#27 the end?

Thanks to all for this learning opportunity. It's been mostly a lot of fun, very little hard work and a great excuse to expand my mind.

#26 Reflection

Looking back is not my forte but here goes.
These 27 things have opened my eyes to a small part of what's out there on the web beyond my email and checking for new books on KCLS' website. Ok, I did use more than that but I'm basically a 20th century gal and all the new technology makes my head spin and things change so fast! If my computer doesn't boot up when I push the button, I'm hard pressed to know what to do. But I vow to keep trying new things, and I have learned that it won't be hard to find them.
I liked exploring Flickr, Youtube and podcasts...that online software, not so much probably because I don't use my computer for all that much computing. There was always somebody around to ask for help in the back room and next up for me is uploading some photos from our trip to Spain to a shared site so friends and family can see...they have been bugging me to do so.
I would totally participate again..Why not learn something new?

#25 ebooks

Exploring this makes me excited to earn that MP3 player and start downloading books to listen to on my walks. I already use the eaudio players but having the choice of what to listen to and never being without appeals to me. So much to learn. So many choices of book publishers. Which will work best...do they magically disappear after the 3 week check out period in a Mission Impossible fasion?
Can't wait.

#24 podcasts

This was a fun explore for me. The only podcasts I'd listened to before were the Learning 2.0 ones. I looked at all 3 sites but liked the podcast.net best. I found a great site called Book Voyages. It's a review of children's literature from ?? But the host starts with a mystery book, gives clues and with the winner to be chosen randomly from correct entries. The prize? A hardcover copy of the mystery book...I think the book for the one I was listening to was Bud not Buddy. Then there was a guest kid reviewer in one and an author interview in another. I found myself wanting to be able to see the books being talked about. Guess I'm a visual learner.
The podcastalley.com search for Library 2.0 and just library seemed to bring up the same list and I noticed several were on the list from podcast.net. Nothing seemed to grab my attention. Over to Yahoo podcasts and here I found what I've heard other folks talking about. Podcasts about Lost theories! I didn't listen too long, why spoil a good show with overthinking it? With the help of Kyle I was able to add the RSS feed to my bloglines account. But here is the link.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BookVoyages

#23 You Tube

Oh my, the time to be wasted here. I got to looking at some Japanese mousetraps after watching those library dominoes and couldn't look away. And some cute animal antics. And then I found Cows with Guns in claymation which I'll try to imbed. Wish me luck.
How about Mr. Jim's story time on Youtube for those who can't make it in?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5s5qGg01nE

Lesson 22 Choose your own Adventure

Wow. Just looking thru' the lists it's obvious that there is soooo much more out there that we never explored. I looked at the other book sites. The Lulu seemed to have good reviews on rather obscure books. And I liked looking for out of print on the Biblio site. Had to read thru the one sentence site on fun stuff and just on and on. I searched for cheap travel tickets but didn't buy and decided I didn't have enough time to waste to explore the games...remember the Flickr sudoku? The Webware froze up on me twice! So at least for me, it wasn't so much of the fun.
Some of what I looked at?
http://www.lulu.com/
http://www.biblio.com/
http://www.onesentence.org/
http://farecast.com/
http://realtravel.com/

Google Labs

This is a fun spot. I like the trip planner altho the estimated 58 seconds it said it would take me to get to the bus stop is a bit optomistic. This seemed easier to use than the Metro site, at least for me. I think if I was younger and more into the music, the Music Trends would be fun to watch.

Online software

Another catch up day, looking at the online software. Google or Zoho? The Google was easy to use, I inserted a picture to my post, no problem, the Zoho seemed like it offered more possiblities. I can remember doing the registrations for Issaquah Little League for a couple of years, as well as schedules and lineups. Something like this and the comfort level for using it sure would have been nice.

Library 2.0

Boy, don't ever go on vacation in the middle of learning something! Way behind and feeling the pressure. The articles give good insight into the way libraries are changing and it's good for us to be reminded of this. Those of us of a certain age have very fond memories of libraries being about books and have a long history of lingering amongst the shelves. I can still remember the smell of my childhood library. But nothing remains static and this is true in the library. I may be frustrated by what the system spends my tax dollars on, like populart hip hop cds and major motion pictures that are destined to be stollen. My husband in particular likes to rail against the media, saying this is not what Ben Franklin had in mind. I have to remind him that back in the day, books were the entertainment and information and the scope of intertainment and information has changed. He grudgingly has agreed.

Searching for Answers

First let me say that I really enjoyed last week, not having to set up yet another online account for something I'll never use. I could have spent hours on the Generator Blog site but held myself back to only trying a few (dozen), By the way, my Harry Potter character is Albus Dumbledore!
Ok, back to the searching thing. I tried both the Rollyo and the Google but I guess I like the Google best because I use it all the time. It's great for those obscure NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle answers. So that's where I set up my account, named kclsblogger to try and keep things simple. I set it up to search for shoes. Why, you might well be asking. Well my oldest son along with his day job has a data base for selling shoes online. While he sells absolutely nothing, he buys ads on Search engines like Google and when folks click on his ad, they go to his website, look around, get directed to places like onlineshoes, where shoes are actually sold and if they buy, he gets a commission. It's all pretty much Greek to me, but is making him enough money to pay his monthly mortgage including taxes and insurance. Boy, this younger generation amazes me!

