$ea Change

Microsoft is discontinuing its Microsoft Money software. Credit this to Mint.com and its ilk: apparently online banking, both from banks and from free websites, has gotten to the point Microsoft decided to drop out. It's not that I have deep sentimental attachment to Money--please, we're talking financial software here--but I've been using it since 1998 and I'd gotten used to it.

I'm guessing there are ramifications here beyond just the end of one program. Just how well is Microsoft doing lately? It's a shaky economy for everyone of course, but here we are entering the era of cloud computing, and Microsoft is more known for tangible products sold in stores with updates only every few years. I hear they've discontinued Encarta as well, although that will barely affect me.

Off to explore my banking and accounting options...

Thing 47: Evaluation

Oh wow, I actually made it. I gather that More 23 Things took about a month longer to complete than the original set. In my case, anyway, I see that the original 23 Things took place over the summer, while More 23 Things was running during winter and spring. It was easier for me to work on these sorts of things during the summer; earlier, I was in class and had less time and energy.

Overall, I enjoyed the program. I think each Thing needs to be fairly simple and straightforward though. Twitter felt like it had gotten out of hand. I enjoyed Books 2.0 and Bloggers' Toolkit, but it took way too much of that precious time and energy stuff to look at a good sample of the possibilities for either Thing. By comparison, Screencasting and Online TV & Video felt so much more manageable. It might've worked better if each Thing only mentioned a few activities or sites with the rest in a sort of "appendix" to each Thing.

As with the original 23 Things, I don't see our library getting much use out of most of these Things, although we've started Twittering and I suspect we'll find a use for screencasting. Personally, though, I'll be listening to Internent radio, watching online TV, discussing my travels online, and so on. It was a great introduction to Library 2.0 and Web 2.0; thank you.

Thing 46: WebJunction Minnesota

Well, here I am at WebJunction Minnesota. I'm not sure what to say about this site. Like LinkedIn, it's something that's purely professional for me . . . and like LinkedIn, I suspect that means I'm going to forget to visit it after a while. Social networking--or in this case, professional networking--is just more attractive when you've met the people you're networking with. With WJMN, I suspect the only people I know are the coworker and former coworker that I've gone through the 23 Things programs with, and by now, we're connected on all sorts of websites.

I like the idea of a site specifically for library networking, but I think WJMN needs some time to mature. I glanced over the classes. This is a good idea for letting people know what's available, and ditto for the calendar. However, the website itself could do with a redesign. Overall, the design seemed scattered and I found it difficult to focus on any one section. The Quick Links are "below the fold" and it took me multiple visits to the page before I saw them, and through them, finally found where the groups were listed. After all that, I did join a group: on Library 2.0, of course. I see that you can read group discussions without necessarily joining the group. I like this, as I have a tendency to lurk on groups, and this way, I won't be building up a long list of groups I joined because I found one discussion months ago to be interesting.

At this point, it's probably the courses that set WJMN apart from all the other networking sites out there. Discussions, contacts--those could be found on other sites, including LinkedIn and Ning. Perhaps as more people join WJMN, they'll expand their features, much as these other social networking sites have done.

Thing 45: Cloud Computing

Huh. There's not much in this Thing about the downside to cloud computing. Try searching "cloud crash Google" (ironically, you can Google this). You'll get a slew of articles on what happened this spring when Gmail and GoogleDocs went down for a few hours. Apparently there are already a lot of people who can't function without them.

Obligatory cynical reaction now taken care of, let's move on to the benefits of cloud computing. I'm getting more cloudy by the moment, it seems. My most recent switch is to using web-based email for my primary account. I'm making the change for several reasons, but one of them is that I'm tired of not being able to access my email from any computer I'm at. Yes, I could have left my emails on the server, but my ISP's webmail is unpleasant to use. I figured I might as well switch to a service that assumes you'll be keeping your messages online, and doesn't just offer a MB as a backup while you're on vacation.

After peeking at the Web OS articles, I don't think I'm going to need to leap into this right away. Beyond surfing the web and handling email, much of what I do just involves the basic Microsoft Office programs. GoogleDocs can handle most of this--okay, it'd be nice if they'd upgrade to the point they can handle .docx files, but if I have to, I can revert to .doc. And rumor has it that Microsoft is planning to make the next version of Office cloud-compatible ("Office Web"), so maybe a little patience is all that's necessary.

On the other hand, I really do need to pay attention to data backup. Again, with a dial-up connection, online backup was just a fantasy. Now it's a practical option, and yes, sounds much cheaper than the therapy I'll need if I lose both the computers and the external hard drive.

At present, I don't think cloud computing is affecting my productivity one way or another. Basically, I don't take my work home and I don't travel as part of my job, so I almost never have to access work files when I'm not physically in the office. It's pretty obvious, though, how this could benefit all those people who do need to carry their work with them, at least virtually. Likewise, I'm not that worried about security right now, simply because I'm not working with confidential materials. But it's a good question: is your data safer in the cloud or on a laptop or flash drive that could be lost, stolen, or damaged?

Say, if I decide Mint.com is a safe option, that's cloud banking, isn't it?

Thing 44: The Economy

Ah, this is going to be one of those blog posts where I try to list my reaction to as many things as possible in as short a time as possible. Got it.

The educational tools were, well, educational. That was a pretty good little "how it all fell apart" video. I couldn't think of any pressing financial issue I needed to research on MyMoney.gov, but it looked like it would be solid information about the basics.

My interest level rose when I tackled Banking 2.0. Understand, I just don't find personal finance and economics all that gripping, so one of the ways to pique my interest is to involve software and websites. But the security issues around online banking make this less fun than online music or video. I wonder if sites like Mint.com have been having an influence on software: Microsoft Money has vanished from stores. You can still get it online, but in general, it's gone, and it and Quicken were the big names for personal financial software. How do you judge the safety of these sites? At first, I wondered why anyone would trust their financial data to a free website, but then, Money could be forwarding my account information to Zanzibar every time I go online and I wouldn't know. Plus financial software leaves your data on your hard drive, which is difficult to erase securely when you're done with the computer. Just try thoroughly wiping a hard drive when the computer won't boot. Maybe Mint.com is no worse a risk.

