Thing #13

Del.icio.us can certainly be that when I use it to tag recipes to try, but for right now, I set up a travel itinerary. This will come in very handy as I plan for vacations. I certainly love being able to use numerous tags for a particular site. That was always my problem with bookmarks, too many categories and too few words to use. Thanks Del.icio.us! (And by the way, I hate the name and the spelling. Talk about typos. Yikes!)

Thing #12

At first I really wasn't getting the difference between Rollyo and a Feed Reader, but once I created one and did a search...WOW...was I amazed!! Talk about a time saver. I created one for genealogy and absolutely LOVE being able to search on multiply web sites at one time. I even found pedigree charts that I can help fill in. Won't there be happy customers out there in cyber-land?!

Select...los genealogy 101Search The Web

Thing #11

I can see how this Thing would be useful for book clubs and others that want to talk about books, but I'm not into that. I could possibly use it for my genealogy references. Currently, I keep a hand written log for my genealogy references and this Thing could be helpful for genealogists who share information with other family members or researchers.

Thing #10

I've been hearing so much about Pattie Boyd recently, that I've been wondering what it would be like to have someone famous write a song about me. Well, with the Bob Dylan Message Generator, I could wonder no more! But in the end, is it his song to me or my song to him?! Hmmm, I'll just ponder on that for a bit, while I reminisce about the very first concert I ever went to - Dylan at the Garden 1974 - can't get any better than that. Welcome to Columbia this weekend, Bob. Miss you.

Thing #9

Well, I've heard the term "merlin" mentioned so often at work, that I'm glad I finally know what it is! I subscribed to MERLIN and was happy to see Beth's entry on the site. (Thanks for representing, Beth!) I look forward to hearing from "behind the scenes staff" and more specifically from accounting personnel, to learn how their departments function/operate in a library setting.

I explored all of the search tools listed for this exercise and found Bloglines to be the easiest and most helpful for me. (I even subscribed to a few more feeds, but when do I find the time to go through them all!?) The Feedster and Topix results came up with way too many unrelated hits for my search. There's that darn Boolean searching for you. I'm not sure why blogs kept being pulled, even though I would limit my search to podcasts. I really don't want to read an average Joe's opinion on my topic. I discovered that I'm starting to get lazy with my feeds and enjoy the podcasts more than the print media. Is it quicker to go through? Possibly. I can turn away from the screen and continue to hear the news, so I can do something else (ie. iron clothes) while I go though the feeds. In that sense, I feel like I'm being more efficient with my time. Oh the life of a Type A.......

Thing #8

Thank goodness I attended one of Beth's RSS trainings before I did Thing #8. I felt a bit more comfortable tackling a topic that I had covered before.

What a great idea RSS feeds are!! I love the idea of the most recent information on a topic, website, blog, etc. coming to you. I would really like it if there was a pop-up or sound or something to alert you that a new feed is in your reader. (How about a different sound for each folder?) Talk about getting distracted when you're working online!

I have feeds for some of my co-workers blogs, which I know will save me time in the future. I like to check on how well everyone else is progressing, but many are still at Thing 4, so I won't waste time checking their blogs now.

Once again I had trouble setting-up an account (this time with Bloglines). It seemed to accept my AOL address, but it never sent me an email notification. Finally, after several attempts, I decided to use my Hotmail address and an email notification was quickly received. Go figure.

Thing 7

Doing Thing 5 and Thing 6 was very frustrating when I couldn't register for a Yahoo account. I don't understand why it said I had to register with Yahoo to be able to use Flickr, when actually I didn't. Ughh! After talking to Jaye about this, I now have a new mindset. So, let the training continue!

Thing 6

I created a trading card using a mashup, FD Toys' Trading Card Maker. At first, I entered the URL address of my Bighugelabs.com account on my blog, so that people could link to the card, but then I realized that it went straight to my account and not just the photo. Yikes! So then I just cut and pasted the photo to my computer and blog. Is there a one step process to adding these photos, etc. straight to my blog?

Thing 5

Found this photo of Columbia Winery on Flickr. I visited this winery in 2006 on my trip to Washington State and I was more impressed with their wines than with the wines from Chateau St. Michelle, which was literally right across the street from here. Oh well, and I was so looking forward to CSM.

I had trouble setting up my Flickr account or rather my Yahoo account. It wasn't accepting my zip code, so I never did register. Did anyone else have trouble setting up a Yahoo account?