#24

When I began this, I kind of thought it would be reviewing a lot of things I already knew. And while this was true in many cases, there were almost just as many sites that, even though I spend much too much of my free time on the Internet and am quite comfortable with it, I had never really explored, not really. I had heard of sites like Technorati and Del.icio.us, but never actually used them. Even though they may not be things that I personally would use everyday, I think it's good for me to know them in case I am asked questions that those sites would answer. And in being asked to help my colleagues out with the sites I was familiar with, I learned more about them. I had really just learned out to use them in an intuitive, slapdash sort of way, but you can't do that so much when you're teaching someone something, so in approaching them in a more orderly fashion with other people I discovered features I'd either missed before, or that had been released after I gotten to know the site.

I think I've also learned more about the services on the library webpage. Before the only site I had used enough to say I was comfortable with it was the R.E.A.D.S. site.

I think my favorite discoveries that I didn't know before were Google Documents (at least so that I can access copies of important documents anywhere) and the Pandora music site. I'll probably continues to use those, as well as the ones I already loved (LibraryThing and Wikipedia and Youtube).

I think I might do other programs like this, if they were offered. There are still quite a lot of things I need to learn.

#23 Podcasts

I've been really into podcasts before, but I have listened to one every now and then. I used to listen to some Tim Gunn did for Project Runway, simply because that man has the most delightful vocabulary of anyone on reality television ("Designers, let's caucus!") And just in the last few days I started listening to one I found one that's a year or so old, done by a British student studying abroad in Japan. Here's the link for that.

I did look for some library or book related ones, but nothing really jumped out at me from the descriptions. They all seemed kind of too technical for my experience or more geared towards educating patrons. But I'll check out everyone else's suggestions.

#22 R.E.A.D.S. and MyLibraryDV

These sites are like little hidden treasures that more people need to find out about. I think it's always nice to go on R.E.A.D.S. and find books that the system doesn't have hard copies of, ready to check out as an ebook or audio. I used it before and found some lesser known books by Meg Cabot (author of the Princess Diaries), these two that are sort of...I suppose you'd call them teen chick lit Regency romance? The only downside is that the staff checkout time of a month doesn't apply there, so I never finished them, haha. But I can always go back and reread them later. I've also used the site to download audiobooks, but they're not compatible with all mp3 players, or even all of the big ones (specifically iPod, the most used one), which is definitely an issue if the service is ever going to kick off.

MyLibraryDV is pretty good too. I think the collection is a good start - but I think if I were really into travel or cooking, I'd say it was a lot better than a good start. Those sorts of things are really popular, bookwise, so I hope more patrons find out about the service and how to use it because they'd probably really like them.

#21 Youtube

Youtube has been a favorite of mine for a while. The sheer variety of things to be found is amazing. Also I like the idea that anyone can post things. This video, for example, is the sort of thing my friend does when she'd bored. She's really into drawing things in a cartoon/Disney type style, and sometimes she puts them to music. I think her dream is to animate all of Les Mis with animal cartoons, and you can see some of the beginnings of that in her account.

I have an account myself and use it post random videos of my cat. I once also posted some videos I'd taken of some traditional dance I saw at an ikebana convention in Japan, that turned out to be surprisingly popular. I really only posted them for my own benefit, so I could go back and watch them easily later, but since there wasn't much more of that sort of thing on Youtube, they ended up getting 2500-6000 views each. I just finished the book Extras, by Scott Westerfeld, where the main character lives in a society where the economy seems to be based on a thing like Youtube popularity - post a video a lot of people watch, and you get paid more suddenly. I think those videos would have helped my financial situation dramatically for a few months. Too bad it was only a book!

I rather like Mel's idea of doing staff recs through Youtube. I'd make some! As long as we had a camera with a mic good enough to pick up my voice. I tend to read a lot of books that I think would be popular with the demographic most likely to be using Youtube, I think. I also like Al's idea of making some how-to videos on there, about express checkout and the reservation system. One that teaches them how to find all the good new DVDs that never actually get put on the shelf because they're always being checked out might be a good idea (as much as I don't want the 'competition' in the DVD reserving race, haha). I don't have any new ideas myself, I'm afraid, but those were such good ones I thought I'd just repeat them.