The Last of the Wikis

The linking of the blog to the best blog ever was a frustrating experience for me. I kept running into being locked out and did I want to steal the lock and I thought, how mean, somebody else is having trouble doing this and needs more time...then I did get my blog name added to the list with the funny dotted lines under but unlike everyone elses, mine wouldn't link up. Thanks to a co-worker's eagle eyes (one too many ///!) I was finally able to complete this but it did take two days!
Phew!

wiki day one

Phew, that's a lot of reading!
But I had heard of and used Wikipedia before, but never understood what it was all about.
Explored some of the others, loved the reviews on the Book Lovers Wiki and had fun at the Steven County Wiki. Who knew there were so many Washington state murder mysteries? One could have time to read nothing else!

A library thing

First let's get that Technorati out of the way. I looked around, saw some learning 2.0 and kcls27things, quite a few German entries and some that had nothing to do with what I was looking for. But I did find my friend's blog listed, not under her banner name but I remembered the url name and was able to find it that way. It did not bring up the photos that I get from using my favorite places link at home. Bottom line for me, this will not have much use.
That said, that Library Thing has possiblities. I need to spend some more time looking around but I loved reading what others thought of books. I hope to find some more good reads,(which I really don't have time to read!) here. Here's the link to my account
http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=kclsblogger
Thanks for an interesting lesson!

delicious

I know that's not how it's written but it's just too cutsey for me the other way. While listening to Kathryn Gilroy's podcast about the uses of the site I could see how someone doing research and digging for specific information might find this useful, but for me, I don't see the relevance. Maybe it's because it's the end of a long stressful day, dealing with the nuts and bolts of the library and nuts was probably a Freudean slip there, but I sure don't see this as something I'll ever be using. I didn't see much in the the 27 things account, found some recipes but they are available easy enough with a google search if I'm looking for something new.

My Space

I cannot believe that I, a 50 year old gal now has a My Space account. There is so much negative publicity about this, trolling for underage encounters, etc that I set it up to be anonymous and used my KCLS email. I so don't want my home computer associated with this.
But it is done and I have my KCLS27things signed up to be a friend. Still waiting for the confirmation that that was successful. You can be this will be taken down at the end of the program!

RSS continued

So, here's the 2nd part of the RSS exploration. Being unimaginative it was hard to think of anything to even search for. I ended up with a link to a Lost site and one for knitting. For the library sites I chose the Librarybytes, liking the Flickr type letters in their banner, and Library Link of the Day which seemed to be a good way to go for someone just learning. Tame the Web which also sounded good for a newbie would not load during several tries. sigh.

RSS

According to co-workers, I'm way behind after having 2 days off! So here goes the catching up. I listened to the podcast at home as I do each week, not having headphones for the computer. Then I started to make my way thru the reading and links while still giving the best of customer service at the accounts desk. Now I continue to multitask by blogging while manning the phones. I've managed to set up yet another account and have figured out how to subscribe to multiple links, more than I really wanted to, but it was per the instructions. I'm not sure how this will be more efficient than checking my favorite places when I'm on line, but I'll give it a try. Again, I'm blown away by how much time can be spent (wasted) on line.

more Flickr

So I've played with some mashups (and learned a new term) and have come to the realization that there is not enough free time in the day to explore what's out there and have any hope of getting anything else done.
Spelled KCLS and watched while the letters changed to my clicks. I have always loved photo mosaics but need a much bigger computer screen to have these images look like anything, at least to me. Maybe on the plasma screen by the elevator? The color thing was interesting and I found it again in the Flickr Bits. Amazing. The drawing thing was cool. I drew a sort of black half triangle line with my mouse (who knew I could?!) and got this great black kitty that had the same shape against a white background. But then I got to the Flickr Sudoku. I total time waster but I have to admit, I've been back already. Again, I could use a bigger screen so I could see all the squares at once but I can still get it done. This will be a favorite and one I'll share with some other Sudoku nuts.

Flickr, something I've heard of before!

So, I was able to get into my Blog successfully several times altho' it's not intuitive yet. I have at least 8 password combinations to remember for work then all the ones for home and here is another one. Now it's time to try another post.
Flickr is a website I have had occasion to visit before. Some of you may remember hearing about a horrific boating accident on Lake Sammamish last summer. A 16 year old, Chandler Balkman, was hit by a boat while he was swimming at dusk. This was all the worse as it was the family boat, driven by his sister. The Balkman's are our neighbors and Chandler's dad, Steve, is one of my husband's best water ski pals. Anyhow, Chandler defied all the odds and is well on the road to recovery. Before the accident he was a budding photographer and had a Flickr account. I checked back and he still has the account and it is updated to show photos of his recovery. If I manage to do this correctly, here is the link to Chandler's Flickr account. I found it again by typing his name in the search box for people. Have a look.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chandlor/

I hope I did this right!

Here's hoping this will be a blog post to my own blog account. Something I never thought to do because who would want to read about my boring life. But it's a learning thing and that's got to be a good thing. I hope the next thing we learn is how to get back here!