RSS feeds in My Yahoo and more

I'm trying to make my life simpler. Adding a Bloglines account really just gives me one more website to open. In addition, there seems to be something in our city firewall that is blocking my subscribed blogs. I can search for blogs there but not view my own selections. Oh well.

I've opted to use Google Reader for my work related RSS feeds since we use Google calendar already at the library and I can be logged in to Google and simply click over to Reader. I keep my family blogs on My Yahoo, since Yahoo is my primary personal e-mail address for friends and family.

When I was adding feed from the World Herald, a little window popped up in Internet Explorer 7.0 with link, Subscribe to this feed, so I tried it. Now I can check the OWH feeds from my Outlook page. Very sweet!

So, you may ponder the question of whether I made life simpler using 3 different services for my feeds. I would argue that I did since they work with my schedule. I can briefly check news (I like the OWH better than my local NP Telegraph) when I check my mail first thing at work; I can periodically jump into Google Reader during the day; and I can view family blogs at home.

I added feed from 3 other people in our class and will enjoy exploring their posts and blog layout.

IM at the library -from bad to good

The bad:
Instant Messaging has really improved since I started working at the library in 1999. At that time, the standard IM products such as MSN Messenger or Yahoo Messenger or AIM (AOL) required software downloads. MSN messenger seemed to be the popular choice and it would "sit" in the system tray waiting for a user. Unfortunately for the public environment, the default setting was "log in when Windows was started" and patrons would also tend to tell the computer to remember them so it didn't really log out or they would simply leave and not log out. The next person would sit down and, to their surprise, a little message window would pop up and the first person's friend would try to start a conversation, thinking their friend was still there. The worst case we encountered was when the online friend would start writing obscenities if the second person attempted to write something in the message window. NOT GOOD! And of course, people didn't want to leave when their time was up because they were in the middle of an "important" conversation. The decision was made to get rid of messenger because of the problems.
Getting Better:
Meebo made the situation better because computer users could go to Meebo, log into the IM accounts and when they closed the Internet, the conversations would go away. No problems for the non-IM-savvy patrons who didn't want messages to keep popping up, and we didn't have to play with settings.
Even Better: We have a shortcut on the desktop labeled Meebo IM to direct our patrons directly to that website.
My Preference: I like Yahoo because I can be in my Inbox page and see which of my contacts are online and click on their name without downloading any software. Gmail works the same.

More about blogs

I got distracted by the Settings tab when I started this posting. I haven't done much with the settings since I started this blog. I need to explore these as well as layout choices, but time is flying by tonight.

7 1/2 Habits of HIghly Successful Lifelong Learners

I'd like to think of myself as a lifelong learner. There is always something out there to be discovered. We were asked to think about the 7 1/2 habits in terms of what was easiest and hardest for us. For me, the easiest would be #7: teach/mentor others. Once I learn a new skill well, I like to share the knowledge with others. I use that now as a computer class instructor, but in my past life, I was a 4-H leader, teaching cooking and baking skills. My 4-H demonstration skills led to another section of my teaching life-I had a 5-10 minute TV spot, eventually named "Cooking with Terri". For 12 years, I faithfully drove up to the North Platte TV station on Tuesday mornings, my car packed with food ingredients and cooking utensils to be a regular guest on the station's noontime "Newsmakers." Unfortunately, I wasn't paid like Julia Child so I can't say I did it for the money. I think I kept doing it for the people who would tell me how much they liked making the recipes I prepared on the show.

My hardest is Habit #3: View problems as challenges. I'm a born worrier so problems kick in my worry mode. I'm working on this one.

Library 2.0 Nebraska-style

I started this blog in May 2007 when I was working my way through the original 23 things from another institution. I stalled out when I was experimenting with image generators. I found one that let you create book cover images similar to the For Dummies series. I tried to follow the instructions to either link to the image I created or copy it so I could show it off. I obviously did the wrong thing because my image changed to a book cover that basically called me a dummie in less than polite terms. Hmmm..I didn't do very well about making that problem a challenge, did I?

So here I am again. I did start blogging again this summer and two nieces, both avid bloggers encouraged me. I want to start adding pictures or at least links to my online pictures this time.