Wednesday, May 14, 2008

listennj success

Hurrah!!

i have accomplished ALL the task and am still alive to blog about it.
I had to use the PC in the library to actual complete this task but it did work. Once I got started and the downloads actually started to work, I will say the process was easy to understand. I loaded the player onto the desktop, upgraded the media player, listened to a tutorI found. Then I could not find the books again, but they where lurking at the bottom of the screen. Once I found them, was able to download the two books I chose and actual listen. The quality for very good. I think I will rate this process on a normal scale in use and task accomplishment. The process took awhile because I did not have the right equipment to do the task. I do not have a player of any kind so I could not try the other types of downloading.
I feel so GOOD that I can say ELAINE has finished the tasked and hope I have qualified for the prize.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Web 3.0

AND here we go! What on earth is Web 3.0? In my poor confused mind, I would say Web 3.0 is the new envolving technology of the future. It is being developed to enable programmers to let machines /software relate to each other. It is the mother of search engines, way beyond the searching of today. Maybe I will term this as a search engine with a mind. The concept is rather frighting if one thinks of it this way.
Once again I want to thank the OCL committee for allowing the staff to participate in this learning experience. When I started, I was not sure if I could make it through the process but I have kept up with the commitment and finished.

23 and done

As I have said many times in the post on this blog: "This has been a time consuming challenge for me." YES, I did enjoy the process and do feel that I have learned many new skills. I think some I will continue but others probably not.
I am going to say that youtube is probably one of the items I will not use. I must say it was fun to search and watch some of the items that have been video, but I do not see the need. I did like the instructional ipod videos that where attached to the challenges. They where of great help in the confusing process of some of the items. I still am confused about the use of flickr, especially in loading pictures on a blog site. I hope to figure this out because I do intend to KEEP on Blogging. My family is interested in doing a page so we can share photos with family members from out of state.

Beside the picture idea, I think the next hardest part was ListenNJ since I have not been able to download a book. I have been told that it really is not that hard; how ever, in reading the directions I am not sure I would be in agreement. I mentioned this problem in an early post. I hope this does not completely screw me up. I promise I have tried.

I was impressed with librarything and do intend to do more in this area. I do hope that the library can use some of this technology to enhance our on-line catalogue. I also think that the committee should be using some of the databases (like the wiki) that can be edited for their notes and meeting planning. I feel that our library in general, is doing a good job in keeping up with the new technology. I know we are limited by the scope of the company's we use. We have to keep up to with the trends and we have to keep training our staff to train the public.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

#22

ListenNJ
So far I have had no luck in this site to listen anyway. I tried to download on a staff comp but no luck. Tried it at home but became very confused, so I will try again.
I do think that this is a great idea and will become very popular for travelers. The tutor was good but still confusing for me. I am the sort of learner (hands on) that needs to see the actual process before it sinks in.
The books that are available are numerous and varied. The tutor mentioned being able to download to ipods and even having music available someday soon-all with click of a mouse and the barcode from a library. WOW!!

podcast #21

I found the Podcast searching feature to be very easy to use. I browsed through the top choices and then searched for comedy, books. In this section I Found a great Harry Potter site that discusses the Harry Pooter books chapter by chapter AND then a podcast for the symbolism. This was facinating. I have to go back and try to listen to them all. I know we are suppose to put some kind of link but I have not figured out how to do this. I went to ipod.com and search Harry Potter-the secrets of Harry Potter.
There is also a featured site on comedy 365. It is very funny but does contain some raw sites, so be careful.
I did have trouble getting some of the podcast to play-the one Earth day never did play for me.

#20

You tube. Well this was something very interesting. I was familiar with the concept but must admit that I had not played around much watching videos.
I took some time to watch the current ones, then I did a couple of searches for gardening, sewing, decorating. I was very impressed with decorating-this search came up with ideas from soup to nuts so to speak. I found Nancy Peters decorating Ukrainian eggs and then I found a great group of videos by Sue Pelly (decoratingden). These were great.
I did another search on dancing and found some very funny clips but not many in the instructial.
As the article said "glorious waste of time", but it is fun and does provide a place for amatuers to be able to send clips and get feed back from people.

Friday, May 2, 2008

just for fun

I am giving you a couple of websties that I found.
My middle daughter lives in Spotswood, NJ which has a very small library but it is connected to the Middlesex consortium called LMxAC http://librarycatalog.Imxac.org. Take a browse, pretty interesting. She has been very successful getting information from many sources and picking the items up at the local facility.
Another fun site http://library.thinkquest.org. This is a site of websites created by children 9-19. There are annual competition that encourage kids to form a team and produce a website, enter in the competition. One of the fun winners was a dewey presentation to teach the DD system to other kids. This thinkquest is a great idea. I hope that many schools push the process.

#19

Another comment on challenge 19.
What is content and management award? Well I had to look up the word aggregation before I could attempt to think of the meaning. Aggregation--collecting of units, condition of beaning collected. After looking at the three award sites under this heading-wufoo, projectstat.us and editgrid, I have come to the conclusion that these sites gather information for the people who want to use the site, the site stores the information to make it available at a latter date, produces spread sheets, surveys etc that can be shared and work on by groups.
Sounds goods. Wonder if OCL uses any of these? I think a small busines and or a new business would get much use of these functions especially since they are free at least at the basic level.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

web 2.0 awards

We could spend hours in these award sites. I found this challenge fascinating. Who knew? So many places, so few hours. I guess it is good that someone in Web land is monitoring sites, ranking and watching tags. Was very interesting to search our site in the page strength area. we rated a 3 out of 10 which did not sound to good; however there where other catagories that it seemed the page did better.
In the challenge, we where asked to visit Pandora and Color Blender. I had a good time in color blender. Think this site might be useful in many ways. It was just fun looking at all the different colors blends that one would normally not think to put together. Padora, the music site did not peak my interest because I am not that addicted to music. Think it would be neat if you wanted music on your home compt or on an ipod phone situation. The concept of choosing, editing etc. your type of music was interesting.

In the awards was a catagory called Mashups containing an interesting site called Ning.com, which seems to be another group of networking sites. I even found a group for crafts, dancing and dating. These sites should cover all my bases, if I ever get time to go back and visit.