Thing #31: An attitude adjustment!

It's quiet in the library this morning as I write this blog unlike when I watched the video by David Lankes on this month's lesson.

My desk at the library is essentially a public service desk where I continue to master multi-tasking as I work on projects as well as assist public computer users, answer the telephone, take money for prints, all surrounded by the hubbub of people moving in and out of the tech center. It took me around 3 hours and two sittings to watch the 53 minute video but it was well worth it. This was one of those attitude-adjustment moments or "AHA!" times. Those of us at libraries are not just here to point out where you find requested information but to also lead others or sometimes follow others into new knowledge. I really the presentation's thought that "Knowledge is not a thing-it is dynamic!" Not an exact thought-I grabbed at short tidbits as I took notes. I will watch this again but I guarantee it isn't going to happen before the end of this busy month. My mind is currently on the weather and what it will be like when I drive home.

Back to "attitude adjustment." In a birthday card note, a friend shared the fact that she hates her job so only enjoys 2 days every week and not always that because she has to clean the house on her days off. I hope I never reach that point-I like my library job because each day is different. I get incredible satisfaction from helping someone find the info they need or helping them learn a new computer skill, or just finding an author they might enjoy. It is definitely a two-way street. I have patrons share web sites,"how-to-do" stuff, and authors with me too. They might take the knowledge I shared and expand on it further and then share back with me. I've told several people about Skype after I was introduced to it and found it an awesome tool for international communication. One friend was heading to South Africa on a safari and needed to check up on things at home while she was gone. She took her laptop with Skype installed and with Skype minutes she could easily contact to family on their home telephones and computer very cheaply. She in turn helped others on the trip do the same. Another friend was paying for an international calling plan. I told her about Skype and then she told me that she had figured out how to share her computer screen via Skype and was sharing pictures in her folders with her sister while on Skype-something I hadn't done yet.

It may seem like I've veered off topic but to me it all relates to keeping the innovation mind set that the presenter talked about. I liked the fact that we aren't stuck to heading for a "predicted future" but instead we need to focus on an "ideal future" and how we can get there. I liked the focus on the future of librarians not libraries-we are a people driven institution. Yes, we have people that want it to be the same as it always has been, but we don't have to follow along like sheep. We can be the shepherds leading the flock. (Yes, Christmas images are in my head..)

I really enjoyed this lesson. "Now is a good day to be a librarian!"

Thing #30 and the webby goes to..

Exploring the Webby awards was fun. I remember a few sites that I used in the past would send e-mails encouraging me to vote for them in the Webby awards but I never went much further than that. Browsing the webby awards, not knowing what category I wanted to explore, I reached Services and Applications and found http://www.blurb.com as one of the nominees in this category. My niece used this application to create a very high quality book of their son's first year of life in photos, complete with colored dust cover. I was impressed with the book and saw possibilities right away. They created about an 80 page book which they could purchase for about $37 ($25 for softcover) and others can purchase it from the website as well. I told my son about it as a possibility for wedding photos since they have the rights to the digital images. I'm thinking this would be a great way to display my travel photos instead of scrapbooking or traditional photo albums.

The software is free to download and the site has several tutorials to get you started. I watched most of the introductory video. You can use pictures from your computer files, from Flickr and Picasa web albums or a few other sites. If you don't want to use their software, you can use your own software and upload a PDF for printing. Authors can opt to keep their book private or for sale, preview or no preview.

This is something that I will want to explore further by downloading the software at home and playing with it. The software promises to be very flexible as far as making changes in format along the way. The only thing you can't change after you start is the size and shape of the book so the tutorial recommends that you play with a few pictures first to decide if you like the landscape or portrait shape or the 7-inch square book or coffee table-sized book. You can also publish a book with only b/w text for as low as $5. They do offer a flat rate shipping rate of $6.99 for 1-5 books.

