Thing 47 - Stay Cool, things on a stick

Obviously I had my share of ire over all of this. I still hate web 2.0 and the way everyone uses it. But I did get used to a few more websites that I needed to learn about, and I think I do have a better understanding of the modern internet and how people use it. I forget that it's not just nerds on the internet anymore, so a lot of the rules have changed.

I do think it's at least good that there's an increased focus on shared content on some websites. Or at least, there's more media coverage of the increased focus on shared content. That way, for every hundred or so useless websites, or ones with a good idea but terrible execution, there will be a brilliant one that changes the way we look at information and technology.

I hope I can help people somehow with all that I've learned here. I doubt the ability to directly influence the patrons that come in by telling them about these websites, because we don't really have that kind of connection with them when they're on the computer - I feel it would be invasive to ask what they were doing online and recommend things to them. However, any increase in our understanding of online systems will have their applications in the future. After all, computers are just going to become more and more important as time goes by. That's not up for debate. The more I know, the better.

Thing 46 - WebJunction Minnesota

This is kind of a nice website, but once again we come up against the problem of decentralizing the process. I don't like the idea of discussion pages only coming out of specific groups, because then you decrease the amount of traffic that will look at each dicsussion. There should be levels of discussion pages - ie, not only for individual groups but for affiliations (like Minnesota) and for the WebJunction website as a whole. Then there would be more people checking out the topics, and since they clearly already have the technology for the message boards, it shouldn't be a problem to implement them in more universal ways.

I am speaking this way because I just took one of the free courses on marketing, and it turns out I'm really good at it! I got low percentages on the term definition part because I don't know all the industry jargon (obviously), but in the simulation parts I made good marketing decisions and sol the products well. Anyway, I'm in the zone of identifying implementation needs and strategies. So they should increase the discussion boards and make the whole thing more user friendly.

Thing 45 - Cloud Computing

Seriously?

In Web 1.0 we called this "e-mailing something to yourself so you could print it off somewhere else later". Now, of course, we have the wonderful advent of Web 2.0, and websites that do things you could already do, but much more smugly.

I guess I like the idea of being able to backup your ENTIRE hard drive remotely, but it seems unnecessary for a couple reasons.

1. A LOT of of the space on your hard drive is taken up by your operating system. So paying a bunch of money to back up Windows Vista, which you'd get a new copy of when you bought a new computer anyway, is stupid.
2. What's going to happen to your computer that you suddenly can't get to any of the applications or documents to save them on a hard drive or external hard drive? I guess it could blow up. Spending a bunch of money monthly to protect against this seems like it'd give the people from thing 44 a conniption, though.

So yeah I'm not gonna be signing up for any off these companies. I don't need them and they're stupid. I will continue to e-mail things to myself, which is very easy and very free.

Thing 44 - The Economy

I appreciated the video posted right away at the beginning, it was a pretty good metaphor for the situation we're in. It was a little oversimplified, in that they would explain that a mortgage was like a "promise to pay more money in the future", but then refer to mortgages as promises for the rest of the video. They did the same with business Securities. So conflating all this as "promises" in an attempt to simplify it actually obscured the meaning.

Other than that, I liked it.

Some of the money saving tips were odd. I mean, some of them were overly simple, like the video, like "Save your money and you will have more money!!!" which I think I inferred. But some of them were really weird. I guess I never thought of "raise your own chickens" as a good money saving tips, especially because you presumably have to buy a chicken coop and a bunch of chickens. Seems like it'd be cheaper to just go buy chicken meat from the supermarket. I mean, even if a chicken is cheaper to buy than just the meat, you still have to wait, what, a year before it's big enough to be slaughtered? I don't argue with it being a nice hobby, but I don't think it's a good money saver.

I like that the white house has a few money education websites up. I think it's a good little public outreach effort. I don't know how many people know about them, but I leafed through the pages and it looks like there's a pretty succinct description of most of the important stuff relating to credit, loans, insurance, etc. This is a good resource and I'll recommend it to patrons if necessary.

Overall I guess people are going to have to pinch pennies to get through if prices start to soar or they get laid off, but mostly the crisis seems to be in imaginary money that doesn't exist. So investments and stocks are plummeting but for people whose net worth is in actual dollars (like me!) stuff isn't so bad yet. Gas prices are even down from what they were before things started getting terrible. Obviously we need to solve the recession though, and the good news is that no one has any idea how to do that!