On to the potential savings in my daily life. I don't own a car, so I skipped the entire driving section. My cell phone comes in cheaper than any of the plans at MyRatePlan.com. Self-sustainability, although noble as all get-out, is clearly not targeted to people who live in apartments: a woman who can't keep oregano alive in her windowsill for lack of sunlight is not going to be able to maintain a victory garden. I don't go to garage sales and thrift stores now, so I'm not going to start the habit. The pennypinching websites were an odd lot. I was pleased to see that I'm already doing lots of the tips on FrugalDad, although if you water down juices a là #31, I don't think you can count them as servings of fruit. I clicked on an article on Wisebread and found myself reading a product review of a webcam--what's that doing on a frugal living site? Finally, the coupon sites looked like an awful lot of effort for minimal reward.

I think I'm going to research Mint.com and ClearCheckbook more thoroughly, since they interested me the most. I'm hoping to find some expert opinions on whether or not they're safe enough to use (or at least no more risky than Money or Quicken).

Thing 43: Online TV and Video

I first heard of Hulu the old-fashioned way: I saw commercials for it on television. Like Internet radio, online TV wasn't much use to me as long as I had a slow connection, but I've been testing it out a bit now that I can actually watch the episodes. Stripped of most commercials, this will be a faster way of watching TV, but I'm still a bit hesitant to really get into this for fear it's going to eat up a fair chunk of my time. I'm not going to underestimate the instant gratification factor. I'd missed a few episodes of Dollhouse, and normally I'd have to wait until they came out on DVD to see them, but hey, now I can just wander over to Fox's website and see them there.

This will also let me see programs I just wouldn't be able to see otherwise. Since I don't watch a lot of TV, I don't spring for anything except the most basic level of cable. Except for the very few programs I'll buy in DVD, cable-only television is a mystery to me. Mystery no longer, it seems. So what is The Colbert Report like, anyway? Well, now I can find out. I suppose I'm going to want to hook my TV up to my computer at some point.

I'm not sure how much of an impact this will have on broadcast TV--will they notice after the long-term impact of cable? Cable is another matter though. Will people be willing to pay exorbitant fees if they can get good stuff for free? And how will advertisers respond? Print media is disintegrating almost daily because people realized they could get the same stuff for free online, and advertisers haven't figured out how to capitalize on that. Television may follow suit in a year or so for the same reasons.

Incidentally, I can't see any applications for personal mashups, Internet radio, or online TV for our library. Alas, we're dull. :)

in-between thing: supporting micronesia

I hadn't been able to avoid noticing the "new" domain name .fm that had popped up in the last two Things: Lifestream.fm in Thing 41 and Last.fm in Thing 42. Both sites touch on social networking, but lots of sites involve social networking nowadays, and I couldn't figure out what else they might have in common (okay, they both start with L, but I doubted that was significant).

A trip to Wikipedia reveals that .fm is the country code top-level domain name for the Federated States of Micronesia. Micronesia isn't stingy: they're quite willing to let others register .fm domains. The proceeds go back to Micronesia, a source of income in these troubled economic times. In general, it's been FM radio stations that have chosen the .fm domain, so even though Lifestream.fm and Last.fm are the only examples of .fm that I've seen to date, they're apparently atypical.

Oh, the trivia of the Internet. :)

Thing 42: Music 2.0

I feel like I'm starting out on this Thing a little behind the population in general. I got out of the habit of listening to radio back in college. For me, listening to basic broadcast radio after this many years would practically be a Thing in its own right, much less Internet radio. I suppose this means I don't have many old habits to unlearn.

I looked at both Pandora and Last.fm. I confess I decided to start with Pandora because I liked its name, but on the other hand, Last.fm doesn't make you create an account to just try it out (after this many Things, I'm getting burned out on creating accounts and keeping track of passwords). One advantage of either of these services over broadcast radio? Well, remember the frustration of, "Wow, I really like this song, but I've never caught who sings it or what the title is"? Not a problem with Internet radio, where you can read all about the song, the album, and the artist while the song plays. I was able to bookmark a group I'd never heard of before, who happened to come up because they're similar to a group I'd told Pandora I liked--fun!

While I've had iTunes on my computer for about two years now, I'd never bothered to look at its "Radio" option. There wasn't much point, what with only having a dial-up connection. But having just gotten high-speed Internet (!), it was a good time to be reminded of that option. I looked it over a bit. Admittedly, after all the graphics of Pandora and Last.fm, iTunes looked very barebones in this regard, but they certainly had a lot of stations to choose from. But several of them were dead silent when I clicked on them. I don't know if the station was permanently dead (how often does Apple review these lists?) or just not broadcasting at that time. If the latter, it reminded me of TV stations in my childhood and how they would just go off the air every night.

Here's an album quilt widget from Last.fm. I finally have a name for the genre of music I've been listening to lately: medieval. So that's something else I learned from this Thing.

in-between thing: friendfeed and lifestream.fm

Two days in, and I can tell you neither of them is perfect. FriendFeed can't see my Facebook status. Apparently this is some sort of glitch that affects people who tried to add Facebook to FriendFeed after the "new" Facebook was released. The app developers said back in May they were aware of this problem and are working on it; obviously they haven't solved it yet.

Less critical, but still annoying: despite my telling Lifestream.fm that I was in Minnesota, my posts are time-stamped for Central European Summer Time (seven hours ahead of Central Daylight Time), which affects what day they're credited to. Sigh. Lifestream.fm is based in Germany, I believe.

Thing 41: Mashup Your Life

I get why this Thing is called "Mashup Your Life." But for how I will end up using it, "Mashup Your Friends' Lives" would probably be a more accurate description.

I joined FriendFeed this afternoon. I'd chosen it because I knew at least one friend of mine was already there (so I'd have someone to connect to) and because my coworker who's doing the More Things program had joined Lifestream.fm and loathed it. But about an hour later, another 23 Things-er invited me to join Lifestream.fm, so I've ended up comparing the two. Based on a few hours familiarity, I think I like FriendFeed slightly better (I see why the More Things on a Stick program would like people to try these services for a few weeks, but this close to the deadline it ain't happening). It mostly has to do with aesthetics, and that I don't like Lifestream.fm's search engine for trying to find out if your friends are already on the site. But I'll have to play with both sites some more to see if that preference holds. I'm glad that both services let you make your account private. I will probably make my accounts public until the end of More Things on a Stick--that's only a few days, after all--and then go private and personalize my chosen service.

