23. Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog.

The 23 things challenge has really been a lot of fun! I have learned that there is a great big world wide web of social software available. After completing the 23 things challenge my favorites are; del-icio-us,
Zoho, and
Bloglines. I am glad that I went through the 23 things challenge. I probably would have never used a blog or subscribed to bloglines without this challenge. I will continue to blog even though the 23 things has come to an end but, I’m not sure for how long. Anyway, it’s been a lot of fun and I learned a lot. I’ll let you know when I get my “Prize”!

22. Teach someone else how to use one of the technologies described above and blog about your experience!

My co-worker Katherine (who Is also doing the 23 things challenge) and I decided to show and teach each other about one of the 23 things challenges/technologies. Since I had such an awful time with "MY Maps" Katherine showed me what she did for her My Maps challenge and showed me how to find help on the website. The help section is definitely the place to start. It goes thru each step In very basic and simple language. Also, I went In and unchecked "the automatically remember each address I search" button. I like to have control when I'm working with a program. It's Irritating to me when a program tries to tell me what to do. Ha, ha…

I showed Katherine some of the podcasting search engines that I used In challenge #21. I uploaded a small list of resources to our shared documents page In Google/Docs. That way we could use two of the technologies at the same time. I also gave her some hints about podcasting like; you don't have to have an ipod to listen to podcasts, and you can listen to podcasts online or download the MP3 to listen to on your computer, or you can listen to it on your own MP3 player. Also, if you want to use iTunes then you do need to download it to your computer, but the best part is that iTunes is a free download and the podcasts are also free!

21. Discover some useful search tools for locating podcasts.

For this challenge I researched podcast search engines. These are some that I found to be interesting and easy to use as well as informative.

This search engine is called plugged you can search for podcasts as well as video. It has a subject directory to help you narrow down what you are looking for.

Next I visited Yahoo Podcasts. This is a good place to start your hunt for podcasts especially if you are new to podcasting because Yahoo has everything written out in plain and simple terms. You can read about “What is a podcast,?” you can search the comprehensive directory, and you can listen to the podcast directly from the browser or download the mp3.


I also checked out podnova. At first it looks like you need to sign up for an account here but I was still able to browse without signing up. What I enjoyed here was the top 40 podcasts! It’s kind of fun to browse around and see what everyone else is listening to. Once you see something of interest you can click on the show title and link to a page with all of the information you would want to know about that particular podcast. Very informative!

These three sites are a good start in podcast search engines, but my personal favorite place to search for podcasts is in
iTunes! But I am a die hard Apple Lovin Geek!

20. Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos.

When I think of You Tube I don’t think of libraries! I have been to You Tube many times to see my niece’s uploaded videos. I have also been to You tube because of links from other users blogs, emails etc.

I’m not sure how a library would use You Tube? I searched libraries and I mostly found gags and jokes about libraries, oh, and 1 from Info People although I didn’t watch it. Sorry…

I went ahead and did some research on other sites where you can view and upload videos I found one called Viddler. Viddler is interesting because you can do all kinds of things with your videos. For instance you can Tag specific moments within a video, you can search inside videos themselves. I found this to be a new and interesting way to interact with videos.

Next I went to We Show! Now this is a must see video website. You can watch videos from around the world and on any topic. There are how to videos, weather videos, sports etc. A person could get lost here for hours. Once again I searched library, libraries and this time I came up with “nothing found!” Do be careful when browsing the videos as I found some adult content.

I think it would be fun to make Library Video’s. Some could be serious like “How to find books in the library”, or a kid’s video about the “Dewy Decimal System.” I could think up all kinds of fun stuff!

19. Explore My Maps on Google Maps and create a map for your library and add a picture of it to the map.

Okay, here comes my opinion on “My maps on Google Maps"! Why? So you can personalize maps here by adding pictures etc. Not sure why this is useful? Maybe it’s just me but I found My Maps to be utterly time consuming! Plus, it keeps remembering everything I have ever typed in the search box even If it was an error! I went in to my account and deleted two addresses’ twice and then what do you know? The addresses' were still there when I retried and refreshed the browser! I am a tech savvy person so when I come across something that Is supposed to be super easy and It ends up being Irritating, It's just so frustrating! I really don't see much use personally for My Maps. I guess a library could find it useful. I'm not certain, although I may have to re-visit My Maps on another day and see what I can do with it.

18. Take a look at some online productivity (word processing, spreadsheet) tools.

Here are some of the online productivity sites that I visited. I liked Zoho the best because it has more to offer than the others. I'm going to try and use Zoho and so far I have uploaded a document. The thing is it's not that convienent to store documents online because you have to remember the darn passwords and sign ons. Anyway, I did a collaboration with Kimba's Connections in google docs.

You can do word processing and spreadsheets at google docs

Notesake is a really interesting way to keep notes for your college courses or any kind of notes that you would want to keep organized. You take notes online, you can collaborate with groups, you can pass notes to friends, you can organize your notes in different ways. One of the best features here is the ability to export your notes as PDF or Word documents so you can take them anywhere with you.

Zoho has a plethora of online processor, spreadsheets, presentations, project management just to name a few.

17. Add an entry to Infopeople's Our 23 Web 2.0 Things wiki

My contribution to the 23 Things Wicki is on Library Thing.

This is what I shared on the 23 things Wicki:

I have an important tip to Library Thing users: When logging into Library Thing for the second time make sure that you are using the correct user name and password. For some reason if you use a different name or password Library Thing registers you as a new user and you will have a blank page with no books cataloged to your library. This happened to me and I thought that Library Thing lost all of my hard work at cataloging my book collection. I wrote about this glitch on my blog”Squeaky’s 2.0 because I was so disappointed. Thank goodness “ Tim” founder of Library Thing was kind enough to leave me a message as to what happens if you put in the wrong user name or password. Whew, I was so relieved to go back and sign in with the correct user name and password and to see my virtual library.