Open Library

Both Boing Boing and Slashdot have stroies this morning on Open Library http://demo.openlibrary.org/, a "giant books wiki" which may have half a million books eventually. Sounds like it would bring together online book content from anywhere, such as Project Gutenberg, Electronic Text Center, Digital Library SunSITE, etc. Will have to read more about it. . . .

Learning from each other

Several people have told me they've learned a few things from my blog. I'm flattered that anyone is reading it and glad some are finding it useful. I am also learning things from reading what others post, for instance roboform for accounts & passwords from Jesse's blog. Part of the whole point of us all exploring things together is to work together and help each other out. It makes it more fun, too, than struggling alone with the not-always-simple directions that sometimes seem too tedious to bother with, except for those few people with unlimited patience. (I am not among them. . . .)
An added benefit of doing Library 2.0 that I don't know if anyone anticipated is that we learn more about each other, not only the fun social things i.e. grandchildren and pets, but also useful information such as that someone knows sign language, or is a movie buff, dog expert, nutritionist, whatever. It's always nice to know someone personally who might answer a question or two.

Changing the subject, watch WYTV 33 tonight to see one of our patrons answer Len Rome's "Question of the Day". We don't know his name, but he said he'd be back to sign autographs ; )

The photo things really are fun. From reading other people's blogs, I decided to play with Dumpr.net, which couldn't be easier. I only have a few pix in flicker to work with right now, but made them both into sketches and antiqued them, also tried the distorting circle feature and the Easter egg. Silly! And it's a lot of fun to browse through the creative photos on Flickr. I have some saved into my favorites http://www.flickr.com/photos/99416963@N00/favorites/, mostly book related but there's a pumpkin one for Linda.

Thing 23 reflections

This is an easy task, because a few of the "things" stand out as favorites. I particularly enjoyed Technorati because I like just popping in or browsing a tag (i.e., "funny") and being able to immediately have the choice of blogs, videos, music, pictures, etc. And it all loads fast and easily. And if you've been reading my other blog entries, you already know I'm very fond of the RSS feeds, and yesterday I discovered podcasts can be added to them. Zoho also has intrigued me a bit, because I noticed it has several features that Word does not have, and it also is easy to use.

I don't particularly like having about 50-100 different logins and passwords for all my accounts, but someone is probably hard at work to fix that inconvenience.
And there are a few things I probably won't use again, but I still like the idea of knowing what they are if they come up in conversation.

As for more programs like this, I read in Library Hotline that 2.1 is in the works!

Podcasting

I was all set to make this post an actual podcast but www.audioblogger.com is not accepting new accounts, so I'll have to look for another source and play with it later. I used Podcast Alley to find a few podcasts that I added to my RSS feeds at bloglines. One is library news, called LibVibe, and the other is a music one called NextBig Thing. There were also a couple thousand listed in the comedy category which I plan to check out a bit when I have more time. I don't know about you, but I need all the laughs I can get!

The more the merrier

This will all be a lot more fun now that we'll be doing it library-wide, I think.

YackPack and YouTube

I added YouTube section to my page elements on this blog, but didn't bother investigating enough to find out if the choices will change or not. Will watch and see. . . Found out about YackPack, a push-button walkie-talkie widget, which I added to the WickAvenue Wiki, but since most of our computers do not have microphones, will have to find out a few more details and try the terminal in the TRC that has a mike. Sound like your computer becomes an intercom with some kind of voice-over-i.p.
There are so many new things, I'm already re-evaluating whether Ning is going to be as useful as I thought it might. I think it's like any set of tools, i.e., it's good to know the difference between a hammer and a screwdriver, or a toaster and a whisk, and why you'd want to use each tool. But there is no way everyone can possibly learn more than a little bit about the things they never use or have no desire to use, so figuring out what you want to do in the first place is pretty important. Like, do I want to make a sweater? build a treehouse? cook Thanksgiving dinner? groom a horse? paint a picture? These activities alll require special tools, i.e., knitting needles, saws & hammers & nails, pots & pans, brushes, brushes. But there are many variations on each, and who has the time to learn more than the most cursory overview of those that do not appley to one's life?