Skipping to Thing # 20: You Tube

So I've made it through Thing #12, but am skipping ahead to Thing #20.

We've all had our fun with image generators. For Thing #10 Batgirl Was a Librarian posted a mashup of Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues,a famous film clip from D.A. Pennebaker's 1965 documentary "Don't Look Back." She even questioned whether the 60's bard is still alive. Well, Dylan is not only still alive, he's once again in the public consciousness with the recent release of Tom Haynes' "I'm Not There." After seeing Haynes' homage to Dylan last weekend, I thought the following an appropriate response to Batgirl's Dylan video mashup:



Doesn't that just say it all? And all in palindromes.

Thing #12: Rolling Right Along with Rollyo

With Rollyo, anyone can make a personal "searchroll" of favorite websites or search engines for future one-stop searching. These searchrolls can then be accessed from any computer and either restricted for strictly personal viewing or made public so anyone can access them. Rollyo has an excellent search engine for finding new sites, example sites for generating ideas for new searchrolls, and a list of celebrity searchrolls, including those of Ariana Huffington and Debra Messing. There's even the search engine on string theory by physicist Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe. What a great way for any researcher to compile search tools and information on a particular topic.

After browsing through some of the top-ranked searchrolls, I started a "private" one on a medical topic. Then inspired by the You Tube exercise, I began a public searchroll on "Online Video Sites" with 10 listings. Academics and researchers could really make use of Rollyo for making comprehensive webliographies. And of course it could also be an invaluable organizational tool for library professionals. I definitely give Rollyo a big thumbs up.

Thing #11: It's All about the Merchandising

LibraryThing is a tool for cataloging the user's library (lots of data entry here), for connecting with people who share the same taste in books, and for generating hype about books. While the user is supposed to be able to add the book by entering its title or author, it only works if you enter the book's ISBN #. Once entered, a nice little picture of the book jacket and a ranking of the # of people who have added or reviewed the book appear. You can add tags, reviews, etc., and search for people and libraries who share your taste in books. There are a lot of little fun features, but my favorite is the "widget" montage of covers of "Random Books in My Library." Very pretty. It's also an easy way to get small color copies of book covers for displays. I used to use Amazon for this, but they blocked the feature a few years ago, supposedly for copyright reasons.

My first question was: should I add the books I've read, the books I own, or the books I've read and own? Or I could draw a Venn diagram of where the "owned" and "read" books intersect. Oh, Hell. I finally just decided to add books I read and liked relatively recently. First problem: only books that are in print and on sale on Amazon will appear. If you click on the book cover, you will be sent to the Amazon page where you can purchase it. No surprise here. The site's owner, Tim Spalding, openly gloats in two separate places that he hopes to make a ton of money from the site, including an aside to Amazon Associates. Apparently he gets 5% of each sale directed to Amazon from LibraryThing. Pretty cool idea to make a buck, especially as a lot of people seem to love it. In fact, there is a huge "Buzz" page of accolades. I especially liked one comment that LibraryThing is "both entrancing and evil." According to the site's owner, "If the buzz page doesn't convince you, you cannot be convinced. Go away."

In short, this site is cute and fun and a clever idea for those with a lot of time on their hands, especially for Spalding, the wannabe-millionaire who developed it. For those in the book biz, it's a great marketing analysis, merchandising, and advertising tool. Not only is web 2.0 changing the way we interact with one another, it's creating whole new business models. This guy may just be onto something here.

At Long Last, Play Time

I never thought I'd make it this far, but I have to admit it was a lot of fun playing with the online image generators. First I tried some of the suggested image generators. According to Chinese Name Generator, this is my name in Chinese. Who knows. I guess I'll have to take their word for it.

Next I moved on to the Custom Neon Sign Generator. At a loss for "custom text" I entered "Abandon hope all we enter here" as a test. This turned out to be way too long for all the neon sign templates. Here's one of Santa I found only mildly amusing But then an article in Sunday's Newsday reported a grassroots movement in Australia encouraging Santas to change the traditional "ho ho ho" to "ha ha ha" for obvious reasons. Suddenly the sign took on new meaning.

Still a little disappointed in this exercise, I searched for "image generators" on Google. Whoa! One could spend an entire lifetime playing with these babies. My favorites were from txt 2 pic. This looks like the motherlode of image generators and has tons of links to others. While I did have some nagging suspicions before this exercise that those hilarious billboards and signs circulating on the Internet might be faked, I really wanted to believe they were real. Now I feel so naive. First there's no Tooth Fairy, then no Easter Bunny or Santa and now we can't even trust pictures from the Internet!?! My innocence has been crushed.

Anyway, I chose the "comics" generator and finally found my favorite:

I couldn't figure out how to change the title.

And that's all folks, at least for tonight. Tomorrow, it's on to Library Thing.

Thing 9 -- Fishing for Feeds

Woo-ha! After a (half) night's sleep and a helpful hint from Sharon, I saw why I was having trouble loading blogs to Bloglines. The first newsfeeds I subscribed to were easier to load because they came straight from Bloglines' lists of suggested feeds. But the blogs required one additional step. After entering their URLS and clicking on "subscribe," I had neglected to scroll a little further down the page and click on yet another "subscribe" button. Voila! One more simple step and there was no problem adding blogs to my list of newsfeeds. So now I am able to download the active blogs from this project, making life easier.

