Thing #14 - Technorati

I found that Technorati is a good tool to use for blog searches. I got 2,295 results for "Learning 2.0" and paired it down to 191 results for "Library Learning 2.0". There seemed to be alot of technology blogs like Boing Boing (over my head), also tons of political blogs. I spent a bunch of time searching for sports commentary (endless blog content in this area). I guess when you are tracking 51.5 million blogs you can get to about anything you want to.

Thing #12 - My Space & Facebook

I must admit that I used my son's email address to create a MySpace page, using fake info of course. I guess I am wary of exposing myself to the public on the internet. All of my son's friends are on MySpace but none of mine.

I do think MySpace and Facebook could possibly be beneficial to the library especially connecting to younger people and advertising events to friends.

Thing #11 - Librarything

Another interesting site I had no idea was in existence. Here's a link to my library.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/tmoncher

Thing # 10 - Image generators

Interesting exercise, here's the poster I made.

Thing #9 - RSS news feed searches

Seems like I've been searching for something all my life and not really knowing what it is I've been trying to find. I've sometimes thought my search was about discovering my true purpose, or connecting to nature, or deepening my relationships with my fellow man, or finding the meaning of life, or discovering the holy grail, or whatever......but after doing "Thing #9" I finally realize that what I have been searching for all thse years is actually RSS news feeds!

Actually, it is so easy to connect up to a news feed source about practically anything you are interested in. I used the Blogline's search tool and Topix.net and both will get you hooked up to about any source you could imagine. I also just googled a bunch of sites that were interesting and they all had RSS buttons for news feeds. Pretty amazing.

Thing #8 - Bloglines

After fighting thru Flickr I was more prepared to deal with setting up a Bloglines account. It really was quite easy (maybe reading the tutorial and following directions actually helps?!?). It was also very easy to find news feeds to subscribe to. I am a sports fan so I was delighted to find that my favorite professional teams all had feeds available to subscribe to.

Thing #7 - Technology

Technology, technically, is a 10 letter word. Too me however, it seems more like a 4 letter word. I would love for the world to move slower. I would love for my brain to be bigger. I would love to have less information to process. I would love to return to the days when you could do business with a handshake and could talk to a real person on the telephone instead of an automated menu. I miss Andy Giriffith and Opie and Barney and Beaver and Wally and Eddie Haskell.

Oops....gotta go.....I need to answer my e-mails, text messages and cell phone messages before I set the DVR to record what I'll be missing on TV while I go hop on a machine to give me some exercise before I pick up dinner at the drive thru to save time so I can get home to answer my e-mails, text messages.......