23 Online Flowers

Thing 47 -- Evaluation

2009-12-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

Most interesting use: screencasting, because I think it could really work for people . . . especially if it was involved with a class assignment.

Least useful: Twitter. I don't want to subscribe to people's marketing, I get enough of that.

Most useful: Scrapblog, TripAdvisor

The most useful thing of all would be to teach people how to put up actual webpages. That knowledge is very helpful in explaining to people why the page they're tying to bring up isn't working, or why they keep accidentally printing out advertisements on frames-built pages.

Thing 46 -- WebJunction

2009-12-07T11:51:00.000-08:00

I can see where the courses could be a great thing -- especially in places without easy access to library-paid training courses. They could be helpful, too, for people who can't quite keep up with the pace of county training! I notice that their beginning Word class, considered to be 5.5 hours self-paced, seems to cover less than the county's three hour Word Level 1.

Thing 44 -- The Economy

2009-12-07T11:10:00.000-08:00

I got more online bank/investment accounts than I ever imagined while settling my mom's estate -- I needed access to hers. Plus I use my own.

I suspect that Michael Lewis' Vanity Fair article The End had more specific things to say about the crash than that four minute video, but I was unable to watch the video on my computer, so I can't compare them.

The Good Sheet's graphic timeline was interesting.

I already knew about Craigslist (and its many scandals! Murder! And other stuff!), but have never used it, and probably won't. :)

FrugalDad had some okay suggestions, but nothing earth-shattering. I'm from good German upper midwestern stock and both my parents grew up in the Depression; I'm already doing most of that stuff.

"Reuse bath towels. Sounds gross at first, but think about it – you are clean when you get out of the shower. Hang up towels after each use to thoroughly dry, and only add them to the dirty clothes pile after every three or four uses."

Until I was well into adulthood, I never knew there were people who DID wash towels every day.

Thing 42: Online TV/Movies

2009-11-24T13:55:00.000-08:00

The annoying thing about websites that put up tv shows is that they seldom include the first episodes of a series. I wouldn't be buying dvds of a show if I haven't even seen the first episode. I do notice that Hulu put up the pilot of "Chuck," but Castle only has recent episodes, Eastwick has only clips (although ABC has episodes on its own website). Star Trek TOS has all of Seasons 2 & 3, using a link to CBS. I'm mystified; why not S1?

Penguins vs. Panthers: wonder what a "condensed game" to the tune of 20 minutes is? OTOH, it could be the entirety of the action these days!

If there's something I've missed on tv, I usually go to the network website. Mostly I don't, because the couch is more comfy than my computer desk chair. Maybe I'll do this when I learn how to hook up the laptop to watch Hulu programs on tv -- there's a reason I bought a 32" television, after all. And that's going to happen some time after I learn how to program the dvr to record the same show every week . . .

3. Create a login and set up a queue of items for viewing at a later date.

Yeah, right. I sure will if I ever feel the need for MORE tv.

3. What do you think the impact of free Internet video entertainment will be on broadcast or cable TV?

Almost none, unless netbooks become ubiquitous (likely) and wifi conections get good enough to watch streaming video in such huge files (not holding my breath). People want to see their favorite shows in order, as soon as possible. I do know people who dl their faves from itunes for money, and loads of people who dl tv from the internets.

Thing 41: Mashup Your Life

2009-11-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

Um, no. Just no.

Since I refuse to use Twitter, Facebook, or read my Google Reader, this definitely does not work for me. I'm all for lessening my digital footprint, not making it bigger. There's only time for two hobbies, and while I use social media websites in the commission of both, Using Social Media is not one of those hobbies.

Although . . . I did get a good laugh out of Profilactic. Name choice: good or bad?

Thing 45: Cloud Computing

2009-11-24T07:39:00.000-08:00

I was listening to Ken Auletta, author of Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It on NPR a couple weeks ago and he provided an extremely succinct definition of cloud computing. Any time I'm accessing the processing power of other people's servers, that's cloud computing. So whether I'm blogging, using email (cause all the action's taking place on somebody else's servers, even if I'm paying my own ISP instead of using Yahoo or Google), storing photos on Flickr or SmugMug, taking part in any internet-based game or using any software not stored on my CPU, that's cloud computing.

[As an aside, I was really intrigued to learn how Google ranks their hits.]

I had to laugh at the idea that cloud computing improves my productivity. Um, no, but it certainly is a fabulous social enhancement/time sink.

Also, calling it "cloud computing" obscures how basic the idea is. It's like renting space/production facilities in somebody else's warehouse. The Tame The Web blogger points out questions like, "How do you trust Google to keep your information secure?" or "What if you can’t get on the Web?" Those answers, I suspect, are much the same as when you're renting somebody else's warehouse. 1. Take away the keys, i.e. encrypt it 2. Tough bananas. If you can't get on the Web, you're probably not in a situation where you can access your own computer, either. If you can access your own computer, why isn't the stuff ON it? Don't you believe in backup?

My question is, what about when the warehouse burns down? The info isn't in a cloud, it's on somebody's machine. I guess that like the answer to 2, you can't do cloud computing without backing up -- put your materials in several places.

Thing 40: Mashup The Web

2009-11-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

I live in a very safe area, but I also think our local authorities don't report to crimereports.com.

I liked the restaurant-finder, Lunchbox.

The video on how web mashups are developed was genuinely interesting -- although I must admit the idea of net-based ecosystems vs operating system based ecosystems made my head explode. :) I take it that adding photos to Google Earth is some kind of a mashup, or doesn't it count as a mashup if the application was created by Google for one of its own products in the first place?

Thing 38: Screencasting

2009-11-20T07:41:00.000-08:00

"How Scholarly Search Engines Differ"

I'd have to watch this presentation several times to get all the information, as it went so fast -- except I don't want to. Watching the cursor move when it wasn't under my own control -- and therefore ignored, as such, except for the endpoint -- nauseated me. I knew I had problems with motion sickness, but this is ridiculous.

Most of the MoreThings links were broken or the articles/videos/screencasts used formats I can't access on my work computer. Yes, I have at various times asked IT to update my computer. Newer versions of Java, Flash, and who knows what else don't work for me. "A Quick Guide to Screencasting for Libraries" helped. The Smashing Magazine display in my IE6 (unless it's supposed to look like that) was amusing and annoying with its one-word-per-line on the left side of the screen.

I tried to watch examples on ScreenToaster, but maybe you have to be logged in to see any of them?

I can see how screencasting could be very useful if incorporated into the library's catalog, especially with the new and exciting AquaBrowser.

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

2009-08-14T13:29:00.000-07:00

. . . because it sounds better than digital scrapbooking?

I thought that's what personal, not-selling-anything websites were all about. Now it's a lot easier, at least.

This could be great for library publicity people. And I have a very good idea of just how time consuming it is. :)

Thing 37: Photo Tales

2009-08-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

I already posted a slideshow and made a thing with captions. Wasn't the cat thing in the last one roflbot? For photo editing, I've finally conquered layer masking in PSElements, and am teaching the Camera 101 people PhotoShop Express.

I pay SmugMug for photo hosting since they're the only ones who promise to print my photos to AdobeRGB spec without any modifications. Admittedly, making sure it happened was a challenge as they assume only professional photographers want that, and they hid the option in the photo sales pricing.

So far, I haven't needed any photos from outside sources. :)

Thing 42: Music 2.0

2009-08-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

Music on the internets! Wow, that one's old news. My husband RAN out to buy an HD radio just for The Morning Show, so we don't use the internet for it.

