Thing 35

Apparently the Sims 3 people learn even when you aren't doing anything with them. Isn't that creepy?

Read the article on online reading. I like to read at FF.net too. And I think reading is reading. FF.net is still reading, sometimes better than stuff that's published. Kids like to think about their favorite characters and write about them. As they get older they are more likely to see plotholes and ether fix them or exploit them. The sloppier the original work, the more fanfic you can write for it. And I thought it odd that the girl cited in the article was keen for World War Two history books but her mom got her a fantasy. The future of reading is pretty much the same as the past, there's just more of it.

From Organizing my personal library I chose iTrackmine. (I have a LibraryThing) Being able to add dvds and such will be useful. So I got all signed up and realized I don't have any of my stuff here to add. I will try to think... Hurrah you can look things up by title! Then I pretended to lend an item. Apparently I have people tracking me already which could make one paranoid. Not sure if their prices are all right, but it's still neat. Very handy for series stuff

Books on my phone. Not too keen on this, although I have put books on my palm pilot for years. Bigger screen though. My phone can't do this anyway. I looked at all the sites, but couldn't really do anything with them.'

Reader's Advisory: I tried "What's Next?" Probably shouldn't have used Star Trek as a search. It did find series within that set of books, but not all Star Trek Books.

Online book communities: Went to booktalk.org. Very busy looking website. White space is Our Friend! Did not find a search area. I will keep looking. Really not wild for this website.

Book Group Resources: Chose to go to LitLovers. A very friendly looking website. Easy to use. Saw a spelling error but I won't fuss. I like the links and the tidy sections. You can't search a title or author, however, which is annoying.

Audio books: Tried LibriVox. I did not download anything because the computer doesn't always like that. The site is easy to use and nice to look at.

Thing 34

The gaming grant fell through again!!! ARG

Ok. I read some of the interviews with various librarians. I don't entirely agree with Laura Solomon that browsing is going away and that we just need an on-demand Netflicks type set up. We seem to need both. We have the pending list, where people have put requests in for items we (are supposed to have) on shelf which we retrieve and they (are supposed to) pick up. We have people who want help finding "something good to read" and people just wandering around looking for stuff. Browsing is not dead.

Looking up answers online is appealing because you are anonymous. And you can do it in the middle of the night.

I tried Snappyfingers first. They don't list questions, as such, you put in a topic and they give you all the places that involve that word in their FAQ. It is a bit weird because there is little context involved. Then I tried wikianswers. You can look up the most recently asked questions there. Those are all over the board.

Lots of the questions could be answered at the library. Some might take a lot of research like "How many black soldiers fought in the Confederate army?" Some are just fine for a quick interent answer such as "2 liters is how many gallons?"

I suppose people would like these sites because they can get a quick answer. I would think it would be frustrating though with more complex questions.

Slam the boards sounds sort of interesting but I don't think I would have time for such a project.

Thing 33

I like staying home. That said, I will now learn about traveling.

I decided to read "What is Travel 2.0?" Apparently it is a lot of things. There were websites for finding travel companions, videos, picture, 89-million hotel reviews. It is NOT Travelocity or any of those sites. Those are just for booking and such.

For the travel reviews I went to gusto. I liked the name. I looked up my home town because then I would know how accurate the site is. It's not too bad. Not sure if Duluth is feisty, as such, but maybe. Restaurant information was not completely accurate. I know one of the restaurants has moved. I can't tell if the restaurants have to pay to be on the site. Some I would have included were not there.

For Travel Journals I looked at Vcarious because I liked the name. Duluth didn't have much so I tried Minneapolis. Again, not a lot, but a bit. The MoA is not in Minneapolis, no matter what the website says, but I suppose that is a quibble. Disappointing. Not very informative.

From TravelMashups I went to FastFoodMashups so I can find all the Starbucks. The fastfood part was ok, if not totally up to date. It does give adresses adn driving info, so that's nice. The Starbucks were on another map, but that only had spots where each store was locate, no directions or anything.

I guess some of the webstie would be sueful for the library. Asuming they keep up to date. Not in Youth Services, really, but Reference might like them.

Thing 32

Just for the record, you can't use Google maps to spy on people like on TV. VERY DISAPPOINTING!!!

Apparently potholes are not considered dangerous enough because my town was not included on the Most Dangerous Roads best tools and mashups.

All righty. Time to make my own map. This is not as easy as the video. I needed to be able to move the map but you can't do that and draw.


View a nice walk in a larger map

Wow that embedding is really stupid. Why won't it show the map at the scale I drew it? How thoroughly useless.


I can see a use for the mashups at the library. Although there must be some way to produce the map at the desired scale.

Thing 31

Twitter is all the rage just now. Although apparently teens are now turned off by all the boring old adults on twitter.

Somebody twittered during the President's Not-State of the Nation speech. That was a tiny scandal.

I use Twitter from time to time. Mostly to read about more interesting people than me, where I occasionally comment. Or I grump about the weather (rightly so).

I tried TweetEffect. I have 17 followers. "In the last 67 updates you had no changes in your follower numbers. Loyal readers, you have."