Thing 43: Online TV and Video

I don't have TV at home, so I could see this being pretty cool. I've watched a few shows on youtube and stuff like that, but I don't watch that many new shows so I'm unsure of how Hulu will be. It does have The Office and 30 Rock, which I like. And there are some episodes of the Simpsons, which is fun but it's not nearly as good as it used to be. But I got an account and put a bunch of stuff on queue, so I'll see how this goes. With summer coming I got a lotta time to waste (As if I didn't have enough stuff from the library already).

I guess a lot of the things I said about internet radio can apply to internet TV too, but comparing the two isn't exactly the same. For one thing, it's relatively cheap to buy instruments and recording equipment and form a band you intend to promote yourself. However, the cost of an ongoing television program is astonomically beyond the normal person's reach, so any ongoing show produced and released independently will simply not have the kind of resources a sponsored network show has. This isn't to say that independent shows can't fill a kind of niche and reach a certain audience, but it's definitely a consideration.

I know a lot of people that come into our library use hulu and other TV services, so now that I know a little more about it I can help them out if they ask. Which is cool! The movies on the site seem a little more lacking, but I bet those are harder to license.

Thing 42 - Music 2.0

Ignoring the 2.0 label, this one rules!

FIRST of all I friggin' love Pandora and last.fm. As you can see (as if anyone is reading this) I have embedded a last.fm widget over here on this side -------------->

Which means now this blog knows what I have been listening to on my iTunes.
And soon I'm gonna be adding that pandora/last.fm mashup to my home computer (which I just got working) which rules because, come on.

ALSO ALSO grooveshark is the neatest thing I've seen recently. It lets you play whatever song you want! No catch! Also they have some obscure stuff and I was impressed with the amount of songs on there you can listen to. I don't know why, but I appreciate that it exists.

Also thanks to whoever added that comment on the pbwiki page about places to get free music. That Amazon link had a few cool ones I'm gonna get when I'm home again. I sent the link to myself via facebook.

I am basically certain that internet radio is going to overtake traditional broadcast radio, at least in terms of most people. The thing is that music is not even CLOSE to universal anymore, there's no such thing as a song that everyone's listening to. So broadcast radio stations have to play music that they KNOW is going to be listened to by a LOTTTT of people. This means:

1. Classic Rock, because that music came out when people DID all listen to the same thing, and old people don't know how to use the internet
2. Mainstream Pop & Country that's advertised so heavily that people who don't care about music that much listen to it and are ok with it. (which isn't to say that none of it has value, but advertising is pretty heavily involved).

Everything else you kind of have to assemble yourself. And the internet is a very very good way to do this, especially because of music networking sites like this that can recommend similar stuff to what you like.
The problem of decentralizing the music business, of course, is how the music artists themselves are going to be paid. Ignoring the impossibility of stopping torrents, if everyone listens to pandora and online radio and such (sites that only pay for the rights to use the songs, I think), where does the artist earn money? Record sales and concerts are traditionally the source, but with music becoming more diverse and specialized, they can't hope to be superstars nearly as easily anymore. Right now we're in an in-between state that capitalizes on the established order of the past, and the new opportunities of the future. But this won't last forever.

Anyway, I like music sites. So, yeah.

Thing 41 - Mashup your Life

Now THIS I am in favor of! I spend a lot of time on facebook and a lot of time on Twitter, so putting them together seems like a pretty boss idea.

Naturally, however, I have some stuff to complain about.

The problem here is that Lifestream.fm (or friendfeed if I had chosen to use that) require you to subscribe to other people THROUGH their website. I understand the need to get people to sign up for your website, and requiring someone o use the service in order for people to be able to follow them does that, but it sucks in that it's not ever going to be the same as facebook. It's never going to have the same amount of press or the same amount of people on there, so unfortunately you're only going to get a few people. Same with twitter, everyone I follow would have to add LivingSocial and then I'd have to resubscribe to them.

What I WANT is an application that gives me all the twitter updates AND all my facebook stuff. And I have last.fm on LivingSocial as well, so if that could be part of the deal too, it'd be great. Of course, facebook applications give a pretty close approximation of what i just described, but because facebook just opens their code up to third party stuff, the interface isn't all that great and it's certainly not consolidated into what you'd consider one website. It basically just opens the other website up in a new window, which gets them an A for effort but no so much for effect.

I guess as Mashups become more common and implemented I might see what I want. An RSS feed type LivingSocial facebook mashup. That would be righteous. Then I could have a last.fm/pandora/youtube mashup thing on THAT website and I'd rarely have to leave!

