Eat in NYC! (#12)

I had a good time with this one and I hope my rollyo search is useful. I was torn between doing one for book or movie reviews and one for food. In the end I choose New York city eating, something I love to do, but can't do as much since the kids. Therefore, every time I have the opportunity to go out to eat, I do a lot of prep ahead of time - checking reviews, neighborhoods, making reservations, etc. - so I knew about more websites that would be relevant to this topic. It was very easy to create a Rollyo search and when I tested mine, I seemed to get relevant results. I would still be very interested in a rollyo search for book and/or movie reviews, so maybe one of my fellow Queens 2.0 travelers can make one.

Eat in NYC

Library thing (#11)

I really like the concept of library thing because I love to collect and to catalog. I also love to read - strange for a librarian, huh? I like the idea of creating my own folksonomy with my tags. The only criticism I have is that I actually signed up on Library Thing a few months ago and couldn't remember my username and password. Since the sign up process is so simple and doesn't require you to enter anything at all, there is no way to retrieve my account. I hadn't done too much on it, but still. It should be a bit more complicated to get onto it so they can help you if you lose track of yourselrf among the many usernames and passwords the Web 2.0 Society requires. Also, when I stopped using Library Thing, I began a goodreads account and now I am a bit too lazy to duplicate all that information on another site. Like so many of these 2.0 tools, Library Thing seems too ephemeral to me. I am going to create a "What I am Reading Now" widget for this blog and let's hope I can stay on top of it.

Image Generating (#10)

As usual I am using pictures of my kids to experiment with the Web 2.0 tools. Any excuse to show off my daughter eating cake! FD toys was fun to use and of course very easy too.

Feeding Frenzy (#9)

Hmmm...This thing was very difficult for me. It seemed like it should make more sense than it did. I honestly did not like any of the RSS feed search tools better than the others and found them all lacking. I found most of the feeds that I did not already know about from previous travels through the web in Bloglines. When signing up for feeds you can look at an area called "Quick Pick" subscriptions which has popular feeds broken down by general category - bookworms, music, news, etc. I find more things of interest when provided with categories. When I entered terms into Feedster, Technorati, and Topix, I didn't get anything relevant, really. Just because someone has blogged about something doesn't mean the overall theme of the blog is of general interest to you. Maybe my search terms were too broad? I tried entering "music news" and "book reviews" and also more specific terms relating to my various collections, some of which are pretty idiosyncratic and shouldn't yield an overwhelming number of results, but all these strategies did just that. I got a ton of results for feeds that didn't really relate. I had better luck when I entered "Leo horoscope," but I only did that because I read someone else's Library learning blog and although I got results, it turned out I didn't really want a daily horoscope after all. So, I'm still a bit confused about what this one is all about.

#8 - Bloglines

This is one thing out of the 23 1/2 that I actually already use. It makes it very easy to monitor all the blogs/sites of interest and immediately see which ones have new feeds you haven't seen. It can also make you feel a sense of "i'm falling behind" panic when you see that something has 200 new entries that you haven't read and you've got to catch up. Of course, if all you have to catch up on is gossip, this is probably okay. I think a media professional probably gets a lot of mileage out of Bloglines. As a tool for monitoring your feeds, bloglines works extremely well, but when I tried to use it to get recommendations for blogs I might be interested in, I was not impressed. The "news" feature doesn't seem to work. There is never any news as far as I can tell, or maybe I am missing something?

Thing # 7 - One Laptop Per Child

I've been reading a lot about the so-called $100 laptop (now $200 dollars) which is supposed to be a low cost, extremely durable computer for kids in poor countries. The concept was developed by Nicholas Negroponte of MIT Media Lab and in November it will be available for purchase. I first heard about it only a few months ago and was intrigued because originally the battery was going to be charged by hand crank which I thought was an amazing idea. The newest design uses a pull charger or a solar panel which is still pretty cool. The computer will have a camera, a microphone, memory card slot, and game pad controllers. It won't have the usual software (like Microsoft word) installed on it because it is designed to work as an educational tool in whatever country it is being used in. It'll be plugged into a network, so kids can use it in a classroom setting. The fact that people are working on something like this makes me happy and hopeful. The idea has been criticized because some people feel that kids in developing countries need food and clean water more than computers, but I think giving kids computers will help them keep up with the rest of the world while we're all still working on the essentials too. It can't hurt. Here's a link to the last Ny times article about it: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9801E4DF123FF937A35753C1A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Thing #6 - Warholeo

Warholeo
Originally uploaded by Labelle3968

Wow, with the amazing power of technology I have Warholized my son! I used fd's Flickr toys to do it. The mashups are fun but in my case not too much more. I'm sure they do improve other applications like google Maps with Craigslist apt listings, but I can't see spending a ton of time with mashups. I guess I still sound kinda curmudgeonly. I also played with Retrievr and the mosaic generator. Fun, but it didn't change my life.

Thing #5

IMG_0656
Originally uploaded by clabelle70

This is a picture of the gallery at Central Library in Jamaica. I think it's very cool that this is here. They have rotating exhibits throughout the year. Right now there is an exhibit on line drawing that has this interesting big balloon/intertube type sculpture right in the middle of the room. I would have taken a picture of that, but I'm not sure if that's legal and appropriate, so I'll just leave the description as an enticement for you to visit.

Lifelong Learning

I am not that old, yet lately have been feeling like a bit of a geezer when it comes to technology( "these crazy kids, what are they up to now?"). I do remember when learning new things about computers and the internet seemed natural, intuitive, and fun, but somehow within the last few years, those feelings of ease have vanished and when I hear about social networking and blogging I feel more like my own grandmother trying to send an email. So, I am relieved and excited to find, through Queens Library, a fun and low pressure way to get back into learning. Our first assignment was to go through the "7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners" and discuss which steps were easy for us and which were hard. I thought the 7 1/2 habits in general were kinda obvious, especially given that we all work for libraries and should be eager learner types to begin with, but I am willing to put in my two cents. For me the easiest steps would be accepting responsibility for my own learning (if not me, then who?), having confidence in myself as an effective learner, and teaching/mentoring others. I like learning and helping others to learn, especially when it is about something I also enjoy. The hardest habit would definitely be viewing problems as challenges. It's usually only in hindsight that I can see I learned something from dealing with a problem. So, in setting up this blog and writing this post, I've taken the first step in towards learning about Library 2.0...