Time to party

It's called www.meetup.com ...

a perfect combo of online social networking and meeting people in the physical world.

If you haven't tried it you should, at least once. Pick a hobby you really enjoy. I chose drawing. Go to meetup.com and enter your city and hobby or interest and hit search. It will pull up groups in your area that are oriented around your interest and when and where they meet. My first meetup experience was "Drink and Draw Sketch group". Basically a group that gathers a local bistros and restaraunts in the area for dinner, drawing, and conversation. I had a great time.

There are book clubs and wilderness survival interest groups. Night life meetup and movie-goers clubs are prominent in the area too. It is a great way to meet people and fill in some free time. Take a chance ad have some fun.

Lay back enjoy the pool and listen to the tunes

PANDORA'S BOX IS OPEN!

http://www.pandora.com/

Coolest website ever. Not sure how we can use it in the libraries, especially with the no speaker connection on public PCs, but other than that... very cool. Hey maybe it would help with the sales of headsets for the Friends?

FUN Photos make a splash!

It's Mini Me as Mona Lisa... I love www.faceinhole.com as a way to make interesting and hilarious pictures of friends. They have all sorts of scenarios and you can even order T-shirts of your designs!

Create your own FACEinHOLE

I think I just got water up my nose.

OK ... Being Productive Online... Kind of a strange concept.

I am used to surfing the websites like TV channels, idlely skipping from site to site skimming the information highway for something that catches my attention (OOooh shiney object) before going onto the next, usually unrelated subject...

To use the internet for something other than frivolous entertainment? My what an intriguing idea.

I can see where Google docs may benefit the commitees, especially those in charge of writing class scripts and "How-tos" for the public. Also the Public Relations department would benefit as they have constant editing.

Perhaps the Teen groups, would like it as well, since it would allow the kids to communicate with the staff as well as each other in a public format.

Yeah, I can see how Google docs would be beneficial even just on a basic level.

Who's up for a game of Water Tag?

Tag - You're IT!

Ok. I really like tagging... I mean, really like it. It makes complete sense to me that a library would use it for searching. Most people use plain English (generally not the librarians, but most people) and when searching for something the patrons don't remember the author, or title, but (hopefully) they do remember general storylines for the books they are looking for.

Here is where tagging helps. If you can tag a book with descriptive words based on the story, you're golden. Suddenly your online catalog becomes ten times more powerful than ever before. I think every library should start tagging its collection for the online catalog, makes it that much easier to use.

My Fingers are Turning Pruney

So I have been using Networking sites like Myspace and Facebook for a few years and I guess I could see where the benefits would be for an organization like the Library system. Promotion of the Summer Reading Club and the "What to Read" would be pretty easy on sites like these.

I guess my only hesitation would be that a library would have no say in what their "Friends" had on their sites so if you had a child say age 8 or so looking at the library site on Facebook and start clicking on the "Friends" on said library who knows what that kid could come across connected to that libary's page. But I guess that is something you always have to worry about with the web, can't filter everything out.

Belly flop!... Ouch! (that had to hurt)

OK... so I understand that kids love games and therefore encouraging reading through games is pretty much a no-brainer.

However, I would still strongly argue that there is no substitute for a good book and imagination, so as long as we us it as a secondary teaching tool for reading I think it's a good idea.

I do wonder though... there have been countless studies about how watching TV turns kid's brains to mush, I can't imagine how a computer can be that much better. I guess that's why we only allow two hours per card... to prevent brain-mush. Who knew?

Hrmmm...I wonder if I can do a cannon-ball...

Time to float...

Here Wiki, wiki, wiki.....

So... wikis... I must say I didn't know the actual definition of a wiki, but the overall concept isn't new to me.

The ultimate question is, how could the library use such a tool. One thing I can think of is some type of online Bulletin board. The library can add and remove event information, link to speakers pages, the history behind the event, and so on and so forth. Then perhaps the public could have a section where they may add similar events in the area, give feedback on the different services of the library, programs they attended, what they'd like to see more of, that kind of thing.

