Thing 42: Music 2.0

I have used and continue to use Pandora.com on a regular basis. I have found that they are quite accurate with their similar artists and I enjoy the variety and mix that I get from them. I don't think that this internet radio is much of a threat to broadcasting because there are still many areas in the United States and throughout the world that do not have internet access. It is also a lot less expensive to buy a radio than it is to buy a computer and internet service. I do think that internet radio is having an effect on broadcasting just the same as the internet is having an effect on virtually everything. It is allowing and providing a more personalized and self-catered service that the broadcasting and other medias are trying to catch up with.
I also played around with the widget that I installed on my blog. I did not agree with the genres that they had tagged to some of their songs and stations. But overall, it was easy to use and easy to install on my blog.

Thing 41: Mashup your Life

I didn't like this thing very much. I like having my separate sites and having the ability to log into them on their own. I use my facebook and twitter sites for different purposes and have a different set of people that I am following or are friends with on either of the sites. I don't necessarily want this two sites to become one nor do I want some people from one to be included on my other site. I think that these are only efficient if you do a lot of instant messaging then this would be a way for you to streamline and do more messaging at once. I do not do instant messaging and do not really want everyone to know everything about me all the time. I will not use these in my everyday life nor do I think that they would be beneficial for the library. I think that something more along the lines of LibraryH3lp would work for the library better than these sites would.

Thing 40: Mashup the Web.

I am kinda confused about mashups they in theory make sense but some things just don't seem like they would be mashups to me. I looked at the booktour mashup, this was an example of something that didn't seem like it belonged and it wasn't the most useful. It seemed just like a database of book tours. I also looked at the lunchtour one and was kinda excited until I saw that there was nothing for our area and then it didn't seem nearly as cool. I was intrigued by the wheel of lunch and may just have to check out this site again. It was very cool but again I am confused as to why this is a mashup. I took a glance at the interestingness website and found some pretty cool pictures. Here is one of my favorites: http://interes.tingness.com/image/3507839564 you should check it out. In theory I thought that the last.fm+youtube sounded cool but it was not working when I tried to use it. The letmegoogleitforyou I thought was just kinda weird and didn't really have a point. I also tried to do the crime reports one and there was nothing for this area. I did the map mashup and made a map of places I have been:

Places I Have Been.

Make yours @ BigHugeLabs.com

I don't really see the use of these things in the library nor in my personal life. They just make things more confusing.

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

I could possibly see this as a tool to promote library events and to get the word out about past events but other than that, it seems to me to be more of an at home thing. I do like how easy it is to navigate and to create scrapbooks but at the same time, my scrapbook came out looking kinda like a teenager did it. I used Scrapblog and I liked it as w website. It was fairly simple to get my pictures from my photobucket account and very easy to get the scrapbook into my blog. Overall, it was an alright thing but not exactly my cup of tea.

Thing 38: Screencasting

I tried Screentoaster and I think that I made a screencast but when I went to watch it, it didn't go over so well. I let it buffer for 15 minutes before I gave up on teh lack of progress. I am not sure if I actually made a screencast, it was a very confusing site and I pressed the record a screencast button but then I was not really sure what to do. I opened a new internet file to mess around and show something but then when I went back to the Screentoast screen on my computer, it wasn't recording. It did say that I had 45 secs of recorded information but I was not able to see it do to the buffering to figure out what it was. I watched the Jing tutorial but choose not to download it. We have been having issues at our library with downloads and other things that have had viruses attached to them so I didn't want to risk it. I also took a look at Skitch and its tutorial, but it was waaay too girly for me and I was getting a bit annoyed at the continuous misspelled words so I didn't watch the whole thing. I took at look at what SELCO has done with screencasts and was very impressed. I think that this a great tool for the library and wouls be very helpful for patrons to see how to do things without being embarrassed to ask their questions or feel stupid. One of the databases that we provide at our library, NetLibrary would benefit a lot from this tool. If we were able to put a tutorial on our website on how to use NetLibrary, I think that a lot more people would use that service and be comfortable with it.

Thing 37: Photo Tales

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

I tried using Flickr since that is what I used before. I was unable to access the website, it was having trouble loading. I decided to start an account with PhotoBucket but in order to more forward with it, I need to get some pictures onto my account. I got some pictures that I had taken recently off of my facebook page and uploaded them onto photobucket. I tried to do the tiltshift thing because I thought that it sounded cool but when I actually went through it and created a miniature model picture, it wasn't nearly as cool as they played it to be. I then looked at One True Media and I used this to create a montage or slideshow of my pictures. I thought that this was pretty neat but very limited to the effects and things that you could do to your photos. I liked that they had music available to add to the montage and there was a large selection to choose from. I could see this being used to create a montage or slideshow of an event at the library to put on the library website and promote the different things that are going on. I could also see using this at home for photos from a vacation to share with friends and family but really for me, it is too much to do, I would rather just show people the actual pictures.

Thing 36: Comic Relief- Generate some fun

Being the huge nerd that I am, I loved the notepad generator and the cornell note taking generator. I got excited to make personalized stationary and could see how it could come in handy if I was still in school or needed such item. There seem to be a lot more things out there, mainly on the internet that allow people to easily organize and keep track of things. These definitely would have come in handy back in the day. I also loved the dewey decimal generator. Trying my full name, I was 189 Medieval Western Philosophy. When I put in just my first and last name, I was 079 Newspapers in other geographic areas. I was very amused by this generator and could see this become an almost addiction for the nerdy librarian in me. I also checked out the braille generator which i thought was neat. I looked at the XtraNormal website where they convert text to movie. I didn't want to create an account so I was not able to view my movie but it was interesting. I liked the ToonDoo and I think that I may just have to check that one out again and make soem cartoons from scratch. I am sure that I am the only one that will find them funny but I will be laughing out loud at my own jokes. I think that it would be neat for the library to have a weekly or daily cartoon created by the staff on the website. I think that patrons would like the personal touch and it would give them a way to get to know their librarians better. Other than this, I don't see how any of these generators could be used in the library but they are good for entertainment.