23 Mobile Things #1

Found the password for the 2009 23 Things blog and, yay, it still works. I'm looking forward to learning some new cool stuff to do on the iPad.

Thing #26

Join the Ning

I joined the Ning and the RCL group in Round 1. It's a place to post commments and stuff so that you can say you completed a Thing -- but it doesn't seem to be a place where people are staying. If I see one more cute widget, I'll scream!

Thing #25

The Blogger's Toolkit

Here are the four gadgets I tried:

1) Typealizer
This is supposed to determine your Myers-Briggs type based on your blog. You don't get any information about how it works (magic?), and there are disclaimers about how you might have one type on one blog and another type on another blog, depending on what you're blogging about. So they've pretty much covered all their bases. On my blog they got two out of four letters right -- so pretty much the same odds as flipping a coin.
2) Blog readability test
I couldn't get this to work with my blog's url. I just wanted to find out if I was smarter than a fifth grader.
3) Spoken Text
This converts a passage of text into a spoken word recording. You get a choice of voices -- American, British, French, Spanish. All male voices, though. It took a looong time to translate a short passage, and the recording only lasts for one day unless you upgrade your account. Looks like you can pay to get more voices and to hang onto your recording.
4) Google Gadgets
The only think I actually added to my blog was a gadget for the top box office hits of the week. It comes with ads (Do You Like Beyonce?), so I'm not sure I want to keep it.

A lot of the gadgets/widgets were for helping readers link to other places and interact with you, which is great, if the purpose of your blog is to get some important information off your chest. Since my blog is more of a personal, keeping-track-of-homework blog, I decided not to try out the interactive stuff. I did enjoy the videos, though.

Thing #24

Refresh Your Blog

My blog is looking very refreshed with a new text color and a sparkly Yahoo! avatar. Took a while to get the avatar on there, as the instructions from "23 Things" are already out of date.

The refreshed blog has been duly registered. I find myself hoping that no one will look at it, as it is truly dull -- even with the undersea ballerina. Onward and upward...

Thing #23

Evaluation

The online survey is closed, so I'm not able to complete it. In general, I enjoyed learning most of the 23 things. Doing some of the things with pictures and adding things to my blog definitely boosted my confidence in my ability to handle technology. Still, I find myself overwhelmed by the number of things I need to keep track of to keep my head above water. I'm glad that there will be more "things" to work on next year. That will at least keep me from falling behind.
I've subscribed to Common Craft's blog, so I can keep watching their excellent little videos. And maybe, just maybe, I'll find the time in 2009 to start that T.S. wiki...

Thing #22

Keeping Up

This one is easy. I attended the "More Things on a Stick" presentation at the inservice. I will sign up in '09 and keep doing "things" as long as Metronet keeps putting them on sticks.

Thing #21

Visit 23 Things on a Stick


I joined the 23 Things Ning and posted a comment. Not much happening there these days.
I checked out Gather.com, which was not as high-minded and literary as MPR would have me believe. I did find some smashing photos of a rich 16-year-old's trashy wedding there, though.
I'm still enjoying Facebook -- but wondering if I should be wasting my time sending digital plants and snowmen to my friends. Perhaps I should be watering my non-digital plants or making a real snowman with my daughter.
I still depend on my good old-fashioned Yahoo! groups to stay in touch and plan social outings. Anything that makes it to my e-mail gets read, but I don't spend a lot of time searching around for new groups to join.
I'm on the home stretch here...

Thing #19

Podcasts
Love 'em! I listened to a mom with a lovely Australian accent give tips on how to clean your bathroom. Enjoyed a skit from last week's MPR Morning Show. Subscribed to NPR's "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!," which is broadcast at a very inconvenient time for me. Will I actually find time to listen to it somewhere else in the week? Unlikely.
I did not create a podcast using Gcast -- but I did take a look at the site. The podcast directories were not particularly helpful to me. Once again, if I had a lot of time on my hands, I could use them to find cool new stuff to listen to. I find that, during my free time, I'm mostly looking for silence.

Thing #20

I joined Facebook, made many friends, joined a quilting group, took a "Breakfast Club" test, wrote on Carol's wall, and logged out so that I could log back in and check my account. Technically, I have completed Thing 20. Of course, it doesn't stop there. I can see that I'll have to log in every couple of hours and post what I'm doing, see if there are any new tests to take or fun applications to download.
Can't wait to get home so I can add a photo.

