Finished! (I think)

Well, if I am correct in guessing that there are no links for the final two posts, then I am all done! Yay! It was a fun road, but I can't say that I really learned anything mindblowingly new. However, as I am a very tech-savvy teenager, this didn't really surprise me. I did enjoy helping out the others that were struggling though. Thank you for the program, it was very enjoyable!

Overdrive

Well... I like audiobooks... but most of these are too... classic for me. Things like this, I probably won't spend the time downloading because I am more interested in newer books, that's just me. Anyway, if there was a site that had downloads for new books, I would like that much more.

Podcasting

So, I already knew what podcasts were, but I don't use them much, because I can read the same information (generally), and I can read faster, so I just look up the info myself. However, my dad uses some of these during football season for our fantasy football league, and in these are found opinions that you can't really find written anywhere, so they are useful for that. However, I went to podcast.com and typed in "Nintendo" as I am a huge video game fan. I found a podcast completely dedicated to the wii, and subsequently attempted to figure out how to subscribe to its RSS. I couldn't find it. I could subscribe with an account that I made, but I couldn't figure out how to do it with bloglines. Anyway, it had some neat stuff on it, but I had already heard most or all of it, so I don't think it will be something that I will use all the time.
Edit: Darn it, I forgot to look for Library podcasts. Oh well. I did it now, and I only found a couple, but they were relatively new.

Youtube

I love youtube. I always have, and I always will. There are so many hilarious, ridiculous, stupid people that I will never get tired of watching. For example: Miss Teen South Carolina.
Sad, but hysterical. Also, this is one of my favorite videos, because I love Saturday Night Live, but it wasn't on youtube, so I found it through the google video search.
Classic. Anyway, youtube is great, the only issue with it in my opinion is that sometimes there will be videos on the sidebars that you might not really want to see, or comments that you don't want to see. Video hosting doesn't really seem to fit with libraries, but they could in some tutorial sense, as in helping people that couldn't figure things out with step-by-step videos.

Web 2.0 Sites

I like all of the widget sites, because I like widgets. There are a couple really fun ones, like the radio and the snowglobe on Yourminis. Anyway, yeah, these are fun, but there aren't a lot that are useful, most are just silly or fun. Or both. I could see myself using these for a little while for a time, but eventually stopping, because I would be done with them. It's hard to see these really being useful for a library, but if someone came out with a Useful-for-a-library widget, well then maybe.

Web-Based Productivity Applications

WOW! I like these. I have to say, I never knew these existed, and they rock. This is an amazing tool for schools, because at our school, flash drives are blocked by our systems admin, because people were bringing games on them (who would do that ;P) This has caused lots of problems, because we need to use them with our senior projects on them. However, with this, we wouldn't need them at all. I am totally weirded out that I never knew about these sooner, and I am telling everyone at school about them on Monday. Oh, as far as a document for everyone to see, I am not going to publish one, however I DID get a shoutbox working off of zoho on the left of my blog where people can chat with each other. If you want, you can see my exhilirating chat with myself. Anyway, long story short, I like this.

Wikis

I personally already loved wikis before this lesson. I use wikipedia on school reports all the time, whether they like it or not (they have an issue with the "anyone can edit" thing about it), and tons of wikis are made on homebrew apps and video games for my consoles all the time. That said, I can't really think of something that this feature would work well for libraries... Anything that the library needs to post shouldn't really need to be edited by the people all the time...the only thing this would benefit would be if the library wants to create a hub for something it didn't know much about. I don't know. I do know that I love wikis.

Library 2.0

I haven't really understood until now why we were doing this, I just enjoyed it and didn't ask questions. Now though I think that I get it. We are doing this so that we can better service to our customers who will be using the new technologies available, and so we need to be able to help them with them, or at least understand them. So, this whole thing is trying to keep up with the consumer, and keep them coming back for more.