Except somethingawful.com and my blogs, and google. But surely a COUPLE extra websites would be ok.

Thing 40 - Mashup the Web

My hour's up so I gotta go, I'll finish this later but here's my mashup

http://www.polyvore.com/how_to_go_digging_for/set?id=8509226

edit: Ok, back to finish this one up.

I had fun messing around with some of these, even though a bunch of them didn't work. I don't have last.fm here at work, but I have it at home and these additions to that sound pretty friggin sweet, especially the one that syncs up with pandora and scrobbles your songs. I have a pandora station set up to play JUST a certain kind of music, so having that scrobble would be double-sweet. I'm gonna look it up at home.

That silly one with clam digging was kind of a cool idea, but it was mostly womens' clothing sets. I might have played around a bit with men's clothing and whatever, but I don't know what I woulda done with it. ha ha

Basically though, it was a good way to see how different websites can work together. I don't know anything about coding and mixing websites or anything, but I like the idea.

Thing 39 - "Digital Scrapbooking"

I went a little nuts on this one, too. I didn't really have that many pictures on my facebook or a good theme. Plus I am trying to get these done in a timely manner so I can actually finish before May 20. The flood is to blame for this.

Thing 38 - Screencasting

I couldn't download onto this computer, so even though skitch looked really cool and I'm sure the people who developed Jing are really nice, I had to go with screentoaster. I made a real boring tutorial about how to open non plug-and-play drivers in Windows. In case you really wanted to do that.

Free online screencasting tool

So this is my avant-garde photo set. I hope that you like it. And that I did this correctly.

Thing 36 - Comic Relief

I guess I had some good fun with this one. I can't really understand how most of this is useful to library patrons, considering they're all kind of gimmicky. But if someone needs to name a gnome I guess I can help them out with that!

I also like the name generator that was supposed to come up with new English-sounding names based on naming trends over time. In addition to RODOUGLAMOSHANIBALDONA, SHAUSTEVER and LUCIENDOMIGUST, I got more elegant suggestions like SAC, STEW and ELTONSWOODER. Truly we have arrived in the future.

I used the medieval tapestry generator to make a comic about a king who is very upset about dogs being in his palace. I tried to send it to Megan but it didn't even work. So that was a bust. You can watch this movie: http://www.xtranormal.com/watch?e=20090429175358698 which is supposed to make sound but this computer has no speakers so I have no idea if the portuguese accents I threw in there even worked.

Thing 35 - Books

Lots of cool stuff in this one. I recently cataloged all my books using library thing, so I got that aspect of the Thing down before I ever got started. It was fun but without a bunch of other people I know using the site, it seems to have kind of limited application. I have it on my facebook now for people to look at if they want to, but so far I can't think of what else to do with it. I kinda like having it just for its own sake, anyway.

Reading books on your phone seems like it'd be really bothersome. I admit I have a really old phone, so reading anything on there would be double unpleasant, but even with a fairly new phone you'd think the text would be pretty small and the screen hard to read. The kindle supposedly fixes these problems by being completely designed for reading, so I'd be pretty interested to try it out. It's big enough for sure, but I'd have to see the screen before I decided whether I thought it was a good idea. I guess the backlight in the system is different than it is in, say, a gameboy, so you're not going to get the same eye strain. I'd like to try it. If anyone wants to buy one for me, I accept.

The swap sites were really interesting, too. Unlike traditional swap clubs, these go all over the whole country! So you could get whatever you wanted. Including books, I guess. This is why the internet was invented. You can get information and stuff from everywhere. I want to try this, too. I think I should sign up, I could get rid of all the stuff I don't want and get new stuff for it! I can not see a downside here.

Additionally, the site that encourages you to leave a book lying out somewhere and then putting a message up was cool. I would have loved this when I was young. I loved secrets.

Thing 34: Online Answer sites

It's been over a month. I would like to reiterate at this point that the phrase "Web 2.0" is stupid, overused and basically meaningless. Labeling a bunch of other stuff as "2.0" because it now involves the internet is also stupid and pointless.

I gotta say, I think people have been yelling about the death of the library for a pretty long time. I think it's people who just want to have their name in the newspaper for saying something shocking. I work in a pretty modest public library; we're not on the cutting edge of super technological urban expanse, but we don't have the dredges of society in here, either (depending on the day). And we certainly don't have thousands upon thousands of people coming in every day like some libraries. Yet even with this modest example of a library system, we don't feel anywhere close to extinction.

