The 23rd Thing -- What does "Last to Know" Know Now?

So I'm on the 23rd thing. This has been an interesting experience and I really appreciate that PPLD and the Tech folks took the time to share these Things with the rest of us. It represents what I love about working for the library -- the philosophy of lifelong learning. I know these Things will change and shift, with new Things showing up all the time and other Things disappearing. But these concepts and ideas are changing our society in ways that will continue to affect us even as the individual Things come and go. So it is vital that we learn about what is happening and understand how technology is filtering into our daily lives. Thank you for giving us this gift of information!

When my kids play a certain car racing game on the wii, they have something that occasionally gives their car a "booster" and they can temporarily go racing ahead of their opponents. When the booster burns out their cars return to their normal pace and it is up to them to hold onto any lead they may have gained during their "super power" moments. That is how I feel about 23 Things -- it was a booster that pushed me temporarily into the know. Now it will be up to me to try to stay there!

So I loved learning more about the blogging world, and even though I knew about RSS feeds, I really didn't understand their practical application. I really didn't even know what the 2.0 concept was and I am so glad that has been made clear to me. I loved Library Thing and Del.icio.us and Google Labs. But maybe the Best Thing Of Them All is the Web 2.0 Awards, because it is a single website that holds the best of all the sites we were learning about and more! And to think I wouldn't have understood what I was looking at if you had introduced it any earlier! That is the most obvious demonstration of how far we've come -- that we can look at that website and know what we're seeing! Have I said "thank you" yet?

So what should have been done differently? Hmmm..... My experience was one of high enthusiasm which wained in the face of so many Things. For some people, getting started was the hard part and then they flew. For me, each time I added a Thing to my brain I got a little more saturated, until I felt I couldn't possibly absorb another Thing (at least until some time went by and a few Things fell out of my brain and made room). So it got progressively harder for me to keep going with the same level of enthusiasm and interest. It started to feel like a lot of Things and I didn't want to lose the ones I already did and yet when you only scratch the surface of each one and move on it is easy to lose them just as quickly and then what would have been the point?

So I say HURRAH for the Things! Would I do it next time? YOU BET! I fervently hope there WILL be a next time. Just maybe not 23?

podcasting

Ok, I'm so near the end I can taste it, and I have to say I couldn't bring myself to download whatever it was I needed to download onto the library laptop (which I've been using) in order to listen to the podcast. But I understand the concept and have, at times, listened to interviews at home over the computer. So I get it. And maybe I'll spend a little more time on the search sites on another day. Gotta go do the router now, tho!

You Tube, an old friend

So I'm in my last week at last! And me and youtube go way back, so I'm flying though this one. I was the one who had to sit my teenagers down (this was awhile ago) and say, "You need to know about this site." Of course, I've lived to regret that, since my 14 year old LIVES on youtube for her evening entertainment. She prefers it to TV, and I'm sure she's seen a lot of trash. But I will say that I've tried to search for kinky videos (NO, just testing as a MOM, not for my own cheap thrills!!!) and it won't let you watch them without registering. But man, it's great for those of us who always miss the "great" moments and need to be able to catch them later. And good for Virginia for making sure that PPLD has a presence there, too.

WEB 2.0 AWARDS - VERY COOL!

Ok I really, really liked this website! This is a keeper! This is the secret (!) place where all the best stuff we've been learning about is kept altogether! So I don't have clutter my brain with all this stuff! At first I looked at the first page of the website and my heart sank because I thought, "oh no... more stuff to wade through and figure out..." I think I was thinking it was a technorati-type site. But having all these cutting edge and BEST websites grouped together was awesome. I looked at bunches and it gave me a new travel website to use and all kinds of other fun stuff. I'll be back!!!

Experimenting

Experimenting with Zoho Writer...

 

Ok, so this is kinda fun.  You write a document and then invite your teammates to help you edit it?  Hmmmmmm....  This has potential for the never ending word smithing that happens on the Diversity Team.  It seems pretty user-friendly, although let's see if I can figure out how to share it. 

 

Hey, guess what?  I posted free old barbed wire fencing on Craigslist to whoever wanted to come to Monument to pick it up and within five minutes I had a response.  Beats going to the dump with it!  People justlive online, don't they?  Ok is this long enough??

 

 

Zoho Writer: for people who play well together....

Potential I guess, if you need to collaborate across distances...which PPLD does.... I played around with it, wrote a little ditty, even imported it to my blog (see above). It's not very pretty, in fact all my little smiley faces didn't transfer. I guess I would need to see how the "share" part works to really appreciate it. Sorry, this gets only a "C" in my grade book, but it is probably due to user-stupidity.

Google Labs, glad to know you!

So now we can actually see into the future and play with tools that Google-people think is cool! I checked out "Google Trends" and found it to have awesome potential. When you put in a search term it brings up a graph that shows how many people have searched that term over time (and/or the news articles that have been written?). It was a little hard to tell what the increments of the axis were, but when I searched "adoption" it gave me a graph that looked like a heart monitor which covered the last several years. You could narrow it to various countries or even states, but it wasn't always clear what the data was that I was looking at. Still, it has definite nifty potential. Glad to make it's acquaintance!