Time will tell whether I actually get this done. I have been very guilty of letting lots of pictures sit on my computer where I enjoy them randomly appearing as my screen saver instead of printing very many of them.

For libraries, I could see this as a way to get historic images out for the public or publish a small book about the history of the library.

Thing #28 Google Reader

With this being my second round of exploring Google Reader, I spent part of this month really making an effort to check it frequently and read the RSS feeds that I had subscribed to earlier. I then found I needed to make my list more manageable and ended up deleting several feeds that didn't really catch my interest. At the same time, I really enjoyed several of the feeds and ending up sharing them in Google Reader and e-mailing two to a friend who teaches elementary ages. Sharing and sending were my two new skills learned. I sent one feed to my blog (previous post) and a link to another to my Facebook account.

Google Reader is a great way to have my RSS feeds together but I still like to use the RSS feed ability of Microsoft Outlook. I can log into my e-mail and easily scan the subjects of the feeds after I read my e-mail. Google Reader has the advantage of letting me move between the different feeds very easily by using the left side-bar list and going up and down in the window of the feed I am currently looking at.

Now I just have to find more time to read feeds and stay more current on things happening in the world in general. Thanks Allana for your shared items on Nebraska libraries.

eMints: eThemes

I've been using Google Reader as a way to get several RSS feeds in one place for easy browsing. I found this on the Librarian's Internet Index. I shared it with a friend via e-mail but decided it was worth sending to my blog too. It has links to a vast amount of information. When exploring Africa, I was impressed that suggestions also let you know if the linked site also contained advertisements.

eMints: eThemes: "'eThemes is an extensive database of content-rich, age-appropriate resources organized around specific themes. These resources are created for educators to use in their classrooms.' Search or browse 'more than 1,000 eThemes ... on topics ranging from Africa to Yellowstone National Park.' A service of the eMints National Center and maintained by University of Missouri-Columbia College of Education staff and graduate students from the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies."

Learning more about Facebook-Thing #27

I've been using Facebook for awhile, mostly by the "learn by doing" method. When I first signed up I searched for friends using my high school graduation information that I had filled out on my profile. Almost immediately I connected with a classmate. She used both Facebook and MySpace and encouraged me to sign up for MySpace to see photos she had posted. I felt more uncomfortable than at home in MySpace so I haven't done anything else with that account. Signing up for my account however, did provide me with some troubleshooting info for asisting a patron with problems using MySpace so I didn't feel I wasted my time.

I now have lots of family "Facebook friends" spanning 3 generations and feel like it has brought distant family closer. I especially like the ability to share photos and tag people in photos. I also enjoy reading posts from my library friends and other high school friends.

I thought the tutorial suggested on the Nebraska Learns 2.0 post was very valuable and I'm also including the link for other friends that read my blog.
Facebook for Grownups

Initially, I left applications alone until prompted to use "We're Related". That application became extremely annoying as it started sending me frequent e-mails to add more relatives. Changing settings did help with that problem. My niece introducted me to Hippopost, a postcard applcation that will send "snail mail" postcards to USA and Canadian addresses. You can upload jpg images and write a message. You have to choose an ad from one of several sponsors but there is no cost involved. It takes 2 weeks or more but it is a fun way to send a picture postcard. My niece uploaded pictures from her computer in Germany and sent postcards to her grandparents in Nebraska. I like FREE! As part of this month's exploration into Facebook, I decided to add the Visual Bookshelf application. I had blogged seeing this application when I was exploring LibraryThing during the first "23 things" and one of the application's creators commented on my blog. I like the layout of this application and easily wrote a review of a book and published it to Facebook. I think some of our Facebook using patrons would enjoy that application. And for fun at home, I decided to play with the Farm Town game application since I had seen several of my friends play that. I wouldn't say I am completely hooked on that and will probably never have a virtual farm as spectacular as some I've seen. I'm too busy trying to keep our real farm looking nice. I am currently growing sunflowers on both farms!

