Thing 12 Twitter

Well, I have a Twitter account with the name of "lbailey695" I've located a few people through the search, but most I've found are through others' followers. I found David Warlick and a couple of librarians that way. There's a few on my followings that don't have anything posted. So, I guess there's lots of us just starting out. I'd love some suggestions as to library leaders to follow.

I love the PR that Denton ISD Libraries is posting. I really want to start something like that for our libraries. Several school districts have twitter accounts I see.

I've set up my cell phone and will see how that works out. Last week I started following the local performers twitter because it was raining. They never tweeted about whether the concert would still go at 7:00 after it rained, but I've gotten lots of other tweets from them this week about their nightly concerts. Interesting way to spread the word without lots of expense.

And I even put the twitter gadget on this blog. It is puzzling to me how you have to try several times to get those gadgets posted or attached. About the time I'm ready to give up, the same steps work and tah dah, it's there. Not sure if a tweet on your blog is to any advantage, but what the hay...

Thing 11 IMing

Well, I'll come back to this one. I tried signing into Google Talk so many times it locked my account. I have to create or use the gmail account rather than the normal ways I log into my google account--a known issue with Google Talk. So, more later.

I have done AOL IM before. In fact I got to where I hated to go online because an old classmate had found my name. I was going to graduate school at the time. Everytime I got online she'd want to talk. I just didn't have the time. I finally figured out how to turn that feature off.

Thing 10 Nings

I found Nings a bit confusing. I have an account created a year ago but have never used it. I explored and found several scrapbooking nings and children's literature nings. I explored the Digiscrap 101 Ning and the Childrens' writers, illustrators, and publishers ning. The latter didn't excite me at all. In some ways it seems like this is reinventing the wheel. You create a social network in Facebook, so why do it here as well. But, I know that I'll see how someone else has utilized this tool and begin to think differently one of these days. It's amazing what the creative powers of human can envision. So, far now, I'll spend my time doing something else.

Thing 8 and Thing 9 Facebook

I created a Facebook account several months ago because lots of people were talking about Facebook. I have several friends who just have to check their Facebook pages every day or more than once a day. I slowly but surely got into the application adding friends and relatives. It's so much fun viewing the pictures they post. My son-in-law's high school friends are adding pictures from when they were in the show choir. It's neat to see those name tags on the pictures and relate to the young men I know today. I haven't discovered any long lost friends through Facebook though several people I know have. I can see the potential...

I also began following my son or lurking. He didn't seem to realize how open his account was. He's 20. So, mom got to know more than she ought to as well. He wouldn't accept my invitation to be a friend though. Now he has removed his page entirely. I did mess around with uploading to Facebook from my phone trying to show my son what my new car looked like. It posted the pictures and announced it to all my friends. I didn't intend to share that news with everyone exactly that way. Learned the caution about what you post lesson with that.

I've become a fan of a couple of pages like Diet Coke and a member of some groups like my high school alumni group. I guess they're fan pages as well when I'm following TeachingBooks.net and The Library Corporation. I've been intrigued by how companies are creating pages as well as libraries. I got all excited last weekend while attending a scrapbooking webinar when they mentioned that more instructions were on the Facebook page. It took some searching, but I found it and now am a part of that group.

It's the connectivity in Facebook that keeps people coming back. I do have a bit of concern about mixing some of my personal information with my professional information. Nothing that bad or that I wouldn't tell you, but as one author said, I don't necessarily want my reader fan to know the same things as my personal friends.

There sure are a lot of people hooked on playing those silly games on there or creating lists. Fun, but I do wonder why I'm doing them at times. Two years from now it'll be interesting to see where Facebook is at.

Thing 7 RSS Feeds

Well, I got an RSS feed to show on my blog. I put on Doug Johnson's Blue Skunk blog. The comment on the North Texas 23 Thing blog helped clarify what the difference is between following a blog on your blog and a blog reader. I do like the idea of only checking when something new has been added. However, perhaps Twitter is more what you want for that, but I'm getting ahead of myself with that web 2.0 tool.

Thing 6 Blog Readers

Well, I realized today that I've done several more of these Things but not posted about them. My bad!!

I set up a blog reader in Google Reader. I added feeds to the blogs I'm monitoring for the NorthTexas23 things as well as a couple of others. This should assist me time wise in following these blogs. I know several in the past have urged us to do this. I just hadn't taken the time to do it until now.

I also went to a couple of website and noticed their RSS icon. Sometimes I could get these to work and a couple I couldn't. So, I'll have to play around a bit more with this as well. I did note on Library Journal that their RSS links from a specific topic on the webpage go to a broader category when you create the RSS link. That's not quite as specific as I'd like.

Thing 5 Image Generator

Interesting... Since there was an example from Image Chef, I went there first. I decided to play around with the word mosaic and create this




Then I tried the Banner Maker. That one's easy. Not lots of choices and a quick product. This time when I add it I did it through typing in the url. That so much easier, but the image still goes to the top of this posting. Why?

Then I went back and tried some picture frames. I do hope these two library employees won't mind their picture here. This was quite easy to use. The picture can't be too big and you can crop it once it is uploaded as well. Probably a clear background would've been better since I added a caption to the picture frame.

Well, I guess if there are 4 choices, I should try one of the other image generating programs. So, I tried FD Toys which sent you to Big Huge Labs with lots of choices. I made a sign you might use on your library webpage to get a message across.

This Web 2. 0 tool definitely can keep you occupied for awhile. Your imagination or creativity could go wild!!!

Thing 4 Flickr Mashups

Well, this spelling with Flicker is rather nifty. But I had lots of issues with saving it. In fact I can't figure out how to save the word unless you have to do it letter by letter.

As you can see, it didn't work for me copying the html and pasting it here. I don't know why though. After a bit more exploring or messing around, I decided to save each letter as an image and paste here. Well, that didn't exactly work like I expected. It's an unexpected outcome.

So, then I decided to explore a couple of the other mashup programs. Putting captions on a digital photo was interesting. However, Icouldn't figure out how to resize the balloons for use on this portrait picture. Now this has lots of potential for use with presentation or newsletter or blogs.

Then I tried the color picker. I like red so I slide the color selection around to red. I don't like that you can't just paste an image into this editor. This inserting is a pain because it inserts at the top. Okay, I guess I have to be patient as I'm learning this. Some techniques don't transfer from one program to another..... Well, you don't see a block of red color because nothing saved doing a right click save picture as....

On to the next step. Perhaps someone can share a hint or two to help out my frustrations...