Friday, September 12, 2008

Thing 23: Final Thoughts

Oh, where to begin? I gained several favorite new Things through 23 Things. I went from having no idea what Facebook was to using it daily to keep my long-distance social life on track. I didn't understand why people want to blog (why so many people want to blog!) and now I'm tentatively considering starting a personal blog once I sign off on 23 Distractions. And let's not even get into listing the online productivity tools--those are just plain fun (and useful--a win/win situation!). Plus there were the old Things I was already familiar with that I was happy to see during the program: seeing LibraryThing on the list made me feel like I was already being trendy and innovative on my own.

Naturally in a list of multiple options, some will be less attractive than others. The idea of doing much with my photos online just leaves me feeling exhausted, not creative. I keep forgetting I have a Delicious account, much less that I can use it. Second Life may have to wait until I put grad school behind me and get a faster Internet connection. But at least now I know that these Things are out there and I've tried them, rather than just hearing about them and idly meaning to look into them someday.

I liked that I knew people, usually coworkers or fellow students, who were also going through the 23 Things. It was always interesting to read their takes on stuff; often they picked up on aspects of something that I didn't consider important or vice versa. And yes, if you do a "23 More Things" or "Another 23 Things," I'm likely to sign up.

Thing 22: What Did I Learn Today?

I came into 23 Things wanting to learn more about the new stuff out there in Internet-world. I'm coming out of it knowing more and wanting to learn still yet more, so it looks like the program worked. Unlike a resolution to lose weight or break a bad habit, a resolution to keep poking around in Web 2.0 will probably be easier to keep because it promises to be interesting and often fun as well.

I've been hearing intriguing things about Lifehacker, so I'll probably get its RSS feed and try it out for a while. It sounds like it could keep me posted on useful Web 2.0 developments. I don't know how many Things I'll find a use for in our library, for all the reasons I've detailed over the past four months, but when I come upon someThing new, I'll give it a good onceover and see if we can use it. I anticipate far more success with Web 2.0 in my personal life because I can probably always find some justification for a new toy!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Thing 21: Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

Uh-oh. More of this here socializing with perfect strangers stuff. Eek!

In a way, Thing 20 was simple. Facebook or MySpace: choose one or the other (or both) and have at it, knowing you're tackling one (or both) of the largest social networking sites. With Thing 21, I feel like I'm overwhelmed by potential. Ning? WebJunction? Bake Space? The Wikipedia list left me feeling a bit lightheaded. My membership in Ravelry counts, right?

So I have dutifully joined the 23 Things on a Stick page on Ning, but like back in May when I first joined Ning for the Midwest Library Technology Conference, I can't think of anything to say (so much for socializing). I'm debating joining Bake Space--thank you for bringing it to my attention; even if I don't choose to play there, I know someone who should know about it. I'm not entirely sure how WebJunction works, so maybe it'll become clear if I join, and I dimly remember telling myself that I'd join LinkedIn when I got to Thing 21. But given what I said in the last post about not being all that interested in socializing unless I have a connection with people in the group, plus the fact that it's just going to take time to keep up with all these groups, I'm not sure how much use I'll make of any of these social networks.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Thing 20: Libraries and Social Networks

This Thing is practically anticlimactic, what with my having turned it into an in-between thing way back in June. It's good that I got three months head start on social networking before it came time to write about it, because it's taken that long to get the hang of Facebook.

At first, Facebook looked like it was in danger of drowning in inanity. The games I saw seemed silly. I'd had quite enough of posting photos after all those Flickr-related Things. It didn't look like many people I knew were on Facebook--I'm not in its biggest demographic, after all--so the social networking part wasn't working out too well.

I finally decided that Facebook's strength for me is its ability to keep one up-to-date on the minutiae in one's friends' lives. This isn't a big deal if the friends in question are local and you stay in close contact with them, but most of my friends live in different states. Even with email, we just don't stay in contact all that well, and so most communication degenerates down to birthday cards and holiday letters. And usually only the big events make it into those, so there's no context ("We're getting married!" "Married? I didn't know you were dating! Wait, who is this guy?"). Facebook encourages keeping your friends updated on anything from upcoming nuptials to whether or not you're having a bad day. Playing the online version of a board game with a friend of mine on the East Coast has resulted in more casual communication between us in a month than we've managed in the past two years.

I haven't been all that interested in the groups. I've joined a few, on topics I'm interested in, but I never remember to visit them. This lack of interest doesn't surprise me, though: I'm in groups on LibraryThing and Ravelry, and I never take the time to visit them either. I need a more personal connection than just mutual interest in a single topic. So I've joined the Library 2.0 Interest Group, but have only visited it once since then.

I looked at MySpace's homepage this morning, in the spirit of investigation. The spirit of investigation can only take one so far, however. While I appreciated that MySpace offers a rudimentary tour (Facebook apparently believes people should sign up sight unseen), advertisements for some sort of sorority program and news about Jessica Simpson left me cold. And when I ran a test-search on a name, I realized I could see much more about the people in the results than I wanted to. (After my adventure with my representative, I've got privacy issues on the brain.)

This is still yet another Thing I'm not seeing our library making much use of. Again, generational issues are a factor. I don't see a lot of teenagers or twenty-somethings having much interest in law libraries, and pushing a page or a group under their noses isn't likely to change that.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Thing 19: Podcasts

Right off the bat, I can tell you that my favorite discovery about podcasts is that they can be downloaded. My connectivity issues haven't improved noticeably in the past twenty-four hours, so I was picturing staying after work trying to find very short podcasts to listen to so that I could go home at a reasonable hour. And then I learned that they could be saved to disk and the light bulb went on. This is what large capacity flash drives are for. A bit of post-work downloading and I headed home laden with podcasts to sample at my leisure.