If I listened to lots of music, I'd probably really like the Music Genome Project and the Hype Machine.

Nine sites for lyrics, and all of them came up when I clicked except lyrics.com! I am surprised. However, I'm more entertained by The Archive Of Misheard Lyrics.

"THE MISHEARD: Might as well face it, you're a d**k with a glove

Real Lyric: Might as well face it, you're addicted to love.

Artist Robert Palmer
Song Addicted To Love

The story:
I thought that it was a song about Michael Jackson and I asked a friend if he had heard this song. He had me recite the lyrics. He laughed at me for days."

Some of the misheard lyrics make more sense than the originals!

As for various audio players, a friend gave me a whole stack of MP3 audiobooks burned to cd, so my next project is to convert them to regular cd files -- my car doesn't have a jack for an MP3 player, and the radio tuner units
are pretty bad.

Actually the NetLibrary audiobooks require incredible ingenuity to explain and help people with, much more than any internet radio or music source. Internet radio broadcasts will become hugely popular whenever the internet is as reliable and available as radio waves.

Thing 36: Generators Of Stuff

2009-07-27T14:41:00.000-07:00

So that was where the templates for the READ posters came from! Very cool; too bad the link doesn't work any more.

At first I couldn't figure out why anybody would want to convert a file to PDF, but then I realized that maybe you don't have to use .html and its ilk -- you can just throw up whatever you have and that's it. Now there's a concept that bears remembering, if one ever needs to create webpages. There must be some drawback, or all webpages would be .pdf . . .

Password generator, huh. If I wanted random letter/number passwords, I could make them up myself. Otoh, this mainly exists to sell password creation/protection/management software.

CITATION GENERATORS! THAT IS FREAKING GENIUS. Best way ever to get students to cite their darned sources.

The braille generator is interesting, but it won't be useful until you can get it to raise the dots in the printer . . .

I make my own lolcats, but I suppose the generator is much easier if you don't have a useful photo editor.

Thing 35: Books 2.0

2009-07-17T08:23:00.000-07:00

Organize My Personal Library? Since I don't collect books, I have absolute zero interest in cataloging the few in my house. Talk about bringing work home with me.

I adore BookCrossing! If I had some books, I'd leave them in the wilds of North St. Paul.

I will never read a book on my phone. Even Kindle is only a marginal possibility. I read a camping article that said Kindles were great for camping! Woo hoo, bring along yet another thing that needs to be recharged while driving, along with the phones, the half dozen camera batteries, and the walkie-talkies instead of a plain old paper book. That seemed kind of silly.

Hmmm. Booklamp. Sounds good, but you get the opinion of whoever it is, let's call her Wossname, that thinks Stephen King writes like Anna Maxtead -- pacing, tense, persepctive, et al. You might as well look up lists of "writes like Dan Brown."

Overbooked, otoh, looks genuinely useful! Yay! Figures it's done by a librarian. Well . . . except that the links at the top don't work. That's not v. handy.

Reading Group Choices, always a good source.

I was surprised at the cost of booksfree.com -- $22.49 a month for the lowest level of books on cd. But I suppose it's way cheaper than buying them. It's unlimited rentals, you just have to return #1 before you get #2. Which leaves one without one's crack for a couple days. Plus, if you don't like it, which is always a hazard . . .

One Minute Critic!!! I wouldn't have believed anyone could summarize, much less critique, anything by Jasper Fforde in one minute. Okay, it took her another 20 seconds. :) This is a terrific way to browse books!

Thing 34 Online Answer Sites

2009-07-16T14:49:00.000-07:00

It's another case of information that's fast enough and good enough. I see some of the answers to those things and of course you get the usual collection, anything from right on to waaay off. I noticed that when I was searching for the load capacity of my factory car-top rack, I couldn't actually search Yahoo Answers' zillion pages of discussion on RAV4s, although Google did bring up a couple things. (Yes, it was in my owner's manual, just v. well hidden.)

I do get the impression that people throw questions out there just hoping that somebody will pay attention, rather than that they're desperate for an answer to that question. How like libraries that is!

Of course they're our competition. Many people who come into the library are short enough on time and/or patience -- if we don't have an answer in a couple of minutes, they can't wait any longer.

I read some of the interviews about the future of librarians a while back, and unfortunately nothing stuck with me except a woman -- who of course is an academic librarian -- talking about how libraries are still back in the dark ages, teaching people how to get email accounts, when we should quit that crap because everybody already knows that. Talk about your ivory tower.

I was not impressed with Mr. King. He seriously expects us to take a phone call as a patron is walking up to the desk, or work on an email question when there is a patron standing in front of us? That's about the worst customer service imaginable. Alison Hunt's response about paying in travel time makes a lot more sense. Mr. King apparently does not work at a busy public reference desk for the majority of his librarian hours. His very job title tells all -- Digital Branch & Services Manager.

Digital Camera 101

2009-06-22T06:47:00.001-07:00

The Digital 101 class went quite well. Actually doing the maybe ten things I outlined on the handouts took every bit of the time I thought it would, and that was with only three people, each of whom had a Canon camera. It took all four of us 20 minutes to figure out how to access the Modes feature on one of the cameras. Of course, with so few people I wasn't worried about hurrying them along, but with more than three participants, I suspect I'd have to push it a little.

There certainly wouldn't be enough time in one 1.5 hour class to have people start loading pictures from the camera onto the computer, as I'd hoped. And getting people onto Snapfish, well, that will have to go into a second session.

Thing 33

2009-06-03T16:59:00.000-07:00

I'm a posting member of TripAdvisor and wouldn't go on a serious trip without consulting it for places to stay. People's reviews provide really useful info that you can't find in a guidebook or on a hotel website, like, "They're demolishing the east wing with jackhammers all night, the work is expected to last six weeks, and they wouldn't give us our money back."

Jim used to be a member of Virtual Tourist and had fun putting his pictures up, but he got bored with it a couple years ago.

We googled for info for our Yellowstone vacation a couple years ago and found something very important in a random blog -- one couple spent six days there and ended up eating convenience store sandwiches for every meal. I expected actual grocery stores in a park that big and that popular, a la Yosemite. No way. The silly storelets in the gift shops were worthless, and the restaurants at the big attractions, such as Old Faithful and the huge camping area of Grant Village, have limited hours. We had to drive two hours to West Yellowstone for a grocery store.

The other most useful thing was Google Earth, which has way-cool virtual topography maps with people's photos of touristic opportunities. We could tell what the roads were really like, where they started to climb into the mountains, and what cool stuff we shouldn't miss.

I looked at igougo to see what that was like, and I think it kind of broke my brain to see Haleakala National Park listed as a tourist attraction. The posted photos of Maui made me feel like a Serious Photographer.

Thing 32

2009-06-03T16:56:00.001-07:00

I'm skipping the Google Maps thing for now because I can't listen to the v-tutorial upstairs and I can't watch it downstairs on my computer, no Flash 9 on that baby, and apparently I can't figure it out by guess and by gosh.

So it'll have to wait until I think about it downstairs and borrow somebody else's computer.

ETA: I did watch the tutorial for making my own Google tour map, and it looked pretty easy, but then I couldn't think of anything to map.

Thing 31

2009-05-13T18:01:00.000-07:00

The link to Mashable's article 9 ways Twitter can help you in the real world is broken. Ironies!

