Thing 10

I downloaded an ebook from the library's catalog for the first time. It was a mystery, titled, "The Abbot's Gibbet," one of the few that was not on hold. I did not explore the entire list of downloadable ebooks in the library's catalog, but it seemed that most of the fiction books, at least were all by established writers. I guess there's little or no call for ebooks by little known authors -- like me. As for the library's website, it is amazingly comprehensive -- I can't imagine there's much room for new services to include, but librarians more imaginatiuve than me will come up with some, I'm sure. Up to now, the only areas of the website I have used have been the catalog and my library account. One service that I just thought of that may or may not be practical is to enable patrons to tap into the Library of Congress or other specialized libraries through the SPL website.

Thing 9

Taking even a superficial look at all the products/tools offered by Google Products and Lifehacker, my head is spinning. (Charlie's eyes have glazed over). I had no idea the spectrum of tasks one can accomplish with Google, other than search for info. This is truly amazing, especially the idea that people in remote areas can work together on projects simultaneously, if I understand it correctly. The potential for people, companies and institutions to get the word out about what they're doing is enormous. So is the potential for interaction among groups. THis is not your grandfather's communications!

Thing 8

I contributed an item to the Wiki page on authors and books, writing about the most fascinating book(s) I've read in the past two years -- the two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. It was fun adding my item to others' and also reading others' comments on books and authors they loved. I really never knew what a Wiki was although I had heard of Wikipedia. This was very informative and in fact the whole Ten Things program has made me more aware of the amazing communication and information dispensing and sharing techniques and technologies that have been devised and are continuing to be added.

Thing 7

Charlie was an immense help on this one. We went to Learn Out Loud educational podcasts, the Lit. Summary section and listened to "Frankenstein," "Robinson Crusoe" and "Pride and Predudice," and added the RSS Feed for the selected podcasts. Obviously, this would present an important tool for library patrons who could listen to summaries of various books before selecting to read them or even buy them at bookstores. The same technology could be applied to films, and other library materials. Beyond that, libraries could set up techology and appropriate hardware where patrons could obtain specialized information from podcasts quite apart from books or other printed materials. Podcasts could be another medium, along with books, periodicals, movies, music, etc., where prtrons could find information.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Non-Green Leaves on Greenleaf St.

More Non-Green Leaves on Greenleaf St.
Originally uploaded by theskokieten

This was taken with my camera phone in sepia mode before the rain came and changed the textures and crispness of the sidewalk leafscape on Greenleaf St.

Thing 6

I learned new tricks today about bookmarks, tags and del.icio.us. Never knew people could organize their interests in this way and tap into those of others, friends, family, etc. Seems there are ever more dimensions to communication being created very day. How can the library use this? Of course the library is the repository of a great chunk of the world's information, so you couldn't have a tag for every subject. But there are obvious ones that patrons would find useful, like fiction, non-fiction, films, audio, crime fiction, etc., and all the other genres of fiction. Patrons could be encouraged to add their own candidates for tags

Thing 5

It was interesting learning about Flickr. I thought I was uploading a photo to my blog but it was ultimately unclear to me how to "create a connection between Flickr and my blog," as it requested. I tried clicking on everything on that site, but to no results. I don't know where that photo is. I uploaded it, wrote a brief description and tagged it. Is it here, or what? I also thought this might be a good way to share photos with family around the globe, but it took several minutes or more to upload one photo. Seems like it would take hours to unload the 250 photos I brought back from a recent overseas trip. Charlie's made he didn't get in the picture.

Thing 4

Me and Charlie are now members of Facebook. Well, he's just a silent member. I previously had joined MySpace. I expected that I would be able to put more into my Facebook profile than just the basics of name, address, birthdate, etc. I thought I would be able to create a profile with a paragraph or two about me and my new novel, as I did on MySpace, but I failed to find any place on Facebook where I could do that. I did see that they had a long list of people I had previously sent e-mails to. Kind of scary that they would have that information. So much for privacy.

Thing 3

I didn't do so well with IM. Not always clear, at least to me, what's going on. For instance, I was told to install Adobe Flash 8, and I went through the steps and was told that it had been successfully installed. Then I got to a message that told me what to do to install it, as if it hadn't been installed after all. Then there's Google Talk, which I filled out with my name, but I never got to the point of being able to IM anybody. As far as I'm concerned, either this whole process on Thing 3 is hard to figure out for most people, or this old dog IS to old to learn new tricks.

Thing 1

Well, I'm a blogger, proving that old dogs can learn new tricks. It was fun, and if I'm not breaking any rules, from now on my best friend, Charlie, is going to help me get through these 10 Things. He lends a lot of moral support, and I can use all the support I can get. Charlie's raring to go on Thing 2, so off we go!

Thing 2

Well, charlie fell asleep, but I toured Thing 2 (RSS) and learned a lot more. Now I have five news sources that will feed me info, I think. Anyway, I hope my first blog is posted, because when I clicked on the Post button for my blog on Thing 1, a got "this page cannot be displayed," or some such. Very frustrating. If this happens again, I'm going to tear someone's hair out. Charlie just hid under the bed.