Thing 11

Instant messaging is the one thing I have done before. When my oldest daughter went to college the cell phone coverage was spotty and expensive so I learned how to instant message and we would frequently chat in the afternoons. This went by the wayside when cell phone plans became less expensive and included the area where she was going to school. I was quite proud of myself when I went to log in and remembered my user name and password even though I set up the account 10 years ago and haven't used it in over 5 years. My user name is pastamama2 (given to me by my kids) and I am using AIM. I know we downloaded the software when I originally set up the account but I have not updated it and the AIM express from the browser seems to work just as well. The home page does seem to be much more cluttered with ads and other stuff that I find it more distracting than I remember. I do need to try to use the abbreviations more often- my kids said my instant messages read more like letters and so therefore are not very instant.
I thought the post by another North Texas 23 participant who used IM with other librarians while trying to help a patron was a great strategy.

Thing 10

I watched the tutorial about Ning and that didn't seem too complicated but then I read the article about Ning and their use of networks and that made me think twice. I wonder just how many of these social networking sites there are and it seems belonging to them would take a huge amount of time. I did search several areas of interest - libraries, book clubs, quilting, education and even for home inspection (my husband's occupation). The number of possible networks to join was overwhelming 5,000+ for some networks. Some are recognizable such as ALA and I would feel comfortable joining them but then there was the Second Life Librarians network that was not what I expected. I find it tedious to go through and view the different networks to see if one is a good match. Since I didn't set up an account I can't compare it to Facebook as to ease of use and quality of information.

Thing 9

Finding friends in facebook. This is in some ways easier than I thought it should be. I added my kids and a friend I knew participated in Facebook but when I actually typed in names of many other friends I discovered none of them are on facebook. I have had a couple of friend requests but have not responded yet - I am still contemplating how many people to include and whether I really want to include people I only know through other people or casually - some feel the more friends the merrier but I am not sure I agree. I am still more likely to send a private message than post something on the wall for all to see. I joined one group - the Texas Library Association and became a fan of the Texas Rangers. I am still looking at other groups to possibly join such as a quilters group or perhaps a book club. I think belonging to several groups or becoming a fan of several things will be more information than I want to sort through on a daily basis. My daughter says she just ignores the postings from all of the various groups she is a fan of - but what's the point of joining if you are just going to ignore it. I guess I am still not really with it ....

Thing 8

I had heard all about Facebook mostly from my kids but had never looked at it. I was a little more intrigued when a friend said she had joined and was having a great time connecting with her old high school friends but still not enough to do anything. It was easy to create the Facebook account not as easy to navigate the site - again too much information with ads and pictures and different options all over the page. I did not put a lot of information in my profile partly because of the privacy concerns but also because part of me wonders who really cares about my favorite books. It seems like such a ME generation thing - I find it hard to believe that people really want to know what I'm doing today. I did enjoy looking at friends from high school who are listed in Facebook and I discovered when typing my own name into the search box that there are 20 pages of people who have the same name. I guess this is where more information in the profile can be helpful - I may go back and add my maiden name to mine.

Thing 7

One of the reasons I started the 23 Things was to learn about the RSS feeds since a listserve that I am on is moving to RSS this summer. I am still not sure about either the Blog reader or RSS feeds. It seems you end up with so much information. I am still looking at it to see if I can delete the irrelevant information or save the items I want to look at again in a way that doesn't involve going through everything. But I did add the list serve and hope that it works when they make the shift in July. So far it looks like it will.

Thing 6

I found the Blog reader easier to understand and install than Flickr. I was able to add subscriptions with ease and added my niece's travel blog, a library list serve that I generally receive through e-mail and my son-in-law's football blog. I also searched for additional blogs but found this to be quite time consuming checking each one out to see if it was one I would like to add. I agree with the video that having all the blogs and web sites on one page is easier than going to each individually but I can also see where this could eat up a lot of time. Before I would go to the site only if I wanted something in particular or had extra time but with all of them on one page it will be easier to visit each one - which may actually eat up more time. This will be a time will tell option.

I tried another flickr spell and am adding some text to see if it will work. Fingers crossed. It worked but I don't know what I did wrong the first time and I probably won't be able to figure it out - so confusing.

Thing 4 - I think

I was able to post the Flickr spell of Thing 4 but not add any text - do these have to be done separately? When I added text the first time I just got the boxes with X's but without text I got the images. I am not sure where to go to find the answer to this. I think I will look at some other blogs to see if they have image and text.

Thing 4

Thing 5 again

OK so thing 5 didn't turn out exactly as I thought - didn't think the text would run along the side of the image since it didn't look that way in the preview but at least I have a picture! Yeah!

Thing 5

I hope this will show up on my blog as an image. If so it went much better than thing 4. The instructions that were on the image generator page were helpful. I have not given up on thing 4 and will try it again after playing with thing 5 a bit more - maybe it will give me some insight to the Flickr Speller.

Thing 4

I tried to put this in the title box but that didn't seem to work. The first time I tried to copy and paste the image I got an error message. I then tried to save it to my computer but got another error message when trying to upload it to the blog. And since I don't really understand the error messages I tried again and this time it did appear to work. Guess not - when I went to preview all I see are boxes with red X's and the name of the image. Back to the drawing board. It may be something that is set on my machine and I will have to talk to the IT department (my husband) to see if he can help. I will keep playing with it but I am starting to feel like I am in way over my head!

Thing 3

Just went to the Flickr site actually first I went to the link about how libraries are using Flickr which led me to the Swem Review of Technology which led to Flickr for Newbies. I find that is one of the problems with all of this information and the ease of access - it never ends and it is hard to know when to stop or where to go next... it can go on and on and on. I then took the Magical Feature tour on Flickr and went to the FAQ. I enjoyed looking at the pictures of libraries and grandchildren and found a picture of a card catalog which I would love to show my students since they just look at me with blank faces when I talk about card catalogs. I will need to continue to look at this site to see how I could possibly use it in our library.

Thing 2

I just finished viewing the first video for Library 2.0 and thought this isn't too bad. then I went on to read the blog and ran into all of those acronyms and terms that I really don't understand. I thought I would press on to the webpage about Web 2.0 and that one really was really difficult. All the time thinking that I am not sure how I would ever use this in my small private school library. Not wanting to give up I watched the shiftedlibrarian video and that one I enoyed and could relate to - it made sense to me and I think some of my fellow teachers would enjoy it. I read today that the Boomer generation of women have been the last to get on board with all of the new technology and networking, I must say that I fit that stereotype but hopefully not for long - on to thing 3.