Exploring web2.0 more

In the initiative through my work I learned about great web2.0 products which I still use today. Now I’m taking it further for myself with mobile web. While I’ve known about the idea of it, costs have prevented me from exploring this facet of web2.0. For the moment I am enjoying the ability of being wireless and accessing the web wherever I am.

HappY New Year

Within hours we will usher out 2008 and welcome in 2009. What a year. At the beginning of the year I celebrated birthdays with an old best friend. Our birthdays were a day apart, and so, for the first time in almost 17 years, we turned a year older together, again. It’s amazing to me that I can categorize 17 years of my life and have more to count from. When I was younger I always imagined what it would be like to be the age I am approaching (and yes, I know I’m still young and considered a “spring chicken” by many – I’m by no means saying I’m “old”). It was just hard to imagine any length of time where one year wasn’t too long. When I first started working at the library, I worked with a gal who had been there 3 years. I distinctly remember saying to myself, “I wonder what it would be like to work somewhere that long,” and here I am, going on my ninth year. I’ve been with my boyfriend almost 5 years. We started dating Jan 1, 2004, did the on-again, off-again game a few times, but not long enough to really count (I doubt it was more than 3 months, and even that was broken up into segments). Tomorrow we’ll have dinner together and ring in our fifth year. It took me 7 years to complete a college degree: I went part time the first two years, changed majors a few times, and had circumstances which took me away a quarter or two, but I finally completed it.

This year I’ve had some firsts too: I fell off my bike, dislocated a bone, joined a gym, picked up knitting, interviewed for professional positions (yes this is a little late coming), took and adult tumbling class (which I can now jump off a spring board and do a flip onto a mat)…..and almost brought a new addition to my little family.

I’m hoping next year will not bring tragedy to my door even though many are faced with it everyday. I look forward to a possible beach vacation; possible promotions; and possible sisters (adopted by my mom).

So here’s to a new year of new things, familiar friends, personal growth, and well wishes!

That is the end of our broadcast..(#23)

Here we come to a close of our 23 Things for Learn and Play. I definitely enjoyed learning about products out there (I enjoy technologies) and more about products I already use. I think it is awesome that my company led this initiative and facilitated the means to learn about the Things. The things will help me in helping customers, providing more options (who doesn’t love more?) and “extending our services.” So when a customer doesn’t have a flash drive or floppy disk, perhaps they can use Google Docs. When a kid asks us to help download the free music.. MOLDI classical music it is.

I’m looking forward to keeping up with new products like iStats.com.au when I exercise, and update my Shelfari account and my Google Reader. I think I will keep-on twittering.. but I’m not sure. Myspace.com has a user status that you can update that does the same thing and I check that more often than twitter.

So far my favorite exercise is the blog posts themselves. As previously mentioned in a post, I occasionally post a blog here and there on myspace, but now that I’ve been in the habit of doing it for Learn & Play, I’ve added a few here and there that have nothing to do with it, giving me a taste to keep on doing it.

I think that knowing what is available out there will help with my goals too. Since I have a problem finishing something that I started (AND THIS WILL BE A FINISHED GOAL!) I can find online forums that can give me ideas and chat with others who may be working on similar projects. Recently I joined an online forum that dealt with something personal in my life and I was able to post on the forum and communicate with other people who were going through a similar situation myself. It has helped me in many ways, and I think being in the mindset of finding greater community than what is immediately around me (L&P goals) led me to sign up for it in the first place.

One unexpected finding in this process was the addition of iPod use for MOLDI (excellent..!)

If my work were to have other opportunities like this I would definitely participate. The only thing about this entire project that I would have changed, they already did it: more time to complete the exercises.

And last but not least, if something new were to come along, say a new Web 2.0 tool that would possibly have been an exercise Thing, it would be nice to have a quarterly exercise to be able to explore it and post a blog about it, possibly adding it to our activity reports.

Also, it would be nice to have the CML wellness accessible outside of work (if it is already I don’t know how to do it); possibly a wiki?

Mold-i, the free materials access library, not toxic growth in your shower (#22)

I’ve been using the Mid-Ohio Library Digital Initiative (MOLDI) for a while now. I mainly started looking at it when the library was closed an i NEEDED a book at the last minute. That was not a great way to be introduced to the site, especially when I started, as there was very limited titles available. Every time I go back and visit the site they are getting more and more titles and even media. Now they have music and videos that you can download (though I have yet to find one I actually want to watch, but I mainly browse for ebooks). The only thing I don’t like about MOLDI is that I can’t use it on my iPod. I understand why we might not be able to, and I’m not sure if there is a fix yet, but that’s my only problem with it. I love being at home and instantly having something available to me. They have so many categories now to appeal to a variety of audience (kids, teens, etc). When I’m at work and I can’t find a title for someone, I sometime suggest (when I remember) to try to download it on MOLDI if it’s available.

