MyServe

#23 WooHoo!

2007-08-07T09:59:00.000-04:00

I feel like I'm graduating. Maybe there should be parties and confetti when we each finish the whole 23 things! I'm sort of sorry to be at the end, but now maybe I'll have time to go back and re-discover some of the little treasures I found along the way.

So here are my responses to the final excercise:
1. My favorite exercises were creating the avatar, of course, YouTube and flickr.
I also love del.icio.us!!
2. I am probably more likely to expand my searches to blogs and other social networking sites for information that I'm looking for. I'm working on a masters program in Communications and will be putting a lot of the information from the Maryland 23s to good use.
3. An unexpected outcome is that I will continue to read blogs that are interesting to me and will be more likely to listen to podcasts.
4. Suggestions - some of the links were not valid, and some of the videos didn't work, for example the del.icio.us one. Making sure those kind of things work, or fixing them when they don's, would be beneficial. I also found some of the exercises more time consuming than I would want.
5. Yes, I would choose to participate in another discovery program.

My learning experience was very positive. I felt that the collaboration among co-workers was a big benefit. I so enjoyed reading other blogs and seeing how other people used the tools and how they responded to the exercises. I actually feel a little sorry for those who chose not to join in. They missed out on so much fun and education.

One last thing. I discovered (on my very own) the coolest Thesaurus site ever! It's called Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus, and it works sort of like a "cloud" to display lots of words related to the one you're looking for. There is a trial on their website, and then it costs to get a full subscription. I love it and will be subscribing soon. This is one application that I think would be more helpful to librarians than how to create an avatar, as much fun as that was.

Game, Set, Match!

#22 Thing - Audio Books

2007-08-07T08:41:00.000-04:00

My thoughts on Audio Books from Overdrive - as Martha Stewart says, it's a good thing. I know lots of people who enjoy listening to audio books in their car, but my commute is so quick now that I don't have enough time to start a book. Several years ago my husband and I would listen to books on tape on road trips, but I realized that we were missing a chance to actually talk. OK, maybe you could call it "forced communication", but at least we were sitting in the same place at the same time and maybe would talk. But that's a bit off topic. So, I don't do much with audio books, but Overdrive does have an easy to use site with more and more titles available.

What I did find of interest was the videos. I downloaded "The Bicycle Thief" by Vittorio De Sica to my Bookshelf and will finish the download at home. Normally I wouldn't watch a video on my computer, but how cool it would be to take it with me on a plane or train. (Back to trips again).

I also like the Project Gutenberg site. I like that it isn't as slick and professional looking as other sites are. I would love to have time to volunteer with them. I may have to tuck that away for the future.

#21 Podcasts

2007-08-05T20:50:00.000-04:00

So, now on to podcasts. There are so many to choose from. Hard to do tennis in a podcast, so I went with learning Italian. My husband and I have been taking Italian classes at St. Leo's Adult Learning in Little Italy. I have to admit that part of the fun is that he and I meet and have dinner at Amicci's restaurant before class. We both enjoy learning the language and are so not good at it yet. Buona sera. Come sta?
I want to add the podcast to the blog, but so far that hasn't gone well. I might continue to try...

I found that subscribing through Bloglines was more confusing than just clicking the RSS feed and adding it to my Google reader. But really, either one was easier to use than I thought. Recently I was helping another BCPL 23 Things participant and we had a very hard time adding her podcast. Maybe it was a networking problem, but I'm glad to see that it went easier this time.

I'd really like to create some technology training podcasts as we continue to develop our training programs for BCPL. The good news is that Media Support Services is eager to do it as well. Nice group of people to partner with. Stay tuned and learn how to use podcasts!

Additional YouTube Thoughts

2007-08-05T17:33:00.000-04:00

I didn't know that when I embeded my Eiffel Tower video that they would add some others at the bottom. That's kind of cool.