I see the two sites differ in their focus. FriendFeed puts your friends' avatars first, and the source of each post is almost an afterthought, in small gray print at the end. Lifestream.fm leaves your friends' avatars out altogether and leads with the icon of the post source (Twitter's little t, the RSS feed's orange square, etc.).

Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites, these social networking site aggregators don't seem to be nearly as popular. I think these kinds of services could be really useful. I'm tired of tramping around from Facebook to LibraryThing to Google Reader to Twitter and so on, just trying to keep track of what all my friends are doing. Now the question is, are these sites just about to catch on, or are they doomed to never be quite noticed by the world at large?

By the way, if I invite my friends to join either of these services, am I being pushy? Maybe the last thing anyone wants is still yet another account on another service. Or am I just doing social networking the way it's supposed to go, trying to forge more connections? Does anyone know if Miss Manners has addressed this issue?

I managed to get both the FriendFeed and Lifestream.fm widgets into this blog, which is overkill, but I'll be taking one out sooner or later. Both are mostly made up of posts from this blog--it's oddly circular.

Thing 40: Mashup the Web

Being someone who does a lot of walking in her neighborhood, I started with Walk Score. My neighborhood scored an 82 ("Very Walkable")--not bad at all. By contrast, the neighborhood I grew up in only managed a 35 ("Car-Dependent"). But looking at both maps, I see the mashup isn't taking terrain into consideration. You don't walk to the West 7th library from my apartment: I-35E lies between me and it. Back in my home town, there's a creek and a virtually unscalable river bluff between my childhood home and the amenities, so even that 35 is an overstatement. Nor is personal safety considered: while a previous neighborhood of mine was deemed 91 ("Walkers' Paradise"), let's just say walking there was an act of daring. Perhaps Walk Score should be mashed-up with CrimeReports?

Wheel of Lunch looked more gimmicky--and dizzying--than useful, but Lunchbox seemed quite practical. It might need a data update, though: a nearby Vietnamese restaurant didn't show up in a search for Vietnamese restaurants.

Searching for a mashup on my own, I discovered Reading Radar, a mashup of the New York Times bestseller lists and Amazon.com. What you get are the Amazon.com ratings for bestselling books. People do seem to enjoy the bestsellers: most of them scored around 4 stars. But I rarely read bestsellers, so I can't see myself using this all that often.

I played with Phreetings. It's a nice idea, but the site seemed to be allergic to Internet Explorer, which wasn't a good sign, and finding the instructions wasn't intuitive. But in the end, I managed a postcard.

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

I've always enjoyed the idea of scrapbooking, much as I've enjoyed the idea of journaling. The difference is that I got into the habit of journaling: all it required was a pen and paper. Scrapbooking took too much energy. It made messes. You had to plan out ahead of time what you were going to do because basically it was an ongoing art project. I never got any further than stuffing mementoes in between the pages of a scrapbook and telling myself that really, someday, I'd do something with them.

And now we're in the 21st century and there's this thing called "digital scrapbooking" to go along with all the digital photos we take nowadays. I delayed on this entry for a while, mostly because it was supposed to be about a library event, and we just don't do a lot of events at our library. But yes, finally, we had an open house to honor our retiring State Law Librarian, and I got photos.

I took a peek at Scrapbook Generator (doesn't that sound straightforward?) and was immediately repelled by all the tacky ads on the site. I then looked at Scrapblog. Much nicer. I got the hang of it fairly quickly. So much of it is just click, drag, and drop. You don't need to register to get started, but I see you have to register even to save a work in progress. Not a big deal--I'm getting really used to quickie registrations by Thing 39--but it seemed a bit misleading.

Anyway, here's the fruits of, well, far too much time for the final product. But I bet I'd speed up (or do fancier layouts) with practice:

Thing 38: Screencasting

Wow. This was more fun than I thought it would be, even if the subject matter of my screencast is less than gripping.

Given the Judiciary's restrictions on downloading third-party software, Jing, Wink, and the like weren't candidates. (Screencasting didn't sound like something that would lend itself to a dial-up connection, so I did this at work). I went with ScreenToaster. I caught the hint that there weren't many tutorials for it yet, but I thought their basic introduction video worked pretty well. I wish it had explained how to do subtitles in more detail, though. I would've liked to have stopped and started my subtitles rather than just have one ongoing subtitle through the whole screencast. But I wasn't sure how to stop and start without accidentally deleting all the subtitles I'd already done.

Here's my screencast, thirty-nine mesmerizing seconds of instruction on how to search our online opinions.

Unlike so many Things, I could see us using screencasting here at the law library--heck, if this one was revamped a bit, it could be used, I suppose. I've heard our Public Services staff tell tales of how they've had to try to describe navigating our website to patrons over the phone ("Now look in the upper left...no, upper left...yes, that's it. Do you see...no, look down a bit..."). Maybe we could have some stock screencasts on hand for common navigation questions. In turn, I'm not sure when I would use this at home, but now that I know how to do it, possibilities may present themselves.

Thing 37: Photo Tales

Preparing to tackle this Thing, I went off to reread the blog entries of two fellow Thingsters. Both of their embedded slideshows are dead. This isn't inspiring confidence in the Thing 37 toys.

Not quite ready to tackle a slideshow, I started with a mosaic image, using Image Mosaic Generator. Their advice is to stand back from the image about 5 meters to see it at its best. I settled for shrinking it to about 20% of original size. So see Multnomah Falls as made up of dillions of other people's images:


By the way, many of the photos that comprise those yellowish trees on the left are of rubber duckies:



Now ready to put together a slideshow, I started out by trying Animoto through Facebook. I quit after seeing that even though they had 146 reviews, they weren't scoring very high--and it looked like they'd made the reviews disappear. After that, I figured I'd just go for a no frills Flickr slideshow.



Okay, it's not playing music, but I can live with that. Pop music didn't seem to go with all those nature photos anyway.