Technorati: Again

So, this is a google for all blogs that are out there. It is kinda neat. When I searched around for things, I couldn't find how to search in the blog directory... but there were about 8500 more results for "Learning 2.0" in the Blog Posts than in the Tags. This makes sense. I went to the popular place, and just in the top 10 I found some interesting things, so that was fun. I tried to do the optional thing, really I did, but it was too confusing. I went to the instructions for how to set up your blog to Ping technorati, and I couldn't find the screen it showed for my life. It kinda irritated me. Anyway, this is a useful tool. I can't really contribute to it, and I don't know if a lot of other people doing the 2.0 will use this much, but I actually see myself using this occasionally. Anyway... yeah.

Delicious

Ok, this is kind of weird. I get it, sure. Do I think that it benefits me in any way? Not really. I can see how a whole bunch of random, uncredible sources (See: Wikipedia) have identified a bunch of websites. I don't really go around looking for people's opinions before visiting websites anyway, kinda bogs the whole experience down, dontcha think? Anyway, here are the answers to those questions:

1) 2
2) www.spl.org, www.spokanelibrary.org
3) 2
4) oanh.tran1964
5) September 19, 2008
6) Trick Question, the last thing that they bookmarked was on September 30, 2008.
7) 0

I hope I passed!

Rollyo

Hey, this thing is actually a pretty clever little idea. There isn't a lot that I randomly search for on the internet, I more just like to check my couple few sites (See: RSS Feeds). Having said that, this is still pretty neat. I can create a search engine for any site(s) I want, and I really like that. If some website has bunches of information but doesn't have a search bar? You could put that as your only website and make a rollyo for it. Instant easy searching. This really is a neat tool, and I could see it being useful, but I can't really say that I see myself using it a lot in the near future. Oh, yeah, link. Here you go. http://rollyo.com/ssbbveteran/electronics_and_game/
Enjoy.

LibraryThing Thoughts

Ok, so this site... doesn't exactly thrill me. I can put a whole bunch of books up that I like, and other people can do the same thing, then we can look at each others. I think. Anyway, it would make more sense to me just to talk about what books you like with the people that you know. Yes, you will find more people on here, and there is no chance of forgetting a books title, etc. It is still a nice tool, but not exactly one that I can see myself using. It would be cool if you could read the books on this site. Then I would go there all the time. Anyway, here is my link: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/SSBBVeteran
Have fun looking at my 5 minimum books I put up that will probably never get updated ^_^

Image Generators

These things are hilarious ^_^ I went to the Greek God one found here: http://www.generatorland.com/generators/greek_god_generator_gl.php#
You can just keep clicking on the "God Me" button, and the results are ROFL worthy. I mean come on, Selous, God of Cross Dressing and Oral Hygeine? Heropompus, God of Croutons and Dustbunnies? Melpoaia, Goddess of Hopscotch and Vodka Drinks? Those made my day. Next up is the movie generator. http://www.alldaycoffee.net/mpaa_movie_rating_generator.php
Keep hitting the "Try Again" button, and laugh hysterically. I mean come on, a movie being PG-13 because Eddie Murphy in a fat suit, Dan Akroyd after letting himself go, and Paris Hilton are all in it? It isn't as good as the greek god one, but it is fun. However, a lot of the things seem to get re-used a bunch. So... these aren't really image generators. Hang on. OOh! Okay, here we go. The babymaker.
http://www.vw.com/vwhype/babymaker/en/us/
You put in two pictures, and it shows you what the baby would look like. Is it accurate? Probably not. Is it "tasteful"? Not really. Does it take a while? Yeah... Is it hilarious? You bet. Maybe I'm just weird, but I searched on the internet, and used two guy's faces... I recovered from laughing in about 5 minutes.

