#6 #7 Week 4: A Little out of Order....

Ok, Maura, I'm a few weeks in. I'm having fun doing all these great exercises. I am learning some great ways to use technology that I have not ever thought about. But........I have to be honest. I am getting tired of creating new email addresses, ids and such. I have already created 4 new ones trying to keep things straight. GRRRR. Flikr wants yet another one. I already have a Picasa account....when will it end?????

#8 TRUE CONFESSIONS: Week 5

Okay, deep down, I am a Apple baby. I have been using PCs for 99% of my adult life but I will never be able to say I like them better than an Apple. Way back when, in fifth grade, we were exposed to computers for the first time. I believe it was called an Apple II. We played Swashbuckler, Oregon Trail, Frogger and such. I learned how to format paragraphs and spell check. It was like a miracle right in front of my eyes. Up until high school, Apple was all you could find in our school. I learned how to fudge margins to make that paper just a half a page longer, and one time to smoosh the letters together to make my very verbose prose on Hemingway fit onto 2 pages. I did my graduate research on an Apple in my home but was fully exposed to PCs in their labs. I fought with them, swore at them, learned things like WYSIWYG and GIGO. Apple never did this to me. It found every word that I typed to be beautiful and perfect! I bought my very own place a few years ago. The computer did not come with me. A very sad day. I don't miss having a computer cluttering up my space. I just miss saying, with a righteous air about myself, I have an Apple. So I finally broke down and dove into Apple again. This time an iPhone. I resisted the first generation. What did I really need it for. I had a phone already, I'm no music monster, I can get on the Internet at work. Then I actually tried out my friend's iPhone. What wonders did I behold! I could have games, music, phone, camera, Internet, texting, address book, GPS. Then the 3G comes out. I make myself wait and, yes, I now have one. It has changed the way I use technology. I went to a tiny island off the Bahamas, no phone, no Internet, no TV, you know the kind of place. I turned on my iPhone, and what do you know. Everything worked. I talked to my dad, checked my mail until I realized, hey, I'm on vacation! I could still take pictures and listed to music. What a toy! I long for the day when I could download books onto it and not disc by disc. Well, the day has come, I downloaded three books onto my iPhone through NetLibrary. It's not yet connected to my hip but I do tend to keep it near by......it's an Apple after all, you just want to be near them. I yearn for those days when the computer I was working on communicated with me in a meaningful way or maybe I just miss childhood........or maybe I just like saying, once again with a righteous air, I have an Apple.

#12
All the fun of Facebook,
none of the pokes!

Well, I did it! I'm Tweeting. I uploaded the app to my phone and am now being inundated with updates of people that I know, people who I share an interest and a few funny animal lovers. All I can say...I'm glad my phone doesn't go off with each update, it would be glued to my hand ;0) Anyone want to join me? I'm MiaStella. Twitter.com

Talk about reinventing the wheel! Take a look in Public Libraries January February 2009 issue, page 29, "What are You Doing Now?" One library got a dedicated Blackberry with unlimited text for patron IM.....Twitters for events for the day....FriendFeed to push....take a look.

I really think our next jump should be to mobile devices. Let the emails keep going but find a truncated way to reach patrons on their cells.


On a lighter note..........

Just for Fun

Week 3 of 23

In the process of finding a app that would do all the pushing I found a great RSS feed with tech updates that hit it on the money. It is one of their top stories today. It is called "cloud Computing..." It is worth a read.

Day 2: Just my 2 cents....

I have this friend. We are both about the same age but in very different lines of work. It turns out that many of the tools we are learning here, she already is an old hand at, so I picked her brain yesterday.

Part of her job entails keeping up with the latest 2.0 tools and letting her colleagues know not only how to use them but how they should be used. It was interesting to hear how apps like Twitter, Facebook and even the old standby MySapce are being used beyond their original social networking purposes.

What I like about these tools is that they are easy to learn, fun to use and have the capicity to have a huge impact on how we will interact with the patrons in the futre. What I don't like, the time commitment needed to make these tools attractive to the patrons. It is one thing to be the one to set up the application, make it known to the patrons and make sure it is running smoothly. It is quite another thing to be the one checking them pretty much every hour to make sure the updates never go stale and out of date.

Not to let an opportunity slide by, I pushed a little harder. To my great surprise, there are apps on Facebook and such that would allow me to post there and have Facebook push it to any others app I may have...very interesting.....very time saving. Off I go to do a little research.

#1
WEB 2.0,
HERE
I
COME!

#2 of 23
SPRING IS IN THE AIR

Spring is finally here and the sun is beginning to set a little later each day. I have been heading down to the water with Lucky almost every day. As you can tell she loves to swim, no matter the temperature of the water