allnewtechie

The Online Road Ahead: Week 9 / Thing 23

2007-08-14T17:28:00.001-04:00

Some of my favorites discoveries about this project were: figuring out that I could publish my thoughts in a Web blog; finding at least 10 exciting new websites I will continue to explore; and creating an avatar.

This experience has made me realize that I could handle online learning, so when I take a web-based course, I now know a little bit about how it might flow.

I was very surprised about all the web sites and web technologies that people have created--oftentimes allowing everyone free access to them.

I would definitely participate in this type of program again. It was very illuminating about new web technologies out there. Plus the program was very low pressure.

"Learning New Stuff on Your Own is Great!"

Audiobooks: Week 9 / Thing 22

2007-08-14T17:27:00.001-04:00

I surfed Project Gutenberg. Preliminarily it seems like they have a lot of old books that aren't copyrighted in the US--Austen, Twain, Dumas, etc. It's very easy to use. I opened a PDF version of Jane Austen's Emma and read a few pages of its total 361.

I also opened a HTML-version of Mother Goose; it was wonderful because it had illustrations for many of the sayings and you could click their titles in the table of contents to immediately go to them.

One big difference between netlibrary.com and Project Gutenberg is that netlibrary.com has all the latest fiction and nonfiction titles printed in recent years for one to listen to.

All of these resources would be great if someone wanted to immediately read a particular book, but all the copies were checked out. But it does take getting used to reading a whole book on the computer or listening to one read to you.

Searching for Pods: Week 9 / Thing 21

2007-08-14T17:26:00.001-04:00

I explored Yahoo!Podcasts and Podcast Alley. The Yahoo one was good for finding popular and news podcasts. When I did a search for library ones, I didn't have much success for ones I'd want to listen to. So I signed up for the Royalty Report about the British royal family. The presentation of the podcast speaker wasn't very good, but she had some good tidbits of royal news.

The Podcastalley.com one was good for finding lots of library-related podcasts. I signed up via my Bloglines account for Library Geeks (I listened to the podcaster interview web search guru Gary Price), Open Stacks, and LibVibe (this one wouldn't open because it needed QuickTime to run).

I had never listened to a podcast before; of course it sounds just like a radio show --but I learned people can "call-in" to a live show to ask questions and chat, which is very interesting given that someone with the necessary technology can be anywhere in the world and participate in a show.

YouTube: Week 9 / Thing 20

2007-08-14T17:25:00.001-04:00

I explored YouTube for a while. A system could create all kinds of valuable videos for a library website such as, a video on how to use a database or the catalog, a video on directions to a branch, a storytime video, video samples on performers coming to the library, etc.

This is a hilarious "dominos" video that I found after watching the "library dominos" video.

Webbie Awards: Week 8 / Thing 19

2007-08-14T17:24:00.000-04:00

I decided to study Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/) to see if it could be a resource for library customers. It won a first place Webbie 2.0 Awards for Questions/Advice. Basically Y!A is a site where one can post his or her questions on any topic and people from around the world offer their answers/suggestions. Y!A has about 25 categories--from arts to food to history to politics to pets to business to travel.

It seems very useful. I selected a topic I've been researching and one post led me to a very relevant/helpful website. But I would only casually suggest a customer use this site--if they has time to surf the site and/or wait for answers.

When I have time, I definitely was to explore all the first place winners of the Webbie Awards.

Online Apps: Week 8 / Thing 18

2007-08-14T17:22:00.000-04:00

I signed up for two of these online office suites--ThinkFree and Zoho. The signup process for each was very simple--but one does need an email address. Zoho has many great programs for free that I would use regularly--word, spreadsheets, planner, and show. It seems a little easier to use than ThinkFree. But I would definitely need publisher--which is only in ThinkFree.

This is an article I found that compared them. It says ThinkFree is the best one.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9007884&pageNumber=1

This kind of Web 2.0 technology is so exciting. This is something students and other library customers could definitely use. Many never have disks, but want to save their documents created in the library. And many people have email attachments but they don't open. If people got in the habit of using these programs, that may not happen as much.

