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...