Goodbye Again,

I want more Things on a Stick!!!!

Thing #46 WebJunction Minnesota

Wow! I think I remember visiting this site in the last round of 23 things or before that- it has grown a lot and become way more relevant!

I joined- I am glitterhotglue as usual. The site did lock down my computer when I tried to add my interests to my profile, I guess I will try doing that later. The thing that I found really useful is the Minnesota calender that shows library events in the area and around the state. That is pretty cool beans!

I am excited about taking courses too! That is really awesome that they allow subscribers to take free courses online.

I will be spending more time digging in to this site in the future for sure!

Thing #45 Cloud Computing

I haven't really used too many tools that connect into the whole cloud computing universe. At work we have different folder access, so we can access our files from other computers in our building and from home if needed. I suppose if we didn't have that kind of access, I would use Google Docs or something similar.

I do want to try creating a shared calender using Google Docs at some point. There are several different calenders that could be created for our workgroup.
1. A calender that would basically be a work schedule for our student workers. They could swap shifts, etc. from home and not be at work.
2. A calender (that currently exists in paper) that has reminders for tasks that occur each year at different times. For example, Update student worker telephone list - this happens each time a new semester or student schedule changes. These reminders are for our whole workgroup.
3. A combination calender that merges all the individual tasks that each person in the workgroup currently takes care of.

Experimenting is fun!

Thing #44 The Economy

I happen to be bouncing back from financial challenges, so I am all up in this topic! I recommend adding "The Simple Dollar" blog in your RSS feeds. This blogs keeps me reminded of my money goals and gives tips all the time on saving money. The blogger also reviews financial books which is great to read about new books coming out.

I have used both Craigslist and Freecycle in the past. The cactus that I have not killed in my cubicle was from someone on Freecycle last summer. I have used Craigslist to sell things online as well as ebay.com and half.com. I have also purchased many things from these 2nd hand retailers.

I recommend www.gottadeal.com during the holiday shopping times to monitor special online and in store sales and deals.

Thing #43 Online TV and Radio

Picture: Michael Scott from The Office and The Michael Scott Paper Company. Since I don't have cable tv at my apartment, I watch The Office exclusively on www.abc.com. I also watch Lost on www.abc.com.

I have watched movies on hulu.com which is awesome! Movies for free! I have bought tv show episodes and movies from amazon.com unbox service too. Great options for online watching!

Thing #42 Music 2.0

Bob Dylan, one of my heros. I often listen to music while working on projects while I am at work- it helps me to concentrate and shut out some of the random background noise from near my cubicle.

I often listen to mpr. The Current from the cities area. Its great now that they have a little pop-up player that lists the artist and song currently playing. And I'm a member now! I was persuaded by the last fund drive.

The other source of online music is from yahoo.com. They have a great selection of music, I dig their swing and vintage country stations.

One annoying thing about some online stations is you are allowed to skip songs you don't like, however they limit them.

Thing #41 Mashup Your Life

I tried out lifestream.fm. Cool. If you like to go to one spot to catch up on all your web activities, this is the way to go. I am a bit nervous about having this one site have access to all my separate accounts on different pages, but it is nice to be able to go to just one page to keep track of stuff.

I have certain sites that I visit faithfully, others I go to once in awhile, and more that I eventually forget about. Delicious- I loved it so much in the first round of 23 things, and then I forgot all about it! boo. So its great to see it again showing up on lifestream.fm. Lifestream also has a bunch sites listed that I am not part of right now, but want to take a peek at!

Thing #40 Mashup the Web

I love love love mash-ups!

My favorite new "thing" is Pandora.com. If you are like me you have purchased countless cd's that you ended up not liking because there was no way to sample a certain group or genre of music. (This was before sound clips on amazon and the like). Anyway, I have a Neko Case and a Bob Dylan music stations so far, and am building them like crazy!!
It's a great way to find music that you haven't experienced but is similar to music that you already like. Yea yea yea!