But for really important documents, I would still suggest people make backup copies on a disk drive. Since I'm going to start using these programs myself, I don't have to go out and buy a USB port right away now.

I also found this presentation of funny animals at Zoho Show. It is great! Hit Play under the picture and change the Slide Delay to about 3 seconds. Enjoy!
http://show.zoho.com/public/sridhar/Funny-Animals.ppt?view=3

Fun in the Sandbox: Week 7 / Thing 17

2007-08-14T17:02:00.000-04:00

It took me a couple of days to figure how to post my "contributions" below to MD Libraries Sandbox. Use Edit (duh!). Then I thought (ah!) that's the power of this type of program--everyone who signs up has equal weight in adding or deleting to the site.
This could be problematic--I heard on the news today that big companies like the voting machine maker Debold have edited out bad news on themselves at wikipedia.com. But I wouldn't think wikis would be used for anything proprietarial or of national security.
This is the link to my Favorites page:
http://marylandlibrariessandbox.pbwiki.com/Favorite+Magazines
This is the link to my blog allnewtechie at the Sandbox, under PG County's section:
http://marylandlibrariessandbox.pbwiki.com/Favorite+Blogs

Wikis: Week 7 / Thing 16

2007-08-14T12:19:00.000-04:00

I have been using wikipedia.com for several years for information on pop culture items, etc. I explored several of the wiki tutorials and found out a lot of information about their setup that I didn't know. One site had a great suggestion to connect people who are on a waiting list for a popular book so that they can talk to each about that title.

I also explored the BookLovers Wiki of the Princeton Public Library. I like how it's just a simple website with brief reviews of all kinds of books. Customers send in their thoughts and give books the number of stars the book deserves. I also like how the site has pictures of the books' covers and a link to the library's catalog to see if a copy is on the shelf. We have something similar at PGCMLS' catalog website but it is links to book reviews from publishing magazines. It might be good to add a customer review feature to our website.

Library 2.0: Week 6 / Thing 15

2007-08-09T12:52:00.000-04:00

The YouTube video "The Machine is Us/ing Us" was awesome! I must watch it again with the sound up.

After reading the "Away from Icebergs" essay, I found a lot of good nuggets to chew on and digest. I do think some parts of a "just-in-case" print collection are unnecessary and it would be good to learn how to steer customers better to our online collections.

After reading the Wikipedia article, this Library 2.0 concept seems to focus on technology/computers, but at least 40 percent of what public librarians work with and of what customers want are books. Plus don't these Library 2.0 proponents think customers care about interacting with people face-to-face? (I don't think most people, especially women, do most of their socializing online; but boys--maybe so.) And what about reading in this Library 2.0 equation? Where's that in their new-fangled ideas?

Tagging: Week 6 / Thing 14

2007-08-09T10:59:00.000-04:00

In my brief exploration of Technorati, it seems to be a website of techie blogs. I browsed a long time to find any interesting blogs in the Top Favorites--alth0ugh I did explore The Unofficial Apple Weblog. This blog had so much information one could spend days exploring it. I like how the Top Favorites page has so many features like a snapshot of the webblog, its URL, recent posts, and of course all that blog's relevant tags.

Regarding the Learning 2.0 search, I definitely had to put the phrase in quotes to find related blogs/posts. There were 187 blogs--it seems like people had just give their blogs that phrase name. There were 25, 489 posts about Learning 2.0.

I found a great blog dictionary under Support/Site Guide.

Del.icio.us : Week 6 / Thing 13

2007-08-08T18:00:00.000-04:00

I've been working with Del.icio.us for a few days and I think I finally have a basic understanding of its purpose and how it works.

I can see the value of using this site for bookmarking, in the similar way that Rollyo is used, but with less work. I set up my own login and I like how you can just type in your URL (http://del.icio.us/allnewtechie), and boom! you're there. No password necessary, etc.