Side note: Here is an article all about how Twitter is evil and spreading swine flu. Or something like that.

Second side note: Here's a comic strip about twitter.

Getting overwhelmed.

Added myself to the Tweeter directory. I am still boring. But now more people can find me. And apparently they are.

I have Twitterfox at home. Don't want to put it on the staff computers at work. It's nice. Not too distracting. Would have been useful during the book awards and such.

I think the stage of Twitter I am at is Presence. Sort of. I think I am more of a Lurker, but that wasn't an option.

I think Twitter is a bit more like a water cooler than anything else. Not a library.

Thing 30

I adore my google reader. I follow it pretty well. I don't always read all the news stories, but I do like to keep up with various local and library related things. Also the fun stuff. LOLcats, etc. My feeds are organized into sets: 23things, which mostly book reviews and similar library related feeds ; News, which is national and world news (I don't always read all of that) ; Local, my city paper and a tv website ; and Fun, LOLcats, Unshelved, etc.

Delicious I haven't really been using because practically every time Firefox updates, the delicious widget is fail. Also it is weird on the shared work computers. Your delicious links sort of end up wherever you were.

I decided to give the 43marks thing a try. Liking it thus far. Not wild about all the stuff they start one out with but deleting isn't hard. Adding links and categories is also very easy. I like it.

Thing 29

All righty! I knew about some of these google things because of having the iGoogle account for reader and blogger and such. I tried Google Earth once to see my house but I couldn't. It also does not really work to spy on people.

Looking over the Search Tools section. Alerts would mostly be emails to ignore, WebHistory is creepy, so either Google News or Search Wiki. I chose Google News.

Not sure about the bit where it chooses news based on web searches since lot of people use this computer, but we'll see.

I am befuddled. more study needed.

I didn't mean to publish this right away. Oh well.

OK. Editing my personalized page. How exciting. And simple. I rearranged my layout, although top stories always stays on top. Deleted sports since I mostly don't care. Added a custom section on news stories with the word library or libraries.

Easy Peasy. Though I like my reader better.

Gmail! I like gmail. I like gmail chat. I chose this because I am lazy. my sproudfit gmail is the only one I have not associated with a Gaian. Not that that is a good reason to make another Gaian.

Glanced over the google calender. Might need to look into that some more since Palm has abandoned my palm pilot. Not sure why I would want to make my dentist appointments public.

Thing 28

I chose iGoogle. Mostly because I already have an iGoogle and I am kind of lazy.

I have two tabs on my iGoogle. One is the main Home page which has news, weather and things like that. Important stuff.

The other tab is my fun page with pictures of kittens and a penguin to poke in case I need to do that. Useful from time to time. I added a flickr widget to the fun page. I was surprised that anyone had commented on the pictures.

iGoogle was easy to set up, easy to use, easy to find widgets for. I like it.

I highly recommend the Poke the Penguin widget. Just in case you need to poke something until it goes berserk.

Thing 27 (3 of new)

I actually started using twitter back when the ALA announcements were going to be on it. Then I added Neil Gaiman because he is cool. (I read his blog too and get announcements from his publisher so I do seem a bit like a stalker.)

The first video was useful and interesting.

The second video is not quite for me because it assumes I want people following me. Or that I am interesting. Whatever. I think there are people following me who I don't know. I have no idea why they follow me. Shoes are not that interesting. This guy could sell cars.

Looked at the Hibbing Library twitter. Interesting, though many repeats. Keeps one up to date though, I suppose.

Added a badge to my twitter, in case anyone is interested in my shoes.

I like microblogging, I suppose. I have said more there in the last month than I have on LJ. I like following other people.

Not sure how else libraries could use twitter, aside from announcements and the like. Maybe include interesting library related news stories?

Thing 26 (3 of new 23)

I sort of remembered ning from the last set of Things. I have a ning badge so I clicked on that and went to my ning page. I think it looks nice.

I added some avatar pictures because my photo slide show was boring.

I commented on John Hunziker's ning. I commented in a ning discussion.

Thing 25 (2 of new 23)

Personally suspect my blog is a bit widget full.

I was going to add a clustrmap to this blog but I have one of those on my manga blog so I didn't. I do have a neocounter which tells me what countries people are from who have visited my blog.

I added a tag cloud. I tag better on my manga blog.

I already have a clock which also displays the weather, so I didn't add that.

I spent a about twenty minutes looking at stuff. The video took a while.

There seems to be a lot of widgets to add though they probably aren't that friendly to older computers.

I find it ironic that I actually removed widgets in my last post.

Thing 24 (or 1 of new 23, whatever)

I haven't blogged here since the end of 23 things. I don't blog much in my own blog, so that's not surprising.

I have been using stuff like the google reader I set up for the previous shish-ka-bob of things.

I like reading other people's blogs. Neil Gaiman has a cool blog. I like LOLcats but I am not sure if that counts as a blog. I have signed up for some news feeds and a couple of book review blogs.

I mostly lurk on the blogs.

For the refreshing of this blog I changed my avatar, added a photo, and changed the template.