Thing 33 Travel 2.0

This was great! I went to most of the liked sites and found fun and interesting information. Patrons often ask about travel information, so it's great to have some sites to tell them about. The travel/social networking thing seems inevitable. The review sites were pretty good. I can understand wanting to keep track of your travels with the journaling site. I think my favorite is Trip Touch, but I am now following a couple of the sites on Twitter--Crankyflier is fun.

Thing 32 Google Maps & Mashups Part 2

I enjoyed this Thing more than the Twittering. I have done quite a few maps for our patrons, so it wasn't a new thing. I did a mashup, but it didn't want to allow me to put it into the blog, so I just went with the map. I also followed many of the links about the Google maps and other online map searches.

Thing 32 Google Maps & Mashups

View Larger Map

Thing 31 More: Twitter

Too much Twittering. I'm not on board with this. But I'm reading and trying things out. I couldn't find anything I'd want to add myself to in the Tweeter Directory, so I didn't. I guess I can't say that I'm in the Denial stage of Twittering, because I do have an account, so I guess my stage is Presence. I do look at it and follow a few, but it just doesn't feel like my kind of thing right now. I'm not sure I can say what I think Twitter is, from that list of descriptive words. I think it's boring and not worth all of the time I've put into it. I can't even get my daughter to sign in to Twitter, and she's into most things technological. I'm looking forward to moving on to Thing 32.

Thing 30 More Ways to Use RSS & Delicious

The computer I used during the first 23 Things crashed, so I've started over with most things, including Bloglines and Delicious. I feel bad that I can't keep up with alot of these things, and I would like to have spent more time browsing these and setting up bookmarks, but the time element is so not there right now. I'm just trying to keep up with the Things. When I had Bloglines set up the first time I did check it daily and kept up reading the feeds. I think it would save time, because now I've been checking the websites that I used to have feeds to. Filtering is good and I also found a few pages on Delicious to bookmark again.

Thing 29 Google Tools

I've used the Search Tools in the past. I don't particularly like the Google news, but I did try customizing it. I have a GMail account, but I set it up recently, and didn't know about all of the extras. I went into the Lab and tried a few of the options there. Some of them worked, and some didn't, but it was interesting to try them. I'll keep them in mind and try a few more out in the future. The Google 411 was funny, and could work. Maybe I'll try it. I've downloaded the Google Desktop. I'll see what I like with that.

Thing 28 Customized Home Pages

I've had an iGoogle page for a long time. It's a fun thing to do and really can jazz up the start. I tried the others and really liked Netvibe the best. They are are easy to set up and can be changed easily also. I have a lot of news sites, weather, calendar, Google map, a clock, moon phases. I change it around occasionally. I'd like to make my own widget sometime, so I'm going to keep that page bookmarked.

Thing 27 Twitter

This involved alot of reading, trying things out, trial and error. I just don't do alot of this online socializing. It is interesting in it's own way. I have a couple that I'm following (the More things, for one) I think it may be used as a resource for people who are on Twitter, and can get quick updates and links. I had trouble with the badge. I'll try again another time. I was surprised to see that I'm following people that I've never heard of. In reality, I'm only following two right now.

Thing 26 Join the 23 Things On a Stick Ning

I had joined the orginial version of this, but updated my profile and added a photo. I joined a discussion about Bill Holm, invited a friend to join and asked to join the SMILE group. I hadn't participated after the first 23 things, but may try to keep in touch now.

Visit 23 Things on a Stick

Thing 25

I had a bunch of trouble trying to get to this point. I updated my "old" blog, but not the template, so I couldn't find the layout. It took alot of help screens to figure out that I also had to update the template. I seem to have to do things the long way around. But I did enjoy setting up the Animoto gadget--I'll use that in the library blog. I linked this blog to the Winthrop Library blog, set up Clustrmaps, and for the 4th thing to do on this Thing, I found the photo resizer site. This was great! I have a patron who has been trying to figure out how she can do this, and now I'll be able to help her with this. So even though I was going to just give up on this year of Things, I'm glad I tried again. (I also had trouble trying to separate this blog from the library blog--it took many tries and help screens with that, and then when I signed up for the Things, something happened that I didn't get signed up--and I thought this year would be easier !??)

Tea