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?

Bloglines.com and Second Life

It's been a busy month but I have still been exploring. One of my new favorite things to use almost every day is my R.S.S. feed at Bloglines.com. It makes it super quick and easy to scan all my favorite websites at once. I have 17 "feeds" right now, which basically mean the new content from all 17 of my (current) favorite sites is one click away. Here's what I have been reading lately: 17 feeds
A Librarian's Guide to Etiquette (0) (0)
Annoyed Librarian (0) (0)
Arts & Letters Daily (0) (0)
Bloglines News (0) (0)
Boing Boing (11) (0)
Comedy Central Videos (6) (0)
Diggnation (Mp3) (0) (0)
Fool.com Headlines (36) (0)
iTunes Top 25 Songs (5) (0)
LibrarianInBlack (0) (0)
Library Garden (0) (0)
Official Google Blog (0) (0)
The Shifted Librarian (1) (0)
Slashdot (9) (0)
Unshelved (0) (0) [!]
WEB2RSS: Doonesbury@Slate-35th Anniversary-- (0) (0)
Wired Top Stories (0) (0)

I also signed up for Second Life after touring "Information Island", and created an avatar. However, this has been a little confusing so far and I haven't really been able to do much with it. They have mentors available, though, so when I get some time will look into that more. I'm not much of a gamer, but know lots of people who are, so thought I should check it out. Plus it's fun to have an alias or two.

Librarian social networking at Ning.com

Now I have found a really neat place to meet librarians and others interested in Library 2.0. It's a social network on www.ning.com. It just takes a few minutes to sign up and create a profile, the other people are really cordial, and are from all over the country and world. Bill Drew started it. Check out my profile under "Barbrarian."

Editing practice

MySpace image generator

Since I already have a MySpace profile, I think I will play around with the image generator feature of it, and report back. People have fun doing things like adding things to photos that weren't really there, such as a hat the person was not actually wearing. Think Michael Jackson morph video.
On to Rollyo. I've been wondering what that was, and now I'm finding out. From their website:

Rollyo is the fast, easy way to create personal search engines using only the sources you trust.
Are you tired of wading though thousands of irrelevant search results to get to the information you want? Ever wish you could narrow your search to sites you already know and trust? With Rollyo, you can easily create your own custom search engines - we call them Searchrolls - and explore, save, and personalize those created by others.

Cooltext

You may have noticed by now that I am not doing all 23 things in sequential order. That is partly because I have tried some of them before, and partly because I think the sequence is somewhat random, anyway. Right now I just made a new logo at Cooltext.com, and image generator that I have tried before and like. Let me see if I can insert the image right into my blog here. Well, I see I was able to insert the image, but not the exact spot intended, and am not sure why it copied seven times! But I did figure out how to edit that.

LibraryThing.com

Back in July, while I was working with genealogy materials on the third floor, I discovered LibraryThing, which lets you catalog your own personal collection, (up to 200 items) free. Since my personal book collection is way too unorganized and I'm way too lazy to organize it in even a vaguely library-like way, I gave LibraryThing a try with some of the uncatalogued items I came across on the third floor. Everything wasn't listed, but a surprising amount of items were, and it is easy to use. Here's the link:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php
In case it won't let you in, the user name and password are both "isgen".