#20 Other Web 2.0

I picked the contest winner for music, Pandora, and I am quite impressed. It calls itself 'Radio from the Music Genome Project', and as the title implies, it really does seem to dissect music into tiny little elements that make the song what it is. It asks you for your favorite artist, and then it plays you a song by that artist. If I didn't know better, I'd swear there was a music genius in there, telling you that it had just picked a song that exemplified Franz Ferdinand's *long string of musical terms I don't really understand*. I got the basic idea, though, and the song it played did seem to be one that represented the band's style. Then it picked another song by a different band that it felt, according to it's mysterious complex 'genome project', matched the things I probably liked about Franz Ferdinand. I'm pretty amazed by this point! And if by some chances it messes up and gives me a song that I don't like at all, I have the chance to give it a 'thumbs down', and I guess that tweak the song chooser's choices even more, giving it more data to work with.

One small downside - I think it still must be limited to artists published in the US, because the only Japanese artist I could get it to find in it's 'genome project' was Utada (Hikaru), and then it was one of her English songs. But I guess that's understandable.

#19 Social Networking

Ahh, the social networks. Being my age, you pretty much have to have a Myspace or facebook page, or you end up terribly left out of a lot things in your peer group. Actually, I was a little too old to get in the Myspace trend. When this all starting getting big I was just entering university, so it was more useful for me to join facebook, which at the time was university students only. I have lots more friends there than on myspace anyway, especially since it expanded so anyone could join, and all of my friends who went to schools in other countries or didn't go to university could join as well.

Also, I confess I have this snobby aversion to MySpace. I don't what it is, but something about everyone having the ability to put automatically starting music and any background on their pages makes for some hideous and ear-splitting combinations. I think 75% of MySpace users don't understand that no matter how cool their background pic is, it's more important for people to actually be able to read the text! Maybe they'll learn, eventually. That and there are always tons of people wanting to be your 'friend', who you've never even heard of. I guess I find it sort of creepy, and don't really care at all that I only have 13 friends. With the exception of a few comics and bands who I really wanted to support, I actually know all of my 'friends' personally.

Anyway, as to the question of libraries using MySpace...I think it's a nice try, but that the purpose of libraries doesn't really mesh well with the purpose of MySpace. I can understand the need to want to woo young patrons over, and convince them that cool stuff can be had at the library. I just don't know that MySpace is the way to do it. Just making a web page to share all the information, and making events they will actually be interested in, would probably be better plans than MySpace. I think most teenager's reactions to the library wanting an 'add' would just be rolling of the eyes.

#18 Online Word Processing

I tried out Google Docs, because I use a lot of Google's services already: email, the personalized home page, and Google Reader for RSS feeds, mainly. Maybe because of that, I didn't have to sign in or anything - when I clicked on the link it took me right to the main page of Google Docs, with me already signed in (because I keep my personalized homepage always signed on my home computer, I guess). So it was very easy.

I like the idea of being able to access documents from anywhere. Before I've always either put documents I know I'd need on other computers into an email attachment or uploaded it to some free webspace somewhere. And that works pretty well, of course, but this is better because I can edit the document right in the same place I am accessing it. And if I wanted to share them with other people, let them edit it, I could do that too. I can see where that might be useful. Especially for projects multiple people are working on. Someone could write up an outline or make a presentation and share it here, and others could go in and make changes to it, without all the emailing back and forth and extra versions that no one is sure what the latest one is.

I uploaded both my resume and the file I keep extra resume type info in: all the addresses of my jobs, and contact information of references. I took the chance to finally update these documents with the information for my job at Kohls, too, which I am ashamed to say I haven't done yet even though I've worked there for three months now. It was pretty easy, just like a word processor or blog post. And now I have created this third document, which I will try to publish in my blog (I think I have the settings right). So, here goes!