Our library doesn't plan to have a Facebook page anytime soon, however I really see the value of a page such as the Perkin's Library at Hastings College. Since Facebook originally was limited to users with .edu addresses, a large number of students could be reached through event invitations. Susan Franklin has almost made me want to jump in the car and drive the distance to her library. Our small rural church has a Facebook group and I used the event invitation option to remind people in the group of a potluck dinner. It generated lots of responses even on short notice.

In summary, Facebook is a great thing for reconnecting and staying networked to friends across the country, learn more about people I know through work and to spread the word about events at work and in my personal life.

Worldcat.org: Thing #26

Learning more about Worldcat.org and the ability to create my own lists has been a fruitful experience. About a day after reviewing the basics of using the site, I had a patron ask me if there was a way he could look up books that he might want to request via interlibrary loan. I immediately showed him Worldcat.org and told him of the list feature. He was hooked and later thanked me for showing him the site.

I really like being to search a title and also find book reviews. My daughter-in-law and I had been talking about how some books had evolved from blogs. She told me about one such author, Jen Lancaster. Our library recently acquired her book, Pretty in plaid : a life, a witch, and a wardrobe, or the wonder years before the condescending, egomaniacal, self-centered smart-ass phase
Worldcat provided some great reviews on this book, one of which said it was a prequel for some of her other books so I don't feel bad reading this one first. Now I just have to find the time to read it!

I like the list feature because I am terrible about remembering everything I want to read. I don't know about other library staff, but I see lots of books that appeal to me as I am checking them out to other people at the circulation desk, then later can't remember author or title. I might write down a quick note that eventually gets lost. I can see using the lists on Worldcat to jog my memory and will probably recommend this feature to others. I started a list called Cozies

I did find the Worldcat.org application on Facebook and finally got it on my wall and profile and added a search box as a gadget on my blog. Initially, I did a search for gadgets to get the search box but it was too wide for my sidebar so I went back to the website and found the code for a smaller search box. It looks better.

Again, another fun lesson that has already been put into practice!

My other blog-Cooking with Terri

I decided to start posting recipes from my cookbook that has never been compiled. I did a cooking spot on KNOP TV for 12 years before I started my job at the North Platte Public library. I intended to put a cookbook together as much for myself as others but I was never motivated enough. So, I'm going to post my favorites at least once a week. I put this blog on my blog list so if you look at this blog you can see if I have a new recipe on Cooking with Terri. RVLS board members will recognize my latest recipe. I served it at a board meeting and they requested again when I hosted the board meeting the last time. It is very good! I like easy and the recipes from my cooking spot had to be easy-I had to demonstrate how to make them in less than 10 minutes. Let me know what you think and follow my cooking blog. Who knows what could come of my blog! I want to use it to explore the potential of blogs as I have seen others do with their blogs. Mostly, however, I just want to have fun and share some great food!

Thing # 25 Assignment 3: My Maps and More

Playing with creating my maps was really a super feature on Google and I would be tempted to call that my favorite. I started a map of our library and surrounding area but since I don't work with our website I decided to map our farm instead and then embedded it in my previous blog post. I was having way too much fun.

I uploaded a picture of my house to my Picasa web album and then embedded pictures from my Flickr account. It took me a little time to remember how to do that. After choosing the individual photo, I could grab the URL of the picture by choosing all sizes, selecting the size I wanted, and copying the URL at the bottom of that page.


I also played with the marker icons. I added the water icon to my river location, the hiking icon to our river pasture and a picnic table icon by our pond where we like to picnic if we're not closer to the river. I made the map public so you can actually search it by searching: cranefarm, Hershey, NE. In my first search without our village name, I discovered quite a few places named crane farm. I plan to add a few more pictures and adjust the size of some of my pictures on my map.

Google maps definitely is a good library resource, not only for people locating our library but also for our patrons. I point people to Google maps because of all of the features we've worked on in this class. My son and his wife used a link to a Google map on their wedding blog to show locations of hotels near the church.

