Cute video

I realized I haven't tossed a new video on here in a little while so here we go. It's a video of a little baby otter that makes the cutest noises. Why can't my my pets be this cute.

Baby Otter

X games crash

It took a while to find this since ESPN pulled their original video that was hosted on YouTube. The fact that this guy hit this hard and walked away is amazing. This is the camcorder version from someone in the stands.

Warriors of the Internet

This is another of the videos I like on YouTube. It's a really good basic explanation of how networks and the Internet works. It's in two parts and about 15 minutes long total but it's really well done. Enjoy.

I-Phone Commercial

Here's a funny I-Phone commercial that came off one of the late night shows and got posted to YouTube. I'm just waiting for an I-Pod with the glass touch screen. That's all I want not the phone.

Another fun link

Here's another fun link that was passed on to me that I though others might be interested in. It's a collection of links to TV shows that are hosted on the web. It's been nice to catch up on some of the TV I have been missing over the last year.

tv-links.co.uk

Another video

This got sent to me by a friend of mine and I thought I would pass it on to everyone.

Internet Crash

Enjoy.

Follow up to the youtube entry

After mentioning this video to someone the other day I had to find it and show it. It's a funny news report from the west coast. Involving a dead whale, some explosives and a large mess.

Week 9 thing 23

Last thing. I debated if I wanted to post this one now to finish up but I figured I might as well post it then I can say I finished then went to help everyone else. I don't want to hit the high points in this post as much as just give some thoughts on the future. Here goes...

The 23 things Web 2.0 project has been great and everyone who participates hopefully will learn about some of the new technologies that have been developed recently. But the individual knowledge isn't what I hope people take from this. What I hope everyone can take and myself included is the desire to continue to learn about the new technologies that are born every day on the web. It wasn't that long ago that MySpace and YouTube hadn't even been though about. The most complex way of communicating was through message boards and maybe for the techie people some IRC. Look at what has happened in just a few short years with YouTube. It went from a site that I originally associated with fraps videos of online game victories (yes that was my original use for YouTube) to a worldwide phenomenon that may play a sizable role in the next presidential election. When the next YouTube arrives on the scene we need to harness it to work for us. That's not always possible but we need to at least be able to understand it so we're not lost in the dark.

We can't think about everything in stages. Web 1.0 and 2.0. The web is continually evolving and changing and as soon as you think you have learned all the latest tricks and programs something new will come along. Always look and always share with other people because no one person can discover everything on their own. That's way too much time in front of the screen.

Week 9 thing 22

I played around with the Project Gutenberg web site. I liked the whole idea behind it but I was sorely disappointed in the content selections that seem to be made. I looked mainly at the science fiction list that was put on on a free CD. It didn't look like a normal list of science fiction at all. Instead it looked like a list of books that I would have had to read over the summer in high school. To me it gets old that a book needs to be close to 100 years old before people will consider it worthwhile. Why did they only choose to do only old science fiction? I understand that for some the term "classic" reaches mythical proportions but sometimes it's taken way to far. Just once I would like to see modern books get some needed attention. Oh and come on put something by Tolkien in there. He at least wrote close to the same time period. Ok my rant is over.

Week 9 thing 21

Podcasts. It's always fun to watch ask a ninja. I found part of this one to be a bit frustrating but I think that was because of the topics I tried to find postcasts on. My main problem was that it doesn't look like the podcast directories are ever pruned. I found a large number of dead links to podcasts that are no longer found on the web. This was a bit frustrating because some of the older ones looked interesting and I really wanted to listen to them. I know this is a common problem on the web but I think out of the 9 or 10 podcasts I tried to listen to on a specific topic only one worked. The one was really funny and well done but it was frustrating to have to sort through a bunch of dead stuff to find the one gem of a podcast. I guess I just have to say they are really nice when they work.

Week 9 thing 20

On to the last few things now. YouTube. I've been a fan of this site since before it became mainsteam. The first thing I ever saw on youtube was a fraps video of an online game and I though wow what a great idea. Since then it's become a key component in online games for sharing content. I'm going to link a few of my favorite videos in this post. It's an experiment in the embeded coding since I've never played with that before.

First the evolution of dance:



Second is medieval tech support which is about a book. This one is subtitled.



I hope you enjoy them both.

Week 8 thing 19

Ok, I had a lot of fun with this one. Flash games sure have come a long way since they came out a few years ago. I tried Arcaplay and really enjoyed it. However I have to say that Duck Hunt was a lot easier on the old NES with the light gun. I swear the ducks got faster or something I just couldn't shoot them this time around...

Week 8 thing 18

Online tools. I'm on the fence about these. I can see the benefits that's for sure: multiple people across different networks can access the same documents and edit them, centralized storage so you can get your documents from anywhere and not having to purchase expensive software (cause wow office isn't cheap). But the other side of the equations there are a few things that make me hesitant to use them. Security for one. If I create a document I'd like to know for sure that I am the only one who has access to it. Also what if your internet connection goes down. ALl work has to stop then. I can just see a busy office stop dead in it's tracks because they lost their connection. Also what happens when the internet gets busy and bottlenecked. It does happen. If your productivity is tied to the stability of your connection then bad things can happen that would be completely outside your control.