RSS Finders

Hmm, okay, so here goes. I think that the bloglines search thing works great. It is good how you can choose between if your searching for news or for feed names, it just works well. Topix? Not for me. It is kind of interesting that it can look for blogs, but I don't really care about random blogs, I just want to look for information. I might as well be searching on google. Syndic8 was the best for if you wanted to find feeds focused on your information needs. It works well. Only problem? It doesn't seem to discard feeds that haven't been used in a very long time. One was trying to tell me about new Gamecube games that were coming out. Pfft. Technorati seems to be just a little bit more focused than Topix. This one actually I would prefer to google though. So, overall? I actually think that the bloglines search tool works the best. Having multiple search options, it comes back with current results, it is simple, it is already in the website you are at... yeah, I think it wins. Anyway, that's what I found!

RSS Time

I have to say I like RSS feeds. I do a lot of web surfing, and this helps to cut down on the time involved considerably, so that I have more time to play games ^_^ By the way, Bike Mania 2 on the left of my blog? Great time waster. Super addictive. Anyway, yeah RSS readers are cool. You can get a whole bunch of information quickly, and you only have to go to one site. If I had dial-up speed internet, this would be a necessity. Even with hi-speed, it's still cool. However, I still visit nintendo.joystiq regularly anyway, because of the kind of atmosphere that the site has. It's cozy. Oh, and here is my bloglines thingy.
http://www.bloglines.com/public/SSBBVeteran
It took me a couple tries to get this working correctly, so I thought I would put up the things that you need to do.
1) You must create a username. You can do that if you go to bloglines, click on "Account" and then on "Blog Settings". There is a box that says "Username". You need to make one in order for this to work.
2) You have to set your bloglines account to be able to share. Did you stay in the "Blog Settings" place? Underneath the Username box, down two boxes, is an option that says "Share my Blogroll". You must click on the button that says "Yes, Publish my Blogroll".
I hope that helped!

Technology: General

I absolutely love technology. Of course, being 16 lends itself to this. I bet it would shock most people to know how much time they spend, or others spend, using or interacting with technology. I'm not talking about things like the wheel, the lever or the fulcrum, I'm talking about electronics, minus lights. Think about it. (I will be looking at this from my perspective, and the times that I see of my parents, but if someone else is actually reading this, and wants to comment about how much they are plugged in without realizing it, that would be cool.)When we wake up in the morning? Alarm clock? Yup, it plugs into the wall. Stumble down the stairs, and turn on the coffee pot. Hey look! It's plugged in to the wall! Turn on the TV to watch the news, well duh, plugged in. Listen to some music in the shower? Maybe that's just me, but my radio is, again, plugged in. Check your email before leaving for the day maybe, and BOOM, you are on the computer. On the commute, listen to your radio/iPod. Maybe not plugged in, but runs off of a battery. Get to work/school. Approximately half of my school time, maybe more, is on the computer, whether I am on it, or the teachers are using the projectors to show the class what we are doing. On the way back home, radio/iPod again! I guess I should include audiobook as well. And yes, your radio still runs on batteries. Then, to wind down from the day, you turn on the TV and become half couch for an hour or two. To bed, where I turn on my iPod on speakers to play some calming audio to ensure I fall asleep. What do I do right before I fall asleep though? I make sure that my alarm is on, so it will wake me up the next morning. AND IT STARTS ALL OVER AGAIN. Think about it.

Flickr Mashup Tools

Ok, the Flickr Montager could be the single coolest thing I am going to find on the web.... ever! I can't quite comprehend how it is able to find enough pictures to make a mosaic out of a picture, much less how they all fit the description as well! I'm not sure I explained it enough, but if you just stop reading this right now and go check it out, you will understand. The Jigsaw and Trading Card Maker ideas are cool as well.

Check it out!

Butterfly

Schmetterling - Butterfly
Originally uploaded by Altweibersommer

I decided to look around the "interestingness" section, and this picture caught my eye. It looks like a leaf or a pair of giant lips, but I never would have guessed it was a butterfly.

The easiest and hardest steps.

I definitely think that the easiest part for me is being confident, because I am very into technology, but creating a learning toolbox could prove troubling for me.