Tech Tech Tech

Thing 14

Technorati was an interesting tool to explore. I searched for "librarian," as I often do, and found a couple new blogs to add to my feeds. I liked that I could search on posts or blogs, so if I was searching for something very specific, I might find a mention of it in someone's blog post. These searches I found to be quite slow, however, and not necessarily any better than a Google search. When searching posts, you can specify entire post or tags, language, and degree of authority. The results are posted by most recent post, and unfortunately you cannot sort them any other way (like by authority). So prolific bloggers will get their blogs at the top of the result list. I prefer Google's attempts at relevancy ranking. Technorati duplicates utilities found elsewhere (like adding blogs to Technorati favorites instead of adding them to your feeds), and personally I find it a site for people who have a lot more free time than I do.

Delicious! Yum!

Thing 13

I LOVE Delicious! Here is my page: http://delicious.com/mtwtf I use it to collect all sorts of websites I can use for work. I can access it from any computer anywhere, and sometimes I give out the web address to patrons so they can access it from home to get to wildflower links, for example (local students do a wildflower project each spring). Whenever I am asked a reference question and I find the answer online, I tag it so I can find it again. Periodically, I go in and bundle up my latest tags so they are easier to find.

Word Game Fiend

Thing 12

My vice! I have spent hours on Bookworm and TextTwist. And now there's Free Rice! I hit a level 60 once, but was unable to maintain it. I like that it gives you pronunciations as well. Have you noticed that with TexTwist, the smaller words are in reverse order of the spelling of the first 6-letter word? So if you are having trouble getting the 6-letter word, try getting all the 3-letter words, look at the order they are in (bottom to top), and it will help you spell the 6-letter word, which you need to keep going in the game.

Social Networking

Thing 11

While I can understand the attraction of these sites for people, I personally find that life is too busy to invite all this extra connection in. Between emails and feeds and going to school and keeping up with the news - all online - I feel OVER connected, and thus I will never join an online social network. Besides, I like my anonymity. I did peruse MySpace, looking at (and listening to) the website for "Flight of the Conchords," a funny New Zealand music group. I also found pages for family members (mostly set to private). In addition to MySpace, I also regularly check in on two art-making nieces who have pages on deviantART.

Chit Chat

Thing 10

I haven't had much luck yet with Google chat, but I will give it another try. I have had a nice chat with Kam via Meebo, and last weekend I joined a chat I found online where some nice fellow was giving a play-by-play report of the 4A state football final (our local team won, and I knew patrons would probably ask about it at work). Interspersed with the report were comments and questions about the game, the players, and the statistics. It was a fabulous way to get up-to-the-minute news.

I have also used chat for my schoolwork at TWU. I worked on a group project with 4 other women, and we discussed all manner of things in our chats. I found it very helpful to come prepared with comments pre-typed in Notepad, because if you have a lot to say, typing can slow things down and the conversation can get out-of-sync.

Delicious blogs

Thing 9

One of my favorite ways to find library-related blogs and sites is on delicious.com. If you search for librarian, a lot of blogs that people have tagged "librarian" are retrieved. Not only can you look at the blogs and add them to your feeds (or to your own delicious page), you can also click on the number to the right of each of the blogs to see who has tagged that blog. For example, if I search for librarian on delicious, one site that comes up is librarian.net. Next to it (today) is the number 1364, indicating that 1364 people have bookmarked that site on their delicious page. If I click on that number, I can see all the people who have bookmarked this site. There is a good possibility that all those people are librarians, and I can now access the delicious page of any one of those librarians to see what websites they think are cool. I have added a number of feeds to my reader this way. I have also added sites to my delicious page this way.

Feed me!

Thing 8

I usually track my RSS feeds within Internet Explorer, which confines my looking to own computer. Google Reader allows you to check your feeds from any computer, but I do not like the way it works, mixing all the feeds together, instead of allowing you to view one at a time. Also, it is a pain in the neck to delete feeds. I like the search feature, though, and I added a few feeds to my reader. Among them are:

librarian. net I love Jessamyn West. She is passionate and sensible all at once.

Swiss Army Librarian Brian Herzog does a great reference question of the week.

Merriam-Webster Word of the Day Just to keep the mind nimble!

I have added a feed for the word of the day at right....