So what can BCPL do with YouTube or other video sites besides block them until our bandwidth problem is cleared up? It's a cool way to show a special program so branches can see if they want to host the same program. Also, for the branches interested in working with middle-schoolers, having them create and post videos could be a fun idea, if they have access to a video camera. It's also a good way to post a video of a speaker that we might want to share systemwide; it's not as professional as the Media Support staff can produce, but it might be an quick option. You can delete a video very easily, so it wouldn't have to stay online forever.

BTW - tennis is heating up again. It's Sunday and I got to watch Andy Roddick and John Isner play and now the women are playing their final. I wish I could play 1/2 as beautifully as they do.

Thing #20 YouTube

2007-08-05T16:34:00.000-04:00

It's been awhile since my last 'thing', and I've missed it. I was so looking forward to this one, YouTube. If you look back thru my blog, I put a Roger Federer video in a posting a while ago, but for this one I wanted to add one of my own. It's way far from professional looking, and you can hear me at the end. I took it with my digital camera - first time, can you tell? I'd like to buy a digital video camera, but haven't really started looking yet. If anyone has suggestions, I'd love to have your reccommendation, so feel free to leave a comment.

Back to YouTube, it wasn't hard to upload the video, except that it takes awhile for the video to be processed, so I'm writing this while waiting for the processing. The other trouble I've had was my own doing. As you can see, I turned the camera so I could take the video in Portrait view. So that's how it was saved. My camera downloads photos into a program called PicturePerfect and I've had to learn that so I could change the orientation. I finally found how to rotate the picture to change the orientation and then made a "muvee" and added a title and a pseudonym at the end. Cute, huh?

On a BCPL note, I am doing this at home so that I'm not compromising the network bandwidth. It's such a short video that I'm not too worried that it will cause problems.

Meebo Redux

2007-07-20T11:38:00.000-04:00

Today I added the Meebo Widget to my blog so MyServe readers can send a chat. However, we're having trouble using Meebo to chat with "buddies" on different networks. I have a gmail account and Ellen has yahoo. So far we haven't connected, altho I can connect with my son who also has gmail. Must be doing something wrong.

On another topic - I'm hoping to get in some tennis this weekend. The weather sounds perfect for it.

#19 Exploring Award Winning Site.

2007-07-19T14:24:00.000-04:00

Fun thing. I did Meebo, an all inclusive chat site. You can chat with people who have Google, AIM, Yahoo! and other accounts. It's great. I haven't been doing IMs, but have used chats in an online class. I signed up for a Meebo account and, because of my Google account, found my son's name. I knew he was using Google chat, so I sent him a little message. When I came back to it a few minutes later, he was on. It was fun to have a little conversation with him. He's working in DC and getting ready to move to Philadelphia for grad school. Ah, now another way of keeping in touch. He claimed it wasn't scary getting an im from his mom and welcomed me to 2007! Cute kid.

As far as using it in the library, the only application I can see is as a means to have virtual meetings, but in my small experience a large group would be hard to manage, since some people type quickly and others more slowly. We already use a form of it for AskUsNow and the like.
I am thinking that it might be good to use in some training environments, but not as a teaching tool. One good thing would be to encourage class participation or to have question and answer sessions with the instructor. I understand that for college online classes that are taught over a semester, chat rooms are used as a substiture for the community interaction that forms in traditional classroom settings. But I don't see it as an important component of the types of training that I would use. On the other hand it is fun...

2007-07-09T16:28:00.000-04:00

Last of the Apps thing

Here's the bolt of lightning that struck me as I was using the Google docs and spreadsheets. This would work in place of the floppy disks that are continually giving our customers fits! Instead of saving papers, resumes, financial documents to a floppy and then not being able to open it again, they could create an account with Google or ZOHO and use that. They could access the document from any branch, or any computer actually. We're going to be considering this as an answer to the long, sad floppy disk problem.

2007-07-09T16:17:00.000-04:00

Still in the Apps thing...