I wouldn't say the services I tried worked "smoothly." Flickr, which you'd think would be solid and established by now, locked up when I tried to sign in. Animoto was behaving less than trustworthily. Yet I remember ten or fifteen years ago when creating a music video of your photos or video clips was a massive undertaking, done only by the truly dedicated, and now it's a free service that basically just asks for you to do some uploading. I might play around with this more when (if) I have more free time. We did a Flickr tour for our library. I doubt music and fancy transitions would improve it any, but we can always keep the possibility in mind.

Thing 36: Comic Relief--Generate Some Fun

So, am I more of a Moth Willowglitter, "caster of weird dreams" and "only seen in the light of a shooting star" (Fairy Name Generator) or a Magdalene Saint Clair, "seductress of the Beltane Feasts," "presiding over the gluttonous feasts of the wickedest night of the year" (Vampire Name Generator)?

Okay, less of an organized report here, and more of a "splashing around in the pool" effort. How could I resist Convert Your Name to a Dewey Number?

Elizabeth Tuckwood's Dewey Decimal Section:

851 Italian poetry

Elizabeth Tuckwood = 52961250801313554 = 529+612+508+013+135+54 = 1851


Class:
800 Literature


Contains:
Literature, criticism, analysis of classic writing and mythology.



What it says about you:
You're a global, worldly person who wants to make a big impact with your actions. You have a lot to tell people and you're good at making unique observations about everyday experiences. You can notice and remember details that other people think aren't important.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Just a thought here...since I'm probably coming to Thing 36 later than many people, what are the chances that when I'm looking over the library-themed cartoons to choose one to post, that I'm choosing the work of another 23 Thingser? But here we go, with a work from Bernd:

by bernd Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

As for one of my own:

by Twen Create your own Cartoon at www.toondoo.com

Maybe I'd be enjoying the toon generators more if I hadn't spent a fair chunk of my life reading comic books, graphic novels, manga, and so on. I just kept thinking how clunky and amateurish the whole thing was. Instinctively, I'd say there's not much use for a library comic at our library, but this is sort of thing where in the hands of the right person who can think of the right punchline, something might come of it after all. Just don't expect me to be that person. I thought the name generators were fun, though. No real thought needed, just a few minutes of silly relaxation.

Thing 35: Books 2.0

You know, you glance down a list of 23 Things and right away you see some Things that attract you more than others. Thing 35 is probably the most attractive Thing on the current list.

I've been on LibraryThing since 2006. I don't feel like picking up another site for cataloging my books since I'm mostly happy with LT in this regard, plus I have a book database on my home computer. Still, I enjoyed seeing what other sites had to offer. I liked that Lib.rario.us is set up to let you enter other media besides books, but beyond that, it just seemed to be playing catch-up to the more established book sites (and light print on a dark background is difficult to read for long periods). Ditto on catch-up for BookJetty. They're justifiably proud of being linked to library catalogs, but I can look up books in libraries--or on Amazon.com--on LT. Plus, as far as I can tell from their screenshot of a book details page, they don't include cataloging information like call numbers, which is something I specifically enjoy. ITrackMine definitely adds value with its ability to track item loans, not only that you lent a book to your friend, but in what condition your friend returned it to you (and if they returned it). This is not something LT is set up for, and while I can do that with my private database, ITrackMine's "circ module" is more sophisticated. The reports feature also looks easier to use than LT's. Too bad the design of the site makes me think of the 1950s. aNobii doesn't seem to do anything that other sites don't do (I see whoever described it on the More 23 Things wiki said, "is yet another collection management site"). I got the same impression with BookTagger, although maybe its online book clubs are easier to manage than the discussion groups in LT.

I'm not likely to be reading a book on my cell phone anytime soon, it being too primitive to support these services. If I wanted to badly enough, I'd find a way to do so, but based on these offerings, I'm not motivated to try. I thought about following TwitterLit on Twitter--they even have an iPhone app I could use--but I realized that I just wasn't that interested. For the other services...look, I carry books with me 90% of the time. I just can't work up much enthusiasm for this aspect of Web 2.0, although I'm glad it's out there in case I change my mind.

I've got over 250 unread books at home. I won't need to use a reader's advisory service for years, if ever. BookStumpers looked promising though, because I too have partially-remembered books from childhood that I'd like to track down. And I might play on ReadingTrails someday, just to get a better feel of how it works.

I'll have to get back to you later about the resources for online book clubs. I have a penchant for books that no one else wants to read. But I'm in a fledgling online book club at the moment, and since its current home (Facebook) is awkward, I may look into these and see if I should recommend that we relocate.

If I enjoyed audiobooks, I bet I'd enjoy these online ways to listen to them. Librivox sounds both ambitious and noble. I'm impressed that Open Culture gleans its materials from reputable universities (when something's "free," you might very well wonder about its quality).

I joined BookCrossing about the same time I joined LibraryThing. I've released several books into the wild; rarely does anyone report that they've found one. But yes, one of my books was last seen headed for Hawaii. It's fun, as long as you can live with the uncertainty of ever hearing of your books again.

The Internet doesn't lack book reviews--why are people wondering if reading is declining? So now I have somewhere else to go besides Amazon.com, Library Journal, Facebook, LT, BC, etc. to look for reviews. You could spend so much time researching books that you'd never have time to read them! (Did I mention the number of unread books I have at home...?). But when I look up a book review, it's because I'm either thinking about reading the book or have just read it and want to know what others think of it. With The Complete Review, it looked like they review only certain books, in an effort to promote them. I suspect our tastes will rarely overlap.

No children in my private life, no children in my professional life. So, not much need to play with Web 2.0 tools for children's books. As for the book rental services, my first thought was that why would I pay for what a library does for free? Then I saw Bookswim rents college textbooks. I'm in school. I should see if they handle MLIS texts. Suddenly, this sounds practical as all get-out.

Ah, Facebook. And ah, Facebook's book apps. I believe over the past year, I've tried them all. I'm currently using Visual Bookshelf, not because I think it's a wonderful app, but because it comes closest to what I want. What I want is for LT to put together a Facebook app, but they've been procrastinating on that since 2007 at least, and I've given up on them. I like the idea of showing off my current reads. When I find myself feeling uncomfortable about it, this is encouragement to weed my friends list on Facebook. If I'm really bothered by someone seeing what I'm reading, chances are, we're not friends in any sense of the word.