Maybe the various clubs, like DU's Teen knitting club could have one for the group to communicate to each other outside of their regular meetings.

As far as staff goes, they could use wikis for online brain-storming. If multiple branches are coordinating an event the staff could use a wiki to get their ideas across. The PR department in particular could utilize this tool in such a way. Library openings, "Meet-the-Author", outreach programs... all involved could be kept up to date as a group.

Now... time to relax and enjoy the water... it's actually not too bad.

Treading water...

Flickr, the digital, online photo album...

I must admit that as an artist I am rather intrigued with the thought of Flickr. It is a free way to get your work viewed and as long as you take the proper precautions, it should not affect your copyrights as the creator and owner.

However, as far as it's promise to protect all my images Flickr seems to fall short. Not because it's not possible to load them onto the site, but because the site doesn't give me the sufficent control I want over my own albums. (Granted I only spent a few moments setting up my account and loading a few photos so I may have overlooked things... feel free to correct me.)

There are some pics that I would want to keep among only family (embarrassing baby pics for example) and some that I would want among only friends (like my 21st birthday, or last year's St. Patty's Day celebration)... can you select which friends can view which sets and groups in Flickr? Perhaps one day Flickr will give me more control over who has permissions to see what. Until then I am afraid not everything will make it to the online album.

Though I did post some of my own images (you can view them by following the link below) I tend to take alot of pictures of people... so until I get permission to post them online I am afraid my photostream will be rather subdued.

Feel free to take a glimpse if you so desire.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sld_photobox/

Waist high... water is still chilly, but I'm warming up to it...

This just in... a dramatic increase in the Pod-casting frenzy has swarmed the area ... infected persons are downloading podcast at an alarming rate... it's being called the invasion of the Pod-people.


Just kidding... well sort of.


Pod-casting is one tool that this reporter has often stated that we need to utilize to get more (on demand) information to the public. There are already several ways we could do this. Creating podcast of classes and events we offer would allow those who do not have the schedule to still partake in them (Granted we would probably have to create a class to teach people how to use podcast, but that is beside the point). I can also imagine several outreach programs in the community that would benefit from this tool.


Pod-casting would allow us to perhaps offer classes and events in with subtitles (English- for the hearing impaired, Spanish, and French) so that those who do not comfortably understand audible English could still gain the knowledge we have to provide.


Internally, training would be one area that pod-casting could be utilized by staff. If a new technology is introduced into the system, perhaps a podcast could be made available to staff to go over the "finer points" on it's set up and implementation. Or if a new staff member comes on, perhaps there may be a series of podcast related to their new job responsibilities that they may reference as needed. There are online training companies in which all they do is provide this type of service.


I have known about this tool for a while and believe it is a very useful way to get information to the public. There are possibilities for how our organization may want to use this in the future.


I guess that makes me a pro-Pod-person (try saying that 5 times fast).

Twitter... and the point would be?

So to me Twitter seems like texting on your cell phone, but for your computer... I can't help but think... what's the point?

So, I understand texting on a mobile device such as a cell phone, but on a computer using a site that sends small "notes" to all your friends about what you are doing doesn't seem very useful to me. Myspace and Facebook have "status updates" which I use when I log on to let people know how I am for that day in general... but as far as what's going on in my life in a moment to moment basis??? Call me old fashioned but that's a little much.


I mean my own parents would get sick of hearing from me on that kind of timeframe, and they brought me into this world! Shoot, if I recieved my own mesages from Twitter, I'd probably annoy myself.


Nah, I don't think I will ever get into Twitter... I'm not that into finding out EVERYTHING about people, epecially over the internet. (I already can't believe some of the things that people post about online instead of picking up a phone and actually talking to people - one gets automatically recorded on a server, and, unless you are in serious trouble with the US government, the other doesn't)


If you want to sit down and have a good conversation over and nice game of chess that's one thing, but sending random notes over the internet just makes me feel like I am back in middleschool. (I went through that experience once already no need to re-live it thanks.... though my grammar may improve considerably.)