Okay, I tried using the ZOHO presentation feature, which was not worth the time I spent on it. I had high hopes when I started, but am sorry to report that PowerPoint is so much more robust and easier to use. I can usually put a PP presentation together pretty quickly, but ZOHO's was far too difficult.

2007-07-09T15:13:00.000-04:00

Document created using Google Docs & Spreadsheets

This too seems pretty cool to use. I think I like ZOHO Writer a tad better, but Google has been around for awhile and should probably not lose my important stuff. That's the most important thing to me - keep it secure. Oh, I just had a really good idea about how this will be useful to me - when I write papers for classes I always worry that I'll lose them before handing them in. At least this would take the place of e-mailing them to myself. Now if I can find an online PowerPoint I'll be all set.

Week 8 #18 - The Apps thing

2007-07-09T14:33:00.001-04:00

Below is my first attempt using the ZOHO writer. Not bad, not bad. Might be a fun thing to come back to. My concern about using an online app over Office or other downloaded program is what happens if the website goes away? There are lots and lots of websites that are left to languish, or go out of business. Witness the burst techno bubble of just a few years ago. So where would my important document or spreadsheet be then?

But it is cool to publish right to the blog and there are many other cool features. I think the online apps will give Microsoft and other software developers something to think about.

First Doc

This is my first document using ZOHO writer. So far so good. I see the value to using an online application and will probably return to it in the future.
Technorati Tags MD23things

2007-07-09T13:49:00.000-04:00

#17 The Sandbox thing .

I added my blog to the Favorite Blog list and added a blurb about what I'm reading now on that page - too hard to come up with a favorite on a Monday.

Wimbledon is over and in the record books - my guy Roger won, but had a few bad moments on the way, and I began to have my doubts that he would win.. Rafa Nadal is amazingly good, but a bit of a gamer in my opinion.

Unfortunately the weather here is getting just too hot to play. I'll have to hope for a cool spell so I can get back to the courts.

#16 All things wiki

2007-07-05T13:52:00.001-04:00

As usual with the 23 Things I found lots to read and lots of links to follow. I've got to go back and read more. On a personal note, there is a link to the BullRun Library which is in my husband's home town. Even though I doubt that he spent much time there as a kid,I sent him a link to the wiki.

The Staff Help Desk is building a wiki to replace our Help Desk web pages. It's a long-term, ongoing project, but it will be very useful to our staff when we get it all together. Of course, since it's a wiki, we'll be expecting input from the technological savvy in the AO offices and branches. The hardest thing about the wiki is losing control of content. Although, there are administrator privileges that include deleting inappropriate or wrong postings.

Not that I'm complaining or anything, but maybe after I've finished the 23rd thing, I'll have time to work on the SHD wiki. ;) Stay tuned.

I'll also report that I've had a somewhat heated conversation with a sibling who is adament that there is no place for something wiki-ish in a library. Her view point is that you can't trust just anyone to add correct information. She says that she wants her information to come from books. And we all know that books are always correct. hmm..?

#15 Perspectives on Web & Library 2.0

2007-07-03T12:26:00.000-04:00

This is a hard one. There was a lot of interesting reading to do, and a lot of opinions. Most of the suggested readings are very supportive of Library 2.0 concepts and strongly encourage libraries and librarians to adopt these concepts. I pulled together some points from the different blogs to kind of mull over. Here they are in no special order, just as I came across them:

~ No profession can survive if it throws its core principles and values overboard in response to every shift in the zeitgeist. However, it can be equally disastrous when a profession fails to acknowledge and adapt to radical, fundamental change in the marketplace it serves. At this point in time, our profession is far closer to the latter type of disaster than it is to the former. We need to shift direction, and we can’t wait for the big ship of our profession to change course first. It’s going to have to happen one library—one little boat—at a time. - Rick Anderson

~ Adopt Web features The features of Amazon and Google of interest to students and scholars ought to be incorporated into the services libraries make available. Libraries should welcome the submission of reviews, assignment of keywords (“tagging”), addition of scholarly commentary, and other forms of user participation.- John Riemer