Maybe this site would be useful if one is exploring a topic and wanted to see what other people think are interesting sites related to your topic. This would be good for 'lite' research, but not for any topic one would need to explore in depth.

Rollyo: Week 5 / Thing 12

2007-08-05T13:24:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure I understand the ultimate benefit of Rollyo--you find websites on a specific topic that you can do searches within? Why waste time loading in all these websites into a searchroll? Just use Google!

But here's a link to a searchroll I made up:
http://rollyo.com/allnewtechie/shopping_for_organic_food

LibraryThing: Week 5 / Thing 11

2007-08-02T10:29:00.000-04:00

I thought the LibraryThing website was very interesting. It's always fascinating to see what books are recommended for certain titles. I found it a great way to explore additional aspects of a topic or to find new authors.

The following are other interesting aspects of LibraryThing to me:
- you can join one of the many different book groups. I joined Reading Globally Fiction.
- that I can have my own RSS feed of my books or my reviews.
- that you can automatically find out the Chicago, APA, etc. citations of any book in the catalog.

This is my online library.

The New Online Me: Week 5 / Thing 10

2007-07-29T14:58:00.000-04:00

I created my new image in

Meez.com

Yahoo Avatar (yahoo. wouldn't let me export it) , and

Simpsonizeme.com

My Library Blogs/Feeds: Week 4 / Thing 9

2007-07-27T16:32:00.000-04:00

The library-related blogs I signed up for are:

caffeinatedlibrarian.blogspot.com/ ( The Caffeinated Librarian--very very funny blog!)
http://lii.org (the Librarian's Internet Index: New this Week)
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/library/feed/msgs.xml?ggroup=library (Library Google Group)
-- I haven't explored this one a lot, but it seems like a networking place for international librarians).
http://www.merlin.lib.md.us (MD's Merlin)
http://plablog.org/feed/ (official blog of the Public Library Association)
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com (the Shifted Librarian)
--I haven't explored this one a lot, but I found a hilarious essay on "Why You Should Fall to Your Knees and Worship a Librarian". ( http://librarianavengers.org/?page_id=3 )
and http://www.unshelved.com (the very funny Unshelved library comic strip).
--I discovered this comic about a year ago and I love the characters Mel & Dewey the most.

Merlin & his Feeds: Week 4 / Thing 9

2007-07-27T15:41:00.000-04:00

When I explored Merlin I found a lot of interesting links on online training, library blogs, and avatars. I'm definitely going to come back to start using the online training. It's good to know this site exists and is regularly updated.

In addition, I actually created 2 new pictures of myself--one on meez.com and another at yahoo.com. I'm hoping to post them to this blog soon.
http://www.meez.com/allnewtechie
(Note: It seems like the yahoo.com avatar can only be viewed within yahoo.com)

Regarding the feed websites--going backwards--I had the most success with technorati.com because came up with good results for my searches, in particular on politics. I also liked how it had a large paragraph list of topics on the right side for me to click. I found a great video demonstration of how the iPhone works here and learned there were 106 results for iPhone videos.

I think syndic8.com is the worst--none of my search topics even came up with results. I liked how topix.com makes you look via your town and then saves your town for next time you open their website. I found a good article in the Washington Post about DC libraries using topix.com. I know where to go if I want gossip on any place I visit.

Feedster.com was okay--it gave basic results for the topics I searched for.

My RSS Adventure: Week 4 / Thing 8

2007-07-26T11:19:00.000-04:00

I’ve been working with this RSS exercise for about a week. First I explored a few of the tutorials, then I set up my own account. Then I was off!

I never knew this feature existed, but I can see how it can be useful to many people. If you can get the latest news on special topics sent right away to one website—what a timesaver. The Bloglines site was a little confusing in how one can search for RSSs. But in the end I signed up for about 20 feeds—it was a lot of fun to explore all the topics out there. At least now I’ll know what that little orange/white box means.