Thing 34: Is This Our Competition? Online Answer Sites

Wow. After thirty seconds of looking at that list of online reference sites, I could see myself just plunging in and wallowing in information and trivia and assorted facts and never coming out again. Anyone reading this blog has noticed that it's called 23 Distractions, right?

Okay, okay, focus.

I skimmed the offered articles on online answer sites, and then went off to look at a few of them. My first visit was to WikiAnswers. I would not advise looking at their recent activity page as your introduction to the site; when I saw that "ID2907462660 asked How many miles equals eleven kilometers and said it was the same as How many miles equals 4.8 kilometers," I started getting seriously worried about the questioners, much less the answers. (WikiAnswer's home page shows far more presentable questions.) Exploring the site, I'm not sure I'd want to ask a question there, but I may set up a username later and go answer some of the questions I saw. I dunno, should I feel safer knowing that if I get an answer wrong, someone might come along and correct it, or worried knowing that some moron might come along and replace my accurate answer with nonsense? I saw both kinds of answers as I looked around on the site.

Next, I looked at Yahoo!Answers. I see this site has a different take on answers: where WikiAnswers lets you completely overwrite an earlier answer, Yahoo!Answers lists all answers and lets members vote on them. My gut instinct was to prefer the latter--give the questioner the ability to choose, don't choose for them--but if the questioner knows nothing of the subject, how would they decide? By vote, probably (if there were any), and there's nothing preventing a wrong answer from getting more votes.

So, why use these kinds of sites rather than ask a reference librarian? I can think of several reasons. Some are well-known, like the ability to ask your question at any time, or that you can be anonymous (come on, find me the person who can ask a librarian a sexually explicit question without blushing or sounding threatening...or the librarian who can manage that reference interview with perfect composure). Personally, I prefer taking in information by reading it rather than listening to it, which is what happens when you talk to a librarian. And another reason: I recently read Thomas Mann's The Oxford Guide to Library Research. He points out that many students are taught that asking the librarian for help is cheating. You may not think of that consciously after you leave school, but can you shake off that training easily?

Slam the Boards just left me shaking my head. Yes, people, we're that desperate. We're just going to force knowledge down people's throats. So what if they didn't want to come to a library to ask their questions; we'll insist that they get a library-quality answer anyway. We do have value, we do, we do, we do! (We have shaky self-esteem, is what we have).

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

This is a good time to investigate this Thing: I've just gotten back from one vacation and am gearing up to plan another. I suppose it would've been even better if I'd gotten to Thing 33 before that first vacation, but nothing's perfect.

For the travel blogs, I looked at Travel 2.0 Blog and Notes from the Road. I didn't get far into Travel 2.0 before getting distracted and heading off on a link to Nextstop.com. Testing it for Portland (my recent trip), I found a review for Cupcake Jones. The reviewer liked it much better than the friend I was visiting in Portland, who took me to Saint Cupcake instead, but at least it was a review of somewhere I'd heard of. As for Notes from the Road, it mostly served to remind me that I don't get out much: not only had I been to just one location on its homepage, I hadn't heard of most of the rest (Alvord Desert? Great Guana Cay?). Nice layout and design, though.

Moving on to the review sites, I decided on TripAdvisor. Obviously this is a site focused on hotels, rentals, food: the sorts of places you want to know about before you head off to an unknown city. Me, I tend to visit local friends who take me to the spots they know well. I ended up testing this on Bloomington, practically in my backyard. I found it interesting that when one person wrote a negative review of the Sofitel, the Sofitel posted a personalized response. Ah, the interactivity of Travel 2.0.

The travel journals are definitely more my style! I want to remember both VCarious and My Life of Travel for the next time I take a trip that's more about sightseeing than just hanging out with friends. I think it would have been great if sites like these had existed lo those many years ago when I did study abroad in Scotland. I see that MapVivo takes a different approach, that it would be suitable for a trip where you stopped at several different locations, like a tour of Europe or a road trip in the U.S.

Finally there were the travel mashups. I'm not going to have to travel to make use of Hotspotr, now that I finally have wireless devices. I plugged in my zip code and got to rediscover all the Starbucks in my neighborhood--all of them marked with cute little dollar signs, of course. Oddly, no one has mentioned the Caribou Coffees in my area. I was going to contribute a couple of cafes I know of, but I learned that Hotspotr wanted my name, at which point I became shy and ran away. Maybe later.

All this was fun, but I don't see our library making use of any of these sites. The only reason you'd come to a law library to ask about travel would probably be if you wanted to learn about the laws of your destination, and I'm guessing most people would ask their travel agent or just poke around online before coming to us.

Thing 32: Google Maps and Mashups

That's it? Just make a map and post it? Oh, thank you! After Thing 31, I was pretty much drained.

Yarn addict that I am, I decided to map out a few of the Twin Cities yarn stores. I didn't choose all of them for a variety of reasons:

1. After a few selections, I got the hang of it and didn't feel I needed to keep practicing.
2. We really do have a lot of yarn stores around here. I heard once that the Twin Cities have the highest number of yarn stores per capita, although I have no easy way to verify that.
3. May 20 is coming. Cannot spend all May perfecting this map.

View Twin Cities Yarn Shops in a larger map

Although pretty simple, there were a few tricks to putting this map together. 3 Kittens Needle Arts recently moved to a shopping center that literally isn't on Google Maps: not only is the shopping center itself not there, but none of the streets leading to it are there either. Google Maps had the proper street address, but unable to find a Main Street in Mendota Heights, they plunked the placemarker down on Main Street in St. Paul. I sense some irony in the fact that I had to look the address up on Mapquest (which did have all the streets in question) to figure out where to stick the placemarker in Google.

Another problem came up when I tried to place Knit'n From the Heart. Any other yarn store I looked up, Google showed me a map; when I looked Knit'n From the Heart up, I kept getting driving directions instead. Eventually I figured it out: the word "from" was throwing it. It was trying to tell me how to get to Knit'n from The Heart. (The solution was to search the store name as a phrase in quotation marks).

