Summary of 23 things

23 Things was a very successful program, both for me personally and for our library system. Personally, running through the 23 things enabled me to really spend some guilt-free time learning about things like avatars, tagging, social bookmarking, etc. Otherwise, I may have learned and used these things eventually, but they would have been given a much lower priority in terms of workload and been put on the back burner a lot.

Benefits to our staff and patrons? Now when patrons come to the desk wanting help with Flickr, Technorati, Zoho, or Del.icio.us, we will have been exposed to each of them and will have some means to continue the conversation and make a connection with our patrons. I hope that those innovators among us will take these lessons learned and apply them to what we do here at the library now and examine the potential for these tools in providing additional services.

Downloadable books

I just can't seem to get into the ebooks so far. It is one thing to get the downloadable audio books, but for those ebooks that you read on a little itty bitty screen--well, I just prefer the feel of the print.

The convenience of the ebooks I think comes in the portability. If you are taking an airplane flight, for instance, and don't want to lug a book in your carryon, you can load an ebook on your portable device, like a pocket pc. I actually downloaded some books that were only available in ebook format, but found reading them awkward and not as enjoyable and turning the page. I even tried some of the free ones from Gutenberg and universities, but alas, no appeal to me.

I'm all for technology and am receptive to many innovations, but the ebooks haven't progressed to the point where I feel like they are going to take over from print. I have every confidence that one day, someone will tinker with them and develop a format that will be more successful.

Podcasts

I usually subscribe to podcasts through Itunes, but I also have a couple of them set up in Bloglines. A couple of my favorites are NASCAR related. MRN, the Motorsports Radio Network, recaps what happens each weekend at the racetrack, and the Dale Earnhardt Jr. team's radio transmissions are also podcasted each week. I download the broadcasts and load them on my Ipod to listen to--and am entertained and informed about all of the news in the racing world.

Chad Vader -- YouTube at it's most entertaining

Chad Vader, Day Shift Manager

Netvibes

The Web 2.0 award winner I chose to explore is Netvibes. Netvibes lets users create a customized start page that includes everything from blogs and wikis, RSS feeds, to news and weather and more. I imagine the goal behind this is to save time by pulling all of these things into one contained area, but I am afraid that I may never emerge from the start page. There is so much stuff to view!

ZOHO

Back in January, Jennifer H. and I took a look at Zoho.com when we had our first annual Wiki Day (yeah, I know--we're unique). Anyway, Zoho seems to have a lot to offer to people--much of it for free. I also like their quote on their page:

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.

He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.

He is not an interruption in our work - he is the purpose of it.

We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us the opportunity to serve him.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Sandbox 2.0 experience

I enjoyed viewing some of the entries in the Sandbox and getting my feet a little sandy too. PBwiki seems to be one of the easier wiki sites to use, and adding the link to my blog and a link to a favorite movie was not so hard. It was great to see all of our Allegany County folks listed in the blogs area!