Think about it: all libraries suddenly entirely ceasing to exist. World leaders are going to come together and decide that one of the cornerstones of society as we know it should just end? All mayors are going to sign the orders one after the other til all library buildings become McDonald's? No one is going to be able to read anything they didn't buy, no one will be able to use a computer unless they own it, no one can ask anyone for something they don't know. Yeah ok, and then after that Michael Jordan will come to my house and tell me to stack rocks on his head until he dies.

People need to stop freaking out. LIBRARIANS need to stop freaking out. Just because the internet does potentially give people the ability to search for information DOES NOT MEAN that every single person there is alive will have the resources to access this, the ability to understand and utilize it properly, or the time and effort to maximize their reference capabilities and decide to therefore bypass all library services forever. I realize we don't always get as much respect as, say, firemen or nurses or whatever but I think saying we're going to be the last of the library workers because of computers is pretty gullible.

What percent of internet users primarily look up videos of people getting hit in the junk? A lot? I think we're good, then.

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

Ok, so I think I'm starting to get this "2.0" label attached to everything. It's not just that people have new ways to send links to each other, but that websites are redesigned to allow more content from users. I guess I'm kind of surprised that this is such a big deal, since this is not new technology or even new applications of it, just that more websites are doing it? Or at least that more websites that non-nerds pay attention to are doing it, so magazines are writing stories about it.

In that sense I guess Travel 2.0 is a good name, although I think that's only if you count ticket-buying sites like expedia.com as "Travel 1.0" websites. It seems to me that the kinds of reviews, hints and picture-sharing these travel websites are all about have been around since BBS days, but that now they're redesigned to get more exposure. I don't have a problem with this or anything, I just think it's necessary to be accurate about this.

I'm not planning on taking a vacation any time soon, so I couldn't use these sites precisely the way they were intended, but I get the theory. It's nice to have overviews of what people like, with ratings, but I'm not sure how extremely helpful this would be. Of course the Hilton hotel in San Francisco is 5 star, I probably didn't need a website to tell me that, you know? And of course I'm going to see The Louvre if I'm in France. The real hidden treasure of these websites should be to identify the little hole-in-the-wall, out of the way places that aren't necessarily well known, and there is an element of that in all the mire. But once again I am frustrated with the site layout and navigation, which seems counterproductive to sorting things out in this (or another) way. I realize that if you have a huge amount of people adding reviews for things you'll get a lot of content about only the most popular, universal things but there should be a way to deal with this. Maybe there could be a "Critics choice" kinda thing? Where stuff that has been highly rated but only a few times is suggested. Something like that, maybe.

Maybe in Web 3.0 everyone will stop running around in circles patting themselves on the back for their clever application of existing technology, and do some damn troubleshooting!

Thing 32: Google Map-O-Saurus

It's been a long time since I did one of these. I basically lost track of where I was on everything so I'm just gonna call it good on the previous entries and move on. To GOOGLE MAPS!

Google kinda creeps me out some. I mean maps are cool and all but it freaked me out being able to walk around in the street view of Downtown Fargo and it was JUST LIKE BEIN' THERE. Except sometimes it switches from day to night real rapidly because they took the pictures at different times. But anyway, still crazy, or maybe creepy.

So I made a pretty basic map of how to get from my apartment to the library:
Check it out

It was very easy to do. I could see this being pretty useful. I'm thinking of some kind of citywide event, where there are different exhibits or demonstrations all over town, and the website has a link to google maps with all the points bulleted. Or, obviously, just having a link on the library website to show where we're located. I'm wondering now if there's a browser add-on somewhere that lets you click on any address in a browser window and have it look it up on google maps? They have one of that kind of thing for phone numbers and skype. Although it may be a little more difficult to distinguish an address. In any case, it shouldn't be too hard to make the address on the Moorhead LARL website a link to a google map showing its location.

I'd like to see a community-wide map of the city, where everyone can label their house to add information if they want to. Or you can label the exact spot where you think you lost your gloves. Then others can check the spot where THEY found some gloves and see if anyone labeled it? Or you could label like "This is where I saw the gorgeous redhead filling up her car's gas tank last Tuesday". And then if SHE'S looking for you too, she could totally see that and look you up somehow. Community billboard sounds awesome!

Thing 31: MORE TWITTER!

Oh how I do love Twitter. Getting to play with it for an hour and get paid for it is a sweet, sweet reward.