I could see uses for this in a public or academic library. But it takes a while to create one of these maps, so while it would be nice to produce one on demand, it'd make more sense to have a few choice ones ready and waiting for patrons.

Thing 31: More Twitter

I just made a rough count of how many links there were to this Thing--articles, applications, badges, etc.--and came up with 118. If all the More 23 Things have that many links to explore, it truly will be a challenge to get through the program by May 20.

Suffice it to say that clicking through those approximately 118 links to do Thing 31 wasn't happening, especially as I still haven't warmed up to Twitter in the first place (but as promised, I do drop by and update it every now and then and scramble to keep up with others' tweets). I ended up skimming the list, trying to pick out the most promising. Since Thing 27, we have set up a Twitter account at work, so I forwarded the links to David Lee King's posts to our Twitterer. I also glanced over the "9 Ways Twitter Can Help in the Real World" article. I guess I've been hanging out in a law library too long: when the author jokingly listed becoming a super-stalker as one of the 9 hints, I just went, "No, that really isn't funny," and stopped reading right then. (After which, "Get Facebook friends to use Twitter without them even knowing" sounded downright creepy).

Of all the "fun" things listed for Twitter, the most attractive was the one that integrated it with LibraryThing. After all, unlike Twitter, I enjoy using LT. But then I was done in by being too much of a cataloger: when it said that it searched Amazon as the default, I just couldn't bear it (I use Library of Congress as my first search site)!

I've been more attracted to Twitter when I haven't been working through the Twitter website itself. I've got TwitterFon on my iPod touch, and it streamlines Twitter nicely. It's also easy to use when I'm out and about--which is about the only time I'm doing anything interesting enough that I'd consider twittering. I'm interested in TweetDeck too, but it's too big for a dial-up connection to handle and I haven't gotten around to downloading it somewhere else to my flash drive and carrying it home. So as you may guess, since the web is my least favorite way of accessing Twitter, I haven't done a thing with my Twitter page other than choose one of the most basic templates.

No one writes neutrally about Twitter, do they? I glanced over "The 5 Stages of Twitter Acceptance" and noted that acceptance is considered the desireable outcome. Even the suggested articles for those of us "struggling" with Twitter (I am not struggling: it's not terribly complicated to use) mostly seemed to take the approach that using Twitter is what we should want to do. "The Limitations of Twitter" was irrelevant to my situation. I wanted to point out to the author of "What Exactly is the Point of Twitter?" that maybe his friends were constantly on Twitter, so that it made sense for him to check in multiple times a day and stay in touch with them that way, but my friends mostly aren't on Twitter at all, so why should I bother? That said, I did enjoy "The Inspiration that is Twitter." I don't hate Twitter and I find the phenomenon itself interesting--I just resent feeling pressured to enjoy it (sort of, if you don't find Twitter to be a crucial element of your social networking experience, you're obviously not using it properly).

Thing 30: More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

I see there is a slight misunderstanding here. Having read through Thing 30, it sounds like the More 23 Things program believes that I am actively pursuing more RSS feeds to follow, more websites to be kept abreast of, etc., and is helpfully offering me tools to manage the flood of updates. At present, I have a talent for finding RSS feeds that rarely update at all, so I'm only having to handle 10-20 updates/day. It just seems like overkill to filter them. I don't particularly want anything emailing my RSS feeds to me--if I'm online, I can just check Google Reader or Bloglines--and if they're sent to my cell phone, I'm going to end up paying for them.

Since I wasn't finding the "normal" use of RSS enhancers all that tantalizing, I decided to poke around some of the more creative applications. Simpletracking.com sounds promising. I get a bit obsessive about wondering where my packages are, and I have a tendency to leave the confirmation emails with the tracking numbers in accounts I can't access except at home. I was disappointed to see that UPS doesn't want to play with them, since most of my packages are sent via UPS, but I will try them out the next time someone sends me something via FedEx. Or the post office, for that matter. The post office's tracking system is horrid; I suppose Simpletracking.com isn't going to be able to do anything about that.

ReminderFeed looks really useful. It seemed a bit...um...simple. Like, all I had to do was come up with something to be reminded about, plus a password? That's it? I can handle that.

I did try adding RSS feeds to my homepage and this blog. I took them off again, though. I'm satisfied with leaving a button for Google Reader in my bookmarks and Delicious toolbars and checking it when I'm in the mood. I've also got a Bloglines account, but it doesn't seem to do things much differently than Google Reader, so it mostly feels like duplication. I had been hoping that Bloglines could handle feed authentication--Google Reader adamantly refuses to do so (perhaps because their blogs can't be made private, so you don't need feed authentication to read them?)--but it seems to choke on it as well. Rumor has it that FeedDemon manages it, but I'm running out of energy to just keep signing up for new accounts everywhere.

Okay, okay, I admit I underutilize Delicious. But it just feels horribly sloppy to bookmark tons of things I'll never visit again. It wasn't until Thing 30, though, that I realized that here you're supposed to be making connections (the network) with people you don't know and aren't communicating with. I thought this was like Facebook, where there was supposed to be more of a personal connection, and since I hardly know anyone who uses Delicious--that's more like, many people I know use it, but I don't know their usernames there--I felt sort of alone. No, no--I shall now go forth and connect with all sorts of strangers. How unnatural for me.

I do like the idea of Tagrolls and Linkrolls. I'm going to finish up this post and then see if I can get one on 23 Distractions without screwing up the layout too badly.

Thing 29: Google Tools

So many options, so little time. What to play with first?

I started with Google News. I'd used Newsvine for my news ever since Thing 12--which is to say, I'd used Newsvine for a while, finding it to be the least obnoxious of the social media sites, and eventually reverted to picking up headlines here and there instead. Dang it, I don't want my media to be social. I rarely even read the reader comments attached to a news story. Using Newsvine or Digg or the other social media sites was like trying to read the newspaper while sitting in a room filled with people I didn't know calling back and forth to each other about what they'd just read or had seen online or whatever: hard to concentrate. Hmph. >:(

This Thing was the first I'd heard of Google News (I suppose it's listed on various Google pages, but it hadn't caught my attention), and I was wary--please, not another social media site! Much to my relief, Google is going to try to customize the news to what it thinks I want to read, not the most popular news of a bunch of people I may have nothing in common with.

