The Final Thing!

And so we've reached the end of this Journey of Things.

OK, so I already knew about a lot of the stuff we covered in here. That being said, it forced me to use some of the things I was aware of, but never actually used. LibraryThing is pretty cool. Maybe I'll use it more in the future; maybe not.

Having my own Gmail account was nice too. I never signed up for it in the past because I already had 3+ email addresses; why would I want another one? I'm glad I got to see its interface and got to play around with it a bit. I'm considering using it to teach my email classes in the future.

del.icio.us is a site I will now recommend people whenever they ask if there's a way for them to keep their bookmarks on the internet so that they can access them anywhere.

Finally, I never realized how useful wikis can be. I'm working on making a wiki for my co-workers here which we'll use to add items to discuss at meetings, as well as computer troubleshooting stuff and links to useful websites.

I'm not sure how I'd improve the 23 Things program. Perhaps it might be better for some people if the pace could be slowed down a bit? I know some people felt overwhelmed.

I would almost definitely participate in a similar exercise in the future. I had fun, and I enjoyed helping my co-workers with this stuff!

Let's Drive right Over this Twenty-Second Thing

I made use of Overdrive before it was even announced to the public. It seems like a great service to the public, and I occasionally field a tech question or two about it over the phone.

That being said, I've not really made it a regular thing to visit our Overdrive page and browse for audio stuff. I think the last book I checked out was America by Jon Stewart, and I didn't even make it to chapter 4. I just can't get into audiobooks. I prefer to read books at my own pace, and sometimes even stop and refer back to another part of the book. This really isn't possible with audiobooks just yet.

Patrons, friends and co-workers tell me that they love audiobooks for long trips or driving to work. For me, podcasts successfully fill that void.

It's podcastic.

I know, I know. I'm not even trying with my blog subjects anymore.

Podcasts are awesome. I was a bit late with discovering them for myself, but I don't know of any other way that would make my commute to work fly by so quickly, let alone my trips to Gainesville.

Most of the podcasts I listen to are video game related. They're usually drenched with profanity and therefore nothing I'm going to share here in my work blog, but they are thoroughly entertaining. Aside from that, though, I recently discovered that many of NPR's shows are available in podcast form. I subscribed to both Car Talk and Talk of the Nation's Science Friday a few weeks ago and am glad that I did.

As far as library-related podcasts go, I subscribed to the Library 2.0 Gang a few months back. It was OK, although I definitely don't enjoy it as much as other podcasts. Since they do their podcast over Skype, the voice quality varies from person to person and it can be difficult to listen to.

I subscribe to all of these podcasts using a program called ZENcast Organizer, which came with my mp3 player. It really comes in handy because it automatically downloads the latest podcasts and deletes old ones from my mp3 player.

The wonders of Youtube

I'm already quite familiar with youtube. What I love about the site is that it has achieved critical mass and it's pretty much the dumping site for almost any kind of video you can find. I've found a few videos of obscure performances of progressive rock bands from the 1970s on there. This is the kind of thing one probably would have paid $30 for a bootleg VHS tap about 10 years ago!

Similarly, there are entire feature-length movies out there which are now public domain...or perhaps put up there with the permission of the creator. I found the movie Threads on Google Video, which left me utterly terrified of nuclear war when I was in middle school.


One thing I can usually do without in youtube is the comments section. It can start off all right, but it usually quickly devolves into petty insults. I do appreciate that YouTube has responded to this problem by allowing users to rate each comment and even label it as spam, but it doesn't seem to do much in the long run.

YouTube and other video sharing sites could definitely be useful for libraries. I think it would be great to record a lot of the special programs we offer and post them to youtube, either in their entirety or just clips for promotional use.

There are a lot of videos I'd like to share from youtube, but I narrowed it down to this one called "My Childhood in 4 Minutes." It's a bunch of footage from a bunch of mid-80s and 90s video games spliced together with a Weezer song in the background. I played many of the games featured in the video when I was a kid, so it's a big nostalgia trip for me.

Fun with Yelp

I chose to play around with the Yelp website. What is Yelp, you ask? It's a site that allows people to review various businesses in a given area. I can take a look at what people think of certain restaurants, barber shops, animal shelters, and computer repair stores in Boca Raton! I can write my own review if I actually wanted to register on the site (I don't).

Since I spend a lot of time in Gainesville, I decided to take a look at one of my fiancee's favorite locales called Maude's. Reviews appear to be mixed. I also looked up an apparently renowned pizza place called Satchel's Pizza. Having never been there, I'm a bit inclined to check it out next time I'm up there!

Anyway, it seems like a cool site. The problem is that you really need a critical mass of users in order for this sort of thing to work. I've come across other sites like this before, and often times they're just ghost towns with lots of locations and no reviews. This one seems a bit better than those, so perhaps I'll keep it in mind next time I want to read more about a location somewhere.

As far as library usefulness, I suppose it could be a quick and dirty way of letting a patron know what other people think about a local restaurant or park.

Zoho and online word processing

So here I am, using the online word processor known as Zoho. This isn't the first time I've used an online word processor; Just a few months ago I discovered Google Docs for the first time. Personally, I'm a bit old fashioned and still prefer document creation on a local computer rather than using a service like this, but I definitely see the positives.

I'm not completely sure, but I think Zoho has more options than Google Docs! Both have the ability to save files as PDF, which I really could have used in library school a few times. Both Zoho and Google Docs also let you import Word documents from your own computer. This function works well enough for the average Word document, but if you're using lots of pictures and drawings, forget about it. It didn't handle my Email Basics handout very well, completely obliterating the notations I made on my screenshots.

I guess I'll use the space below to play around with the various toolbar buttons:

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Horizontal rule! Hooray.

Bold text.

Italics!

Strikethrough. I don't know why, but I always have liked Strikethrough.

1. Making a numbered list is fun.
   
2. Except when it's not.
   
3. Coming up with a third unwitty remark is particularly perplexing.
   

Emoticons. Everyone loves emoticons.

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All right. I've had my fun.

Update: (This is being edited in via Blogger) It seemed to work just OK. It cut off my last sentence which said "Let's see how well this looks in my actual blogspot post." No big loss, but things like that and the extra spaces between paragraphs are reasons why I wouldn't use Zoho to make a blog post.

...and the PBCLS wiki

I looked at the PBCLS wiki for a while before deciding what to add. Obviously, I added my blog's address since that's what we're supposed to do, but I didn't feel like I'd be contributing something by doing just that.

I saw the "favorite restaurants" section and ended up adding Nino's to the list. It's within walking distance for me, and I've been going there since I moved to Florida.