I browsed the list of 100 authors on Twitter. I could see following some of those people. :) There's a news flash for me -- Mashable actually has interesting articles. "How to use Twitter for social bookmarking" wasn't one of them. Bookmarklet posts URLs to Twitter and concurrently saves them to browser favorites. How to save bookmarks and annoy people at the same time!

I was talking to The Love Bunny the other day about how most of the Hibbing library tweets had nothing to do with the library, and said that the only thing people really want to know is when new books come in. (Okay, what they really want is book reviews of new books, but we're short on staff.) I notice that the Tame The Web guy has automated tweets set up for when new books get checked out. I wonder if new book accession could become automated tweets. That would be a lot of tweets . . . but then again, he's allowing people to tweet catalog records.

Of course, that will only bore their followers, not the library's.

Thing 30

2009-05-13T17:34:00.000-07:00

RSS & social bookmarking are two of the best things to happen on the Web.

Wow. There's a statement.

RSS feed filters, lol! Because even chosen feeds deliver Too Much Stuff. It's about time they developed feed forwards to email. Since my chosen email isn't the same brand as my RSS feed reader, I never see the feeds. I suppose a Personalized Home Page would solve that problem, but I don't consider it a problem. :)

RSSCalendar.com: handy for people who don't have a pda.

And, of course: don't just HAVE feeds, publish them for everyone to be edified.

RSS Awareness Day: whose genius legislation was that?

"Search Delicious from your browser address bar" makes no sense to me. It's easier just to do the same things on the Delicious page. Although -- something actually useful! I don't have an account, but I could see subscribing to tags. I do find it handy when people have their Delicious link on their blogs.

1. Slacker Manager needs a Slacker Editor, or possibly a copy of Turabian. Stop egregious misuse of apostrophes. It's its!

2. I looked through the Absolutely Delicious Tools Collection, and thought the Firefox extension would be useful if I ever decide I need a Delicious account, and that Bookmarks Insuggest would be great if I wanted to quit my job so I could spend all my time on the internet.

3. And -- oooh, shiny! Fresh Del.icio.us - A client-side application to keep clean (check broken urls) of your del.icio.us account bookmarks. Broken links, the bane of the casual Delicious user.

Thing 29

2009-05-13T17:16:00.000-07:00

I signed up for Google Alerts. I haven't got any yet.

I was surprised to see GMail as part of a Thing. It's, like, ancient in internet years. I have considered having my Yahoo email forwarded to GMail just to use GChat, but I've never gotten around to it.

I liked the Google Sites. I wonder what the fine print is on content ownership. I thought it looked really easy. I have a set of line-by-line instructions for using Dreamweaver to post content on my webpage (don't update often enough to have it memorized) that's three handwritten pages long. There's a strange combination of Intarwebs and Luddite.

I can't live without the Google toolbar. The fact that it's not on my work computer downstairs, and I can't put it on, is really irritating.

Thing 28

2009-05-08T08:54:00.000-07:00

I ws completely baffled by the whole concept of Customized Home Pages until I realized it was just another way to compile RSS feeds and all the various other minutiae of online babble.

I was disappointed that Flickr dropped their photo editing segment and farmed it out to picnik, so I wouldn't use them even if I didn't already pay another service to archive and print my photos. I despise Facebook and its one-liners, but I can see where it would be handy if you don't already have an online community that you belong to based on interests alone. (If I wanted to talk to my high school/college classmates, they'd still be my friends. Some of them are.) I don't read my RSS feeds.

The upshot is, I don't have much to compile.

I tried to use My Yahoo before, but I hate the way it's laid out.

I can see where iGoogle or Netvibes could be genuinely useful for the "2.0 textbook" information collection. If there were something or a bunch of things I genuinely wanted the newest information on every day or every week, it would be a great collected source. Valenza's pagecast is pretty awesome. The tabbed pages-layout is extremely cool.

Okay, enough about Twitter.

2009-05-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

I got an account. I'm following the Hibbing Library and Jeffrey Donovan, who is a cute spy hero in a show with the always-entertaining Bruce Campbell. Most likely I will never look at it again, like my RSS feeds. Most of the people I know who use Twitter use it to follow celebrities. I read an article in the newspaper where some college prof is requiring students to use for class, and I was like, Whut? But Angie and I deduced it's because kids are busy texting; they don't need Twitter for anything.

I can see where it's different if I want to promote myself, my job, something I try to interest people in so they give me money. Fine. Although I'm not sure the info Tweeted by the Hibbing Library is going to raise huge amounts of interest. OTOH, if I'm looking at Twitter for my own interest rather than my own promotion . . . I get enough of being marketed at in every possible way. I don't need to JOIN SOMETHING ONLINE just so I can be marketed at some more.

Also? I hate it when people post compilations of their daily Tweets to their journals. If I wante to see what you're Twittering, I'd follow you on Twitter. :P

Twitter

2009-05-05T10:17:00.001-07:00

I do not like that Twitter wants to mine my email to find my 'friends' using, hello, the password to my email, Sam I Am.

In fact, it kind of enrages me.

Thing 27 -- Twitter

2009-04-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

So I clicked on something in the explanation of Twitter that, from Robin Good's Twitter page, landed me into discussions of how to protect one's online identity. They were of something that I never considered -- not about preserving my privacy and personal information, but keeping people from hijacking my brand. Very important for me personally, I feel. One of them mentioned the Twitter experience that was #Amazonfail. That made me feel all kewl since I know the woman who coined the term, though I don't actually have a Twitter account.

One can keep track of who does what by searching Twitter for terms, if one wants.

So anyway, there's one thing Twitter is good for -- exploding the internets.

During that, from the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books women, I learned the term Googlebomb -- where you get everybody to put a link in their blogs to a page that's been created specifically to promote a particular idea. For instance, they urged everyone to link to their page describing Amazonfail.

Once a certain number of people had linked, that page came up first on a google search of Amazonfail. It has a certain something that I'll probably never have a use for.

Thing 26

2009-03-23T09:32:00.000-07:00

I did that last round, made some comments, uploaded photos, added the badge. I checked out the groups and the ones that were there still, at this point, don't have any either obviously useful or entertaining traffic. I'll admit I don't have any deep thoughts about it, and I haven't used it since then except to look at right now, and add a comment to someone's thread. It's hard to imagine it being valuable at work, honestly.

25.3

2009-03-12T12:09:00.000-07:00

I already put up a couple slideshows. I have an account at Smugmug for my photos that took me an aggregate of about 15 hours, at various times, to find out how to do what I paid $149 FOR: have my photos printed by a lab using machines calibrated properly to Adobe RGB, with no changes or 'enhancements.'

The fact that it took me that long including help from The Love Bunny, and I only managed to resolve the question with email to the site owners, tells me they did a v. poor job with that bit.

I read the article on putting up polls, but didn't think putting one up just for Carol was worth the effort. Sorry, hon. :) I've read about a poll assigned by a teacher where the subject matter (have people choose their favorite color) was completely at odds with the data being sought (find the mode, median, and mean of the answers). People who responded pointed out that the mean was undoubtedly going to be some shade of brown, no matter what the answers were, and how do you find the mode of 4 pink, 6 blue and 25 yellow?

That did serve to highlight Darren Rowse's suggestion that the offered answers must be given careful thought.

