The End of the Things

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

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

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

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?)

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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

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

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.?

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.