Thing #13

I've been using iGoogle as my home page at home for ages. I love my little Zen fox who goes through his day without a care in the world. The gadgets I've added are not necessarily related to productivity (People headlines, phases of the moon, color schemes). I've added both Google Calendar and Remember the Milk, but can't seem to get them to work TOGETHER. I'd probably be better off with a simple checklist -- as I don't need to assign a time of day to everything I do at home.
At work, I have always been happy with my post-it lists. Putting them on the computer probably wouldn't make me more productive.
I have put the T.S. vacation calendar online. Big resistance from the staff at first. They were used to each getting their own paper calendar every month. They weren't convinced by my argument about saving trees. The best thing about the online version is that I can change it every time someone submits a new request, so it is relatively up-to-date.
One thing I've always been is a big fan of office supplies -- planners, little notebooks, colorful pens, stickers, fancy Post-It notes, calendars with pockets or beautiful pictures. They bring a sense of hope and order to my life. The computer just doesn't have the same feel...

Thing #12

Social media sites. My least favorite Thing to date. Seems like a colossal waste of time. I'd just as soon get my news from the original source. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who like to recommend articles and tell everyone their opinion, but how many of us want to read all those amateur reviews?
Seemed like an awful lot of the "most popular" articles had the name of the social media site itself in the title. The layout of some of the sites was a mess.
I'm just gonna consider this Thing done and move on. I hear there are some better Things coming up.

Thing #11

Okay, I can tag my blog posts. If I need tags to find them, then I've probably got too many. Looking forward to deleting the whole thing someday. Being a cataloger, I'm not huge fan of the folksonomy approach. I want a controlled vocabulary -- but one that is easier to update and more useful than LCSH.
Created a Del.icio.us account. Stupid name for a website -- I have to consciously remember where the dots go. Was unable to put the bookmarklets (or whatever they're called) on my toolbar because this "violates the acceptable use policy." Makes Delicious much less useful at work...
I don't usually have a lot of trouble finding my bookmarked sites. Either they're bookmarked on the computer where I most frequently need them, or I can google them faster than I can log into Delicious to retrieve them.
It was interesting to see how many other people had bookmarked some of my favorite sites (like Fantastic Fiction).
All in all, this is another Thing that I don't feel I have the time to use properly. It could be a very valuable research tool for someone with a big project to do and a lot of time to spend in front of the computer.