Thing 25 Part deux

2009-03-12T08:39:00.000-07:00

The videos on widgets are really interesting -- has more useful-application type things than I suspected. I really like the reading window that opens inside one's blog. Disqus sounds interesting. I did put up a sitemeter statistics gatherer so I can keep track of Carol, the person who reads my blog. :)

I wasn't interested in the photo manipulation because yeah, Photoshop Elements, but at the Science Museum class on digital cameras I learned two v. kewl things I never knew how to do! I knew you could put a head on somebody else's body by using the selection tools and layers, but I never knew you could clone a head in three seconds or less simply by selecting any target spot and waving the mouse around in a circle elsewhere until the entire object appears. Also, I never thought about writing on (or drawing on) a photo with the brush tool.

I can now put Santa hats on top of anyone's new and different head. :D

Also, I think that teaching the bare essentials of digital camera is possible for the library, but it may need two 1.5 hour sessions. Because even if you can use your camera, you still need to be able to do something with the pictures.

What Thing Is This?

2009-03-03T09:00:00.000-08:00

24!

And also, 23 Things, thanks for fixing the visuals on your wiki.

I changed my template, my avatar, and added The Wall Street Journal.

The existence of third-party templates explains why the ones Blogger has are so boring. I figured there had to be creative and talented people out there who also use Blogger.

Even LiveJournal [which has been dying for years and much more quickly now the owners sold it to the Russian mob and the new owners fired all the software engineers] has a nice selection of attractive and creative user-designed templates.

I added Ramsey County Library System to my user info.

I haven't blogged much here since I finished, but I've been using my personal/hobby journal the usual amount. I love the internetz. Some of my best friends are women I met online. I've had a friend in Poland for nearly ten years, and I'll probably never meet her and her family. There are people I know in England, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Brazil, and all over the US and Canada, some of whom I've met and some I haven't.

I'm going to a convention in Boston at the end of the month because half my online buddies are going to be there, and I couldn't even get a ticket; they sold out 150 tickets in an hour. Jeez, it's like VividCon. I'm just staying in the hotel for the weekend. I'll be spending a couple days in Jersey City with Dana, and going to Marblehead for a few days with Janis, who wants me to see her home town.

So yeah, blogging's good with me.

More Things On Sticks

2009-03-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

Yay! Got rid of the evol and offensive avatar! I never realized how obnoxious those kinds of stereotypically 20skinny&beautiful avatars are until I had to get one. Kudos to the 23 things people for linking to the South Park kids site.

OTOH, a big ol' raspberry to them for this:

"If others use your home computer, it is a good idea to discuss any changes you might make on that computer, too."

Who wrote this, and who was the intended audience? Do I look 12? Or is it just that he/she feels that adult library staff are incapable of interacting reasonably with their significant others? (If it's people's kids the writer is worried about, then that's a whole other story about the writer's mindset.)

Then there are these gems:

Buy a tabbed address book to record your usernames/passwords. Enter the tool name under the right letter, then add your personal info. This works well, but don’t lose it!

Keep your passwords in a Word document on a flashdrive—you can encrypt the drive, too. But don’t lose it either!

Somebody just told an entire audience of people whose job it is to organize information to write it down, file it alphabetically, and don't lose it.

Twice.

I'm not sure I need to add any commentary to this bit of fail.

Thing 25, or: I'll Take 'New Device Driver' for $65

2009-01-26T08:47:00.000-08:00

Or; Wherein I Rock The Computer.

The dvd ripper/burner is working. To start with, I completely uninstalled its software incl registry, then reloaded it, which didn't do anything, so -- even though it was a shot in the dark, I'm learning a lot about how any given computer problem can be caused by anything, including an overabundance of cat hair in the case -- I decided to take the Blue Screen Of Death at its word and assume the IRQL driver was not less or equal because there was something WRONG with it.

[The next best option being to restore the system to some time back in, like, November. Which might have A: worked, B: not worked, C: wiped my computer completely. The Love Bunny says that's happened to him more than once at work, when restoring other people's computers. Both A and B options would have been available with Method 3: reimaging the whole damn thing. I mean, it all depended on whether there really WAS a driver problem, or it was something completely different.

Both of those things would be in lieu of taking the box to the Geek Squad, where they might or might not fix it AND it would cost a lot of money.

Reading up on "IRQL driver not less or equal" online offered up many fixes that supposedly worked -- everything from the aforementioned removal of cat hair to things so techno I couldn't possibly understand them. None of them actually did anything about the driver itself, as far as I could tell. Nobody suggested that.]

I bought driver update software and ran it. It said the Atapi-related driver was outdated [okay, DVD driver here] and strongly suggested one NOT MESS WITH IT. Several times it suggested this thing. Like, little windows popped up saying, "This is outdated. DO NOT FIX THIS or your computer will end up a flaming ball of wreckage. If it does, don't be looking at us, kthxbye."

I had TLB step in. Srsly, I have no idea what people do without the in-home sysadmin. The computer *itself* tried several times to prevent him from replacing this driver. In the end, he wasn't sure if he actually had because of the ubiquitous error messages. But whatever happened, the DVD ripper/burner now works just fine.

Go me!

Rethinking the 23 Things

2008-11-06T08:46:00.000-08:00

I have to admit, in all of the time I've been using computers and trying to make them work for me, I never realized until yesterday how task-specific any computer knowledge is.

Okay, yeah, they're the spawn of Satan and all that. But I had a woman come up to me whose flash drive, she said, wasn't working in Internet Computer 10. So fine, I go through all the usual stuff with her. Then I plug it into #10 and the software loaded on her flash drive doesn't bring up her files. Having used flash drives that have no software loaded on them, I opened her files from the file pulldown menu. They opened just fine.

"You have to open them manually," I told her.

She panicked. "Wait, what did you do? How did you do that?"

"Word > File > Open > Drive F."

Here was a woman with a flash drive full of Word and PDF files, with the software at home to use and create them, who had apparently never *ever* saved a file to, or retrieved one from, her hd. *facepalm*

No wonder that in an entire human generation of computers in common use, people still can't make heads or tails of them. Nothing you know how to use makes much difference to using any other software/websites.

Which is why the 23 Things were so time consuming, but also helpful just for Learning More Random Stuff.

Thing 22

2008-10-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

I cross my heart that I'll try to keep up with what's new on the internets.

I'll start with Flock. It's a browser that integrates social networking websites. You can watch your MySpace and Facebook pages, subscribe to RSS feeds, and blog from multiple blog. I can even export news feeds, once I discover what that means. It's built on Firefox code, so many Firefox extensions can be used with it.

The advertisement-intro-comic for the Google Chrome browser is interesting, if a bit thick for your average cartoon and also my brain.

I promise to follow random links to interesting applications and spend moments out of my surf hours doing Stuff. Maybe I'll even start playing Kingdom Of Loathing!

Thing 21

2008-10-29T18:09:00.001-07:00

Thing 21

2008-10-29T18:06:00.000-07:00

I put a Ning badge on my blog and left comments for people. I thought about putting some photos in a slideshow, but I still haven't got my fall photos uploaded to SmugMug. SmugMug is a far better choice for me than Flickr, because I can have photos printed with decent color reproduction. My monitor at home is calibrated to Adobe RGB, and I need a photo printer whose printers are calibrated properly as well.

I read the Gather article, but I raise an eyebrow at their aspirations. I'm sure Gather has the potential to do for books what MySpace did for music. But . . . a survey of 17,000 people turned up 47% who read a fiction book in 2002, with numbers declining for a decade, while a survey of 5,000 adults in 2008 had 94% of them listening to the radio.