~ Libraries should get much greater mileage out of the metadata they create. For example, if geographic names embedded in the middle of subject headings are mapped to latitude and longitude coordinates, it becomes possible to present users with graphical means of searching by place, new ways of easily asking for materials about nearby places, and hierarchical browsing by place.
- Riemer again

~ ...we arrive at virtual collections in the 3D world, where books themselves may have avatars and online personalities - Dr. Wendy Schultz

~ So while books may get in your 3D face all by themselves, people will prefer personal introductions—they will want a VR info coach. Who’s the best librarian avatar? How many Amazon stars has your avatar collected from satisfied customers? This could create librarian “superstars” based on buzz and customer ratings. People will collect librarians rather than books—the ability not just to organise, but also to annotate and compare books and other information sources, from a variety of useful perspectives.- Schultz again

~ But Library 4.0 will add a new mode, knowledge spa: meditation, relaxation, immersion in a luxury of ideas and thought. - Again, Schultz

All very interesting. I love the spa concept, and it occurs to me that without the technology part it sort of sounds like being in a lovely, quiet room, maybe surrounded by books holding those ideas and thoughts to immerse oneself in - oh,you know, an old fashioned library.

Through those blogs I found others that I have added to my bloglines and to my del.icio.us page. This is by Michael Stevens about technology and the library that I found to be very pertinent to our library system.In it he suggests 5 ways libraries can begin to incorporate L2 ideas. He links to another blog about Emerging Technology Committees, an idea that I think we should adopt.

Okay - enough for now.

Wimbledon - more rain outs, but my favorites are still on track. Poor Rafa Nadal - he's been trying to finish out his match since Saturday!

#14 Technorati continued

2007-07-03T12:22:00.000-04:00

Well, I did some more poking around on Technorati and have found another useful tool. I did some searches for e-Training and for Training in general and came up with some useful blogs that I will be watching for good informaion and suggestions. It is nice to have a tool that performs the searches instead of having to read through so many blogs and webpages - too much!

Ok - on to the next "thing"

Week 6 - #14 Technorati

2007-07-02T16:33:00.000-04:00

This will be a quickie post. Everytime I try to spend some time on the technorati site, the phone rings and I get interupted.So tomorrow maybe? There seems to be more to it than I first thought. I'm thinking that I'll be sooooo organized when the 23 things project is complete. Wishful thinking?

Meanwhile, Wimbledon keeps getting rained out and delayed. Can't be too much fun.

Week 6 #13 Del.icio.us

2007-06-28T16:18:00.000-04:00

I love del.icio.us. I've been using it for a few months after being introduced to it thru a class I was taking. I learned more about it this week since I actually went thru the tutorial. One thing I learned that wasn't mentioned was to bundle your tags. Bundling sort of organizes them. For example, right now I have 18 bookmarks, several of which are e-learning sites that I tagged as 'e-training' (clever, huh?), but they are displayed on the page all intermingled with other ones. So I created a bundle 'training', and put the e-learning ones into the bundle, so now I can look at the right-hand column on the page and see the ones I need. I'll be working on del.icio.us a lot. I want to spend some time looking at what other people have tagged too.

#12 Roll your own

2007-06-26T15:01:00.000-04:00

This is the first "thing" I can't find a relevent use for. I do see that it could be a useful tool for reference librarians, perhaps. I guess if I found myself consistently searching on the same websites this would allow me to access them quicker. That might be a boon. But for now I think I'll stick with Google and my bookmarks on del.icio.us. I did add it to my tool bar and will try to remember to use it. Who knows, maybe after I try it out for awhile I'll decide that I can't live without it.

However, if you want to see my rollyo search tool, here is the link.

BTW, Roger & Justine are doing well in the early rounds at Wimbledon. Check out this picture of Roger in the retro outfit the wore to open this year's Wimbledon games.

Week 5 - #11 Library Thing.

