# 23 Is this really the end?

Top four favorite discoveries: Del.icio.us, Bloglines, LibraryThing and Wikis. Professionally and personally, I use all four regularly. I use del.icio.us to keep track of websites. It is so easy to use and keep the sites organized for future reference. I use Bloglines regularly to read the blogs I've added there. It's convenient to have them all in one place. I like LibraryThing suggestions for other books I might like based on my collection. I've found some enjoyable reads this way. I am thinking of creating a Wiki for the library. I am going to talk with an education class next week about setting up a Wiki for their class.

I enjoyed learning using this method. We covered a lot of different technologies in small bites with the opportunity to go into depth with anything that caught our interest. It was great having links to the resources within the text of the blog - enough resources to make it informative and interesting, but not so many that it became overwhelming. I am coming away from this with a greater awareness of all of the technologies we covered and some great new tools to help me professionally and personally. Thanks to everyone involved in this project.

I must admit that I would have done this project anyway, but the prospect of the free MP3 player at the end of the road kept me going to the end!

#22 Face-to-Face

MySpace is more accessible to the public which is a good feature if you want to check it out to see what it is all about. Facebook is less accessible which is good if you want limited visibility as a user. I am not sure how well they work for libraries - maybe because I don't have an interest in them, my imagination fails me.

#21 Podcasts, Schmodcasts

Of the 3 podcast directories, I like Yahoo Podcasts the best. It seems to return results that are more familiar and professional - NPR, NOVA, BBC, etc. - known quantities that I don't have to look at to see what they are about - saves time. I added the NPR book reviews podcast to my Bloglines account.

I enjoyed listening to the ASU Library Channel. I would like to know the demographics of who is listening to this podcast. What is the purpose and is it successful?

I thought it would be fun to listen to book reviews so I did a search on Podcast Alley - 200 results came back - too many to look through - I need a podcast review to choose a podcast on book reviews!

On a personal level, the travel and foreign language podcasts, such as ChinesePod: Learn Chinese and Unabellavista: How to Tour Italy, look interesting.

#20 You Too Can YouTube: RSS in Plain English

I liked this video when I watched it to learn about RSS. Posting it to my blog is a good way to keep track of it.

#19 Discovering Web 2.0 Tools

I checked out Lulu, a site that allows you to self-publish your own book, music, or calendar and sell it online in either print or download format. I think this may be useful for faculty to produce textbooks for their own classes. This would also be a good way to publish a family history; interested family members from all around the world could get a copy. There is no cost to upload the book to the Lulu site; costs are only incurred by the buyer. I'm going to spread the word about this site to a few people.

Wikiality

I was talking with students the other day about Wikipedia - should I show them this video?

#18 Web-based Apps

In the spirit of efficiency, I'll create a document on Google Docs about #18 Web-based Apps and post it on my blog.

Google Docs looks like Microsoft Word, but does it have the functions I usually use in Word? Let's test it.

Sometimes I use the bulleted or numbered list function:

1. to provide information on sub-topics.
2. to list supporting evidence.
3. to make the document faster to read.

I often use the copy and paste function. I often use the copy and paste function. When I use the button for copy, a message pops up telling me that my browser won't allow access to my computer's clipboard. But the Ctrl-C command works.

My favorite button, Undo, is present and working.

And I can write text in many colors.

What about font styles? Not as many to choose from as in Word.

But we can highlight text.

Lots of fun functions for publishing a doc on the web.

It is very easy to publish the document to my blog.