Thing 23 - Summary

I am glad I persevered and finished all 23 things - even if it did take me longer than the original 9 weeks. I am a little sad that the interest in it has waned and nobody will be reading my posts after all of that. But I may send out my site to some friends and family and keep up the blog so they can keep up with me.
I am surprised that I ended up writing as much as I did - this is not my forte. I am really proud that I accomplished my original technology goal - using the digital camera and I didn't bore anyone with garden pictures! I just needed the extra push this gave me since I told my daughter that I had to learn
Learning all the 2.0 "things" was very interesting and I did find some that I especially liked and will use again - like bloglines and podcasts. Most just take up too much time; but at least I know what's out there. Some were fun - I even gave my avatar a new hairdo after I got my hair cut! And I'm thinking of using the sketch generator to make a gift for Christmas.
So I would definitely participate in another discovery exercise again. The 23 things website was easy to use since we could just click in and out of the different steps. I only had to ask for help a couple of times.
HOORAY! I'M DONE!

Thing 22 - Audiobooks

I am familiar with Overdrive and have downloaded a book to my computer back when we first subscribed; but I don't like reading online, esp. for pleasure. But another reason I would like to get an MP3 player is so I can download audiobooks - I like to listen while I work in the yard. The choices for audio are pretty good (much better than the videos).
We should probably advertise the "Project Gutenberg" for those students who need to get their hands on a copy of a classic for summer reading lists and all of ours are checked out.

Thing 21 - Podcasts

My Christmas wishlist will contain an MP3 player (in case I don't win one) because I liked listening to podcasts. There are so many different subject areas to chose from - I especially like the podcast.net where I could browse alphabetically by tags. When I looked under L to find something library-related, it showed:
librarian (4)
librarians (5)
libraries (9)
library (39)
libraryandinformationscie (2)
librarymusic (1)
libraryofeconomicsandlibe (1)
libraryscience (3)
librarysearch (1)
That's a lot to listen to. So I sent the SirsiDynix Institute podcasts RSS to my bloglines. Stephen Abrams does a lot of podcasts dealing with Web 2.0 material. So I can listen at work!
I also looked up quilting this way and wouldn't mind listening to Alex Anderson while I sew. And for all those Project Runway fans in the library - I found podcasts by Tim Gunn! I might also be interested in listening to some health related episodes.
I see that the Yahoo!podcasts site is closing down after Oct. 31 and podcastalley seemed a little dark and weird for me. Maybe I just didn't give it a chance.

Thing 20 - YouTube

YouTube has provided a lot of entertainment during this 23 Things project and I enjoy seeing what everyone has chosen. When I searched the site, I was overwhelmed at all the things I did not want to see or what others thought to be interesting. I am glad there is a search box. So, since it mentioned that I could find some old TV shows I thought of a routine that my family watched on "Hee Haw" many years ago that involved spoonerisms. We would laugh for days about the 'mugly other' and the 'bancy fall' This was the best routine I could find of the story of 'Rindercella' - and the easiest to understand. ENJOY.

There are actually some cute library uses for YouTube - the finalists named in the "I Love My Library!" contest sponsored by Thomson Gale can be found here. Here is just one of the finalists:

Thing 19 - Web 2.0 Awards

I checked out the 1st place winner for the category retail - Threadless (www.threadless.com) It's all about T-shirts. I enjoyed looking at all the designs and reading about how the designers came up with their ideas. You can sign on and discuss the designs as well as shop for the t-shirts and/or hoodies. This site would be very social for the younger set who wear a lot of t-shirts as they can blog about them; so I guess I could see this being used for something in the YA section. Maybe have a 'design a t-shirt' contest and submit the winner OR find a design to order for a teen book discussion or summer reading

"Lost in Translation"
I wish I had seen this site earlier because there was a perfect shirt (see above) for Lee to wear in France. It's called "International Translation" and it is covered in pictures of things you would be looking for while traveling. Then you can just point to the picture of what it is and the natives can steer you in the right direction. Cool!

Talk like a Pirate Day!

My pirate name is:

Dirty Ethel Rackham

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Thing 18 - Online Productivity

This is my sample using the ZOHO Writer. I agree, it's is pretty much the same as Word. The fact that it is free makes it a great choice for those who can't or don't want to pay for the MS products. I also like the fact that it can be used for group projects and would be handy for school. But I was just getting to the point where I felt rather cool carrying around my flashdrive!! I am even ahead of my daughter using that little gadget! But this site is good to know if I need to work on projects when I am away from my desk or laptop.

The above paragraph was typed in ZOHO and published to my blog. It was easy once I changed permissions on IE to allow ZOHO Writer. I do wish there had been something like this years ago when I needed a spreadsheet program on my computer at home. Can you tell I liked the little emotions - not very professional for a paper though.