I also very much enjoyed visualheadlines.com. It's a different way to experience news and since I'm more of a visual person anyway, this is great for me. I always look at the pictures when I open digg, cnn, or bbc. Now I can choose to read the news based on pictures, how great is that!

Thing #39- Digital Storytelling

Below is a digital scrapbook that I created at http://www.scrapblog.com/. This site is supercool, there are a lot of free options, but you do have to pay for the really recently created stickers, layouts, etc.
I love traditional scrapbooking, though the popular type of scrapbooking really subtracts originality personally for me.
Anyway, the site was cool, free, and took only a few minutes to create.

Thing # 38 - Screencasting

http://www.screencast.com/users/MeganB/folders/Jing/media/b7ba1e38-f530-4d79-b3f9-a365260b41a1

Above is the link to my jing tutorial. It's really short. I tried a few different screen casting sites, I found that none of them are very easy to figure out by yourself. Even jing, I'm not really sure how it interacts with screencast.com.

I want to use screen casting as a way to train new student workers in our library system, using Aleph.

using tiltshift.com

this one worked better at tiltshift.com

Thing #37 Photo Tales

I used www. Picnik.com to edit this photo! I am jazzed about using this site to correct pictures. It works really well to brighten pix, especially with my camera that doesn't take great pictures at night or inside.

This is a shot of the MN Northstar Roller girls- The Kilmore Girls. I also used this picture at http://www.tiltshift.com/ but it didn't work very well, if you have a cityscape pic it works a lot better.

Thing #36 - Comic Relief: Generate Some Fun

Yeah!!! I love this thing!!! First, I created a newpaper headline and story about the swine flu for a co-worker that felt ill (no they don't have the swine flu, but I thought it was funny to make).
I added my custom made dewey decimal number, that's on the left hand side of my blog. Very interesting and cosmic!
In that vein, I also created a picture that put my face on a pancake through http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp- there are many cool mash-ups on that site.
I played with printable paper, which at first I thought was a joke, but actually has some useful tools like printable storyboard pages.
I just got started with xtranormal.com which you can make short movies. I want to do more with that one, but first I need to create a script~!

Thing #35 - Books 2.0

Yes, books! Of course I love LibraryThing. I am meganthing if you want to look up books that i have read on the site. I have been using LibraryThing since the last round of 23 Things and have recommended it to many people.

I did check out some of the new links for this thing and liked Daily Lit. I scrolled through the free books and selected My Antonia by Willa Cather to get in installments on my email. Very cool. It will be interesting reading small bits each day instead of diving into books, which is what i usually do.

The site What I Should Read Next is really fun! I typed in a bunch of books that I have read in the past and it was very interesting to see the results that popped back.

Thing #34- Is this Our Competition?

Very interesting. I skimmed through a bunch of articles about the future of libraries, particularly involving reference desks. hmm, different libraries of course have different patrons with different needs. I think the thing that everyone can agree on is that technology will be what shapes and changes the libraries of our future.

Thing #33 - Travel 2.0

Wow- I just keep learning about new things during my 23 things on a stick journey! I love to travel and there are so many great travel sites. I have many travel horror stories that could have been avoided with some of these great tools on websites. Like the time I was driving around St. Louis and there was road construction. My map did not have all the updated exit numbers on the freeway, so I almost missed my flight back home! Or finding out that a museum had been closed for awhile, but I was looking in a travel book that was a few years old. So cool to be able to plan and look online for reviews.

I really like The Lost Girls blog and boo.com is cool, you get the perspective of a person that has traveled, not the stores or attractions that are advertising for you to come visit them!

Thing #32- Google Maps and Mashups

Google maps are sweet! What a great way to make a trip itinerary, show a friend how to get to your house, etc. I made a map of all the places that I have lived, but I couldn't figure out how to put it on my blog. boo. oh well!

Thing #31: More Twitter

No, I still don't like Twitter. I think the more popular it gets, the more I hate it.