My initial reaction leans toward the positive. It'll take a while to get used to the layout, but it always takes me a while to do that. I mean, I'm not entirely used to Newsvine's layout, and that's been how many months? Google's preference for simple layouts serves them well here, although the sheer number of links on the page is pushing that simplicity to the limits. There were a couple of glitches--for example, I tried to sign up for the local news of St. Paul, MN and ended up with the local news of a St. Paul somewhere in Canada--but they were worked out quickly. I liked the timeline feature, although when I clicked on what I thought was a story from 2004, I ended up with one from 2008. And ye gods, I'm lazy: it feels like such an effort to scroll down and get the news past the first part of the screen!

For productivity tools (oh goody, we're back to productivity tools!), I chose Gmail. I've been using Gmail for a while, actually; it's the email I've been using for all the Things that demand registration. I did a bit with labels back when I used this email for mailing lists, but that was about as far as my experimentation got. But for a while now, I've been thinking that this may become my main email address, and so it was time to take a closer look at it. I'd never poked into the Labs that I can recall. Now I've done so and have set up the gadget that warns you that you might be about to send an email without its attachment. And now I know why some emails have a > in front of them while others have a >>. Cool.

Drawbacks? Well, I'm still on dial-up at home, and Gmail is definitely oriented toward high-speed connections. Yes, there's the option to go for basic HTML, which delivers the mail just fine, but a lot of the fun features disappear (and no visiting the Labs while you're on basic HTML). I'm still a bit cautious about storing my main email online forever--never mind that I've had how many computers crash on me at home and have barely saved my downloaded archives each time? But in all the time I've had this address, Google has done an excellent job of weeding out the spam--that's practically enough to make me switch regardless of any other feature.

in-between thing: twitter

Some time later, and no, I have not yet experienced the ecstacy that is Twitter. It still feels like I'm saying random, meaningless drivel into the void. I have, however, started finding a practical use for Twitter when it comes to following others. Following groups, organizations, businesses, and so on is proving to be informative. The groups that are on Twitter for professional reasons aren't wasting their 140 characters in random, meaningless drivel; they're posting actual news, using links to connect readers to more in-depth information. In 140 characters, I can decide if the story is something I want to know more about, and if it isn't, I haven't spent a lot of time on it. It might be nice if some of the organizations on Facebook moved this sort of thing to Twitter. For example, I connected to Magers & Quinn (a bookstore) on Facebook. I don't mind hearing about their upcoming events or their recommended books, but Facebook is feeding that onto my Wall, the same as if they were one of my friends. I'd be satisfied with getting that sort of news in a tweet, knowing that I could learn more from their blog, their newsletter, and so on.

Thing 28: Customized Home Pages

Well, this was hauntingly familiar. I'd dealt with customized home pages way back in August with Thing 13 (Online Productivity Tools). There seem to be a few more options out there this year, but the principle is the same.

Since Thing 13, I've been using iGoogle as my home page on my home computer. This time, I've been testing Netvibes and Pageflakes out as well. I want to like Netvibes more than I do, but it's been having small problems ever since I signed up. I had to sign up twice because it locked up the first time and my registration never went all the way through. Started simultaneously with Pageflakes, Netvibes takes noticeably longer to load which isn't much of a selling point, and sometimes it just doesn't load at all. And finally, something about the layout just rubs me the wrong way aesthetically. I've changed the template and colors, but it's still not to my taste. The various widgets do what they're supposed to do (mostly), but I find many of them unattractive anyway. I do like that they've got a fairly wide assortment of widgets, but iGoogle has more (so there).

Pageflakes' strong points are the things I didn't like about Netvibes: it loads faster, I like the layout better, and most of the time, with any given flake, I like its look more than Netvibes' corresponding widget. Its mail flakes seem to have more problems accessing my email than Netvibes' do, though. But at least I didn't have to sign up for it twice, and so far it hasn't had hiccups in loading.

I'm not quite ready to dump iGoogle yet. I may not like its layout quite as much as Pageflakes', but I find its basic simplicity appealing in its own right. And the gadgets I've found are mostly doing what I need them to do, although why the birthday reminder gadget occasionally just stops working puzzles me.

Some gadgets, regardless of platform, are just really useful. I like having my various email accounts viewable with a quick glance at one page, rather than traipsing around from login screen to login screen to check them all. I think Facebook and Twitter do just fine as small gadgets: it strips them down to their essentials and cuts out the noise (well, Twitter doesn't seem to have much beyond its essentials, but it still works great as a gadget--if you like it in the first place). And what's a start page without news headlines or brief weather updates?

Like giving Twitter a fair shot, I'll probably continue to try all these home pages for a while and see how they work out in the long run. There are always new gadgets/widgets/flakes to try, after all--may as well see them in three incarnations.

Thing 27: Twitter

The hypothetical dedicated readers of this blog will have noticed that I haven't posted since February 4. Now part of this was because of catching That Cold and being busy at work, but it was also because I could see that the next Thing was Twitter and I just couldn't work up any enthusiasm for it. Unfortunately, I still can't.

I signed up for Twitter about a week ago and have tried to post daily. I've found a few people to follow and one person is following me (doesn't that sound like stalking?). I get that Twitter is microblogging, but my preferences run toward macroblogging: when I blog, I want to get into a topic and explore it at some length. This is not something you do when you have only 140 characters to work with.

I agree that Twitter would be more interesting if I had more connections there. More Things advises inviting people you know to join. I don't think I can in good conscience, because there's nothing to offer them. I readily admit, I wasn't enthusiastic about Facebook when I joined, but after a while, I realized that there were things about it I liked: applications that helped me socialize (vs. setting my teeth on edge), ways to find people I'd lost contact with, a way to blog while maintaining some privacy, etc. All Twitter is is the Facebook status feed. If my friends are already on Facebook, what do any of us need another status feed for? And heck, you can write more than 140 characters on Facebook. To be fair, I like that on Twitter you're not obliged to start your tweet with your name--but it looks like in Facebook's next incarnation, you may not have to deal with that either.