Cranefarm: Mapping our farm with Google Maps

View Cranefarm in a larger map

The power of Flickr

I signed up on the Purina website, hoping for free product offers and get occasional e-mails from Petcentric. This video caught my attention since the cat, named Yoda, had 4 ears. In the short video, the owner explained how their son had posted a picture of Yoda on Flickr. Within a couple of days, the picture had 25,000 hits. The media picked up the picture and soon Yoda was in British, Australian, and American newspapers and magazines.
petcentric: Cat Videos#V&DCMP=EMC-PETC-PETC-June09_2#V&DCMP=EMC-PETC-PETC-June09_2#V&DCMP=EMC-PETC-PETC-June09_2

Shared via AddThis

Thing # 25 Assignment 2: Locate and edit

I like the idea of being able to edit an incorrect location but initially found it frustrating. Since I am not the only one in our library doing the assignment, I decided to check our rural church's location first instead of our library. I figured I could safely edit information for Maria Lutheran since I also do a blog for the church. I found our church was identified by its PO box so the location marker was over the Hershey post office. In addition to that listing, there was a listing for the church at the same PO box in Sutherland. I tried to edit the listing 4 days ago and hoped to see it changed this week but no luck. Today I tried another tactic. This time I added a new location to Google Maps, naming it Maria Lutheran Church and Fellowship Hall. In this listing, I was able to add the correct marker and street address as well as the blog which we use as our website. It posted almost immediately. I realized that if we wanted to claim the listing, I needed to have a mailing address so I went back to add the PO box after the physical address. This doesn't post immediately so we'll see what happens in a few days.

Our library was shown in two listings when I searched just by North Platte Public Library. The location was slightly off. I think Google must approximate how many numbered addresses there should be in a certain distance and puts the marker at that point. Our marker for 120 W 4th was east of our actual location. I successfully moved that and added to the city website address so the link opens directly to our library page. When I switched to street view, it was listing the address as approximately 178 W 4th ST when the view was right on our library. Our listing showed two images from web pages and 27 web pages and one review which was very positive.

I decided not to claim the listing but e-mailed the information to our library director and assistant director.

Hello Kitty and Google Maps: Thing #25 Assignment 1

Hello Kitty is alive and well! After playing with lots of the features in Google Maps, I clicked on the link in the Nebraska Learns 2.0 for a random street in Japan and there was Hello Kitty on a huge billboard in the Street View. I've had an attachment to Hello Kitty ever since my son was a toddler and latched onto a little stuffed Hello Kitty toy in a store. My son is 27 and married now. When I visited Japan in both 1994 and 1999, Hello Kitty was very prominent as a toy, on dishes, on clothes, and more so I shouldn't really be surprised. Anyway, so much for unrelated trivia about my life.

I really like Google maps and enjoy using the expanded features. It has become my mapping program of choice for getting directions as I've found it to be fairly accurate in its time predictions and I like the ease of changing the route. We used it in May to play with several routes to and from Ohio and added desired towns as additional destinations to see what Google suggested. Then we further drug the white dots on the suggested route to customize it further to check travel time. On another trip a couple of weeks ago, I took a slower route, thinking it surely couldn't take that long-well, Google was correct and I wasn't! There was too much traffic to fudge the speed limit. Oh well. I discovered that Google maps will actually suggest more than one route. I put in a search from Omaha to Phoenix and it pulled up 3 options to choose from. It can show 2 of the routes on the map at the same time by selecting both, but wouldn't show all 3 routes.

Searching Nebraska libraries, it brought up the area closest to North Platte first. Is Google smart enough to connect our computer IP address with our general location? Elkhorn Public library however, is oddly misplaced into our area. Its marker was round unlike the balloon markers of the others.