Thing #17

ELM Productivity Tools
1. Create a search alert
I did not manage to add a search alert to my Google Reader RSS thing. Apparently, I'm not the first person to have a problem with this. I can create a search alert and set it up for e-mail. I can also direct a patron to the very nice "help" page on EBSCO for creating and saving search alerts.
2. EBSCO Page Composer
Did it. Why? Why not just e-mail the results to myself? Would be much easier.
3. ProQuest
Did it -- except for the part about downloading it to my flash drive. I don't have a flash drive yet. Isn't the flash drive supposed to be the END product of all this work? Am getting a little testy about the way these 23 things are set up...
4. NetLibrary
Did the creating a note on eContent thing. I'm already pretty familiar with NetLibrary on the downloadable audio side. Biggest problem I ran into was that I couldn't remember my login.

I really did not enjoy Thing #17, but practicing with some of these tools will help when working with patrons who want to save search results.

Thing #15

Puzzle Pirates -- couldn't download it on work computer

Second Life -- laaaame! Watch a video of some alien rollerskating around, while I'm sitting here eating a Tootsie Pop. I'm the one who needs to be out rollerskating. Pay real money to buy pretend land and hang out with a bunch of cartoons? Maybe I'm just having a bad day, but this seems like a real waste of time.

Thing #16 (yes, before thing #15!)

Where were these project calculators when I was in school? And do they truly work for the hardcore procrastinator?
Next time a student asks me to help them choose an assignment topic, I'll point them to one of these calculators.

Thing #14

Here is the link to my LibraryThing library.

Easy to use. Useful for finding related titles -- but didn't seem any more useful than Amazon's recommended titles for the topic I was searching. This would be a good tool for keeping track of titles while creating bibliographies over a period of time.

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.

Thing #10

Wikis
I like Albany's T.S. wiki. This is something I've been thinking of trying for the cataloging manual. Much easier to update and distribute than our current paper manual. However, can I get the catalogers to use it? Much easier to open the notebook than to log into the correct site.
We could also use this for a T.S. procedures manual -- which is long overdue.
So:
1) find time to do this
2) get staff on board
3) choose a type of wiki
4) set up wiki
5) transfer/create information
6) update the darn thing!
It may happen some day, but first I've got 13 more stick things to deal with.

Thing #9

Okay, yes, Google Docs is a very cool thing -- but did they have to make it so hard to find that out? Obviously, I've taken too long to get to Thing 9, because the link to Google Docs from the 23 Things site was no longer valid. The info about not having to sign up for an account on Zoho does not appear to be true. I uploaded the exact document they linked to (image of manuscript of Declaration of Independence) to Google Docs, but was not able to edit it (because it's a picture, and not text?). Finally ended up finding a text version elsewhere and uploading it to Google Docs, but was so frustrated by this point that I had NO FUN editing it. Okay, so maybe it's not supposed to be fun. Anyway, I get the point. Google Docs is cool. Zoho might be cool too, if I were willing to sign up for yet another account on the 'net. Consider Thing 9 completed.

Thing #8

Thing #7

E-mail: I spend way too much time checking it and not enough time dealing with it. I always have at least 400 messages piled up in my work inbox. If some virus were to wipe them all out, I'd probably be better off.
I find e-mail at work to be a very frustrating tool for decision making and even more frustrating for training. When I send out a question, I either get no responses or a whole lot of responses that all conflict with each other.

IM: This can be very useful for quick cataloging questions. However, it seems that the moment someone IMs me with "Got a minute?" I get one or two other messages overlaid on top of the first one.
When I'm typing away on a bib record, I have very little patience for people who keep popping back with one liners. It reminds me a little bit of my commute -- I'm too impatient and everyone else is too slow. And it's all about me.

Text messaging: So I did figure out how to send a text message on my phone. Really much easier to call someone. My brother ended up calling me back, since he can receive text messages but can't send them from his phone.
I can see where this would be fun for sending messages in class, but I think I'm safely past the age where text messaging could become an addiction.

Webinars: Been there, done that, printed out the Powerpoint. They're pretty good for lurking while learning, but not much good for any kind of back and forth between student and teacher.

On to Thing 8...