Thing 14 - Library Thing

What a great thing! That is a great way to promote books in your library! I really like the blog widget that's available. I think that libraries could use this tool to promote recent additions to their library or really any book for that matter.

Thing 13 - Productivity Tools

I just tried that Countdown Widget and it doesn't seem to be working. The numbers just stayed at 0. I really like it, I think it could be a very fun and helpful tool, if it worked. Also, I have had a My Yahoo and an iGoogle page for sometime now and I think they are great time-savers! And they are really easy to set up!

Calendars, (I must be crabby today) ughhh, how many calendars does a person need!? If you don't already have a calendar system, then these are a great bet! If I get another calendar, I will be spending half my day just making sure all of them are accurate and up-to-date. I have an online calendar through my current employer, and, I also have lots of things posted on our wiki, and I have an actual paper desk calendar too.

I chose iGoogle as my start page since I use Google Reader then it's all right there for me. My personal email is Yahoo so I also use My Yahoo when I'm at home.

I can see the calendars and other tools being helpful to someone who has a laptop and is virtually paper free. This way everything from doctor appointments to grocery lists will be right there in their computer. I still need paper. I'm not ready to move to putting everything online. Right now the online calendar would be beneficial because I could have access to it wherever I have access to the web, which is really just at home and work, where I actually have a print calendar that I use. I think I'll write more another day when I'm in a better mood.

Thing 12

I must be in a really bad mood today because these just seem like the same old thing, just with a different twist, as Facebook or MySpace. It just seems like another way to get news and information that you want, but is it news and information that you really need?
* Do these tools seem to be a productivity enhancer or a productivity detractor?
With Digg you have the ability to weed out certain subject areas like sports or celebrity news which can be a time saver. I do feel that these tools can be a productivity detractor though. There is so much news and information floating around out there in cyber space that I think it can only be beneficial if the user really knows how make the service work for them -showing them news/information that is relevant to them. There were some postings on Digg that just didn't seem very important to me but were highly rated by others.
* Have you ever read a story/item as a result of seeing it on one of these sites?
I have never read a story/item as a result of seeing on of those sites. In fact, this is the first I have heard of that type of site and I'm not impressed.

Thing 11 - Del.icio.us

I tired to watch that 8 minute video on Del.icio.us but it didn't seem to work. That was a bit frustrating. I think I'll try again in a bit. I created a Del.icio.us account over a year ago but I have not used it since. I do see the benefit of it though. To take your favorites or bookmarks wherever you go is a great way to save time and energy when looking for information or trying to get back to something that you had viewed earlier. I think this would be something that would be great for me to use at work and home. The whole "social" bookmarking thing is still beyond me though. I haven't had time to play around with it but I can see how it might beneficial.

Thing 10 - Wiki's

I just spent the last several minutes playing around in MPR's Minnewiki. I found it very frustrating! Even after reading the help and instructions several times I still could not figure out how to link a wiki I created for a person to their list of people. It's the same thing I get hung up on at work. I just cannot get a grip on how to link wikis to one another. I can create them and that's not a problem I just can't figure out how to link them, and that is almost more important to me than creating them. Here is the link to the wiki that I created through work.

Thing 9 - Google Docs

Since I use Google on a regular basis I prefer working with Google Docs over Zoho Writer. It is a lot like using a Wiki and there is a great need for tools like this in the library world. These collaborative tools make collaboration much easier. At work we have several wiki's which help keep us all on track of upcoming training and conferences and we can all edit them whenever we'd like.

Thing 8

I created a Flickr Badge which you will see to the right. It was pretty easy to do. I can see this being a great tool for libraries to highlight new books, to highlight areas in their library, to highlight staff photos. There are really alot of great ways one could use this Flickr Badge.