de.li.ci.ous makes me hungry

Did someone design de.li.ci.ous to make me hungry?  I wonder why they came up with that title.  It seems to say nothing about the site itself.

Anyhow, I had always wondered about this whole de.li.ci.ous craze.  I didn't really understand it at all.  I thought it was merely for sharing sites that you liked with other people.  I guess I could see some value in that, but not enough for me to partake myself.  But, now I have a better understanding and have signed myself up for YET ANOTHER thing.  My word!  I'm really sick of the passwords and all the giving out of my email.  But, nonetheless, I did it.  I can see how it would help me out at work.  I often see a site that I think would help me out with a storytime or a display, etc. and then mark it in my favorites.  But I switch computers at work as well as browsers sometimes.  And I certianly wouldn't be able to access them from home if I needed them.  Now, I can.  (Not that I'd want to work from home:) )

More fun with photos

For this thing I used Roxio to create a little slideshow. It was very simple to use. It even let me grab photos directly from my Facebook account which was awesome since I don't have a Flickr account. (It seems like everything is Flickr this and Flickr that. For some reason I'm just not that into Flickr. But then again, I wasn't that into Facebook when it first came out. I think it was the whole "poke" thing that turned me off originally.) So, for my slideshow I used more pictures of my family. Sur-prise, sur-prise! I made a really quick little slideshow, but I think it turned out really cute.
I use Smilebox at home. I use it a lot to send pictures of my daughter to family members or to create e-cards. (I always forget to mail an actual card before someone's birthday. So, a picture of Sariya makes it all better.) It's much the same with backgrounds, different text effects and music. It too is free. I like free!
Both of these things could easily be put to use in the library as a marketing tool. We could publish photos from events that we have held. We could have a slideshow of the librarians in the dept. with different books that they recommend. You could even share a story this way. There are a ton of different things that you could do with these tools.

I feel like I'm in college again!

When I was in college I IMed all the time! I wasted countless hours just chatting online with several different folks. I met one friend through IM. He actually came down to visit UF and we met face-to-face. I found it interesting to meet someone in the online world first and to see them second.

IM is not foreign territory to me, nor do I think it is to many of our library staff. We have Ask-A-Librarian and most of our librarians are trained in it. Many of the newer librarians here have graduated from FSU's online MLS program. You become real familiar really quickly with chatting online if you aren't already when you join that program.

Since coming back from my maternity leave, I have started using IGoogle more and chat using their IM service. I usually talk to one particular coworker due to the fact that they assigned me a really wierd screen name and no one else knows what it is. It is nicer than emailing her. I can get more real time answers to questions and I like that I can see when she is typing (just like in AAL).

I think Meebo sounds like a really good idea, but I don't really have any other IM services to consolodate anymore. I don't have time to....I have baby and a J-O-B. Well, I guess I do have Facebook:)

Mashin' It Up!

I'm going to make that some sort of new slang somehow. I'm not sure what it'll mean, but I'll let you know.

This "thing" was a ton of fun. I wish all the things were like this. I got to play around with pictures that I found on Flickr. I tried out the speller and it was awesome. I love this tool. I could see using this to make cool graphics for the website or just displays around the library. Below is the result of my toying around. I, of course, used my duaghter's name.




Oh,no! It didn't stop there. I messed with the Photo Fortune tool. I don't see the point of that AT ALL. It's just weird.



So then I Warholized my baby girl. It makes her appear to have a giant crop of hair (which she actually does, but not like that).

I don't use Flickr for my personal photos but these tools allow you to upload photos directly from your computer. I hope I have as much fun with the next few things.

Images...something I know about

Ahhhh. Now searching images is something I know about. I think I've finally hit the fun part of these 23 things. I have searched for MANY images online. I use image searching all the time for creating bulletin boards, making hand-outs, or just my own personal stuff at home. Many of my friends and family have accounts with some sort of photo-sharing site. (My family takes an insane amount of photos and that has only multiplied by a million since we've had the baby.) I don't personally have an account with Flickr but I do have one with another sharing site. Both of the libraries that I've worked at have also had Flickr accounts.

Though this is sort of old-hat for me, I went through the motions and searched for some cool images. I love finding gorgeous images of local, natural Florida. I actually found some really nice images of Gainesville and the surrounding areas. However, the above image was one that was just on the Flickr homepage. I just think this kid is hilarious! He appears to have eyes as bad as mine and possibly a touch of rosacea. His parents aren't helping him out with that haircut, but he doesn't seem to know it. Kids are awesome!

Time aint on my side

RSS feeds.  I see their value, I guess.  I mean, I do.  However, I do not see who has the time to read all of the news you would get from these feeds.  I mean with the trazillions (yes, I made that word up) of emails that I get at work and the other stravillions (I'm having fun with this) that I get in my personal email inbox letting me know how I can enlarge parts of myself that I don't even possess, where am I going to find the time to read each time someone changes anything on their blog or website?  I suppose the idea is really to SAVE you time.  The "news comes to you" instead of you having to hunt for it.  However, if I get all these emails the reality is that I will have to spend time deleting them and not reading the actual new material.  Or alternately, I will feel compelled to see what is new when I really need to be doing something else.  If I don't have these feeds I feel like I can make pretty good decisions about which sites to look at when.  

To me, this RSS feed thing is akin to the emails that Facebook wants to send me everytime someone comments on my page.  I feel like shouting, "Great, Facebook!  I would have seen that when I went to my page later....when I have TIME to read the post!  However, now you've robbed me of precious time just by reading this feed.  There goes whatever time I had in the first place!!"  Sheesh!

Well, that makes me seem really high strung.  I really don't think I am.  I just feel that RSS feed is a bit like catalogs that you didn't order.   They're just adding clutter.   Therefore I'm not going to subscribe to many.  (That is a very bad analogy though because I actually really enjoy looking through catalogs...even ones that I never intend to buy anything from.  My mother-in-law actually keeps a stack of all of the ones she receives for me to go through when I'm visiting.  But I think it made the point.)