Final Post

Well, I'm done with the 23 things. I can't say I learned a whole lot aside from growing comfortable with RSS feeds, which I had a pathological aversion to in the past.
The staff more or less split in my building in their reaction to the 23 things. It more or less came down to those who were already comfortable with technology, and thus were engaged, and those that weren't, who to this day haven't gotten much farther than getting their blog set up.
I have to say that the Blog exercise was a hit. Everybody was just thrilled about the blog thing, what they could do, and what others did with theirs. Interest in the 23 things tapered off after that, and became more of a chore than a fun learning exercise.
To this end I think those in power could have tried to sell the program better, and to get the staff more excited about it. There were many, and will continue to be many, who just aren't interested in technology, belong to an older generation, or are just not motivated, and this (argueably sizable,) portion of the staff will very skeptical of supposed benefits from these 23 things.
This is not to say that the 23 things were in vain. Nay! They were/are a noble effort, and one that I applaud. Progress is progress, right? Furthermore, I'm not sure how I would get said group interested in this sort of thing in the first place. But, the problem is there none the less.
I hope that this exercise has given the powers that be more interest in useing these tools in our workplace. I daresay we're slightly behind the curve as far as libraries go and Web 2.0. This was a step towards that goal, and I hope it is achieved one day.

Overdrive

This is an interesting little feature we have. It's interesting to see the format of their catalog is similar to ours, so naturally I assumed it was a subset of our catalog and one could find this downloadable content in our catalog.
But, one would be wrong. It's a shame. I wish our catalog could interface with more content that we offer, like the netlibrary, for instance. I do know we have a whole bunch of reference books that are available in the catalog, which is a step, but I wish that the catalog could be the one-stop-shop for "do we have access to this book/material/something that isn't an article."
But, it was interesting to see it again, (as I'd briefly explored it when it was first introduced,) and to see how the collection has grown.

Podcasts

I actually already subscribe to several podcasts, all from NPR. I've yet to find one that seemed worth listening to, as others just seemed to be a Web 2.0 equivalent of talk radio, which I'm not particularly interested in.
But, I did enjoy this Podcast Ally website, and will peruse some podcasts that caught my eye when I get home.
Also, I don't like Bloglines, and I don't use it anymore. I do enjoy the google reader, however, but I'm not sure that that will support podcasts. So, I'll use the program that came with my mp3 player on my home PC.

YouTube

I'm fairly familiar with YouTube, although I certainly don't use it every day or even every week. I did once watch a documentary from the BBC about that crazy Fred Phelps family and the Westborough Baptist Church completely on YouTube. I'll have to look for more documentaires sometime.
But, the video I'm going to share with you today is a favorite of mine, and was a bit of a cult-hit.
Shoes!

SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards and Online Productivity.

This week, (even though I'm a few weeks behind,) we learned about online productivity tools like GoogleDocs and various websites featured on this SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards list. We were told to go to this Zoho writer thingie, but I wasn't a fan of it. I'm not sure why we were sent there when Google has a perfectly good application available. Perhaps it didn't work well on the network or something. But, then again, the Zoho thing crashed on me a couple times as well.
I suppose it will remain a mystery. Didn't learn anything new there, but it was interesting enough.
The second part of this week's activities did make me think a little! We were told to go to this Web 2.0 Awards website, but the site was down. Most people would have given up, but I thought that since this is such an active website, google surely has a copy backed up! So, I searched for it on google, and found the cached copy, which worked well enough. They had a whole list of all sorts of categories, but the only one that caught my eye was an online desktop. Not really knowing what that was, I figured I'd explore that. Turns out it's a fancy virtual desktop. The browser window opens up to a full screen and simulates the look and feel of a desktop. One can type things, do a spreadsheet, play games, message, and email all within this web application. I did try to browse within the browser, (getting a little complicated here,) but the filter kicked in and said it was an anonymizer. I disabled it for a little while, but it still didn't work well. Alas. It was in alpha, to it's defense.
But, another website I came across, not on the list I think, was this website called drop.io . One can upload documents, call into the server and leave mp3 messages, and all sorts of file storing/sharing/sending things, all without making an account! The best thing of all, however, is that one may fax something anywhere in the US for FREE!
So go check it out. drop.io