Back to blogging…can you believe it?

I think if you don’t know what you are looking for to podcast, you might end up searching for a while to find what interests you. I ended up searching for podcasts that I had heard or read about: Guiding Light and Joel Osteen. I couldn’t get into one of the podcasts that I heard about. I thought the podfeed.net was a bit crowded and not user friendly.

I thought the Wiki common craft video was hilarious.  I think it was my favorite.  It was definitely action packed and constantly moving.  Wikipedia is extremely popular and I think that is because it’s understandable to read and the format is easy to follow.   I went to the wiki sites recommended and even googled wiki to see what I could find.  I even tried to see if I could edit anything, but everything required a password.  The Book lovers wiki was great.  Easy to read and understand.  Plus, it was great to see the book itself featured.

I think that it might be interesting to try using a wiki on the wls page for youth services for homework help.  Perhaps we could even use a wiki to communicate better with each other.  Sometimes it seems like e-mail just doesn’t work.  It also might be cool to try setting up a wiki for great books that we are reading.  Maybe for the 2009 Teen list or for Books to Share.  That way we can add title as we go or add our comments to the title.  I don’t know about anyone else, but usually I write down on a piece of paper what I want to add to the above lists and then I can’t find it……

Happy New Year to all!

The following is a list of the Top 10 Books I would recommend to Read: (in no particular order)

1.  King of the Lost and Found by John Lekich

2.  Adam Canfield: Watch Your Back by Michael Winerip

3.  The Road to Paris by Nikki Grimes

4.  Skin Deep by E.M. Crane

5.  Guinevere’s Gift by Nancy McKenzie

6.  When You WIsh by Kristin Hormel

7.  Cheater by Michael Laser

8.  Football Hero by Tim Green

9.  Night of the Howling Dogs by Graham Salisbury

10.  Likely Story by David Van Etten

My twitter link is:  http://twitter.com/patrioticny

I thought the twitter.com site was interesting.  I was able to change my icon to something patriotic.  I liked how twitter asks to check your e-mail addresses to see if there are other “twitters” out there or it goes down your e-mail addresses and asks if you want to invite people to join.  There was 1 for me.  It was easy to add tweets too.  I don’t know if I foresee myself using twitter.  I guess it would depend if I had friends who tweet on a regular basis.  If anyone knows a good way for libraries to use twitter, I would be interested in learning what libraries have done.  I am going to google that to check myself.

Going onto the Generator Blog site was a blast!  I scrolled through the whole site and added photos (see below) of images I created.  I even was able to show others at work some of the fun things like the biorhythm chart, Hollywood star, dogtags, bling, mafia names, make a chocolate bar with your name, tiny tags, road signs and more.  Not only was this a creative exercise, but relaxing with no stress!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!        I created a shortcut on my desktop for http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/

I have spent 3 hours battling adding a widget from Librarian Thing onto my blog and I am stumped and aggravated to say the least. I thought that I would get these nice covers of the 5 books I added to my Librarian Thing page and no can do………………………….I pulled out all the stops too–cookies, hot tea, pjs and slippers to no avail.   I did manage to add this widget on the bottom of my blog that reads Library Thing, but don’t really care for it.

I really liked Goodreads over Library Thing. Goodreads had a simple design, easy to understand, flexibility with browsing, great categories to search for books and I loved the events section. The pages on Library Thing are too crowded, not easy on the eye and there’s just too much on the page. I did like the reviewer section on Library Thing.

It’s nice to know that these sites exist.

I was able to add a widget to my blog………wonders never cease.  I also figured out how to add comments to other people’s blogs.  There are some things about technology I really like—playing Fantasy Football is my favorite!  I like playing Monopoly or 100 vs 100 online at different sites such as pogo or king.com.  I think youtube is great (although to be honest, who has time to upload all of those videos)–I got to watch some of my favorite soap opera moments from years back.  However, I have an ipod and I still haven’t bothered how to figure how to use it.  It’s just sitting in the box on my desk.  I see it every day and I am like I have to get to this, but I don’t have an overwhelming desire to sit there and try and figure it out. 

Technology is ever present and changing.  There are some things I like (love those yahoo directions!) but yet so many things that I don’t understand or feel frustrated with.   I have a coworker who spends hours a day with his ipod.  He watches movies on his laptop.  To me, I’d rather spend the time doing something else.  I do think it’s a generation issue.  When I look back, I escaped high school, college and grad school without ever taking a computer course!  Imagine that.  Everything I’ve learned has been through classes, someone showing me or by accident.  I have my own laptop at home which I must admit is a definite bonus.  It also makes balancing my checkbook easier! 

One of my favorite quotes is the “only thing you have to fear is fear itself!”  Hopefully, my fear of learning new/and using technology will diminish with time.