I note that others seem to be having trouble warming up to Twitter. The only person I get frequent tweets from has nothing to do with the More Things program. The people I'm following who are working their way through More Things have put out a few tweets and then quit. Heck, even mnmorethings, the More Things own Twitter identity, seems to have given up after January 29!

It's different for an institution like a library. I see that if you had actual news for your followers, Twitter would be a good way of getting them the bare bones quickly. Maybe I just lead too dull a life for Twitter.

I'm going to try to be quietly active on Twitter for the rest of the More Things program, to give it a fair try. Maybe I'll ask the one active tweeter in my life what she likes about it. But like with lots of the photo apps from 23 Things, this is an aspect of Web 2.0 that just doesn't fill a void in my life.

Thing 26: Join the 23 Things on a Stick Ning

I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning way back at Thing 21. Okay, that was only five Things ago, but given the break between the two sets of Things, that was also five months ago. Not that I did much then. Heck, I'd joined Ning itself even earlier, May 2008, in conjunction with the Midwest Library Technology Conference, and hadn't done much with it then.

This time around, I am putting slightly more effort into the Ning. I finally got around to answering a friend request from last fall (in my defense, I thought I had accepted that request back when it was made), and I've just accepted another one. I've also left some comments on a wall. As it turns out, we're discussing knitting, not the 23 Things, but it's communication. (I swear, knitting has gotten me further in networking than my professional responsibilities ever have).

I have glanced over the Ning widgets and I'm not finding them compelling. For all that Ning can be used for just about any interest, because of the two groups I'm part of, it feels professional to me and no, I don't really want to add BuddyPoke! ("Express yourself! Hug, kiss, tickle, or punch your friends with your own personalized 3D avatar") to a professional group.

I considered joining another Ning group, perhaps one more in tune with my extracurricular interests. Oddly, I'm not coming up with anything. A search for "knitting" netted me some photos, but no groups--not that I really need another knitting group in my life, since I have Ravelry. "Writing" is far too general; "journaling," far too specific. Of course, the beauty of Ning is that I could run out and create groups for anything I searched for and didn't find. But that's not me. This is partly because my schedule is just crowded right now and partly because I'm only a half-hearted social networker at best. Give me an actual network of people I'm familiar with and I will participate pretty regularly. But starting one and luring people into it? Nah. I'd never follow through.

I did add the 23 Things Ning badge to my blog way back when. Indeed, that redesign that I mention in the most recent in-between thing was prompted by my realizing that the new template I'd chosen was cutting off the right edge of the badge. So if I hadn't been able to get DISQUS to work, could I have blamed Ning?

in-between thing: disqus and blogger

Not being entirely satisfied with my new template, I changed it. What with DISQUS being tangled in the HTML, it changed as well. Now, regardless of whether a post has comments or not, it says "View Comments" instead of giving me the correct number (usually "0 Comments," but occasionally people do say things). Tried reinstalling DISQUS and apparently the code went in twice because it then said "0 Comments 0 Comments." This is when I learned that DISQUS's help files are practically nonexistent (the one for Blogger is "Coming Soon"). Okay, world, I'm not positively impressed by this!

[a few minutes later] Fixed this! I can't believe I figured out to fix this; I don't speak XML. Pure intuition--and it happened to work this time. But I don't think I should have had to rely on intuition in this situation. Surely many people who use DISQUS wish to redesign their blogs at some point.

in-between thing: disqus

Ha. With an actual post, I see how DISQUS works. Yay: no one will be forced to sign up with DISQUS if they don't want to!

(No, I'm not saying how it works. If you've made it this far and you're curious, come comment on something from Thing 25 onwards. :) Yes, that's only two posts. I'm trying.)

Thing 25: Bloggers' Toolkit

Okay, I got it: gadgets and widgets are blog bling. If I used enough of these, I could so successfully camoflage my writing that no one would ever find it.

The easiest toys gadgets and widgets were the ones that required the least effort on my part (duh). Since all I had to do to take advantage of the Typealyzer and the Blog Readability Test was to plug my blog's address into a box, they were the first I played with. I'm really hoping that my blog's postgrad readability rating doesn't mean that 23 Distractions is about as pleasant to read as the worst academic writing! Also, 23 Distractions scores as an ESTP blog. I'm an INTJ, and I'm spending way too much time trying to puzzle out how an anonymous computer somewhere was so off-base.

Moving on to more serious/functional stuff, I eventually decided to sign up for DISQUS. I went back and forth on this because I couldn't figure out from what I was seeing how it improved anything. I suppose I signed up for it mostly to see how it worked. Although now I'm confused: since I had to shut Blogger's comments down to get DISQUS to work, do readers have to be signed into DISQUS to make any comments at all? Gah.

Site statistics intrigue me. I'm delaying signing up for any, however, since most of them looked like overkill. But I would certainly try to set them up on a library blog: we all know libraries live and die by their statistics! So far, this hasn't seemed like a blog that would benefit from adding audio or video gadgets. If I were writing a more personal blog, though, I'd probably want to add photos and the occasional video. As for a professional blog, I'm certain we could find a use for those widgets. With this particular blog, though, it really would be bling: flashy, eye-catching, but not much in the way of functional.

The time consumption is pretty high for this Thing. Installation and sign-up usually didn't take long, but working through lists of widgets, reading about them, sorting them out in my head, testing them, and so on took quite a while. I eventually made myself stop just so I could get this posted before February. Although if we do set up a library blog at some point in the future, at least my preliminary research is taken care of.

Thing 24: Refresh Your Blog

And we're back, ladies and gentlemen: blog revamped, avatar refreshed, ready to plunge into the next 23 Things.

I like Blogger just fine for blogging, but doing this Thing reminded me that I'm not happy with its layout capabilities, something I'd forgotten since the long-ago days of Thing 1. I could probably make it look like anything I wanted to if my HTML skills were good enough, but they're not, so I'm stuck with the templates. And much to my annoyance, I can't customize the templates very much. Oh, it looked like there were possibilites, but it didn't take long for me to realize that only some of the colors could be changed, that tweaking the font threw off the spacing, etc. So wait, in the months since I last posted here, Google added more gadgets but didn't plump up the template selection? Sigh. Well, I did manage to add a subscription gadget, so keeping track of my dazzling prose should be a smidgen easier.