Lastly is more of a philisolphical question. IF we keep putting more and more stress on the Internet will it reach a point where too much traffic is trying to go through to small of a connection? If we push everything to the web and it causes everything on the web to slow down will we then see a move to take things offf the web and put them back onto personal computers and intranets? It might not be something that is on the horizon but if you asked someone 15 years ago if they thought that traffic congestion would be as bad as it is now in some areas I bet the answer would have been no. If the internet can't expand as fast as our usage of the internet will we eventually cause it's own collapse because of congestion?

Week 7 thing 17

Ok, adding something to that wiki isn't as intuitive as you would think. When you want to edit in something (I did a favorite book) when you click edit it takes you to a login page. You have to enter the password at the top then your name and email address then it will take you to the screen where you can edit in whatever you want. Also there are direction on one page that tell you how to edit in your blog to the list. The directions go away after you click edit but that's ok because the directions didn't work for me. Just ignore and type your blog address in manually and it should take then.

Just to warn you all it looks like thing 17 will throw you a slight curve :)

Week 7 thing 16

Wikis. I've used them, I've helped design one for a class earlier this year, I like them. That being said...

Two things I think I'll touch on for this thing just because I think both are important features of wikis that the articles didn't touch on that I saw. First a wiki is only as successful as the number of users who frequent it and actively add things to it. Wikis are the next generation message board in a way. If you go to one looking for information and no one has posted it your out of luck. So a wiki needs a large number of active users who are posting new things and creating links between pages so others can find the new pages and add content to them. If there aren't enough users then there isn't enough information being added then people won't use them so and if they don't use them then they don't add their knowledge to the wiki. It's a viscous cycle that can be common in online environments.

Second wikis aren't perfect. They are a great starting point but because the information is all user submitted then there can be gaps or mistakes. They can't be the only solution to a search. But a well developed wiki page is a completed search with referencing articles at your fingertips without having to do any real work. And really who wants to do a search if the work has already been done for you.

Week 6 thing 15

Again information overload... So much potential to write about...

I guess I'll mention the one thing that struck me as odd throughout all the articles was that every article expected the patrons to know the technologies and the librarians had to keep up. I only think I saw one article mention the opposite which I still think is a very important part of librarianship. Librarians are still teachers and help people. Part of that is to help people understand new technologies. If things continue to advance as rapidly as they are predicted to then that part of librarianship will continue to be important. There is more in Library 2.0 then just incorporating technology for the patrons who know of it. There is still a large group of people who need a little help with understand or a little push to get started. In all the changes the past few years and in the coming years maybe that fact shouldn't be forgotten...

Week 6 thing 14

After wandering around the technorati site for a while and following the links I found it was actually a good way to find new information that I wouldn't have come across another way. Someplace in my wandering on the site I found a link to a collection of blogs for sci-fi and fantasy authors. That kept my attention for a little bit. Maybe it was just the day I was looking but I was surprised to see the iphone listed as one of the top searches. Unfortunately now i want one...

Week 6 thing 13

Explored the del.icio.us site for a while and it's got some potential to it. I'll be honest and say that I don't think the tagging would be that helpful for me personally. I prefer everything organized by folders since I'm the one that put them there I remember where I put them. The nicest thing for me I thought was being able to have my bookmarks from any computer I had access to. It would be nice to have the same bookmark on my laptop as I have on my desktop but it's not a bit deal for me to find something again after I found it once. So while it's nice I don't know if it would be something I would use a lot. The potential nice thing I thought it offered was the ability to share bookmarks in a group but I don't know if that is all that much easier then when someone finds something to just email it to the other members of a group. I don't see a huge benefit to it. Maybe I'm just not seeing something or I'm being short sighted though...

Week 5 thing 12

Ok i spent way too long on this one. I think this thing was the one I have enjoyed the most so far. I know I have always wanted a way to ignore hits from specific sites or to limit my search to specific sites and this gave me a way to do it. I also enjoyed just looking at the search rolls that other people have built. I know I discovered a few new sites that I have never seen before because for one reason or another I just never came across them. I have a bunch of sites now to explore later on when I have more time. While I didn't make a search roll specific to myself because there was a pre-made on that I really liked for quotes and sayings.

Week 5 thing 11

I loved the idea of Library Thing catalog but I have to say I got frustrated easily trying to put my books into my catalog. The search features we weak for what I wanted to do with them. I wanted to be able to search by an author but only list hardback books since that is mostly what is in my collection but I couldn't do that. I had to sort through many other things to get to the one I wanted. I got frustrated with that pretty quick so I only entered my books for one author and then stopped. I think the best way to do it would be to enter by ISBN number but I would have to find that someplace else then enter the number into Library Thing. I do like the concept though because I can never remember exactly what I have on my shelf a lot of the time. The link to my limited catalog is here.

