TABS

I'd like to end my journey through 23 Things with a tribute to TABS. When I started right-clicking and opening links in a new tab, a whole new world opened up. A more organized world. A world in which I no longer got lost in a maze of links. It changed my life.
Did you know that if you have more than 10 tabs open in Firefox, a cute little arrow pops up and you can click on it to go visit your exceeding-10-tabs? It's a beautiful thing.
And here are the Things that have become part of my life: blogging (I may even start my own, personal blog because I'm going to miss it!!!), Picasa & PicasaWeb, Bloglines, the Generator Blog, Bloglines, LibraryThing, Del.icio.us, Wikis, GoogleDocs, YouTube, and Fun with Web2.0. 12 Things!
And so, a fond farewell and a hearty thanks...
Is anyone else up for 2.1?

More Enjoyable with a DEVICE

To fully become a citizen of the 21st century, it seems that I must own a DEVICE. If I owned a DEVICE, ebooks and eaudiobooks would be a lot more useful. I'm not going to listen to a book while sitting at my computer!!! But I've been listening to books in the car lately, and I would really like to do away with the whole process of opening the trunk, taking out the 6-CD changer, arranging the disks, replacing the disks I've already listened to, etc. etc. This is complicated by the fact that I am listening to one book while my 6-year-old is in the car with me, and another while I'm alone. Enter the fabled DEVICE and my problems would be over.
I will say I was happy to experience the Overdrive/NetLibrary interface from a user's perspective and it seems pretty easy and straightforward. I think it was Jen who created the FAQ on our site, and it is really helpful!!!!
Before all this Web 2.0 practice, I was pretty uncertain about the downloadable books, even though we're supposed to understand them in order to explain them to customers!! But now, everything tech-wise (at least from a user's standpoint, not how it actually works) has gotten a lot less intimidating.

Homemade Podcast

Check it out. I didn't create this, but a good friend did, and it's posted on John's website. He updates it pretty much weekly, and it's always an eclectic bunch of songs built around a theme. Right now he sends out email reminders when the new podcast is up, but I'm going to ask John to add an RSS option, so I can put it straight into my Bloglines account. (Lesson #1: You can do that with podcasts.)
But here's the thing with podcasts, particularly music ones: I don't have an mp3 player, so I can't easily take them with me. Maybe I'll win the drawing for the mp3 player and all that will change! (Here at CCPL, if you finish your 23 Things by Aug. 31, you are entered into a drawing for an mp3 player. And since I accidentally WASHED John's in the washing machine a couple of months ago, I figure it's destiny for me to win a new one. No, they do not hold up very well in the wash.)
Also, for non-music ones, I just don't seem to have the attention span for them. I must not be an auditory learner, because I always get distracted. A video can hold my attention, but not an auditory podcast. And I didn't find any out there that looked too interesting. But I did subscribe to SLJ's, just in case they put something up that could be useful or interesting.

Fell In Love With A Girl

Here's my favorite White Stripes video! YouTube is cool and I would love to use it here at work somehow, for booktalks, or other "virtual programming". Next challenge: record and post my own video to YouTube. Can't be that hard!

Totoro Montage

Here's an image I created using Montage-a-google. I found it on the Web 2.0 awards. The award was for Guess-the-google, which is a cool game based on Montage-a-google. In the game, you are presented with a montage, then have to guess the keyword that generated it. For example, the correct guess for the one to the left would be "totoro". Give it a try and see for yourself!!
One more bonus of this exercise: in order to post the image to my blog, I learned how to take a screen shot and used Paint Shop for the first time! That's one of my favorite things about this program, how one skill leads to another. Along with the fearlessness to just give it a try. (Which I never had before.)

Google Docs: Two Thumbs Up!

I was lucky to have already explored Google Docs a bit thanks to a coworker who is quite a bit further along than I am in this 23 Things project. She actually used Google Docs in REAL LIFE. We had attended a training together back in July on internet safety for kids. As part of "transfer of training" here at CCPL, we are supposed to post what we learned at trainings to our CCPL blog. This summer has been PARTICULARLY CRAZY so the weeks went by, and neither of us got around to posting, which is definitely a big no-no...so one day, J. sat down, typed her notes into Google Docs, and emailed them to me to edit & add what I wanted. Her email sat lurking in my Inbox for a couple more weeks, then finally when I creeped up to Week 18 of 23 Things, I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone. I edited her notes, and just to be extra daring, I published straight from Google Docs to the blog. I have to admit this was a little "glitchy" as I have TWO blogs through Blogger, 23 Things & the CCPL blog. There is an option in Google Docs to type the title of the blog you want your document sent to, but this didn't appear to work as I had expected. I meant to post to 23 Things, to use that as my proof of exploring Google Docs, but it posted to the CCPL one anyway. Which I did need to do, so it was OK, and now I'm writing this long explanatory post about the whole thing. The only question is, can I manage to direct it to the right blog???? We'll soon find out.
Long story short: Google Docs, thumbs up. I'll be using it in my work & probably personal life. Thanks, 23 Things!

Wiki Wiki!!

I couldn't help myself. I looked up "wiki" in Wikipedia. It is indeed Hawaiian for "quick" and I'm glad that back in the day this term prevailed. Quickipedia just doesn't have the same ring. Wikis seem to be extremely useful and pretty much easy to use. We are using one to keep everyone updated as we work on updating our Strategic Plan. It is interesting to watch this unfold and compare it to the process that took place just four (?) years ago...it was much harder to share and update information.
I tend to view Wikis as something like "advanced blogs" that other people can collaborate on. PBWiki seems cool, and who could not like that cute little peanut butter sandwich?