There are a lot more people listening to music out there. I'm just sayin'. And readers can be very picky about what they want. Reading a book takes time and concentration. Listening to a song takes three minutes. Readers aren't going to dig through the slush pile of offerings by unpublished authors that appears on Gather. They're most strongly influenced by recs from family members! They don't want to waste their mental energy.

Gather's idea to hold contests for genre works is a step in the right direction. And I was surprised when Paula pointed out their system of "rewards" for people posting content. I hadn't seen any other user-content website doing this. I know Amazon has a yearly dinner and award ceremony, but that's different.

The WebJunction article made some good points about how libraries can use new tech, but I suspect Pierce County might not be as busy as we are. The guy who wrote the article is their system trainer. They can has trainer? I bet he helped them with their 23 Things.

Thing 20

2008-10-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

Dude. Facebook is FREAKING ME OUT.

I don't want all my personal information posted on the internets! I mean, it's there, one can find out just about anything about me by looking my name up on some website that I can't remember (I was horrified when I saw it), but even that didn't have a PHOTO. But now I'm supposed to put one up, along with all that other info, of my own free will? Not on your Network.

I don't want Facebook to mine my email address book to find me 'friends,' (of course, they promise not to keep that access to my email account and spam all my buddies using my name, like Grouply.com does) and I seriously don't want them managing my credit card information!

The thing about LiveJournal is that nobody I come in contact with uses their real name or posts any but the vaguest personal info in their profile. There's a reason for that. Nobody wants random strangers to know who they are! You can get to know people by reading their journals and go on from there; it happens all the time. I met some of my best friends through listserves (back in the dawn of time) and LJ.

Heaven only knows what I would have done without the woman who offered advice about helping my mom . . . the woman who turned out not only to have extensive personal experience dealing with sick parents/doctors/hospitals and is a lawyer, but also is an elder law specialist who writes books for accountants about financial planning for the elderly, and handbooks on Medicare.

Now that's effective social networking.

And I didn't have to make an avatar, post my photo, my real name, my phone number, my workplace, my life history.

I would consider continuing to do this for work if . . . well, even if I limited myself to work-oriented groups, every Friend of somebody who's in X group, even if Friend is not a member of X group, can see my profile. It's all about making it easy for people to find you online.

Thing 19

2008-10-23T10:38:00.001-07:00

I attached a couple of MPR podcast RSS feeds to my Google Reader. It was easy. I just pasted in the url. On the Road With MINITEX, otoh . . . the RSS icon did nothing but bring up a page of .xml coding, and then Podcast Alley bonked my computer! Good work, guise.

The Naked Scientists podcast went on GR just fine, like MPR.

Yahoo Audio Search has nothing but a search box, and so is impossible to use unless you already know what you're looking for. Podcast.net was down or doesn't exist any more. Podcast.com at least has browsing options.

Thing 15

2008-10-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

Puzzle Pirates didn't sound interesting, so I was going to try Kingdom Of Loathing. A few of my friends play that, and after reading the wiki and some interviews with the game developer, I can see why! It sounds like a hoot. It's played with stick-figure avatars and the currency of the realm is meat. You can gain power by drinking booze, although drinking too much gets you a time-out. I really think my destiny in life is to become an Accordion Thief.

If I ever get Much More Time, I'm definitely going to start that.

In the end, I watched the Second Life vid, read the debunking of video game myths, scanned the Info Island blog, and listened to the YALSA podcast.

Mainly, I want to know how much it cost the library to buy the island, or if Second Life gave it to them for free.

I was amused that the kids think adults spend way too much time on Second Life and highly interested to read an article about "banking" on SL.

With people making actual cash money doing various things on SL, and "banking" concerns inside the virtual world promising to invest their money at a high rate of return, it's no wonder that some people transferred their cash into these unregulated and ultimately spurious "banks," losing their money when the "banks" simply vanished. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "play money."

Most SL financial transactions take place in the real world -- you have to link outside of SL to buy products and services over the internet.

The Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County puts out a lot of programming on Info Island. I imagine these programs are done concurrently with RL programming in the library buildings . . . or they have way more money than I can imagine. Setting up on SL seems like a fine idea. It's a terrific outreach project, if a library has enough staff who are already players. The learning curve for serious involvement in this game must be something like World of Warcraft's. It's not a hobby, it's a lifestyle.

I am curious to know how many people they reach who live in their own service area -- of course, there's no easy way to find out -- and how they justify the expense of staff time.

Thing 17 ELM

2008-10-18T12:22:00.001-07:00

The ELM productivity tools RSS feed sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth. I actually drug myself through the entire explanation of why, but the "mixed results" made me roll my eyes.

I made the html file on Academic Premier, but the photo doesn't show up in it when I open the file from the jump drive. I suspect I would see it if this .html file were actually posted on the web. It's certainly more secure to keep photos you're using in a webpage on the same server rather than assume the web-based photo will always be there. Saving the picture file onto my jump drive would have solved the problem if only I could go back into "edit web page" and edit the location. (Obviously my jump drive is not going to reach out into the internets and pick up this picture.) I can't; the editor won't let me edit anything.

I emailed an html file of documents from ProQuest to myself and Rachel, then saved it to my flash drive. Still don't know why an html.doc. Is there some reason why people without elaborate means (paid server space, Dreamweaver, etc.) to make their own webpages would be using this feature? Services that offer free web space often come with page creators. I won't even ask why somebody would want to put the results of their ProQuest searches up on a webpage.

I can't watch the video instruction for clues to these mysteries, as neither the upstairs ref pc or mine downstairs seem to have quicktime.

NetLibrary is obviously bonked right now.

Thing 16

2008-10-18T09:42:00.001-07:00

The Assignment Calculator is absolute genius! Imagine having someone hold your hand through every possible aspect of a research paper! Jeez, when I had to walk ~~three~~ ten miles to school through the snow uphill both ways, we had to use freakin' ESP to determine what to do with research papers. If you weren't a good writer already (or good at slinging bull), you were in for some trouble, because I don't remember an English class in my high school that went through the process in detail. All I remember is index cards.

English 102 certainly didn't. I didn't have to take 101, but I doubt it was research oriented.

Then again, it was a completely different process when dinosaurs roamed the planet, and my little rural K-12 didn't have much in the line of sources anyway.

I'm not so sure a lot of Youth 2.0 is going to use this. I've heard from teachers that the students can't even grasp the concept of citations. Why do that? Information about everything is free and free-floating! Look, there it is on the internets!

But if they did, the papers would be worth reading.

I can't see much use in my work life for it, although if I were ever to write a subject pathfinder, the Research Quickstart is awesome! I notice that the one for Alternative Medicine refers to nothing that would cover the social implications involved with or history of alternative medicine use.

Thing 14

2008-10-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

I would never put my own book list up on LibraryThing, since I'm the only librarian in history who doesn't collect books, but it's interesting for the reviews and for the Authors Who LibraryThing. This is fun as I know some of them from fandom and from their own blogs, and I'm just generally nosy that way. (I'll admit I didn't realize I'd met Naomi Novik -- I didn't know her real name -- until I saw her picture on the back of Temeraire.)

It's obvious that fantasy/scifi readers weigh heavily in the user list. This could come in handy if I ever run out of Vampire/Witch/Werewolf recs.

IN LOVE WITH TAGMASHER. THAT IS ALL.