Week 5 thing 10

I just had to share this one for any Star Trek fans. The random technobabble generator :)

http://www.ics.mq.edu.au/~msjj/index.html

I know I enjoyed it. Anyway on to the thing for this post...

The monster name generator was funny. I ended up with The Evil Three-eared Bus Driving Sea Monster. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly that would look like. The link is here if you want to play with it.

The only one I didn't like was the talking avatar speech agent ones. Maybe it's just me but the last thing I want is talking adds on web sites I go to. Banner adds are annoying enough but when they start to make sounds that's just going to far I think.

Week 4 thing 9

Information overload...

There sheer amount of information available through RSS feeds is just staggering I think. I did enjoy being able to find local news feeds though and specific feeds for sports teams. I know I'll be using some of the football ones I found when the preseason starts up next month. I just can't wait for the technology to make one more leap forward so I can track message board posts on a message board by a specific person. If there's a way to do this now I couldn't find it but I'm hoping that eventually someone will develop that software. Then I wouldn't have to use up time every day looking for that golden nugget of information on a message board that is mixed in among all the junk.

Week 4 thing 8

Once I got the rss feeds set up I really started to like them. I have to admit the first few I added were for some web comics that I read every day but then I found two nice feeds for new librarians that had some good articles. The thing I most liked though was I no longer have to remember what page updates on what day. Some of the comics I read are updated daily, some are twice a week and some are once a week so I no longer have to keep track of when they will be updated. Now everything just comes to one spot which I like a lot. I know I'm going to start making use of this at home too.

There is a lot of promise to incorporate this into the library web site I think as a way of sending out announcements to people about upcoming events if nothing else. Or just link to other feeds about specific genres of books so people could add those feeds and read them. The potential for what can happen with this is astounding I think.

If you want to see any of the library related feeds I found try these links:

Week 3 thing 7

So this thing was to do a blog about something techie. That should be that hard I'm the tech trainer right. You have no idea how hard it can be to pick a topic when it's that broad. Anyway on to the techie blog post for this thing...

So today the FTC came down officially against the need for net neutrality. I didn't think they would do any different but still I'm disappointed. In case you don't know the debate net neutrality is about making ISPs treat all data net over the Internet the same. What the FTC said was it didn't see a need to make a law mandating that which while not saying it is ok it also doesn't say it's not ok. Talk about fence sitting. The reason I think this is so important is because without a law there is nothing stopping your ISP from blocking certain content from you because it takes up more bandwidth or maybe they block the web site of a competitor. That's not that hard to do from the technological end of things. It's actually rather simplistic. The ability to block web sites is built into every router. The counter argument to this is her if an ISP does something like this and their customers don't like it then the customers can go someplace else. That's the basic principle of a free market. The problem with this is the might only be one high speed ISP in a given area. Sure you have an alternative to go back to dial up but that's not even close to the same thing. Broadband access has become just as important or even more important to some people then phone. I'd have to say if I had to chose between turning off my high speed or turning off my phone I'll turn off my phone. I can always talk over the Internet either with voice chat or email. I can't get my Internet through my phone at the same speed.

So there's my techie post about some topic. Bad FTC. You had a chance to make a stand and you didn't take it. Let's hope this doesn't come back to bite everyone in the future.

Week 3 thing 6

So after playing around with some of the flickr mashups I found on the web I reached two conclusions. First many of the don't seem to work right. I guess it's to be expected just like you get good and bad web pages. The second thing I discovered is that the ones that do work are really cool. The one that found photos based on a specific color was a lot of fun. I just enjoyed seeing the pictures change as I changed the color slightly. I think I spent the most time on that one.

Oh yea does anyone have an idea for a tech trainer librarian trading card. LOL.

Week 3 thing 5

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lightlypaintedpixels/39143200/

Since I had to find a photo in flickr to share for this item in the 23 things I picked the Cribstone bridge between Bailey and Orr's Islands in Maine. I used to vacation on the islands growing up and that bridge always fascinated me. It's built entirely without mortar or cement the only thing holding it together is the weight of the stones. That always amazed me because the current through that channel is incredible. I've always wanted to kayak under the bridge but the traffic combines with the current would make it difficult.

Week 2 thing 4

Well registering the blog was easy enough except I really need to double check what my extension is and write it down next to the phone with the number too. I keep having to look it up and it's bugging me.

Week 2 thing 3

Setting up the blog was really easy. The templates were a bit dull but I can always change the colors later. It's not that much different then a message board except I can honestly call first post on everything :)

Week 1 thing 2

Easiest of the 7 things for me is obviously using technology to my advantage. I'm very comfortable with technology in general and have been exposed to many different forms of learning with technology so this one will be really easy for me.

The hardest for me will be to begin with the end in mind. I'm a goal driven person but my goals tend to change over time and what I start with as my goal isn't always the same goal I have when I finish something.

Week 1 thing 1

Just 10 days into the job right now so I got into this late. I thought the whole process for these 23 things was a bit funny. Hi welcome to the job, hey you need to do the 23 things with everyone else, oh registration is closed you're too late, ok we opened registration you can start now :)

Not even here two weeks and I'm already behind in my work...