And, I'm done!

I’m still having trouble with the fact that a great deal of the so called emerging technology out there is not really necessary. Or maybe I should say, the ways in which the technology is being used is not necessary. Sure, it’s fun, I like making lists of the books I’ve read and tagging things and seeing what web pages people find interesting and/or useful. I like being able to take a picture of myself and have it Warholized or Hockneyized of Simpsonized, but it’s not even remotely necessary and I end up feeling kind of ashamed that I’m wasting time playing with web sites instead of, oh I don’t know, solving global conflict or balancing my checkbook.

I only have so much time in a day; do I really want to spend it cataloging every book I’ve ever read? Maybe, but I’m a very lazy person. I like Bloglines because it saves time. Instead of going to each of my favorite sites individually, I check Bloglines a couple times a day and can feel pretty confident that I am up to date on all the important library related news. And celebrity gossip.

I know it’s important to be aware of technology, and all of the 23 ½ things have the potential to be used in some very meaningful ways. It’s just a matter of adapting the technology to fit my life, not the other way around. Can Librarything or the dreaded Rollyo be used to make my job and life easier? If not, out they go.

I’m still not entirely sure which of the 23 ½ I will retain in my bag of tricks, but at the very least, I have a lot to choose from.

Audiobooks? or Odd-e-o Books?

I really wish I could download audiobooks. My home internet is really bad. I once tried to download an episode of a sitcom, and had to give up because the bandwidth is so low, estimated time was 21 hours. Lame-O.
At any rate, the checkout process in really easy. And since you can now have 50 items checked out, we don’t have to worry about people wanting to return downloads before the due date to get something else.
I checked out “And then there were none” by Agatha Christie. I’ll see when I get home if I can download it.

Later:
Yeah, no. didn't work.
Hmmm.

Podcast people.

Signing up for podcasts is so easy! I like Podcast alley better than podcast.net mostly because of the layout. Yahoo is pretty good, but come on! Podcast alley lists “Vegan Freak Radio” as one of their top 10 for the month how can you not want to check that out?!

I added the podcast for Wait wait, Don’t Tell Me to my bloglines account. After fretting about the fact that I couldn’t find the tab for podcasts, I realized you just add them like regular rss feeds. No special steps required. Much easier than say...trying to download audiobooks?

Et Tu You Tube?

I chose this video becuas it makes me laugh.



I also like this one:
It's an anti-speeding ad from Ireland. It shows a super graphic car crash so don't watch if that sort of thing bothers you. I saw it by accidnet when I was in Galway and it freaked me out for days. Very effective!

And the Winner is...

First of all, I had never even heard of about ½ of the sites on the Web 2.0 Awards list so already I’m learning something useful.
Healia is a really good one to know about. I had someone call the other day, asking about the health benefits (if any) of tannins in wine and tea. I eventually found her some good information but now, when I searched for “Tannins” in Helia’s search engine. Right off the bat the first article to come up is “Forget Resveratrol, Tannins Key to Heart Health from Wine: Scientific American.” The articles are authoritative, and you can narrow or broaden your search as needed. I’ll definitely be bookmarking this one.

What's up Google Docs?

I decided to try Google Docs because I already have a Google account so why not. I uploaded some documents from my work drive (the word documents of my Learning 2.0 posts) and lo and behold! When I got home I could access them! O.K. s that’s cool. But wait! I can share documents with people and not have to constantly cut and paste and copy and email back and forth. This? I’ll use.

ThinkFree I didn’t like. When I went to the home page there was an excel document that kind of flashed at me and made me wonder if it might cause seizures. And it does that thing where the mouse arrow moves really jerky across the page. I don’t like that. As for the content? I couldn’t say because I abandoned it at the homepage.

Writeboard looks pretty good. I like that each document is individual rather than 1 account with all of them. It keeps it completely separate from any of your other documents. Which could be a pain, but I kind of like it. The down side is, it emails you with your document name and password so if anyone got into your email, they could access your documents. With Google docs, you would need the account password, which is not in your email verification.

17 1/2

Facebook seems to be one of the best of the Social Networking sites. At least the ones of which I am aware. Myspace is skewed to young for me and some of the pages are shall we say “not office appropriate.” I never got into Friendster although most of my friends did. Facebook seems like a fairly respectable option. I haven’t seen anything too risqué. I signed up but I don’t know how often I will use it.

There seems to be a huge gap between the potential and the reality. Potentially, you could use Facebook to reach out to our customers and provide better service. Unfortunately, it seems like all people ever really do with it is “throw” things at each other. I predict I will use it for about a month and then lose interest. I’m more likely to use my LinkedIn account. It serves a similar purpose but is way more professional. Plus I don’t like the idea of being “poked” by a total stranger.