The results of my first poll are in. In an even split, it was 50% admitting to liking online polls and 50% claiming to dislike them. My next question is even more exciting, if that is possible. The poll is now open so make your opinion known.

Assignment # 4

Was glad to discover what that little orange box with the curvy lines in it is all about. Had seen the symbol but didn't know what it was for. Find the idea of RSS feeds to be intriguing. Parking sites relevant to me so that I can view them all from one place seems like an efficient way to manage one's quest for knowledge. Had some difficulty getting onto bloglines. The first day I tried, I couldn't get on the site at all (tried on and off for about 2 hours). The next time, I was able to get on the site but it repeatedly froze on the 'sign up now' process (again, this was over a period of more than an hour). Found it quite frustrating. Third time was the charm. Set up an account, subscribed to a bunch of feeds. Once I was actually in the site, it was very easy to understand and to use.

With my frustrating introduction to bloglines in mind, I took a bit of time to make changes to my yahoo homepage. I have customized it and added some rss feeds. For me, this is even more efficient than using bloglines. I check my email account numerous times during the day and while I am doing that, I can scan the feeds that I have selected.

Not exactly sure if RSS feeds would be a helpful tool at the library. Perhaps selecting some feeds for the public computers but I think that generally the patrons using those computers have a specific task or web destination in mind. Seeing as a patron's time is often limited to 30 minutes, that's not much time to read the feeds that we have selected for them and then do whatever it is they actually set out to do.

I added a feed from the 'unshelved' comic to the bottom of my blog. This is a comic strip that takes place in a library. Makes me laugh. Was thinking the feed would display the actual comic but it appears as a link. Hope I did it right. If you like the comic, you can also sign up to have it emailed to you daily. Or, feed it into your blog. Enjoy.

Not much time left for my poll. It's too close to call at this point, so if you haven't voted yet, get to it!

Had a bit of time to fiddle, so changed the look of my blog a little. The other blogs I have been reading looked a lot cooler than mine, so hopefully the changes will help. Made some new colour choices, moved things around a little bit and added a photo of myself. I am also pleased to introduce my first poll. Hope to get lots of votes. The results will be available next week. While I was fiddling, I got a few more ideas, so I hope to add more things soon. In the meantime, I'll be busy thinking of my next polling question. If you have any suggestions, just let me know.

Assignment # 3

Just did a tour of the Flickr site. Seems pretty straight forward. Uploaded a couple of images. No personal photos due to my paranoia of posting things on the internet. I can see how Flickr would be a neat way to sort and organize digital photos. I really like the fact that I can control the privacy levels. Not enough of a tech whiz to know if their different privacy settings really mean anything. (How skilled would someone have to be to hack in, even on the highest privacy setting? I know rationally that it is extremely unlikely that anyone out there really cares about my personal life enough to try to get information about me in this way, but hey, remember I'm the mystery reader and many a plot has been built around someone being careless with their personal information.)

The images I uploaded are done by the artist Mary Engelbreit. She does great work. Lots of prints to do with reading, family, pets and just life in general. She uses bright colours that really catch my eye and I just love looking at her work. Right now at the top of where I am typing, there is a bunch of character lines that mean nothing to me. They appeared right after I uploaded the image. Will be interested to see if the image actually shows up on the blog or if it is just these meaningless (to me!) characters. Just checked and there is the actually picture on the blog page! Yeah! I like how the image looks as part of the blog post and will likely select more to add to future posts.

Just checked out some mashup sites. Pretty funny. I like the Bart Simpson chalkboard one. My kids will get a kick out of that one. Another fun one that I know of is the jibjab site (www.jibjab.com). It is a site that has song videos poking fun at American politics and culture. There are a number of their songs that you can upload photos into so that you (or whomever you choose!) is in the video. Very funny.

I tried the 'add link' function to add a link to the jibjab site but all I got was:

Doesn't look like a link to me. Not sure what I did wrong. A line of characters shows up on my edit page but here on the blog it's just blank. Anyway, it's well worth the effort of getting to the site. Lots of fun stuff there.

Not exactly sure how all this would be useful to me at work. I can't imagine ever having time to actually do to it! Maybe a photo slide show of branch activities? I could envision myself doing a mystery reader blog, giving book reviews of the books i'm reading. Adding a photo of each book cover would be good for all the visual learners out there!

Assignment # 2

So, for assignment number 2, we get to create a blog. I feel so cool! Won't admit to the amount of time it took to decide upon my very uninteresting blog title and signature name.

I think what excites me most about this course is the chance to try out some of things that I've heard about. Blogging would be a good example. I know what it is. I know lots of people blog but I've never even read anyone's blog. I'm already thinking about how neat it would be to blog about the books I read. Titles, authors and a brief summary, including information like 'if you like this author, then try...' would be a neat way of recommending books to patrons.

I think the only thing that makes me nervous about this course is the not knowing exactly what I'm getting into. (That is just the way I am. I would prefer life to be predictable and organized, preferably a few weeks in advance. Haven't figured out how to get the universe to cooperate with me on that one!)

As I look at the course outline, there are a fair number of things on the list that I have never even heard of before. I don't know what an 'RRS' is. My only reference for 'tagging' is playing games with my kids. Only know what Flickr is because I looked it up yesterday after seeing it on the outline! Have heard of Facebook but never gone there. I have a basic knowledge of Wikis and have used Wikipedia quite often. I do know lots about Youtube because I have kids and they spend lots of time showing me all the funny, although sometime completely inappropriate, things that they find there!

Spent a little time adding info to my profile. Didn't use any specific information. Don't like the idea of putting anything that could actually identify myself out there into cyberspace. Maybe I read too many mystery novels but for now my profile will be vague.