Now to search the MOLDI database…(commence the jeopardy timing song)…

The first search I did was in their music category, which is mainly classical music. I looked for one of my favorite operas (but couldn’t find it, boo!). But I did notice something cool about the search results: the items listed had many more formats and platforms to choose from! AND IPOD IS NOW A CHOICE!!!! Since I have an iPod I will definitely be trying this at home and I can’t wait. This is an amazing step (sorry I’m geeking out).

I searched for an audiobook next and found Eldest, by Christopher Paolini. I am amazed they even have this title. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve visited the site. The title was not yet available so I put my name on a wait list.

Next I searched for a title that might quickly be demanded and found it. The Scarlet Letter , by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a title they carry. They even have SparkNotes you can download.

Now that I know there is more variety for this site I think it is something I can direct customers to. Before, since there was limited media available, I was hesitant to have people check there because I didn’t want to get hopes up, but now it seems to be a good source to go to.

ps- If I had read the entire Discovery Exercise for Thing 22, I would have known ahead of time that MOLDI began to be compatable with iPOD as of November 10th!

Metapodcastical, aka, Podcast this! (#21)

So, I first started out writing a blog about my search for podcasts, then thought, hey! wouldn’t it be fancy to do this blog as a podcast?!? So I determined to write out what I wanted to say and record it later and upload the recording; I’m at work right now with 7 minutes left to work on this. I opened up the Google directory but didn’t like the way the information is presented, so I clicked on another directory, podcastalley.com. I tried to think of what I wanted to search for, but nothing was striking my fancy. On the left side of the page, however, it lists the top 10 podcasts so far for November. One of the podcasts caught my eye. I immediately started giggling at the thought of subscribing to this podcast and added it to my Google Reader feed. The title of the podcast is “MuggleCast: The #1 Harry Potter Podcast”. I have no idea why this tickles me so much, but it has made me laugh to myself multiple times in the last few minutes. I’m sure a few co-workers have wondered what I’ve stirred into my coffee this morning.
Podcasts are not new to me, but I don’t use them very often. I’ve used mainly iTunes for podcasts I’ve subscribed to in the past, which include a Comedy Central Stand-up cast, as well as a cast that has multiple lessons to learning the French language! (that one impressed me a lot when I first learned about podcasts.)
(4 hours later)
I can see podcasts from the library being useful for visually impaired with an RSS feed for events (or even materials), so that when someone subscribes it automatically updates for them and lets them know what’s going on at the library!
Also, one podcast I found was for Science Fiction Book Reviews. This could be useful to customers who dig the sci-fi scene, and good for staff, if what the ‘caster is reviewing is credible.

You-Tube (#20)

So I’m becoming less creative with my blog titles, but hey, at 9:20am, still drinking my first cup of coffee, explains it all. Up until this summer I never had an urge to browse through You Tube. Never. Every now and then my boyfriend would find a vid and beckon me to watch it with him. Some were funny. Some were stupid. And some were down right nasty that I didn’t both watching, as his initial reactions said it all. I may have said it about a blog or You Tube before, but I feel the same about it now, but just know to search better… that the thoughts/feelings of searching You Tube equates itself to thoughts/feelings searching through spam emails: it’s all junk. Now, after seeing more of what You Tube offers (thank you, BF), I search it more often. I especially like to look for movie clips, comedy clips (esp. Jeff Dunham), and now music videos. It used to be I would search MTV.com music vids when the mood struck.. but now it’s all You Tube. I signed up for an account a while ago and I can create and save playlists from my favorite vids. Before this Thing (#20) I set up another page on this blog dedicated to You Tube videos I thought worthy of sharing. There are many more out there, but I just haven’t updated it yet. Unless I was just plain out doing it wrong, WordPress.com did not allow me to embed You Tube videos. I searched the “Help” section and found the reason to be for security purposes. I know you can add media with the buttons above the editing tools, but for some reason I had problems with it at first, and I could not add media with embedding codes either. Apparently you can add multiple videos at once, which I am finding out right now attempting it. The first video, Henri, my BF found while searching for vids in french. I immediately fell in love with this short.

The second video is the beginning of the acceptance speech of President Elect, Barack Obama. I got out on November 4th and voted, but due to a bad headache, declined to stay up and watch the results coming in. In the morning, I asked my BF who won, and, without hesitating said McCain. What a funny joke.. I immediately frowned and said “Oh, no,” to which he said “just kidding.”