Be like Widget

http://www.manga.com/content/avatar-face-maker

So people have been asking where I made my avatars and so there is the link. Have fun!

The easiest way to save it is to use either Camtasia or your print screen function and open it in paint. Then crop it and save it as a .jpeg file. Enjoy!

Antivirus 360...a Superflu of computer viruses.

FYI - If you see AntiVirus 360 anywhere on your PC, RUN AWAY... RUN FAR, FAR, AWAY!

Not trying to scare you but... the results are not pretty.

Seriously, a friend of mine has an issue with this virus on his mom's personal PC, and it is not friendly at all. It carried down more than 250 different kinds of malware onto her hard-drive and spread them all over her system.

This virus works with what is called "Ransomware" and tells you you have to purchase this specific software to get it off of your computer. Then, it will ask you for your credit card information (who knows where it sends it to). What's worse, is that so far, I have not been able to get it to allow me to access the freeware sites to download Spybot and others like it to get rid of the thing. The virus apparently recognizes those sites and throws up false search pages with messages saying that the site you were trying to access contains spyware and malware.

I've been able to delete some of it manually, so far removing 14 counts of Ransomware and several Trojan downloaders. It even had a backdoor program that could reasonably let the person who created the virus have full access to the contents of the infected computer.

I tried using the directions for this specific virus that I found online, but either the virus has grown smarter, or the version on my friend's PC is more advanced than the orginal.

So I recommend that if you do not have Spybot or something like it on your PC, get it now to prevent this and those like it from affecting your machine. It's free. Just google "Spybot search and destroy" (I also recommend you deselect the tea-timer on download because it will drive you bonkers).

That is all... this message will self distruct in 3...2...BOOM!

Meet Pudge

"Pudge controls the weather."

Okay maybe it's not that dramatic, but cyber pets are a growing trend on sites like myspace and facebook. Some sites allow you to dress them us and buy them toys. Myspace.com even allows "battles" between 2 pets for money and points.

If you click on my penguin you can knock him off his iceberg (not that I am condoning the abuse of an innocent digital animal). If you are a little more "cyber-pet friendly" you can click the "more" tab and feed him a fish. You can get your own cyber pet for your blog by clicking the "Get Widget" tab.

(you may have known all this already, but just in case you didn't)

Ankle Deep... and boy is that water cold

Week Two... or is it three now? Wait, it's week 3 but blog post 2, but we really started week 2 during week 1, but we then skipped week 2... Hrmmm. So, we're on track then?

Great. I'm cold. I have an earache, and now I am totally confused... then again, what else is new?

Ok, so RSS feeds were quite a quite interesting read, they are very useful little tools that I haven't fully utilized before. Plus, I did not know about Topix.com. And because with our Blogger account automatically giving us a Google Reader, I thought, "what the hay", and went ahead and set one up for myself.

I am looking forward to my pertinent News. I find that the best thing about RSS feeds is the notion that I can select exactly the type of news I want to hear about, whether it's by topic, general interest, or locale. It makes it easier to get to what I want to know about and cut out all the "fluff".

So all in all I give this week's topic 2 thumbs up.

Now, where is my box of tissues...

Toe in the water

(Writing on the subject of blogging for work)
Okay, so I am not a blogger. There, it's been said. I'm glad to get that off my chest.

So what have I learned about blogging?... A few things. Though I never have gotten involved in blogs before, I have known how to do it for some time. There are a few sites that I weren't aware of, so I guess that is something.

I think the most interesting link was the ethics article, but the widgets are always fun too.

I like the training videos chosen for the staff. I think that they are entertaining and to the point.

So there it is... my toe in the water... the first blog... seemed a lot like typing