I signed up for RSSs on food, news, libraries, money, and technology. I don’t see how libraries as a whole can take advantages of RSS, but definitely individual librarians can use it as a tool to keep updated on issues.

A Cheaper IPhone: Week 3 / Thing 7

2007-07-25T20:09:00.000-04:00

I read a technology article at cnn.com about Apple creating a cheaper iPhone that would be based on its iPod Nano music player. It may be priced $300 or less. Apple filed a patent July 5 to create a multi-functional device with a scroll-wheel device, like the Nano. Analysts predict that betwen 30-40 million(?) of these devices could be sold. The article also notes that Apple will probably come out with a new iPod soon that has touchscreen features like the iPhone.

When the iPhone came out last month, I really wanted to buy one because I love Macs and it had everything I don't have--a cell phone, camera, web access, iPod, etc. If they launch this cheaper IPhone soon, I think I would buy one.

Sidebar: This article was at cnn.com at their Little Addictions/Personal Technology page. I liked this site; I'm going to return to it often to learn more about all the gadgets and software I want to have. They even have a RSS for iPhone at this site. Sweet!

How I Got into these Things: Week 1 / Thing 1

2007-07-24T17:07:00.000-04:00

I blurrily remember reading a librarian writing that PGCMLS would be participating in a cutting-edge, new program for Web learning. Then I promptly forgot about it and ignored the listing in Management Update.

But then I heard two librarians talking about it and did more research about what I'd really have to do.

This program was perfect because I had been hearing/reading about so many Web technolgies, but I had no cause to use them. Now I can.

The Flickr Specials: Week 3 / Thing 6

2007-07-24T12:50:00.000-04:00

All the Flickr’s tools are fascinating! Looking at all the tools is unbelievable—you could create special posters, CDs, art, calendars—it’s endless. I’m going to use some of these tools when I want to do something special with a photo.

The Color Pickr was also fascinating. I had to check out photos with my favorite color turquoise; there were a lot of ocean/water photos. I really like this feature—it could be a real stress reliever to browse photos by color.

The Mappr was interesting—although it took a long time for them to load. This feature would be interesting to study if you’re traveling to specific location or taking a road trip via a certain route. It'll whet your appetite about what you might see.

And the Librarian’s Trading Cards—that was fun—I especially liked one librarian’s purple M&M picture and her funny caption. Maybe when I get a photo of myself I'll make a card for myself. I’ll have to think of a really funny caption.

My Flickr Tour: Week 3 / Thing 5

2007-07-13T16:39:00.000-04:00

Flickr is a very exciting technology. I especially love that it is amazingly free! I could see how friends and families would use this website to share photos and make comments. I also love that you can buy little photobooks of your creations. I found great photos of swans and of cats. It does seem like Flickr has a large community of people who take art-type nature photos; but I like those too. When I get a digital camera, I'll at least try this website.

Those Great Habits: Week 1 / Thing 2

2007-07-12T11:00:00.000-04:00

I thought the 71/2 Habits tutorial was very interesting. I liked how it discusses that you're responsible for your own learning. And how learning is not just about academics or books, but exploring new things in new ways that may just be for one's own fun and enjoyment. That will be the best way for me to approach this process--if I think of it as exciting and non-stressful.

A New Online Life: Week 2/ Thing 3

2007-07-12T10:27:00.000-04:00

I'm glad to start writing about my new online life here at allnewtechie. I've used computers and the web for a long time for basic tasks. But now I can explore, in an organized fashion, the great web technologies I hear about all the time.

With this project, my goal is to explore the web technologies that I read about in the news everyday. The technolgies people use with photos, videos, cell phones, etc. Even if I just scratch the surface of the technologies out there, I want to get an exposure to some of the exciting things I can do on the web. As a lifelong learner, this will be an easy habit for me because I am eager to learn about them.

But I know the hardest habit for me will be to dedicate regularly scheduled time to explore these technologies. I must confess it has taken me four weeks to make this first post. But I plan to dedicate at least 30 minutes a day to exploring the 23 Things and writing for my blog.