I think I'm starting to evolve to the next level of twitter. If this was JUST me and people I already knew I would still probably feel this rush of excitement, but I think there's even more to it than that. I'm starting to understand the appeal behind building a network, like so many of these twitter sites talk about. I could potentially MEET NEW PEOPLE through twitter. I could have contacts all over the country from this website. Interestingly, the presence of celebrities on twitter facilitates this somewhat - a bunch of people are attracted to the famous person, but in so doing become aware of each other and slowly build these other followers into their own network.

I adedd Mr. Tweet, who will recommend users to me that I should follow. I added a bunch more big power users. I checked my twitter ranking - turns out I have more "influence" than about half the community. Most of those are probably dead or one-time-use accounts, but still, I got some clout. I pledge to build this up.

Thing 30 and the Temple of Doom

Well. I have my delicious and my RSS feed all set up. To be honest I'm kind of underwhelmed by it. First of all I apparently misunderstood the mechanism of RSS feeds this whole time. Apparently you can't just put in any old website you want and get updated as to when it has new content. The website has to have a specific RSS site feed you subscribe to. So basically a lot of really big websites are cool, but a lot of the smaller or independently operated ones I like don't have this option.

Beyond that, I guess I don't spend so much time looking at websites that I don't have time to check them all. I have a bookmarks list in my browser like I always have, and it's not too strenuous to go through and check stuff out when I need to. The one thing I'd like to have an RSS feed for is all the web comics I read, so that I could see when updates happened instead of checking them all individually, but the ones I like didn't all have RSS feeds available, so that's kinda out the window. Beyond that I don't really need to have alerts for every update on cnn.com, for example. I can just go there when I want to read the news.

Considering my lack of utility for these RSS feeds, I don't see how I'm going to use a lot of the featured tools. I definitely don't want to forward all the updates to my e-mail; my inbox gets cluttered up enough as it is. I kind of like the one that will forward updates to my twitter, if only because it gives me another excuse to use twitter. And the one that gives you personal reminders would be GREAT if I were more organized. Which I'm not, but maybe this will help.

I don't know if this one's gonna make the cut for long term use, either. I'll have to see. In the mean time I am going to move on to other Things and give this one a proper wrap up some time in the future.

Thing 30: Raiders of the Lost Ark

(Note: this will be a 3 part entry, hence the Indiana Jones titles, which was also a trilogy. I may add a fourth joke entry to complement that joke of a 4th movie, but do not hold your breath).

So, as this Thing requires that you have Delicious and/or RSS feeds to make it work, I spent my time today setting this up. I put a few bookmarks into delicious and I'm trying to figure out this "popular" section, although it doesn't actually seem to give you THE most popular followed websites, just some ones the webmaster apparently thought were cool.

This seems to be a problem with a lot of these "Web 2.0" sites. They get so caught up in how you can connect everything to everything else that they make it hard to do basic things by "Web 1.0" standards. And I grew up in web 1.0, so I demand the old stuff, dammit. I don't think it would be that hard to have a way to sort the popular followed websites so I could see what everyone else thinks is cool, but apparently you can only see what is new or what specific people think is best? Also, having your tagged items page called "Inbox" is REALLY confusing, since EVERYWHERE ELSE on the ENTIRE INTERNET uses this name for messages you've received. Who decided this?

Anyway, I will finish fleshing it out and using the RSS at home, then Part 2 will be initial observations on the Thing 30 tools.

PS new profile image, someone else made it so the eye color is wrong but I don't know where she did it and I think it's neat so it stays.

Things 28 & 29: google wrap up

I gotta say I didn't enjoy this as much as I have been some of the other Things (like Twitter!). I found iGoogle to be the same as it was last time I used it, which is to say it would've been useful if I didn't have all the stuff it offered me already in other areas. It's nice to have everything right there for you, but if I think about wanting movie times or wanting to see what the weather is I can just go to a website for that purpose, instead of changing my homepage from the one I've had for a long time (a comic I like). A lot of the other applications had pretty limited or novelty use, so I just couldn't get myself into it. I could see this being a lot more helpful for people who don't necessarily know a lot of websites with content they might want, or are uncomfortable using search engines. Then they could have everything right where they need it instead of having to search. For me, though, it just wasn't that great.

Google tools, then suffered from the same kind of problem. They're useful little gadgets that can work if you just want basic information, but none of it is necessarily stellar to me as far as calendars, schedulers and etc. I still like some of the "beta" programs, though.