Toolin’ around (#19)

When the library first came out with the browser toolbar, I immediately downloaded it at home. I like the feature of being able to see the new items as a RSS feed, as well as searching the catalog from the browser. The best thing was the one-click-away access to “My Account.” I did have issues with it though which led me to remove it and replace it with a link to the CML homepage. Often I would do a google search or type emails (and sometimes passwords), and somehow, information I typed in other fields would end up in the CML, and whenever I would press Enter, it would do a search. That bothered me greatly.. so thus, I removed it. It would be nice to have the ability to “disable” or choose which features of the toolbar you want. ***After just typing the last sentence, I immediately found a way to do just that.. if you look under the drop-down menu on the left with the CML logo you will see “toolbar options” and you can (un)select features. Knowing that I just may download it again.
Another tool I checked out specifically for this Thing is the tool MAKE. I love getting books on projects and food and anything that would allow me to be creative (even if I never get around to making them) and I am sure I will visit MAKE again! If there is anything you think you might want to make.. well then, MAKE is a great place to go. It gives ideas for projects (even ones you didn’t think you wanted to do).
I already use or have visited most items in the toolbox, and it is a great collection for exploration. I love Gmail, and if you do too, check out iGoogle, which allows you to make your own homepage to see all of your Google products at once. For instance, when I log in, it shows my inbox for email, the Calendar, Documents, Reader, and other gadgets that are not even Google products. You can display a daily crossword, National Geographic picture of the day, and even the Cookie of the Day from the Martha Stewart Living website. It’s Great!

Web2.0 tools (#18)

I’d first like to start off and say it was nice having one central site to be able to browse the different web2.0 categories. It can be hard to find what you’re looking for, and having comparable sites helps broaden your search. I had a lot of fun just browsing the different categories and seeing more of what is out there that I had no clue existed.
After scanning all the different websites, I checked into iStats – the “Free Online Fitness, Exercise & Weights Journal.” I already have one website that I can log jogging or running, but not much more.
You can even join “teams” where you can apparently blog back and forth and help keep each other motivated! Another feature of this site is that you can browse different exercises that you might be interested in.
Perhaps the Wellness group with CML can create their own team? What another great way to link up with others and be able to do it from home.

I went ahead and signed-up for this web2.0 tool. All the information you’re required to fill is a username and password. Gender and zipcode are completely optional, and probably are there to help you find exercise buddies in your area (and probably their stats purposes too).

Hopefully I’ll keep going back as I have yet another goal to get back into exercising.. I’ve been off the wagon a few weeks. I hope to participate in Race for the Cure again next year. So far I’ve done it two years in a row, and this past year, I shaved a whole 5 minutes off my time from the year before that! So hopefully next year I will beat my time, and the year after, and so forth.

Vote2.0

This year I made it a point to go vote. Things have changed for the better to make voting easier such as anyone can vote absentee, anyone could go vote early at a designated polling location, and there were so many people out registering people to vote. I also had a different polling location than the last time I voted (presidential election 2004).

This year it took me a total of 20 minutes to vote. This included walking time to and from the polling location (namely, no wait). Last time I voted.. I stood in line for 5 hours to vote. Big difference.

This year too, the nominee I voted for won! (g-o-bama!)

Another thing different about voting this year was the touch screen voting machines, which I liked very much. I guess there were many paper ballots too in case the machines broke down (or people didn’t want to wait anymore..)

Things I didn’t like about the election: the people registering others to vote. They were paid to be in many places (paid per signature) so they were like vultures. It wasn’t at all an altruistic deed someone did because they cared about people getting out there to vote.
Also, I received the exact same set of fliers 3 times on my door step, and after I got home, someone knocked on my door, knew my name, and made sure I got out to vote. Apparently three others had stopped by that day asking for people registered at my address (perhaps prior tenants). I did not like that at all.. they had no business showing up on my doorstep.

Sandbox of fun (#16)

Having a wiki to edit and create content is a great way to learn your way around. I still think they can be a good idea for holiday get togethers (e.g. planning menus), and other such events. I got access to the Learn and Play wiki after a day or two. I added my favorite book and vacation spot, as well as a link to my blog. What was fun(ny) was the option presented to me both times I logged in. The wiki allows only one person at a time to edit, which makes sense. When I logged on, it informed me that another person was logged in and in the edit mode. But because they hadn’t made any changes in at least 5 minutes, I had the option to “steal the lock” and begin to edit myself (which I did both times). While it is fun to be able to add your own thoughts/edits, it seems that sometimes I wouldn’t want so many people with access to be able to just put anything down.. but I guess that’s why it tracks changes so any funny business can be taken care of.