I haven't bonded with the podcast directory sites yet. Yahoo Podcasts just seemed to be an open search box, fine if I knew what I was interested in listening to, but not much help for someone who needed a few suggestions. Podcast.net never came up when I clicked on it. Podcast.com was more promising, but when I clicked on interesting-looking titles, I repeatedly got warnings that there might be explicit content in my selection. Either I have an undiscovered instinct for homing in on naughty podcasts, Podcast.com has way too many of them, or they err on the side of overcaution in their warnings. Whatever the case, after about four of these warnings in a row, I moved on to other things (since I was downloading off my work computer, I couldn't take the risk that these really were offensive podcasts).

For my first baby steps into the world of podcasts though, I didn't really need a directory. I've been told about a variety of podcasts just in the normal course of life, and so I went off and visited them. I listened to a couple of Grammar Grater podcasts from Minnesota Public Radio plus an interview with the Yarn Harlot from the KnitPicks site, and I have plans to delve into PodCastle.net ("the fantasy fiction podcast") when I have more time. (Which may not be for a while. Must pass classes. Must get MLIS. Must not set up RSS feeds to constant sources of distraction. 23 distractions are more than sufficient.)

in-between thing: youtube

Oops. I just realized that the "see alsos" at the end of YouTube videos change constantly. Between that and the fact that there are multiple videos on backwards Continental knitting (or is that Continental backwards knitting?) on YouTube, it might not be clear what video I was referring to. I meant this psychedelically-colored one:

Monday, September 8, 2008

Thing 18: YouTube & Other Online Video

I dunno...you're asking a woman who has the bare minimum Netflix subscription and hasn't watched TV in months to check out online video sites?

I think YouTube is a fine idea. It's one Thing, though, that highlights a digital divide: online video might as well not exist if you have a dial-up connection. So with my home computer not even in the running and with my laptop having a few connectivity issues, I'm doing Thing 18 off my work computer and am making sure to view only Very Inoffensive Videos.

That said, I love the "Introducing the Book" video--I'd've put it in this blog, but that would probably come across as a mite unoriginal on my part. So instead, readers of this blog (all three of you) will be treated to an instructional video on backwards knitting. I want to learn to knit backwards, so you get to learn to knit backwards. And I liked the 'see also' feature. The videos this "Backwards Knitting" video refers to include another video on the same topic but done by a Continental knitter (really, that last comment makes sense if you knit). This is a good video instruction-wise, even if it's grainy: it clearly shows how to perform the technique. What more can you ask of an instructional video?



I'm almost scared to get a fast Internet connection simply because I can see myself spending far too much time looking for interesting videos. I don't feel much urge to make videos, though. Of course, maybe that's because I haven't been exposed to enough amateur video yet.

Friday, September 5, 2008

in-between thing: facebook

A few days ago, I got a friend request on Facebook from my state representative. I've been procrastinating on responding to it, mostly because I'm in denial that I got it in the first place. Not that I have anything against my representative--indeed, I'm oblivious enough about politics that it took me a while to figure out who this person was who was friending me--but I'm mystified as to how they found me. Since I didn't put my home address in Facebook and I don't think our mutual friend sold me out, I'm left imagining that some poor souls on the representative's staff have been assigned to go through the entire list of registered voters in my district and friend any of us they happen to find on Facebook (and possibly MySpace, but I'm not in a position to check that).

However Representative X or their staff found me, I'm not happy about this. This in and of itself isn't going to drive me off Facebook--I believe my representative is relatively harmless and I'm capable of ignoring unwanted friend requests--but it does leave me musing on those privacy issues that keep popping up around Web 2.0.

Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools

I knew about the Electronic Library for Minnesota before I started the 23 Things. It's been very useful now that I'm back in student mode--I love being able to get journal articles without having to take the time to go over to a library and I really don't miss trying to make photocopies from bound journals. However, I didn't know that the databases came with extras before playing with Thing 17.

I think EBSCO's Personal Folder feature will be really useful. It was a lot easier to save the articles for my current class to this folder instead of downloading them to a flash drive. After all, I never remember which flash drive I used and when you save an article to a computer, the file name is a meaningless string of letters and numbers--saved to the Folder, the file name is the article title. Although my high hopes for getting all my articles neatly organized and available from any computer crashed when I realized that one of the assigned articles was from another company's database. Oh well.

The Search Alert feature was less successful. Having dinked around with it for a few days, it looks like I can set up a successful RSS feed through IE7 or Outlook, which is fine when I'm at work. But I use Firefox 3 and Thunderbird at home, and I just couldn't get the RSS feed set up on either of them successfully. Oh, it looked like it was set up in Thunderbird (Firefox couldn't "see" the RSS feed at all), but whenever a new article came in and I clicked on its link, I was sent to a login page that wanted a username and password that I didn't have. If I tried, perhaps I could get this working on Google Reader, but like I said back at Thing 3, I don't want to use Google Reader. And it wasn't clear where I should go for help. My library? EBSCO?

I've had mixed feelings about NetLibrary for years. It's a great idea, but the books included seem to mostly be a random mixture of this and that. And once I've chosen a book, the layout strikes me as odd. Maybe I'm just wired for print books more than electronic ones! But I love the idea of being able to run keyword searches on books, not just journal and magazine articles, so I hope NetLibrary (and other variants of electronic books) continue to improve.