Week 5 # 11 Exploring web apps

How fun, I have heard about Craigslist and Delicious, so I checked them out when I saw them on the winners list.

Lots of potential on Craigslist, you can do anything from rent a house, find a roommate, to buying anything from soup to nuts. I really did search "soup", came up with soup bowls, and "nuts" garners Chrome wheels for my Subaru...with nuts to hold them on. Immediately bookmarked this one. One of these days I'll talk my husband into parting with stuff, and advertise it there.

Delicious is going to be very useful as we travel to Florida in December. I can finally locate my favorite necessary sites...ie the mail order pharmacy, when I'm away from home. I was proud of my "technical skills" when I moved from the local email provider to gmail and had my address book available, This is the next step.

I'll eventually work my way through the entire list, It's marked on Delicious.

Week 5 #10 images,

Won't she be fun on the overdue notices? Will require running a batch of paper thru the copier first, but the kids might remember the image and make a connection to the book. WHATEVER WORKS!

Week 4 # 8, 9 RSS & Newsreaders

I'm not exactly a news junkie, but my browser opens to the Anchorage Daily news site, my car radio is set on NPR, and I usually spend Friday evening with Washington Week in Review and Anchorage edition. I set up some RSS feeds and waited a few days to see what came up, and if/how I would use them. Several sites are blogs from people "in the biz" Alan Sitomer, Terri "the Goddess of YA Lit", the YA YA YAs, Guys Lit Wire, and the Spiral Notebook. I can already see that I'm underwater as far as keeping up, but realize that these are busy people and don't post something every day.

I'm also experimenting with a few non-library sites. I act as Career Resource advisor at school, and would like to figure out how to get scholarship notices. Maybe I can just pass along the blog sites to my users. I also subscribed to a travel site, which is interesting. Hopefully I'll use that info someday. Now the biggest challenge is to organize the interesting tidbits I find.

This is a wonderful way to focus on a topic or area. Focus here is the keyword, and is something that will sharpen as I gain familiarity with the tools. Lots of potential here for use in many ways.

Week 5 thing #2

This post actually went out as an email, and as I become more familiar with the mechanics of the blog, I realize I need to put it here. too.

My challenge/problem mindset needs a major overhaul. Especially with things computer related and MY steep learning curve. Looking back at where I was when I first started this job 10 years ago...."You've come a long way , Baby!" The tech guy had to show me how to email.
Whenever frustration sets in, I try to remember all I've learned so far. Then find a person or class to help me out. Thanks, Ann, Jacque, Larry, Hilary, Eugene and all the others , you know who you are.

The other habits are pretty well ingrained. Lifelong learning is the spice of life, and there are so many directions to go, and it's all so INTERESTING. Fun to share with others, tool Focus is often a "challenge" as well because I tend to have too many things going at once.

Week 4 Things #5,6,7 Flickr, Mashups and Post

5. Having fun exploring with Flickr, and Mappr. It's great to search places you've been and see how others got new shots of the place. I also like to look up new places and see other's pictures. Do I want to go there? This would be a fun way to document a trip as well as share photos with others you've befriended while there.

6. Has anyone seen the science fiction mashup? It's a pile of book/magazine covers sorted horizontally by date and vertically by color...and our patrons think Dewey is complicated!
I love it, it rather resembles the floor of a teenager's room at any given point in time, minus the pizza boxes, sneakers and sweats.


7. I downloaded several of our photos from a recent trip to Portland and the Oregon Gardens, and sent them to my mother. This is the second digital camera that I've owned. My tecchie daughter worked at Best Buy and convinced me to get the first one, a small simple Cannon Powershot S 500 that was very easy to use. When we took a trip to the Amazon I had no qualms about buying a more elaborate one. We settled on a Cannon SX110. The larger lens and zoom and movie capabilities are great, but there's a lot to the convenience of the small camera, too. I get the photo if the camera is handy, in purse or pocket. Not worrying about the cost of film also frees me to shoot away and possibly get that great picture I would have otherwise missed. Batteries are now the greatest limitation.

Week 4 Avatar & Blog Things #3 & 4

Here's my avatar. Not in the right place, but we're working on this one step at a time. Taking this couses is a great way to spend a great deal of time on a rainy weekend...It will have to rain all fall to get me through it, Should have given myself an unbrella, too. ;-)

I set up the Blog and registered it with the Raven2.0 Team