Thing #22

Thing 22. I'm going to do the More Things thing that just started. That's how I plan to keep up on my Web 2.0 savvy. I think I'm going to keep doing Mystery Beer Night Podcast too. Those are fun.



A way I'd recommend to keep up your savvy is to help other people learn stuff. I've been helping a friend, John, learn 23 Things. It's a lot more fun to help someone else than it is to do the things on your own. Also, I'm starting 23 Things tutoring. I find people use the things differently, so the more people I help learn the things, the more ways the use the Things I learn.



I had fun with this. I'll almost definitely keep up my blog. I find it to be amusing at the very least. Here's a not so good picture of me waving bye, or more precisely adieu. Until More Things, I'll see you then. Well, then and Thing 23

Thing 21

Other Social Networks. I started a Gather Account. I posted to the Doctor Who fan section of Gather, and I was not exactly impressed with Gather. Just another social network. I did the Ning thing too. I might be able to use that to run a Call of Cthulhu game with my pals. I think a play by Wiki will work out better. I'd probably use PB wiki for that. I joined the 23 Things Ning. Ning seems like it might be a little more useful to me than other things. It also sort of got lost in the shuffle. I couldn't remember if it was Gather or Ning or 43 Things that was the social network creation site. I also joined 43 things. That could also be useful. One of these days I'm going to write a novel. 43 Things might help me accomplish that.

I added a Ning badge to me wiki and I added another slide show with Ning. John keeps saying that 23 Things is, like, 3 things over and over again. The Ning slide show was totally that.

I am a member of a couple different online communities. Outpost Gallifrey, World of Warcraft, and Facebook and MySpace. So I'm not a stranger to this stuff.

Oh, I added a kick ass picture of Ultra Magnus for pretty much no reason.

I'm going to try 43 things for a bit. I might even check out a few others. Also, Ning might facilitate some online socializing of my own.

Thing #20

Facebook and MySpace. I've had both a Facebook and MySpace page for years. I started off with MySpace. It looked like a great way to keep in touch with all my hommies from college. Alas, I found that my network of hommies grew too large and unwieldy on MySpace. And then I started getting spam, and that ended my love of MySpace.

Then one of my Hommies got a Facebook account. He loved it and told me and some of our other hommies. I much prefer Facebook over MySpace. I find my network isn't so unwieldy and also, no spam. It's really easy to keep up with my friends, and I find it to be fun. I don't mind checking Facebook a few times a week. For some reason MySpace felt like a chore.

As far as layout is concerned, I don't have any sort of preference for one over the other. Managing my peeps is what my #1 concern is with the whole social networking thing. I don't want to get invites from bands in my area, I don't want to find out when Lyndsey Lohan is dropping her next album. I just want to keep up with my hommies and perhaps put up some amusing photos from time to time. That's about it.

This is my attempt at a mobile blog post. Let's see if it works.

Thing #19

Podcasts. Thanks to Doctor Who audio adventure produced by Big Finish Productions, I have gained a new appreciation for audio formats.

A good friend of mine, Russ, is a DJ, so I have a passing familiarity with talking on the radio/recording my voice for other people to listen. I think it's a fairly good way to communicate with folks. You can infuse your voice with emotion, unlike e-mail. Also, sarcasm, something I'm fond of, can be conveyed over voice snippets. I think I could get used to podcasts. I subscribed to a Doctor Who podcast, and I subscribed to a podcast by some dudes from England ho I met at Gen Con a few years ago.

All of the podcast directories were pretty easy to use. I joined the podcast.com one, and then added my feeds from that to my Google reader.

I tried the Gcast thing. It was pretty cool. I'll post my podcast a bit later. I'm off to diner now!

Thing #18

Youtube. I have a passing familiarity with youtube. It's great when I want a quick snippet of something to make me chuckle, but other than that, it's kind of, I hesitate to use the word 'useless', but it it fits. Youtube is for fun. That's it.

As far as having it be useful in the library, well, yeah, it's useful for finding fun little snippets to chuckle at.

I had trouble embedding a video (I did figure it out), so instead of a video embedded in this post, you'll notice the video bar at the bottom of my blog. I really like the Sesame Street "No Cookies in the Library" thing. Classic.

I suppose I should mention that RPL has posted some stuff on youtube that could be helpful to patrons. We have a video showing how to use our AMH and a couple other videos on some other stuff, so I guess we have used youtube in a way beyond snippets for chuckles. But I feel chuckle snippets are the majority of youtube's usefulness.

Thing #17

It's a shame that the ELM databases aren't really accessible to all Minnesota libraries. It would have been, I think, a good idea to allow all libraries access without any strings, but who am I to question the powers that be.

Anyway, I tried Net Library. It a resource I've used before, but I took a better look at it this time. It's an impressive and well maintained database. I'm shocked at how many full text books are available. It's astounding the amount of information that can be found online at no cost whatsoever.

When John gets to this thing I might have him create an account and we can try the shared folder challenge. I might revisit this a little later on.