Thing 7 Technology Talk

After my grandson was born, I, of course, needed a digital camera. I like being able to take many shots of the same event and being able to erase those I don't want. I also have started to photograph the best flowers in my garden. For this project, I signed up for Flickr and have used it for some "things". I have been using Snapfish for a year to share my photos and see those taken by other family members. It is a great way of having a backup place to store favorite photos which are accessible from any computer.

Google Doc is something I hadn't heard of till about 10 days ago when I did thing 18. Since then I read about it in the Sun paper and my sister told me she had just learned about it from our brother. She has a laptop without Office and will find Google Doc a valuable service. I will use it with my family also.

Thing 22 Downloadable Books

Someday I will use this, and soon, I hope. I created an account and watched the tutorial on netlibrary only to find out that HCPL will be dropping this subscription. So I turned to Overdrive where I searched for some titles I would like to hear. Suite Francaise and Water for Elephants were checked out and required holds. Browsing the lists of topics would not work for me as the lists are not tailored to my taste.

Thing 21 Podcasts

For this exercise I tried the podcast directories and found that I would rather simply go to a show that I like such as Prairie Home Companion and get the podcast from there. The explanation and directions for signing up were very brief and clear on this site also. I also tried NPR and explored podcasts through it. In the directories I found that using a tag such as books led me to many podcasts that were out of date or of no interest to me. I did not sign up for anything and do not have accounts in itunes etc. Reading about activex stopped me! At this point they would be of little use to me without a good computer at home or an ipod, mp3 player etc.

Thing 20 YouTube

Until I experimented with YouTube for this project, I had not bothered with ever looking at a video. Now I know why; it could become addictive. I found it easy to search by using the search box. I don't plan to use it much so this will be sufficient. I noticed that tags are used so searching should always be easy.

My first search was for Garrison Keillor. I enjoyed the results very much and included a video on this blog of a nostalgic song for me. I did this before writing this post so it is listed separately.

I also looked for a few author interviews and enjoyed the interview with Bill Bryson about his newest book very much. Perhaps author interviews from YouTube and also library generated (local authors) could be used on library websites.

A Prairie Home Companion - My Minnesota Home

Thing 18 Online Productivity

I created an account in Google Docs and found the site to be quite useful. I uploaded two Story Time Plans for this October and then accessed them from home where I could edit them.
I had sent them to my Yahoo account and also shared them with a collaborator. It seems that it could be used as an easier form than a wiki for sharing a small project.

I will definitely use Google Docs again. It could work for my family memory sharing that I organize through lots of email replies to "all." I then edit everyone's shared memories mostly by copying and pasting, but Google Docs would make it easier.

While reading Sun columnist Mike Himowitz's column this week I was pleased that I knew what he was talking about. The subject was free sources for Word, Excel etc. Google Docs was one of the 3 he discussed. He found its main advantages to be portability and collaboration.

Thing 19 Award winning sites

There are many sites listed on the 2.0 site which I would like to explore as the year goes on. Among these are Craigslist, which I often hear mentioned and both my daughters use. Also etsy, a jewelry selling site which my niece uses to sell her handmade jewelry. I had ignored her email about it since I had never heard of it, but now will try to find her stuff on it.

For this exercise I explored Google Maps which I had previously used only to find directions. I have found both my daughters' houses (one in CA which I rarely get to) at the closest zoom level on the hybrid map. It was fascinating to see the houses and the trees in their neighborhoods.
I also really like looking in the satellite view at various addresses where ancestors used to live.

I watched the video on adding content and other tools. Someday I may want to do this, but what I can use right now is the ability to search for businesses near an address. My daughter is moving soon so I checked out the convenience stores near her new address and found one less than a mile away.

When time allows I will go back to the list of 2.0 sites and explore more fun and useful sites.