2007-06-25T14:41:00.000-04:00

Well, Library Thing is going to be put to good use, as soon as I have time that is. I added some books - those that I could remember and I'll go back and add more. I'll also suggest this to friends as a great way to keep track of their reading. Library Thing should really appeal to many readers, especially if they have as much trouble as I do keeping track of what they have read and might want to read. Here the link to my library, so you can see what I have put on it. Nothing really recent, but I'll get around to it sooner or later.

Week 5 Play

2007-06-25T10:43:00.000-04:00

#10 - Generator Thing

I played around a little while with some of the generators. So far I can't think of what I'd use them for, but it was a fun way to spend some time. I tried the Random Technobabble Generator and found new responses to use for those technological bumps that we can't really explain. I can say we need to 'Redefine the confinement field of the sensor array' and that will fix the problem, or we need to 'Increase the fluctuation of the transference engines' on the servers to fix whatever.

I also did the avatar generator and the SpeechAgent. On the left is the avatar I created on Meez . I wanted her to go along with my tennis theme. Speaking of tennis...Wimbledon has started!! Looks like they had rain for opening day, but Roger made it thru. Of course - it's London where it always rains.

Then I tried the SpeechAgent generator and that's kinda cool. Needless to say I'm only doing the freebie level. I wonder if it will get annoying to have a talking picture on the blog. Sorry I couldn't think of some funny, cute thing to have her say. Maybe I'll try again. Click the arrow on the right to get it started. I'm afraid that she sounds quite robotic and a bit autocratic.

Anyway onward to thing 11...

7/11/2007 - UPDATE to the avatar. Thanks to Ellen I got my little avatar animated. I previously had not put the code in the the html/java spot on the Layout, Add Page Element feature of blogger. And now she's moving. I wish I looked as good on the tennis courts.

Merlin and other wizards

2007-06-22T11:30:00.000-04:00

This post completes thing #9 on Week 4 of the 23 Things. I subscribed to Merlin and poked around the site for awhile. I found the link to SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Award winners which were very cool. I checked out several different catagories and while on Biblio.com I found a book I've had on order at Amazon forever. I'll order that later today.

This has been a fun 'thing' - RSS Feeds and Readers - and one that I will be keeping up with. I'm looking forward to the next one - play!

Beach Pix

2007-06-19T11:33:00.001-04:00

Ahh...sunrise at Emerald Isle NC. It makes getting up early worth it. The sky is amazing and the beach was so quiet.

More about RSS Feeds.

2007-06-19T10:55:00.000-04:00

I think I finally got this right! Here's the link to my public RSS Feeds on Bloglines: http://www.bloglines.com/public/joycej. So now anyone can see what I subscribe to and maybe see something that they might be interested in.

This has been a fun "thing". I'd like to see BCPL implement RSS feeds on the catalog - it would be a neat way to find out when the new books come in.

RSSSSSSS Feeds

2007-06-18T16:23:00.000-04:00

SSSTop Me Now! I somehow got on a roll and have been subscribing to everything that's even the slightest bit interesting! And I've got another reader on Google. I thought this was supposed to make it easier for me to keep up. But it doesn't look that way.

I'm also trying to figure out how to share my bloglines. It may have to wait until tomorrow.

I think the RSS feeds are great, but I have to get mine under control!

8 Things Meme

2007-06-18T14:00:00.000-04:00

Ellen tagged me. So here it is - I hope I can think of 8 things/facts/habits about myself.

These are the rules:
Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog

1. I love to watch tennis and am a Roger Federer and Justine Henin fan.

2. I also play a little tennis whenever I can. Mostly with my husband. We'd like to find another couple to play doubles with. Tennis anyone? We're really bad!

3. My kids are moving again - one to Philly and one to NY city. At least our daughter will be closer now.

4. I just spent a lovely vacation at Emerald Isle beach in North Carolina. Great barbeque!

5. I'm taking an online course this summer from Notre Dame College - working toward a Masters. The course is demanding a lot more time than a traditional classroom course.