Thing 13

2008-10-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

I messed around with My Yahoo, changing this and that, then was glad that I don't have to use that page and can still use the basic Yahoo home page instead. I still like that better, although the forest scenery was pretty. I don't want to have to scroll down the page for information, and I don't want to read the local news on my email entity.

The calendars and lists would be much more useful if I had a Blackberry or laptop, or even an iPhone. As it is, paper and ink are a lot more portable than my monitor and CPU.

I'll admit I've wondered where people got those countdown widgets from.

Randomly

2008-10-13T07:34:00.000-07:00

I'm glad to see that Blogger has finally gotten a Reading List. Of course, you can only watch, from the comfort of your own Dashboard, the blogs that have RSS feeds. It's nice that they've joined the modern age, though.

Thing 12

2008-10-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

I love user generated content as much as the next person. A lot more, probably, given the metric boatload of fan fiction I've read in the last decade. However, I wouldn't necessarily hold user generated content up as the be-all and end-all.

Thing 12 has a very telling comment right in the description:

"See a theme here? No editors to decide what information is important, user-generated content, reader recommendations/sharing, and you and others get to vote on what makes the top lists—the very definition of Web 2.0."

We all know WHY user-generated content is such a popular thing, right? Yes, people like it. But it's a primo way, marketers hope, to make money -- LOTS of money -- without any work on their own part. They hope that when they build websites, people will come, and the advertising dollars will pour in. And the people do come, sometimes. Everybody's got something to say. Whether it has anything useful for me, I can't know until I wade through the thousands of voices. Which -- I don't have time.

I don't even have time for the top recommendations. I already have a couple of hobbies.

There's nothing wrong with or even new about "everybody gets to talk." The real revolution is that there might actually be people out there to hear you, if you're interesting enough. Hey, I have a friend who got a nod from Time Magazine last year as one of the top 10 blogs for her Velveteen Rabbi. That made me feel pretty connected, I can tell you. And needless to say, she does have an RSS feed.

Still, I'm not as impressed by The Revolution as I think I'm supposed to be.

AHAHAHAHA. Found on del.icio.us.

2008-05-20T09:28:00.001-07:00

I really, really could have used this a couple months ago, to send to my junk-forwarding uncle and my mom's junk-forwarding friend. Mom's friend tends toward the treacly and religious. The uncle has a friend whose real-estate company actually *purchases* junk links from an internet aggregator and sends it all on to him. He wanted to share.

It was for my mom, of course, but she refuses to touch the computer. 25 pages a day of printed-out internet-humor emails isn't the same as getting it yourself.

Thanks, But No

I am glad to say they've mostly quit when I never replied to the junk. But I got a good laugh out of this, so del.icio.us has already done something good for me.

To be fair, there's internet humor I like. Some of it's absolutely hilarious, like the "relieve your shyness and social phobia -- ask your doctor for Tequila," but I usually get it from people who know me.

Tagging, Del.icio.us

2008-05-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

I am a tagging virgin.

No, wait, I think I put in some tags on Flickr.

I wasn't about to go back through years of journal entries to do it, which has some drawbacks, to be sure. But I did link my photography and writing in my Memories.

Now I really want to read the Guy Kawasaki blog entry that Kathleen Gilroy refers to in "Learning 2.0 and Del.icio.us." The one that features, 'Don't Worry, Be Crappy.' Except, of course, that I can't find it on his blog. Cause, you know, he doesn't tag, and what tag would he slap on that, anyway? And I'm sure not looking up her del.icio.us account to find out if it's really listed there.

I have never used del.icio.us, although I have lots of friends who do. They use del.icio.us for fannish links, and if I wanted people to know what I was reading, I'd put it in my journal. When I was thinking about a laptop, one pal even urged me to buy a Mac so I could scan in the barcodes of my books to LibraryThing [which is not del.icio.us, of course, but bookily related]. Unfortunately, I'm the only librarian in the Known World who doesn't collect books.

The Magic Middle for people who can filter information for you . . . hmm. There's an interesting concept all by itself. Like the rest of life, it's all about choosing your filters.

10, which is a Thing: Library Wikis, Library Blogs

2008-05-20T08:15:00.000-07:00

Library wikis seem pretty useful for those who want to brush up on their reference techniques. I was thrilled with our Reference Newsletter and its easily-found compendium of info that I'd formerly been saving up in backlogs on my email. I do want the tags in alphabetical order -- I thought that sort of thing was automatic. I don't remember ever seeing a journal or blog without tags arranged alphabetically.

Yes, I can search it by plugging in a word, but that's what tags are FOR.

From the Blogging Libraries Wiki list, I note that Fairfax County Library does have a moderated blog. Fortunately for whoever moderates, there isn't any discussion. I didn't see any blogs with discussion, and some of them had comments turned off. This seems like marginal use in the magical 2.0 interactive universe. Okay, wait, Ann Arbor had one comment.

Book blogs are voted most likely to be kept updated. Cincy's reminded me of a non-fiction book that I want for our collection. There were libraries on the list that were noted as "not updated since . . .", and other dead ones that had yet to be noted. This leads me to suspect a lack of staff and lack of response as culprits.

The Gold Coast Public Library's blog had useful information in it, like a post about Economic Stimulus Refund email scam and the fact that firewalls need to be disabled for Reference USA and Morningstar access. Plus! "The Free Web vs. Library Databases." There's a post that should be on every library's page. Yay for Gold Coast!

Skipping Ahead, In Brief

2008-04-29T12:47:00.000-07:00

I was going to watch vids to learn about wikis for libraries, but I still haven't got Flash 9 on my workroom computer. I went ahead to #20 because the only time I ever looked at anything on MySpace, I couldn't figure out how to track the comments on someone's topic. Of course, there might not actually be a way; it could be a mostly nonlinear communication method.

(I've noticed that with Blogger; yeah, you can set your own comments so you're notified about later posted comments, but there's no way to respond to one person specifically rather than simply making a post to the wide world. Or at least no easy way, since I haven't found it yet. I know some other blogging services have this feature.)

Looking again, it may be that one needs an account to read the comment threads. For some MySpace accounts, I'm sure you have to have mutual friending. That doesn't seem likely for the Denver Public Library. I suppose they just never reply.

I really like the layout and general look of the DPL Teens MySpace, but was startled to see that their page is "Female 18 years old".

Must one have a "person" avatar, not a "thing"? And of course, if you must pick, it should be female (nonthreatening); adult, yet not too adult. But. "I'm the Denver Public Library Web Site for Teens!"

It just seems incredibly disingenuous and kind of creepy that they've endowed the website with teenage personhood. Fake Teen Personas: Not Just For Predators Any More! At least the Female HCL page is 88, and has avatar photos of several actual staff members.

On the upside, I can see how a library MySpace page might be a good place to meet other library-oriented geeky teenagers, unless of course they're somebody/something else masquerading as geeky teenagers.

Thing 9

2008-04-24T13:47:00.000-07:00

I use GoogleDocs and I think it's great. There is a stack of documents in my account. However, the "23 Things" version of editing a document totally bonked me.

"In this Thing, edit a famous document using these two collaboration tools. Both are free. You don’t need an account to edit these public documents. . . . Look at this public document in Google Docs. Make as many edits and changes to the documents as you wish, using the various editing tools available."

I clicked on that link without signing in to GoogleDocs, since they say you don't need an account, and got the document to look at. Fine, great. Except . . . I can look at the document all I want, but I don't have a task bar, and thus no way to edit it. That part makes no sense. When I tried to get at it through my GoogleDocs account, a page came up saying I need permission, and to request access.