My views on views:
I like working with the different views on Google maps. I hadn't noticed the terrain view before and plan to explore that further. I have utilized the satellite view in Google and other mapping programs several times. Traveling in rural Canada, we actually had checked the satellite view to locate a cousin's farm, since their verbal directions were a little unclear. I used it before traveling to Boston to recognize buildings along the walking route from the subway station to my hotel. (Did I mention that I am very directionally challenged in cities, especially.) I did discover that the satellite view isn't always up-to-date. The view of my daughter's UNMC apartment building shows construction going on in the lot next to hers. The apartment building currently in that lot has been there over three years now. I did locate the Nebraska capital and could see the colors of the cars along the street. I have found that satellite views in cities allow you to zoom in closer than in our rural area. I liked the added little icons in the satellite view of Japan. It's always important to know where the nearest KFC is!

Street view is an interesting tool and also controversial, although Google does blur parts of images and gives people the opportunity to object to the view. Over the past year, I have read several articles of cities objecting to Google street view and actually prohibiting the vehicles with the Google cameras from filming their streets. I think both articles I read were cities in Europe. It was no surprise when I looked at Moscow Russia and found no street view. We discovered street view by accident (pulling zoom to the maximum) in May and found the home we were going to visit in Ohio. That actually did help us locate it on our trip since house numbers aren't always prominent.

flowers and mothers....

flowers and mothers....
Originally uploaded by janoid

Isn't this a gorgeous picture-it brightened my day!

Learning again: Thing #24

Doing the 23 things with Nebraska Learns 2.0 was not the end. Having played with so many Web 2.0 applications, it is nice to again look at them in depth and see what else I can do with them. This lesson looks at tracking what is on the web about my library and city, my blog, Flickr pictures I have posted, or another topic I choose. I looked at all of the services: Twitter Search, Google Alerts, Bloglines, Flickr,& FairShare and played with searches on all of them. I began to feel like our library didn't have much presence out there despite our website and so expanded the search to North Platte.

I decided to focus on Twitter Search, Google Alerts and Flickr as my back-up. I have been working on being a little more active on Twitter since my daughter-in-law started using it. The large church she works for has started using Twitter to get the word out about scheduled activities. I also follow the Nebraska Tourism on Twitter. When doing a search for North Platte after not finding something about the library directly, I found Nebraska Outback Twitters. Reading some of postings that related to North Platte, I had an Aha moment and decided to tweet our upcoming brown bag luncheon. Nebraska Outback RT'd my posting. Yes, I had to look up RT and discovered it was re-tweeting. I am getting so smart! Oh, I forgot to mention that I got her attention first by commenting @NebraskaOutback about one of her tweets first. She had posted about the teams cleaning up downtown North Platte today and I had seen a team when I came to work so commented. I see great possibilities in using Twitter for mentioning activities at our library especially if I can make connections with others in our area. This is my personal Twitter account, not the library's since currently the decision is to have our website and a blog only, but since I do many of the news releases for our library, there is no reason I can't mention our activities. North Platte is hosting a Chautauqua in 2010 and we hope to tie some events to this theme so I may be twittering more of our events.

5/13/09:I set up a RSS feed of my North Platte Twitter search using Live Bookmark and put it on my Firefox bookmarks toolbar so it is easy to check. I found lots of interesting tweets when I checked it this morning. Even our power company uses Twitter to alert people-this time it was to caution people to turn off sensitive electronics during last night's storm. I was impressed. I also found a Nebraska trivia contest conducted by Nebraska Tourism.

I also set up Google Alerts. So far this hasn't been very impressive. I set up a search for the library and got two alerts e-mailed to me but one was an older annual report for an organization that provides software for one of our computers to search the FC Foundation Grant database. We were mentioned in that regard. The other hit was supposed to be a travel directory but the link had an error. I also set up searches for my blog and for North Platte. So far, nothing. (5/13)Again, I received old news from my Google alert.

