Playing in the Sand

Thing 17 - Sandbox Wiki or embracing Habit 7 1/2

I added my blog to the growing list. I also created a Wiki to post my escapes to Broadway. I had noticed many blogs put an actual sandbox or a sand picture to commemorate their time in the Maryland Libraries Sandbox. Above is my contribution -- my son with some friends in Dubai.

Something Wiki This Way Comes

Thing 16 - WIKIs

Being a fan of the The Colbert Report, I got an understanding of how wikis work and Wikipedia® in particular. I think the concept fascinating and, as long as one is aware of the pitfalls, a wonderful tool. The idea of people sharing their thoughts on books, recipes or whatever else stimulates one's interest has to be enlightening.

This weekend I wasted spent my time doing some more genealogy research. There is certainly an opportunity for cousins umpteen times removed to communicate their information to each other by creating a wiki for such a purpose.

Web 2.0

Thing 15 - This is getting harder because now I have to think.

We are to comment about articles dealing with Web and/or Library 2.0.

Growing up in libraries for most of my life, I have seen how the library life has evolved.  In elementary school I helped to shelve books and stamped a card with the due date for check-outs.  This pretty much was how it worked throughout junior and senior high and college. When my children were young and we went to the library, there were some programs for them, but not like today.  

The library has always been and is still a place to find information. The mechanics of acquiring that information has undergone a major transformation, though.  How fast we retrieve answers depends now on band width.

About 10 years ago, Arbutus library received a grant for 6 computers from a program funded by Bill Gates.  I volunteered to help patrons to acclimate themselves on the computers and show them how to use the applications installed on these computers.  At that time most people were getting themselves used to the concept of cutting and pasting.  A lot of the facts on the internet could be dubious.  The information was only what someone had been able to type in. 

Today we have reference databases with certifiable information. Students have been known to cut and paste sentences into reports oblivious to plagiarism. We can instantaneously share ideas, pictures and a host of other useful or useless facts.  We expect instant gratification and we get it.  With RSS feeds we can check for updates on our favorite websites.  We can develop friendships thousands of miles away and go about our lives with minimal physical contact with others.

Doing the 23 Things has opened up the possibilities of what other have developed to aid us in communicating with each other.  We've come a long way.

Technorati - Thing 14

I was able to become a member of Technorati . My blog is ranked 2,515,283. Evidently Ariana Huffington's blog is one of the most popular everywhere. I keep encountering it as I go through some of these nifty blogging products. I was able to place the head of my avatar as my photo on the site.

The site shows popular searches and blogs which make make it seem too busy and too much like advertizing.

Del.icio.us - Thing 13

In August there was a Golden Delicious apple tree near my grandmother's house. They were the most wonderful-tasting apples ever, juicy and sweet. All summer we would make do with eating green Macintoshes with salt. We never ate the the Golden Delicious green for some reason. We (my brother, cousins and I) would sit around and pass the salt shaker. Those were halcyon days.

Whenever I see the word delicious, I think of apples. Del.icio.us is another product I can willingly embrace. Being a multi-computer user, I see several opportunities to use this.

You Can Roll a Rollyo

Thing 12 - Nearly Halfway There

Looks Like Candy

Rollyo, roll your own search engine, took me a while to decide what I wanted to have as my search topic. I choose some of my genealogy sites. Now that I have experienced Rollyo and gotten more familiar with what it does, I plan to roll more of my interests.

More Things

My THINGS continued . . .

6.  I've been having Flickr fun with fd's flickr toys, doing a poster and a mosaic.

  7.  I wrote a blog about some of my early forays in computing.

  8.  I signed up with Bloglines and subscribed to several RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds.  Time will tell how simple they are.  Maybe they're for simple minds.

  9.  I found some library-related Blogs and Feeds.

10.  I had some problems with Meez, but I would like to use it since envying the princess at ABC...1..23.  I ended up creating my Avatar at good ol' Yahoo.

11.  With Library Thing I realize many, many people like the same books as I.

     This whole exercise has been fun, and I enjoy figuring out things As We Stumble Along.