Make up thy mind, 23.

ETA: Okay, upon Rachel's suggestion, I read the user questions. :) I do need both an account and permission to edit the GoogleDocs one. The Zoho version has a few interesting edits, and several commenters trying to figure out how to get into it, but it certainly isn't as pretty -- how does the person being edited know where the edits are? This would be a serious problem in a document any longer. I've put edits into documents of 200 pages on GoogleDocs and they are usefully obvious.

What Would The F.F. Do?

The Founding Fathers' heads would explode. They didn't want anything to do with rabble like us, much less female rabble.

Thing 8

2008-04-14T13:04:00.001-07:00

Flowers at the Como Conservatory

I managed to make a cube, and also I put up a slideshow of photos from Hawaii at the top of the blog.

Thing 7

2008-04-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

Email is ubiquitous, and how we do almost all communication across the system. IM is handy for reference, except that sometimes I don't log out when I leave the desk for lunch or breaks.

I've been using AOL Instant Messenger for a decade, and it took me this long to get sick enough of the third party applications it loads and the explosion of noisy ads it spawns to download AIM Ad Hack, which works like a charm. I'm not sure if it will actually get rid of things like Viewpoint if you already have them loaded, but I removed them first before downloading the new version of AIM.

And by 'removed,' I do mean cleaned them Very Carefully out of my registry.

Yahoo IM doesn't seem to come with that kind of advertising tornado. I just started using that about a year ago. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same, and you can import your AIM buddy list as well.

I've used Yahoo email for ten years, and Thunderbird on my home computer since I switched to Firefox as a browser a couple years ago. I can't remember what brand of email I had with IE.

I suspect it's a lot harder to do a good reference interview over IM. It's tough enough sometimes to coax the real question out of a patron standing in front of you! Certainly extra care is warranted.

I've only done a couple of web conferences/workshops, and I don't like them as much as when the trainer is really there . . . but it's got to be less costly!

I'll admit, I haven't used Twitter, but I'll have to read the articles, because I'm baffled as to how it can help libraries.

A lot to say about Thing 4, apparently.

2008-04-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

I looked at Picasa, since Library Guy likes it so well. I also saw other good comments on review sites, including someone who said he wasn't going to be using Flickr because he's already "married to Picasa."

One look made my decision for me. I hadn't realized it's not just an online sharing service, it's a download. "When you install Picasa, it instantly goes to work, organizing all the pictures on your hard drive by date in the "Folders on Disk" collection."

I think NOT. That's all I need is for Picasa to go in and "organize" my 16,000 plus photos.

I know that's how many I've got because Absolute Evil Incarnate, aka Photoshop Elements Organizer, told me so . . while it was doing the same thing. I bet you can imagine how long the thing takes to populate 16,000 thumbnails every time you open the Organizer. There's a way to 'hide' them, but they still open even though you can't see them.

[It took me a whole weekend to put a couple thousand photos from Yellowstone into albums. That was before I realized it was way more work than it was worth, and that viewing 15 RAW files will freeze the thing up. It's a known glitch, but instructions for *possibly* fixing it take up two pages of fine print.]

Anyway, now I know why the guy is married to Picasa. A divorce would pretty much ruin his photography career.

A HA. aka Thing 4.

2008-04-02T13:36:00.001-07:00

Enjoy your afternoon at Hamoa Beach. :)

Thing 24?

2008-03-28T08:55:00.000-07:00

Facebook users can install a WorldCat application.

A free WorldCat application for the Facebook social networking Web site is now available. The application lets Web users search the collections of WorldCat libraries and monitor favorite WorldCat lists-their own lists, or those created by other users-right from personalized Facebook pages. Search results are returned from WorldCat.org.

Once installed, WorldCat library searching is easily accessed from the
list of applications beneath the Facebook search box.

The application includes a Home screen with WorldCat search box, as well as quick links to WorldCat searches based on personal interests a user has input in his or her Facebook profile. The application also includes tabbed access to:

* a built-in advanced WorldCat search
* a "Something to Read" panel that displays books recently added to other users' WorldCat lists
* a panel where the user can invite other Facebook friends to install the WorldCat application

On a user's Facebook profile page, the application adds a custom Facebook "box" with basic WorldCat search. The profile's owner can expand or collapse the box's visibility, and reposition it to a preferred location by dragging its title bar.

One option is to log into a Facebook account and install the application directly. Or follow the link from the WorldCat plug-ins page.

WorldCat.org users who maintain a personal profile - which lets them share information about themselves such as occupation, interests and links to personal Web pages - can now add a picture.

Adobe Photoshop Express

2008-03-28T08:19:00.000-07:00

This is mainly applicable to thing 4, but interesting regardless.

Adobe has put a version of Photoshop online, for free, along with 2G of free photo gallery space. Makes sense that they would want to compete with flickr, when they have the full boat product to plug anyway.

I'll have to get somewhere that's not my work computer to explore the site, since I can't download the latest Flash version.

Thing 6

2008-03-26T16:42:00.001-07:00

My real license plate is on a hybrid Highlander . . .

If we could print out some of these goodies on something more hardy than ordinary paper, they'd make great individualized summer reading prizes, or even just mass-produced handouts for Children's Book Week. One could even use them for National Library Week.

Once more into the Thing 5 breach.

2008-03-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

My Presentation

Let me show you it.

I used splashr to link to a presentation of my Flickr photos. I wanted to embed it using an iframe, because that would have put the pictures on the blog rather than a link, but it didn't like to be resized. It seems to need its 1,000 by 700 pixels and nothing else. It cut off one side only when resized to 500x350, also cutting off the "forward" and "backward" icons from sight. It still scrolls the pictures using the mouse wheel, but I thought that was too opaque.

Jim gave me a new camera for my birthday, and I was really happy with some photos I took at the Como Conservatory over the weekend. I wanted to make a cube or other fancy slide show with them, but the old version of Breeze Browser won't convert my new version of RAW files (CR2), and Elements 6 is so slow it's not worth it, so it will have to wait.

Although it's been around a long time, I never had a deep need for the Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer. Now? I feel like I do. It doesn't convert either, of course, but you can view RAW files in the Windows shell without accessing another program first, so I think I'll start by downloading that.

Frankly, I'm seriously considering blowing the cash on the Real Photoshop at this point. But given time I'd need to learn how to do everything in the new software, I shudder. At least I can take classes in Photoshop at the Science Museum, for a mere $159 each.

I know embedding video is a Thing somewhere . . .

2008-03-22T22:29:00.000-07:00

Thing 18, to be precise.

I thought that some of you might be able to appreciate this.

I sing the LOLcat electric . . . or maybe it's just unplugged. :)

Thing 3

2008-03-22T09:10:00.001-07:00

I logged into Google and created Google Reader, then subscribed to HCL's RSS feed with two clicks. For Library of Congress, I had to do it the roundabout way by adding the url manually. I found them by googling 'library rss feeds.'

I made sure to add Therese's and Bernice's blogs to my rss feed, because I know they're at about the same place I am, and a lot of people in RCL are much farther along.

An aggregator is the only easy way to keep track of what's going on in the library world -- chasing blogs all over the net would be pretty inconvenient.

