The Finish Line

Thing #23 Summarize your thoughts about this program and learn more about where to go from here.

Okay, it's that time! I'm ending my journey through the 23 Things! My first post was on june 7th. Since then, I've advanced my knowledge of technology, and learned a few new tidbits that the world of web 2.0 has to offer. I've also discovered the existence of library 2.0. It was very interesting to explore how knowing about these new technologies can help librarians serve the community better. Looking back, there were a few things that this program brought to my attention that I may never have learned about before. For example, I had no idea there were such things as "online productivity web-based applications". Rollyo and LibraryThing were also brand new concepts to me. My favorite Thing was #5 (explore flickr) because I got to show off my dog. hehe! I enjoyed looking through the list of web 2.0 award winning sites too. I'm happy I signed up for the program and was able to broaden my "world wide web horizons" further than I thought possible. Hopefully I can help others do the same!

Downloading Audiobooks

Here is Thing #22 Learn about audio books. As I said before, talking books and I don't really mix! I don't think I would ever download ebooks, but it was pretty neat learning about them. I watched some of the tutorials in Overdrive's digital media guided tour. This service allows you to browse or search their collection of audio books, and then download them to listen to on your pc, transfer to a portable media device, or burn to a cd (depending on the book's copyrights). The audio files automatically expire after the 21 day loan period. One thing I didn't understand about this service is why aren't the number of copies available of an audio book unlimited? It seems that if it's just a file that is being copied from another computer, that the file could be copied over and over again with no limitations.
I also explored project gutenberg. This site allows you to keep your downloaded books. They have computer-generated audio books, and also human-read audio books. The project also allows you to download text versions to read on your computer. The content seems to be partly user driven. You can help add content following a few rules. The gutenberg project advertises an rss feed so you can keep on top of new books added, or books that were recently updated. Since all the books here are free to keep forever, the selection is somewhat limited. I didn't really find anything on these sites that I, personally, would go through the trouble of downloading, but I thought it was pretty cool that the gutenberg project had sheet music!. These sites seem like another great resource developing from web 2.0.

Only two more to go!

I'm coming down the stretch here with Thing #21 Discover some useful tools for locating podcasts. For a while, I thought that podcasts were only for uploading to an iPod, but you can listen to them on any type of portable media device, including your computer. I explored podcast.net for a while, and found that there are tens of thousands of podcasts available for listening. I found an interesting podcast feed that focuses on photography. It's called LensWork Podcasts. I added it to my bloglines account (which now has a total of 19 feeds). I don't think I'd really take advantage of this podcasting technology. I think I need something to stimulate me visually while listening, just like how I can't listen to books on tape. My mind wanders too easily, and I'm constantly getting lost! I am impressed with how widespread this is, though. There were podcasts in a ton of different languages. And it I like how flexible the format is. You can download the podcast, and put it on your mp3 player or on a CD.

YOUtube

Thing number 20 is Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow you to upload video. I discovered the magic of youtube about a year ago. It's an amazing tool. If there was a video made about something, you can bet it's on here. There are also social aspects to youtube - commenting on other member's videos or sending them an email message through youtube. One feature I've enjoyed is the "share video" function. You can email any video to anyone you'd like. If you sign up for an account with youtube, you can customize your own youtube page with a list of your favorite videos, blogs, and of course your own videos. Here is a video I uploaded to youtube. I filmed it at the baltimore aquarium.




I definitely love the "goofy" side of youtube, but there are a lot of educational videos to watch as well. I've watched some knitting instructions that I could never understand by just reading the text instructions! another neat thing I like about youtube is on the main page, there is a section which refreshes every few seconds with a list of videos being watched at that moment. One way they keep you hooked on the site is by showing you a list of related videos to the one you're watching now. So you're just constantly being sucked into video, after video, after video! hehe.

And the award goes to..

Wow I've finished out week 8! This post is on Thing #19 - Discover any site from the Web 2.0 awards list. I definitely liked the sound of that, and I wasn't disappointed! the Web 2.0 awards list was brimming with awesome cutting edge technology. There were many categories to explore. Of course, I immediately went for the "games" award category. I really enjoyed playing around with Guess-the-Google, "the image guessing game". They show you 20 pictures returned in a google image search all found with the same keyword. You need to guess what the common keyword is for all the pictures in 20 seconds. I would say this game uses the same technological ideas as tagging. My highscore was 222! This game reminds me of one I discovered while searching for mashups. Google has a game that helps them improve the quality of their image search. It's called Google Image Labeler. You're partnered randomly with another player, and over a 2 minute period, you're shown different pictures and you need to match the other player's tag suggestions. The more specific the tag match, the more points you get. It's highly addicting! Well there really is nothing useful about the site I discovered on the web 2.0 awards list.. except maybe as a stress reliever! Which is something we probably all need from time to time! haha.