I also set up an RSS feed to My Yahoo for my Flickr account after I added a few new pictures. The feed shows the last few images that I have had comments on. Yesterday I put a comment on a picture of lilacs from one of my contacts (see blog entry above). Today, my feed showed comments on that picture that followed mine. I tried to change my feed to just show comments on my photo stream but my feed didn't change after experimenting.

This has been a good experience. I think I would have found it much more challenging if I hadn't been through the 23 things before.

Financial Advice

I have to give credit to www.commoncraft.com for finding this great video. I follow their website through an RSS feed. I like their Plain English presentations.

Crane Season

It's that time again. We are surrounded by thousands of cranes in our fields, neighboring fields, and on the North Platte River that borders our farm. They are only here from February to early April and we enjoy every day of their visitation. I'll often open the windows when they are doing their aerials in the sky just to hear their sound or even better, I will step out just to observe and listen. What a marvelous joy of nature! I took these two movies with my digital camera. The second one was on a recent walk down along our cornfield and pasture. The cranes heard our approach and many of them soared into the sky.

Personally...

It's time to turn this blog back into a place to share some thoughts, pictures and more from me and not necessarily about being a librarian. Of course, that means spending more time on my home computer. As more family members have joined Facebook, I find myself heading there to check out pictures and miniature update messages. The pictures make it more entertaining than Twitter. I don't want to forget some of the interesting You-tube movies that have been posted. I just looked at a great one on money issues that was actually in my RSS feeds I have in my outlook mail. I think I will add that to a Facebook msg. as more people follow that. We'll see.

I hadn't realized how fast time has flown in 2009-maybe anticipating Craig and Jen's wedding made the time seem to go slower since we really couldn't wait for the event to happen. We came back from the wedding with two letters waiting for us-neither made us very happy. First, Tim didn't get hired for the full-time job he had interviewed for and second, the Nebraska Dept. of Revenue thought we owed more taxes than we do. The latter just made us mad. We embraced the technology of doing our taxes online using the state of Nebraska's website and it let us file even though the printed copy indicated we needed to submit a copy of our federal return-but nowhere on the site did it say "don't use this if...." Anyway, a phone call to the dept. gave us the satisfaction of telling them that their website needed to be improved and confirmed that we were right-we should get a refund but we had to mail in copies of both of our returns with a letter of explanation. Hopefully they get it right this time.

As far as the job, when Tim later visited with the head of the FSA office (he does some part-time work for them already), Bruce said that he got beat out by someone who had worked in another FSA office for 23 years but the interviewers really debated quite awhile in making their decision. So, Tim isn't really disappointed-he still has quite a few projects to complete on the farm. The old barn is ready for replacement siding in the areas that had been part of the loafing shed. Tim replaced sill plates, and reinforced studs that had rotted from exposure to manure over the years. Then, we need to get chipped paint off, which we hope we can do with the high-pressure washer. A friend agreed to bring his big spraying equipment over to do the actually painting. We plan to paint it red, the original color before it was changed to its current white. We'll still keep an eye on the classifieds for the "perfect job" but my job having benefits lets Tim be patient. We had a nice hay crop last year and sold alot of heifers. Now we only have about 5 heifers to sell. We're toying with getting some other livestock. Tim said today that he likes ruminants so no pigs or poultry! Any suggestions?

The 23rd Thing

I'm writing this on Sunday so my mind starting flying to the 23rd Psalm instead of the 23rd thing. And as my faith is a journey, this too has been a good journey for me. I didn't come into this afraid of technology, instead was truly eager to learn more about library 2.0 and the many things encompassed in that phrase.