Thing 4 Again

2008-03-19T11:04:00.000-07:00

Still no love with the hotlinking, but I was utterly charmed by Flickr's photo editing feature. It's all most people really want. I've been calling PS Elements 6 every name I know of (and after a couple episodes of Deadwood, that's a lot), and I swear I'm going pop an artery over it. Maybe I should switch over. ;)

It's not hard to see how pictures can be added to any library information, be it online or otherwise. I contributed to that myself by photographing the children who won READ posters at Shoreview.

I'm not sure how Flickr specifically would add to this process . . . it's got loads of great doodads to spice up the photos you might want to use online, and if you didn't want to learn some other photo editor (I can attest that the curve is steep), Flickr would be great.

Back to Thing 2

2008-03-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

The Ongoing Web Revolution

I appreciated this article a lot more that John Blyberg's blog entry. However, it took me several chunks of time to read, so I just made notes about some of its concepts.

******

If the internet is the new newspaper, and blogging is where people are going to get their information about their worlds (not the outside world, necessarily, but their own little worlds), then blogland seems like a good place for the library to be.

The upside of blogging is that, unlike the local suburban newspapers, nobody's going to cut your book review column to fit in more advertising.

The downside is that no freestanding library blog is going to get the number of readers who got that local newspaper twice a week. The blog will have to be somewhere that has a huge usership, somewhat like foot traffic in the mall . . . which is handy since Library 1.0 has an enormous following in the library's online catalog.

I do like the idea of comments-enabled catalog entries. Why go to Amazon to find out whether a book is any good?

I'm much more in charity with these people than with Mr. Blyberg, but this article does join most articles about new trends for libraries, in that it scorns "the old ways." (This article doesn't go quite so far as to demonize them.) Sure, libraries are still focused on how to protect people's privacy. Hello, it's the law.

Young teens couldn't care less about protecting their identity; they're too ignorant to know or care what criminals can do with it. But everybody old enough to have a bank account and credit cards still cares. That's what pseudonyms are for.

Some library 2.0 advocates claim that library buildings are outmoded, and in fact always have been a barrier to finding information. I say there are still more people who can walk, ride, or roll to a library building with its wealth of information (and HELP) than people who have computers and can use them fully to find everything they need with no immediate outlay of cash.

There is a mountain of information available on the internet that you have to pay for. Information's still a commodity, and that's not likely to change as long as any company can sell it.

I have found out what my uncle, a man who's pretty tech savvy for someone over 70, uses his computer for -- mainly spamming me with internet 'humor.'

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I think allowing unmoderated public posting in library space is an interesting idea -- user generated content is always a crapshoot; just ask MySpace -- but I suspect the driving force behind "unmoderated" is that library staff doesn't have time to moderate it. Fortunately, that so-horrible upright and uptight vision of what libraries are and what they're for might limit the number and kind of library blog readers and responders. :)

Allowing the staff to post unmoderated seems pretty obvious -- it's somebody's job on the line, after all. I note they're providing their staff with rules on postings.

I read a couple of the shorter articles in that volume also, including one on using Flickr and its products in the library blog. As I digest more about Library 2.0, I feel more able to get past the hype. (After all, if it ain't a REVOLUTION, why would anyone pay any attention these days?)

Basically, they're saying that libraries should incorporate social networking space, either by their presence on ready-made social networking sites or on their own space or both. It's hard to imagine most of my online pals caring whether RCPL is on MySpace . . . or to imagine somebody paying me, the Second Life Librarian, to answer questions from some woman in San Antonio.

As an aside, 70% of the women on Second Life are using male avatars, so I'm guessing that most avatars you see belong to a woman. Besides, all the men are over on World of Warcraft.

But it wouldn't hurt anything to be there, and I find it quite reassuring in my staid old-fashioned heart that the GIANT ALL NEW SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT REVOLUTION is just the usual stuff, applied to libraries. Of course, just building a library's own platform for interaction could be time consuming and costly.

Wow, the transparent library uses community open houses . . . kind of like every other library does every day.

Thing 4

2008-03-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

Cute little birds always make a day better.

Still not hotlinked.

I uploaded photos to Flickr, I swear! I even got an Instruction -- in essence, "Want to link a photo to Blogger? Click here to sign in to your Google account, and tell it that Flickr is okay to link to." I did, but I couldn't find anything on that page, or any of its links, that would tell Google such a thing. Now I can't even find the Instruction, but I think it came up when I was uploading photos. I had to get the photo above off of my hd.

I didn't understand until I was reading the Top Ten Flickr Mashups piece that Flickr itself is yet another complete hobby (inna box!). I don't know why I didn't get that -- if it exists on the internet, somebody is going to make a hobby out of it. :)

Thing 2

2008-03-12T17:13:00.000-07:00

How old is this John Blyberg? Srsly.

I am intrigued by his perception of, and want to see his definition of, “the dwindling elderly population.”

I’m fascinated by his theory that we can serve that apparently tiny group of folks, as well as the soon-to-be retiring baby boomers, with the same level of service that we have been so far, while simultaneously shoveling money into Library 2.0. After all, there are how many boomers moving into the dwindling elderly population – six or seven? These soon-to-be retirees, otherwise known as working adults, have been getting a significant share of our services. In terms of staffing, time is most certainly money.

I would love to see his breakout of the projected financials for his library – or any other library that intends to accomplish this.

Failing that, I’d like to see what he used for population statistics and projections, and a brief paragraph as to why, exactly, those soon-to-be retirees were named the 'Baby Boom.'

"Many of the problems we face are self-imposed – L2 assumes that we have solved them."

If you want to get metaphysical, all library problems are self-imposed by the fact that libraries exist. L2 assumes nothing. It is a concept of little brain.

"We’re going to have to find a way to harness the “peer-to-peer” abstraction in ways that can benefit all of us."

Um, okay. I can't disagree with that vague and sweeping statement.

"So, finally, what is Library 2.0? Is it just a collection of ideas? Is it a movement? A revolution? Maybe a little bit of all those things, and more. It may not be the right label, but whatever IT is, it IS."

OMG. If what the first commenter says is really true . . . "John Blyberg continues to be one of the most articulate voices for Library 2.0. " . . . no wonder people like me find Library 2.0, like Web 2.0, complete vaporspeak.

Still On Thing 1. This is very Seussian.

2008-03-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

I couldn't rename my blog. That must be because the name of the blog is its url. In LiveJournal or its other OpenSource software ilk, you can rename your journal as often as you want because it's one's chosen alias that's used in the url.

But I decided not to rename this one anyway, because I didn't want to redo everything.

I also prefer LJ's use of icons instead of avatars, so that I can have a selection of many for any given post. It's easier than changing one's avatar at Yahoo, and you can just use a picture of your cat, or anything else.

ETA: Okay, I found out how to edit the header, and edit the links. Now I actually might be able to rearrange my blog decor, since there is something to rearrange.

Thing 1

2008-02-28T15:07:00.000-08:00

Starting the blog was really easy. In my haste, I forgot the rule that you have to make a Google account to use Blogger, but it didn't seem to matter since I didn't make one. I need to rename my blog to reflect the '23 Things' aspect -- if it won't let me rename, I'll have to delete this one and make another.

The Yahoo avatar was really easy to create, and there were fun backgrounds to use for it. Unfortunately, it now also shows up in my Yahoo Mail and Instant Messaging. I couldn't seem to drag the avatar anywhere on my blog page. Perhaps that was because it was large instead of small.

I also note that one of my coworkers was right -- if you edit an entry, it doesn't change the date on that entry.