It's over! Well, not really.

Talk about leaving things to the last minute! Today is the deadline for completing the 23 Things, and here I am scooting in at the last possible moment. The title of this post is "It's over! Well, not really." because the official 23 Things program is complete for me, but I feel like I have learned so many things over the course of these last few months that I will continue to learn for many, many months to come. This program has been a great success for me personally, and the library system as a whole. I am happy to have completed the program on time and it makes me smile when I hear other staff persons talking about Flickr or Delicious in everyday conversation. I think even those of us who grumbled about having 23 new projects to work on have learned at least a small something that will help them both professionally and personally. I look forward to more Learning 2.0! Learning 3.0?

Downloadable audio

Well, I went through the process of creating a NetLibrary account, finding an audiobook I was interested in, downloading it, but then never listened to it. I have an iPod, which is not compatible and the idea of listening to it on my laptop was not very appealing. Exactly how many patrons feel, I believe. I downloaded Ultramarathon Man, by Dean Karnazes. The guy who ran all those marathons (50 in 50 days) and those long endurance runs. I still want to read/listen to it. How amazing.

Podcasts

I have iTunes on my computer at home and have experimented with podcasts. I used to subscribe to several, including NPR's Story of the Day and NPR's book reviews, but I found that I wasn't very good at hooking my iPod to iTunes and getting the podcasts onto my iPod. I'd have days worth of podcasts, then would have a hard time listening to them to get caught up. I really like the idea of podcasts, and there are many out there I'd love to listen to, but the delivery isn't so easy for me. I have a hard time going into iTunes everyday. If there were direct delivery to my iPod (wirelessly) I'd be much happier. Perhaps in the next couple of years.

YouTube You Choose

One of my favorite things about YouTube (not the puppy videos or the singing bird videos) is the You Choose feature that profiles the presidential candidates (www.youtube.com/youchoose). In addition to the video profiles, YouTube has provided the several key issues (education, energy, healthcare, immigration, Iraq, and the economy) and the candidates have posted videos showing their positions on the issues. These videos are posted by the campaigns themselves, and are from previous appearances by the candidates. I love that YouTube has made it so easy for people to get a taste of the candidates views and positions. The videos are more accessible to many people than the New York Times election guide (http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/candidates/index.html) or some other guides that may not be geared towards a mass audience, or the younger voters.

Online Productivity, Part 2

I just discovered that Zoho Writer offers a way to type a letter, or document, without having to create an account.

http://writer.zoho.com/editor.im

This may be a good way for some patrons to type a quick letter or resume.

Online Productivity

This is particularly difficult blog entry for me. It shouldn't be, because I've certainly used Google Docs and Spreadsheets plenty of times. So why is it hard? I guess because I'll have to start fresh with my feelings on Google Docs (and other online productivity options).

Here's what I like:

1. It's easy to keep documents private and secure, and be able to access them from any computer with internet access.

2. It's easy to share documents that you want to collaborate with someone on.

3. It's easy to publish documents to the web for others to view.

Here's what I don't like:

1. The formatting is not as sophisticated as Word. While this may be good for some users, for most it is prohibitive of creating a nice looking online document.

2. That Google Docs is a replacement for other programs, such as Word, on the library's public computers. Maybe some day soon this will be okay, but until we reach the day when it is just as easy to use as Word, we will be underserving patrons. Setting up an account is too difficult for some people, especially as you must have an active email account to set up a Google Docs account. For those who just need to type a letter and will never use the program again, this is a big hurdle.

Playing Favorites

Here are my favorites. I'll add them to the 2.0 Sandbox.

Animals - Dog

Blogs- Likely Stories (blog.booklistonline.com), PostSecret (postsecret.blogspot.com)

Books- A Thousand Splendid Suns, There is No Me Without You, The Omnivore's Dilemma

Movies- Annie Hall, Amelie, Dan in Real Life

Activities- Umm, reading. Mountain biking, cooking, painting, taking pictures

Movie Stars-Jude Law???

Music- Badly Drawn Boy, Wilco, Michael Franti, Ozomatli,

Place in Santa Cruz County - Wilder Ranch, Beach between Sunny Cove and 26th Ave.

Restaurants- Nuevo, Pink Godzilla, Dharmas

Sports Stars- Used to be Marion Jones, before the steroids debacle.

Stores- Bookshop Santa Cruz, Best of Everything, New Leaf

TV Show- Six Feet Under, 30 Rock

Vacation Spots- Taos, Tahoe, Paris

Web tools- ScreenGrab, Pandora, all Google products

Websites- Epicurious, Facebook

Wikis-