I think I enjoyed playing with the Flickr applications the most simply because I like photography and seeing what creative things could be done with pictures I had taken was fun and appealing. To be creative, I need alot of guiding and the applications did that. For true usefulness, I was glad to be reminded of Google Docs and other applications. Timewise, I admit after first working with Delicious and Library Thing, I haven't been back to those websites and I don't explore my RSS feeds on Google Reader much. However, the RSS feeds that come into my Outlook mail get looked at on a regular basis. I also really like having the updates on my blog dashboard of the blogs I follow. Blogging is something I hope to continue and my favorite other blogs are right there on the sidebar of my blog. Learning to develop my blog, expanding the blogposts by adding pictures and video was the goal I set at the beginning of this program. Working through the things forced me to try some of that and I found it to be easy and fun. I think I will continue my blog with personal posts and pictures and use it and Facebook for my social networking.

Tackling the question of take-aways-wow, I feel more connected to other library people through reading their blogposts, profiles, etc. It's been especially great for those who I already know and I want to meet some of these bloggers that I only know through their blog names. How about a Nebraska Learns 2.0 mixer or talk session at NLA next year?

When starting this, I thought I could breeze through the lessons but found I would stop and be so busy exploring one thing that I was reluctant to move onto the next. It was often challenging to fit it all in at work and I spend several hours a day at my computer unlike some library staff. If you were to do it in the future, I think you might want to consider a topic a month for library staff that can't do it in a week.

I would definitely do another discovery program if you offer more. I like the ability to work on it at my own pace somewhat. Just another side note: As library funding gets tighter, we need this type of programs for those of us that can't get away from the library for training. It can be tough getting C.E. credits otherwise. We really appreciate NLC staff coming around the state to provide training too.

Thank you to all that put this together and for those that participated. Now I'm going to go back and read other participants blogs that I haven't had time to read before.

Wordy Podcasts

I explored several of the podcast directories and found one that appealed to me on podcast.com. I liked the dictionary.com Word Explorer. I copied the link to this below. I added the RSS feed to Google Reader. I also tried to add it to My Yahoo page but it only had old content there. Our family has always enjoyed exploring the origin of word meanings. At work, I'm not really able to do podcasts easily because my only desk is in a public area. I don't think I seem as approachable if I'm wearing headphones. I liked these podcasts because they only lasted about 2 minutes. I did share the podcast on my Facebook page.

I'm looking forward to listening to more podcasts in the future.

http://podcast.com/episode/33159339/19468/

YouTube brings back 80's cartoons

After watching an old What's my line episode featuring Sal Mineo, I switched to the 80's and watched a Popples cartoon. My kids had Popples and watched the cartoons as little kids. Karissa even had Popples sheets while Craig had Transformer sheets. The YouTube video is a great way to explain to today's kids what parents watched as kids themselves. I haven't personally uploaded anything to YouTube but my niece uploaded one of the little movies of her son that I made with my digital camera on movie mode. She then embedded it in her blog. Last fall I did watch a library training video produced and uploaded to YouTube by an applicant for a Nebraska library position. It did not enhance the resume and probably was a strong factor in not hiring the person. However, a good video could very easily have added points to getting a face-to-face interview. Just a thought.

Virtually Confused

I enjoyed exploring thing #20. I initially got sidetracked when exploring I'm Cooked under the food category after reading VC's blog post. I use Pandora all the time at home and find myself using that instead of playing CDs at home. You can't completely walk away from your computer when using Pandora because it will stop after awhile and post a little response window to make sure you are still listening. I exploring mapping applications for personal use but felt that besides offering little icons you could add to maps, the weddingplanner maps linked from Community Walk was more tutorial than anything else. I did send a link to that to my son's fiancee.



I wanted to find something that could be of use to people using our public computers for all of their computer needs. I decided to explore virtual computer applications under the category online desktop. The first choice, Zimdesk only opened to a development page for Version 2. I went to G.ho.st and created an account. The application moves pretty slowly. When I finally got to my desktop created by the program, I saw that it did have its own e-mail, links to zoho writer or google docs, google search and more. It seemed like a crowded and almost too colorful desktop, not my cup of tea. I couldn't see the value of the tool when you could access free applications for almost all of these things. Everything had slow response times-even figuring out how to calculator on the desktop was slow. I think I will pass on this tool!