new posts this way than to check them each individually.

I was somewhat surprised that two of the "top 50" on bloglines today were library-related. Could it be because there are lots of us looking for this type of blog for 23Things?

In the past, most of the things I've wanted to add as feeds were things I came across by accident. With a lot of them, I had the option of choosing a feed or a daily e-mail, and I guess I'm old-fashioned (or just old?) enough that I still prefer a lot of things to come directly to my inbox.

I'll try the feeds again; maybe it will work out better for me the second time around.

Top 3 reasons I'm participating in 23Things

2008-01-30T12:33:00.000-08:00

Even though I have an MLS, I've been out of the workforce for seven years and a lot has passed me by. This is a chance to catch up with some of it.
I'm a trustee on a library board, and I feel that it's important in that role to be as knowledgeable about libraries as I can be, including what we might see in the future.
I love to learn, and at this point in my life it's a lot easier to learn from my living room than to attend workshops and classes.

Where to find the time?

2008-01-30T12:17:00.000-08:00

For a long time, I've held the belief that we're all given the same amount of time in a day; what we choose to do with it is up to us. So I don't buy arguments of "I didn't have time to do that." More accurately, one should say, "I didn't take (or make) time to do that."

There's an old saying that if you want to get something done, ask a busy person to do it. There were days when I thought I was busy. Now, caring for four young children and helping my husband with the farm while serving on library boards, volunteer organizations, and church groups and keeping track of school schedules has made my life downright hectic. Are there other things I could be doing during this time? Of course! But I have chosen, for the benefit of the library system in which I am a trustee, to learn as much as I can. Perhaps it's easier for me than for other trustees since I have a library background, but I think anyone who is interested could find the time to do these 23 things, at least on a cursory basis.

I want to (and may still do it) send a link to the Stephen Abram's video to my fellow board members and the library staff in our system. In that segment, less that 7 minutes, there's a good start on what this is and why it's important. Another ten minutes spent reading the OCLC Web 2.0 articles provided even more information about what Web 2.0 is and why it's important to libraries. So, even if you don't fully want to participate in this program by writing the blog entries, you could "audit" Thing 2 in about 17 minutes and have just a start on thinking about the future in our libraries.

Those brief readings certainly have my wheels turning.

On Avatars, Privacy, and other Stuff

2008-01-28T19:53:00.000-08:00

I'm rebelling against the suggestion to use the Yahoo avatars in Thing 1. I've used avatars in several other sites, and they've been a personal icon, something I've chosen on my own.

While the Yahoo avatars are nice little virtual paper dolls to dress, I'm going back to using a picture from my personal collection. It's a much better descriptor of me at this time.

I also wanted to write a little bit about the concept of blogs in general. I still find it odd that people will pour out their hearts and souls to the entire world. Maybe this is what some intend to do, but I suspect that a good many bloggers think "no one is going to read this except my close friends and family" and they blog away, never knowing the strangers who are reading about their world.

In my online activities, I've tried to be very careful to keep myself anonymous. I believe that associating myself with SMILE in this forum is as close as I've come to revealing my location. I don't post pictures of my kids' faces, nor do I post their names, and I'm pretty careful about what information I reveal about myself as well.

As far as other Stuff, I sincerely hope we have a snow (cold?) day tomorrow. C'mon, this is Minnesota and it's the end of January. Don't we deserve a day off by now?

Blog, blog, blog . . .

2008-01-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

OK, I'll admit it. I like to play around with various programs just to see how they work. So for this, using Blogger to set up the blog gave me a good chance to play around with a new program.

I'm already pretty familiar with Wordpress; I've been using it with my Travels with Children blog for a while now. After an evening of exploring the Blogger menus, here's what I think.

Right away, I missed built-in statistics in Blogger. Wordpress puts these together automatically. On the other hand, I added Sitemeter easily enough to my Blogger writings, but apparently in Wordpress I'm using on of the templates where Sitemeter just doesn't work, for whatever reasons. Wish I would have known that before I spent a half hour adding the html.

Wordpress wins for adding web links to a page. I can get a basic url to show in Blogger, but to have the title show as a hotlink I had to pull out my old manual html skills.

Wordpress also has a lot more template style options available, although you can play with the colors in Blogger to tweak a template a little more. Each has some interesting things that you can add; I like the poll option in Blogger but it's easier to move objects around in Wordpress.

In Wordpress, I can add various pages on different topics within the blog. If that's available in Blogger, I haven't found it yet. I also haven't explored Blogger's category structure yet. Wordpress allows levels of categories with "parents" and is very flexible in its category listings.

Overall, I'm more pleased with Wordpress at this point. Blogger seems good for a beginner or a straightforward blogger who just writes each day. Wordpress seems to be more organize-able. Perhaps I'll change my mind as I play with Blogger more, however.

Back to the world of technology...

2008-01-22T12:20:00.000-08:00

At one time, I was pretty tech-literate. I was in college just as e-mail came onto campus, and in library school in the early days of the Internet as we know it (remember Mosaic?). I went on to be a tech mentor in my school and was a network administrator. I could read Novell rights with the best of them.

And then life changed a little. My title changed from School Library Media Specialist to Stay-at-Home-Mom, and I'm happy to be here with my four little ones. I kept up with technology . . . or at least I thought I did.

Then I started hearing about wikis. And Flickr. And RSS. And some Delicious thing that had a lot of strange spaces in its spelling. I realized that technology was passing me by.

I did (barely) manage to keep my head above water. I've had a nice little blog for quite a while now. (Shameless plug for Travels with Children) I figured out RSS feeds, and just as soon figured out that I didn't really have time to read all the feeds I set up. I have online photo accounts, some public, some private, and I've tried to make an effort at "keeping up." Really, I have.

Perhaps my impetus for doing the 23Things project is a little different than that of others. I'm not doing this for my work. Or am I? I need to stay one step ahead of these little people I'm raising, because although this world of technology has so much to offer, from a mom's perspective, it's pretty scary to know the potentially harmful things that are out there. So I'm doing 23Things to keep up with technology so I can keep up with my kids.

And I hope to learn a few things for myself as well, at the ripe old age of 35. Perhaps you can teach an old-ish dog a few new tricks. Thanks for the opportunity!