Technorati - ho hum

I was not as excited about Technorati as I have been about the other Web 2.0 lessons. First, the video link did not work and then the activities were kind of boring. When I was doing the activities I noticed that the most popular were either celebrity gossip or tech/gadget blogs, with news blogs following way behind in third. I was also surprised when I looked at the number of people who are subscribed to the blogs, that there were only a handful that had really high subscriber numbers. With how many billion (I forget) blogs out there that Technorati keeps track of, not that many people subscribe to them. So, it looks like there are a lot of people out there with tons to say and nobody is reading, or at least very few.
So, Technorati was just ho hum for me, nice to know what it is if someone ever talks about it but will I use it? No!

Mmmm Del.icio.us!!

What a great tool. I have not started an account but will soon. I can see this making searching your favorite sites much easier. I have tons of bookmarks on my computer here at work and it is a constant worry that some day this darn computer is going to crash and zip, all my bookmarks gone. Errrr! With a del.icio.us account I would not have to worry! Yea, sunny days.

I like the tagging part, this gives people so many options when they have large lists of sites and they need to find a page fast. As for the # of people who have also subscribed to this website, it is interesting but I would not use it much.

It would be nice to make one of these for our branch. It would be useful for those reader's adviosry questions.With the tags it would be so much easier for looking up that hard to find time period that all the sixth graders in the school district need. :-)

Play! Fun, Fun, Fun!

I loved this! I quickly lost track of time while doing this, but boy was it fun. My favorites were the Fortune Cookie, Add Letters and Billboard generators. This would be great for making funny cards for family and friends. I can see people who scrapbook really using this to add a little fun to their pages. I will have to try this more at home where all our pictures are on the computer.

Below are my favorites that I made.

Social Networks

I think it is great that libraries take the time to create accounts on social networking sights. It is a way to reach patrons that my not think of the library as a place for them. I love that the YAABs are creating spaces for the teens and hopefully we will have accounts for other library users. This is great space to announce upcoming programs and recommended reading. I am surprised that libraries seem to be concentrating on teens with these types of accounts and not other age groups. I know of a number of my "30 something" friends who have accounts with various social networking sights and they rarely use the library, but I think that they would be interested in knowing that something like this is out there for them. Why not target them, let them know what that the library has a page for them.

Meebo!

Well, I did it. I have a Meebo widget on my blog that will never be used. Yeah!! I did have some trouble getting the widget onto my blog but did finally get it there.
The whole IM thing is not me at all, if you want to talk, pick up the phone or email me and I will get back to you. I do think that patrons would love to have IM available to them for reference questions. I can see patrons from the deaf community using it and the 20 and 30 year crowd being interested in this kind of service. It give the impression that the library is up to date and current with how different people communicate. I would not like to see every branch having this service, it should be centralized. As for staff using this service, I think it would be used more for social interaction than work.

RSS - A Second Helping

I think this could be dangerous! I have lost control of myself and have signed up for so many feeds that my computer is going to implode. Once I got the hang of the feeds I really had fun looking at sites and adding the feeds to Bloglines. Technorati and Topix.net were my favorite and the easiest for me to use. Syndic8 was ok, but let's face it, just not as visually appealing as the others. Sadly I do judge a website by its layout.
I can see the library using feeds to keep up to date with breaking news or even getting new book titles and blurbs about books to teens and other interested library users. It may take another full time job to keep up with it all, but hey, isn't the library floatin' in cash? *smiles*

RSS Feeds -- Argh!

I finally did it!

This whole thing is intriguing, and I know a bunch of people who will find it to be very useful. I subscribed to several blogs and I will be glancing back at them in the next couple weeks, but I know that soon I will forget about this and never log on again. I don't think that it takes that much time to open my favorites and click on the site I want. RSS feeds are fun for now but not ideal for my use of the internet.
I did have a hard time at first with subscribing to the blogs, I had to reread the instructions several times before I got it. And then I was embarrassed because it was so simple in the end. DUH!!
So, for the next couple of weeks I will enjoy reading my Perez Hilton gossip, comic strips, and small farming news!