Thing 19 - Explore Web 2.0 Awards nominees

Several of these sites I'm already familiar with. Care2 (Philanthropy) is a wonderful site, well organized and focused. I'm already a member. Pandora.com (Music) was a recent find. Now I use it all the time. It's wonderful personalized "radio" from your PC. And its great for finding new artists similar in style to your favorites. But for this excercise I explored Yelp.com and Fuzzmail.com. First with Yelp (City Guides & Reviews): I definately see myself using this. Yelp is a collection of, well much like wikis, comments on local restaurants, shows, shops, etc from real real people with real experiences, which, for me is fantastic. Most of my "vacations" are day trips, so having something like this at my fingertips allows me to plan a stop, instead of guessing about what's good, or wandering the town at 8pm unable to find an open restaurant. On to Fuzzmail (Fun Stuff): I enjoy "fun stuff" so this was right up my alley. I can't say if I'd use it or not, but it's cute anyway. Basically, for those of you who haven't tried it, its an email sent via web-link, so when the recipient opens it they watch "real time" as you are typing the email you've sent them including all changes, modifications, or yes, errors you've made in the process. Check out mine! I did find a downside though, it seems to take a while for the recipient to be notified, so don't send anything timely here!!

Thing 18 - Zoho Writer

I can see the use for web-based productivity applications, but at this point I don't find it useful for myself. I generally use Excel to keep track of personal info ie finances, etc., so I wouldn't dare put that online where the techs or any other hacker could gain that information. However, all of the Zoho versions seem to be the best among those listed being that they seemed to have more options. I doubt that I would use Zoho Writer regularly, but I do feel more comfortable with Writer than with the spreadsheets given the type of information being uploaded.

Thing 17 - PBWikis

Ok, the Learning 2.0 Favorites wiki was a little dry. I listed my page onto the "Favorite blogs" page and added to the lists for "music" and "websites." Playing with and creating my own wiki was fun, but it was quite similar to setting up a blog or your own website. It was handy, though to have calendars, pictures, voice chat and miscellaneous other tools to immediately insert onto your personal page.

Thing 16 - Wikis

I don't like the idea of some websites (generally those implying they follow fact, i.e. Wikipedia) using a format that anyone can change or delete at their disposal. However, I do like the idea that at least one of the libraries listed is doing: allowing patrons to write their own reviews. Sometimes, when searching for a good book, it would be helpful to get a general opinion of a book, just to see what others are saying about it. Think of the possibilities with non-fiction titles as well. "This book was/was not helpful." The feedback given from this not only would help patrons pick out new finds, but would also be informative to our Book Selection Committee. We would have more evidence showing where certain authors are loved (and perhaps we could get more titles by them), or authors that may generally be disliked or offensive.
And, on a side note, Wikis might be useful to YPL, on the staff page, special announcements, where anyone can post, instead of weighing down our mailboxes with "sad" or "happy" news. This could be a more casual, social wiki, where staff, should they wish, could post information from their own lives, whether it be the dreaded funeral notice or a birth announcement, or anything else deemed important that they would like to share, like maybe an engagement, or special vacation with a picture or 2 to share. I think something like this could also help to bring us closer together as a YPL "family" and aid in boosting morale.

Thing 15 - Respose to perspectives

In the article titled "To more powerful ways to cooperate," I found WorldCat.org to be quite interesting. I even gave it a quick spin, and found it easy to navigate. It's especially great for genealogists and miscellaneous researchers. Will YPL be joining this?

Thing 14 - Technorati

Technorati's good for searching blogs, but I'm still not convinced about the other offered services. In my opinion, this still falls into the catagory of "Things to do when you have too much time on your hands." I signed up, and added tags, but am still unable to find mine through the search feature. (Maybe its because I'm currently ranked as 3-and-some-odd-millionth!)

Thing 13 - Del.icio.us

Tags are good. Del.icio.us is not.

Thing 12 - Rollyo

I like being able to place a searchbar on my site (or in this case, blog), particularly to enable searching within a page, or several url pages within a mainpage, but I can't see the point in having a seperate link, such as this, leading to another url in which to search. There are so many other wonderful search engines out there that are already linked to such a vast amount of information, I could never be able to compete with that. So I prefer to stick with the biggies.

Thing 11 - LibraryThing

Okay, I like LibraryThing. To be honest, I had my doubts about this, (just another "work" thing for home) but I like it. I can keep track of what I read, booklists I make for other people, as well of knowing what I have in my own collection, accessible from anywhere.

Thing 10 - image generator

This was a difficult step for me, not because of the complexity, but rather the number of tacky generators or ones that simply didn't work properly and that were nothing more than a waste of time. I'm satisfied by this, but I still feel that it would have taken less time and yet given me the same results had I generated it myself through any photo program (or even "paint" or "word" for that matter!). But, I must admit, although most of this is not a challenge to me as it is really just an introduction to new sites, I am however learning more about html, when, how, and why to use it. Such as the case with this pic.

Have you learned to resize an image without stretching the pixels through html? See...now that's fun and educational!

This pic brought to you by FD Toys at http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/motivator.php