Thing #30: More Ways to Use RSS & Delicious

One great thing that I learned about and use everyday are RSS feeds. I was apprehensive setting them up to begin with, but have been delighted to use them. I am always switching them out to find new news! Currently I have a bunch of personal finance, self-help, and library RSS feeds, including MLA (Minnesota Library Association).
I am always excited to look at my RSS feeds and see what came as "mail" each day!

Thing #29 Google Tools

I have already used several google-things: Alerts, viewed Google News, and have g-mail accounts. I really cannot get the hang of gmail. I just don't like it, it doesn't seem intuitively organized, so I just use my yahoo account. Alerts are really cool, I have set up alerts for a bunch of my curiosities at different times. What's great is it searches and finds topical information for you!

I want to set up a Google calender for my co-workers & I to share. When I force myself to do it!!

Thing #28 Customized Home Pages

I love MY YAHOO homepage. I have had it set up for awhile now and it's great! I have a widget for:

my yahoo email
the weather
Star Tribune
Cnn
The Onion
People
St. Cloud movie theatre

and now I was searching around and found a new widget that's called "Overheard in the Office." It's awesome! I highly recommend that one for entertainment.

#27 Twitter

I gave it another go. . . but I just don't like Twitter and I see no use for it personally. Maybe I just have a negative attitude about it. I added my picture, found some people to follow, but I just saw it as pointless. I know people are crazy about it and there are numerous ways to use it - this can be justified by how many blogs and websites there are with offshoots of topics about Twitter.

I went to www.twitspy.com and watched that for awhile. A map is displayed of the world which corresponds to tweets that are being posted and the location. After seeing the following tweets:

hmmm steak

and

That's my all time favorite color for my toes!!!

I came to the conclusion that it was like spying on someone's text messages or email and not really knowing what context these bits of information were from.

. . . On a positive note; I do like the Twitter color scheme and the bird theme though.

#26. Join the Ning

I joined the ning the last round but really didn't do much with it. This time around I customized MY PAGE more. I found some friends in the CMLE group, uploaded a photo, joined a group, and played around with adding avatars, etc.

#25 Blogger's Toolkit

Okay, so I got really lost zooming around the internet playing with a lot of features for blogs, but I didn't actually add too much to my blog! I did add Vozme & Clustrmap, which were really easy to use. I added Apture, and am still trying to figure out what I can do with it.

happy bloggin'

#24 Refresh Your Blog

My most favorite thing to do is play around with colors and the look of my blog. I changed my colors and added a few new avatars! meez.com is the most fun to play around with. i have changed my avatar several times already! I also tried zwinky and doppleme- they were also fun but are not as extensive as the meez site.

I'm Back!! More things . . . .

I'm so excited that More Things is rolling along again! I've had the start date on my calender and I'm ready to go!

#23 All Done!

Were there any take-a-ways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?

It's kind of sad that this is ending for me. . . I looked forward to trying new things with this program! I think the most unexpected outcome is I really was motivated to learn about technology! As I said in one of my early blog entries, I don't really like technology. Now I can say that I welcome learning about technology that can be useful in my personal time and at work.

The things that I have been using the most are:

Ta Da List- to tracks all my lists of stuff to do. It is so satisfying to click a check mark for the items that I have completed- there is a sense of accomplishment.

Library Thing- I have added more books.

Blogger- I have started a blog that will share all my sewing and creative projects- I added craft books that I tagged on Library Thing to my blog!

And of course- slide.com, imagechef.com, bighugelabs.com, to make fun pictures at work and at home!

#22 What Did I Learn Today?

bloggy blog, I am going to miss working on you! I will keep adding to the blog when I have found useful ways to incorporate 23 Things in my work at the library. My supervisor has tasked me with a project for the summer: Figuring out how to use 23 things for work related projects! Perfect! Now I can continue my knowledge of Web 2.0 tools.