Thing 30: More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

I have been using my RSS reader very sporadically since the first round of 23 things. I have added a few blogs that I have gotten from co-workers and I have added all my co-workers more things on a stick blogs. I really have only organized my feeds into one group ( more things on a stick blogs) and have let the rest go all willy nilly on my reader. It does help me keep up with the more things on a stick group but really I don't check it enough for it to make a big difference. Honestly when I do get around to checking it, I usually just end up scanning and deleting. I have not used Delicious at all since the first round but I was a large fan of it then. I went over a few of the tools that were offered in this thing. I looked at the feed-my-inbox and if I were really to keep track and read my RSS follows on a regular basis, I think that this would be a tool that would come in handy. I don't like having to log into a ton of websites to see updates so this would help streamline that. I also checked out spokentext.net. I found this site to be extremely helpful but not necessarily for the reasons that it should have been. I am getting married in a week and a half (yikes!) and my brother (an ordained minister) have been going over the ceremony and everything. It has mostly been done over email because he is in the Navy and we don't get a chance to talk much. I was able to put a draft of the ceremony into spokentext to create a sound recording of it. It was a lot different and very helpful to hear the words and how they go together rather than just read them. I was very impressed. Another tool that I checked out was simpletracking.com. My husband-to-be is a shipping and receiving manager and this tool made me think of him and how if i were in that situation, this would be a very helpful asset. The last tool that I looked at was SPREED. I liked this one because I tend to read a little faster and it let me test how fast I could read. I was entertained.

Thing 29: Google Tools

I went through and looked at a few of the tools for this thing. I searched the Google Books and read a few pages in various books. I got into Frog and Toad and was a bit disappointed when I was unable to read the entire story. I understand that with copyright laws, they could not have the entire book on there but I do like the ability to search within the books to perhaps find a passage or quote in a particular item.
I also watched the videos and then downloaded Goolge Chrome. It is a new server still in Beta testing. I like it so far. I am a huge supporter of Firefox but also an avid Google user so I am torn as to what server to use. I like that with Google Chrome, it keeps track of all your most often visited sites and creates your homepage to reflect those sites. It might not be the best for privacy on a public computer but I think that for my home computer, this could be very beneficial. There is, of course, always the option to browse incognito and there would be no record of the sites you have visited. I think that I will have to download this onto my home computer and play around with it a bit to get used to what it has to offer and to see if I will have to make the switch permanent.
I also browsed the Patent Search tool. I thought that this was VERY neat. I found patents on a brine shrimp hatchery, swimming goggles, fishing lures, and weatherstripping for doors and windows. I was very impressed, I had no idea that this information was that readily available to the public and I am absolutely delighted that it is.
I learned about a few new tools in this thing and I hope that I can remember to use them when the time comes. I think that the Patent Search will become a good tool to use for reference. I can just imagine someone coming to the desk and wanting to know everything about a certain patent or product.

Thing 28: Customized Home Pages

I chose to try out the iGoogle service because I already use gmail and google calendar so it seemed like the logical choice for something that I hope to continue to use after I am done with this thing. I am a huge fan of Google and all the services that they offer. I thought that it was pretty easy to set up. I did it on my home computer and plan on using it on a daily basis. I added the weather and news features as well as movie times in my area. These are things that I check on a pretty regular basis so I thought that it made sense to be able to get easy access to them on my homepage when I first get onto the internet. I like the personalization that we can add and looking throught the gadgets and widgets there are some fun games and such that you can add. I chose not to add these to my homepage because they are not exactly the thing that I would like to check on or see when I first get onto the internet.

Thing 27: Twitter

So I finally joined this whole Twitter thing, I have been hearing about it all over the news. It seems that everyone is doing twitter so I was pretty excited to get to this thing. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I created my profile, added a picture and a few friends. I think that it is neat that I can go to one website and get updates not only on my friends but also on my favorite authors, bands, and other people that I find extremely interesting. I also like the fact that there are libraries as well with profiles. I think that it allows people in that area to befriend their library and get caught up on updates or events going on at the library. Its a great way for the library to get in touch with more people and to seem more up-to-date with technologies and what its users are using in their personal lives. It is great to see the library progressing and branching out to different mediums to get the message across and to get users into the doors of the library.
I tend to babble on and get kinda lost in what I am writing so sometimes it is hard to do this whole micro-blogging thing. I always want to say more to convey the right message but I guess I will just have to learn to be more concise. I think that this is also something that I could apply to my daily life, sometimes I think I can be long-winded. I tend to go off on tangents and lose my train of thought on what I am saying. Kinda like how all my blogs tend to turn out.
So in conclusion, I am now on twitter. You can follow me, my username is jabeans.

fringe

Thing 26: Join the 23 things Ning

I joined Ning in the 1st round of 23 things. The first time that I had an experience with it, I just browsed around and didn't do much to my page or add friends or anything. This second time around, I changed the appearance of my page, added a picture, added some friends, and commented on a friend's page. The only group that I joined in Ning was the 23 things group. I don't really see myself using Ning on a regular basis or really getting involved with it at all. To me, there are so many social networking groups that in order to be an active member in all of them, I would have to be on the computer all the time. I could see the forums being a useful thing for connecting with other librarians. I read a post someone had put up about recommendations of books for high school students. They wanted to know if anyone had any other websites that were useful. I could see these forums as a benefit for the workplace especially for smaller libraries that may only have one librarian and so no other way to connect and ask questions.

Thing 25: Blogger's Toolkit

I added the snow effect and the Picasso painting a day widgits to my blog. I also added one of those map things that tells me where the people that look at my blog are from. I am not sure if I installed it right because no one has looked at my blog yet. But I hope it works, we did this same thing when we created a wiki for our Teen Read Week and it was neat to see that for some strange reason, a lot of people in the UK were looking at our site. I am curious to see who will look at my blog but I am sure it will probably just be people in the program.
I am not much of a fan of clutter and it seemed like a lot of the things you could add would be just that. They seemed fun but unnecessary to me. I spent almost an hour and a half looking over all the widgets but honestly, I got bored and thought that there were much better ways to spend my time. Although, they seem fun and cool on blogs or whatever, they don't seem to have much importance to me in the library setting.
I was not as big of a fan of this thing as I have been of other ones. I did add a few things to my blog, but I wouldn't be surprised if I got sick of them and took them off in the future. I do really like the snow effect thing though, I wish the snow would pile up on the bottom of the screen, that would be a neat effect.