6. I enjoy photography and like to take digital pictures. I have some beautiful ones of sunrise on the beach. Visit my blog again soon and I'll have them posted - I hope.

7. I'm also a movie buff and wish I had more time to watch movies. I especially like some of the oldies.

8. My husband and I are studying Italian. We took a wonderful trip to Italy last Fall and would love to return.

Ciao!

I tag: Anthony , pelican blue, Happy Huckleberry, Periodic Frippery, Tojo, Bonniespal, BikerMice, and em-pulse.
You're IT!!!

YouTube and WBAL

2007-06-06T08:55:00.000-04:00

Just in case you missed this. WBAL now has a YouTube presence. Here's the link:http://www.youtube.com/wbal. I just think it's interesting that TV channel has a YouTube channel. Marshall McLuhan http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/main.html would love this.

Justine's Tennis Montage

2007-06-05T12:38:00.001-04:00

Check out my montage using Montager. The subject is Justine Henin. I love her backhand.
http://www.deviousgelatin.com/montager/image.php?image=92061254

My creation

2007-06-05T12:15:00.001-04:00

My creation
Originally uploaded by allene4italy

This is a little trading card I made from the trading card maker for MD libraries thing #6.

Cute, huh?

And check out the little fastr game at the bottom of the blog.

French Open Tennis

2007-06-05T09:07:00.000-04:00

Well, since I named the blog MyServe I feel like I should justify it by blogging something about tennis. I love watching the French Open matches as often as I can, although I have yet to convince my husband that the tennis channel is a good buy. So I'm not catching as much of it as I would like. I follow along through the French Open website http://rolandgarros.com, but it's not the same as watching the live matches. I'm pulling for my guy Roger Federer to win this one - I'd actually love to see him take all four slams. And I'm hoping for Justine Hennin to win the women's side.

Speaking of Federer, take a look at this video from YouTube:

There's another video - one of Novak Djokovic on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD8aQ9nGky0
It's very funny. Who knew these guys were rock-star wannabees?

Week 3. Photos and Images

2007-06-04T15:49:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm on Week 3 of our Maryland 23 Things. It's taking a little longer than I'd like, but I did enjoy this *thing*. I remembered that I had taken some Sneaks pictures a couple of weeks ago and thought they'd be cute to put on the blog. The hardest part of the procedure is signing up for the accounts. Just have to remember all these accounts and passwords. But I am keeping a list - good idea, Ellen.

We're suppose to blog about anything technological that interests us this week. Hmm... so many things out there. There's the new coffee table that works as a computer - very cool. Here's a link to the story http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132352/article.html. Check out the link to the pictures while you're there.

But I'm most interested in technology training right now. I'm working with Adobe's Captivate program to see if we can use it to build on-line technology training. It's a cool project and I've been able to move through some basic steps. I'm happy with the results so far, but want it to be a lot more professional looking...must walk before running though.

Sneaks says "hi"

2007-06-04T15:41:00.001-04:00

Sneaks says "hi"
Originally uploaded by allene4italy

I took this picture in our department when Dianna had tried on the Sneaks costume.

Rachel and Sneaks

2007-06-04T15:40:00.001-04:00

Rachel is the real Sneaks queen.

Rachel and Sneaks
Originally uploaded by allene4italy

MD 23 Things #2

2007-05-31T14:56:00.000-04:00

First things first. I have started the Maryland 23 things, have listened to the podcasts and went through the lifelong learner presentation. I didn't find the presentation to be very inspiring. Content wise, I've heard it all before, but maybe others will enjoy it more. I pretty much follow the list of life long learning habits, including determining a goal and creating a learning toolbox. But the one habit that would be hardest for me is viewing problems a learning motivation. I'm much more likely to be disgruntled when I run into a problem than to see it as *hooray a learning opportunity!* That'll be my goal as I go thru the 23 things.

First post

2007-05-10T15:29:00.000-04:00

Just tryin' it out. Stay tuned for future developments!