Thing 40 Mashup the Web

This Thing gave me a headache. Not literally, but when I perused many of the links I became very aware of how little I know and how much I have to learn! I definitely need to come back to this Thing and keep browsing.

Lunchbox was of no use as far as I could see. I entered a couple of zip codes that I knew from memory but no information on restaurants was available for those areas. The Wheel of Food site was cute but not something I'd use very often as I don't eat out for lunch very often.

VisualHeadlines appeared to have no use at all. I expected to find photos for the current news but found no photos like that. The site appeared to have templates for those who want to make a headline for their site. I was confused as to what it's purpose was.

FlickrMemari was fun. It had memory games in three catagories: easy, medium and hard. I tried the easy one, of course. If you or your children have time for computer games this might be enjoyable once in awhile.

I bookmarked the Let Me Google That For You web site.

CrimeReports had no information for the two addresses in the two cities that I typed in. This is perhaps a fairly new site and needs more info to be really useful. I think I'd like to check from time to time on what is going on in my neighborhood or in my city. Even the address I put in for St. Paul did not bring up any information. Disappointing, but I'll try again at a later date. maybe it is too new yet to be effective.

WalkScore might be useful for someone moving across country to a new city and desiring to know the walk Score in neighborhoods they were considering living in.

bkKeeper tracks your reading and bookmarks your page for you. I don't see much use for this site. I checked out the books being read by the people who use this site and I see that we don't read the same type of literature. This site is someone's personal project. Apparently they wish to see how literature and technology can intersect.

LazyLibrary was OK. I expected a lot more books to be listed. It appears to be for those who want to read only books shorter than 200 pages and also want to buy books. The site is linked to Amazon.

BookTour is not very helpful and certainly not complete.

LibWorm is sort of a serach engine for library personnel. I spent quite a bit of time perusing the RSS feeds for Feed Catagories and Subjects. This I would think would be quite useful to those in the library profession. I registered for an account.

One other web site I made note of is: http://www.wolframalpha.com and I expect to check that out soon.

Thing 39 Digital Scrapbooks

This Thing is immensely interesting to me because of my teaching background and I have not finished looking through all the possibilities yet. I found numerous sites from which to obtain free images....something I could have used in recent years when I was teaching. I signed up as a user for Scrapbooks That Teach but it appears that this site is very new and is not established just yet.

BookLamp is another site that I checked into. It is also very new and not very complete yet. In the future, I hope it will be a source of ideas for books to read and possibly contacts with people who read the same type of books that I do. As a parent and teacher who has always cautioned young people about connecting with people on the internet they do not know personnally, I am a bit nervous about networking through the web but if I find the right group I will try it.

I continue to add books to my LibraryThing account as I catalog my own collection. It appears that I have many more books than I thought! The site keeps a running total and it will be interesting to see how many books I actually own. Adding tags is going to be a benefit to locating my sources when I am working on a project.

Thing 25 Blogger's Toolkit

I'd rather be exploring "Things" than blogging about it, but I did check out the toolkit and added some widgets and video feed to my blog. It was fairly easy. I changed the color and moved things around on the page just for fun and practice. The 20 usability tips for bloggers was also interesting. My position at the library system won't entail any blogging and I doubt that I would ever start a blog (other than this one) but I considered it a good experience to get to know the blogging world a bit.

This whole blogging experience has resulted in me noticing other people's blogs about various topics and I have checked out some of those blogs a time or two.

Thing 35 Shelfari

Today I checked out the Shelfari web site and entered some of the books I have read in recent months. I added reviews for some of them and rated them for other readers. I liked the fact that Shelfari makes suggestions for other books you might enjoy reading. This site also gives you the opportunity to read the reviews of others before you read a book. It was easy to "join" and use. I probably won't use Shelfari to catalog my books but simply to review some of the good ones I've enjoyed reading and to see what others say about a book that intrigues me.

Thing 27 Twitter

This Twitter thing seems to be the up and coming "thing" for the younger generation. I watched the video on Twitter and realized that I probably won't make use of Twitter unless my children get into using it. The presenter in the video spent 3-4 hours a day at Twitter! I haven't got that kind of time and I really value personal relationships.

Today, I read an article in our local newspaper about Twitter. (I hadn't even heard of it before starting "More Things" but now I hear it mentioned regularly.) The author of the article is of the mindset that mostly the very young use Twitter (under age 20). It is a place to express your moment to moment thoughts and young people like to do that. At my age, I don't feel the need to express every little thing I am doing during the day or every thought I have as the day wears on.

I wonder what these types of socializing will do to our young people over time? Will all the social graces and virtues be lost forever? It seems there is almost no personal commitment or personal contact. Sociologist, Karen Sternheimer says, "It allows people to maintain the most superficial of relationships without any kind of investment." Yikes!

Thing 35 Books 2.0

Books 2.0 has tools for connecting people who have the same interests in books. The first web site I checked out was LibraryThing.com which is a site where you can catalog your own book collection. I began cataloging and found it to be very easy. You can add tags to make recovery of your collection titles within catagories more easy. I am anxious to catalog my entire collection and then go hunting for individuals who have similar interests.

I am wondering how many individuals would take the time to catalog their personal collection. It seems a bit odd except for those of us who are "into" organizing our stuff. It is VERY EASY though. If I were in a large city, the LibraryThing Local could be a gateway to local bookstores, libraries, book signings, author readings or discussions.

Thing 33 Travel 2.0

Last night I spent some time checking out TripAdvisor.com and was able to find posts from other travelers who had been to Bora Bora and made recommendations. The downloadable guide to Bora Bora included their remarks as well as what to bring on the trip (i.e. an electric converter, water shoes to protect your feet from coral, and also a suggestion to change a small amount of money into the local currency and to do that at the airport at Papeete for the best exchange rate.) The web site guide also gave information on what to see and do as well as the best months weatherwise and economy-wise. TripAdvisor was easy to use.