I spent a lot more time on Bloglines, which suddenly seemed friendlier once we got to know one another better. I added more searches on personal and medical topics, which I stored in "private" folders. Many of the new feeds I found on Topix.net. Feedster was offline all day. Syndic8 and Technorati seemed less user-friendly, but maybe it's because I'm getting more used to Bloglines now. Technorati's running feed of news stories was distracting, but I was impressed by the way it rated each feed for authority. I wonder how they came up with their formula for this rating. Most of the feeds I found through these sources I saved on my Bloglines account. I think we're going to get to know one another a lot better. Before I never noticed the little icon, but now it seems to be everywhere. I don't think the problem now will be finding feeds but weeding and organizing them.

RSS Feeds & Newsreaders: Too Much Information?

Before opening a Bloglines account I was very ambivalent about having more information pushed at me. While I have always felt anything worth doing is worth overdoing, my piles of books and magazines, some read, some unread, attest that yes, there is such a thing as too much. I have now reached the stage where the realization has set in that life is finite. There are only so many books one can read in a lifetime; only so much one can accomplish. We are battered today with too much unsolicited, unnecessary information--real time and attention thieves. I'm weeding my life and can no longer be bothered with anything or anyone that wastes my time. So here I am, signing up for more accounts which will generate more information than I can possibly read. But I'm curious and open-minded. Live and learn.

Thing 8 challenges us to open a Bloglines account which uses "push technology" to deliver huge batches of news articles, blog postings, etc. I had visions of being buried under a virtual mountain of information I would never miss if it were not stuck under my nose. I watched all the links and tutorials on the QLL blog and opened my very own Bloglines account to which I added 14 different newsfeeds. These I found by browsing through the Bloglines linked list for Top 200 feeds. In fact, this list was so fascinating that if I hadn't reined myself in I would have ended up with many more. I also did a search on a medical topic which turned up far more results than any Google or medical database adn which I was able to mark "private." So Bloglines seems to be a useful tool for searching blogs and the best part is that the user can customize it.

What I had hoped to do with Bloglines was download the blogs of all the still-active participants in this QL 2.0 challenge to simplify keeping abreast of new postings on others' blogs and compare their discoveries and progress. But after entering the URL of half the blogs on the list according to Blogline's instructions, I was disappointed and frustrated to find that none of them appeared in my feeds. I still don't understand where the concept of "feed" comes in, because the only way I can see to access these feeds is by clicking on each of their links on my Bloglines page. I would just as soon make a linked list of favorite sites myself and go to each individual news site and digital publication on my own. The homepage has far more instructions after 1-3, and my guess is that they might answer these questions. It also has quite a lot of interesting links. Bloglines is consistently rated one of the best sites on the web, so I'm pretty sure I'm just not "getting it" yet, but I will go back when time and patience allow more exploring.

After the many hours spent familiarizing myself with Bloglines, I must have not had my ration of frustration, because I decided to try Google Reader, too. At first the interface seemed easier, but it, too,would only accept a couple of blogs. My guess is that these bloggers had somehow made their blogs RSS feed-ready. I was able to put the blogs I had successfully linked in a "Blogs" folder where they could be easily accessed. But all of this information ends up on a special Google/ig homepage which automatically updates on the desk top. Talk about clutter and distraction! I'm afraid this is going to drastically slow down my computer, which is what happened when I downloaded the Google Toolbar last year. Now if I can only figure out how to delete it.

Once whipped into submission, RSS & newsfeeds should be a big step-up in organizing favorites, bookmarks, recommended sites, and search results. The big advantage is that this information is not just available on one computer, like traditional favorites, but one's account can be accessed from any computer.I forget where I read it, (there were s-o-o-o-o-o many tutorials and links on the subject) but some computer guru was quoted as saying there are two types of Internet users: those that who use RSS feeds and those who don't. That made me think twice. I will definitely go back and take another look.

Caveat for Bloggers (Thing 7, Part 2)

Have you ever clicked on a link to an article or cartoon only to find that the content has been changed by the site host? Irritating, yes? On Thanksgiving Eve I was so relaxed and happy about finally being able to post pictures and HTML links to this blog that I added a link to a silly little Thanksgiving Hangman game. Imagine my shock and surprise today to discover that it has morphed into a Christmas Hangman game! The Noive! I feel downright grinchy about being pushed into the season. And it looks damn silly to have a Christmas game above my Thanksgiving greetings. Then to add techno-insult to techno-insult, I checked out a Latin translation site to find a suitable Latin-like word for "bloggers" and what I got back was the worst, totally bogus, pseudo-Latin. Fraud on the Internet! Okay, it was free, but (shocker!) you can't trust most of these sites. Digitus impudicus to all e-phonies!

The Living Web

The more I learn about the Wild Wide Web, the more I realize how unfathomably large it is, growing like a wildfire out of control. No one is in charge; it has a life of its own.

Linear communication and learning are dead or dying. While there are obvious advantages to the multi-dimensional approach the web provides, it is too easy to lose one's way. Who hasn't sat down at a computer for a few minutes only to discover that hours have elapsed. The experience can be rather like having ADD. In the meantime, the degree of separation between each human being shrinks and we become even more closely linked, like cells in a giant organism.

Way back in December 2000, George Johnson wrote in The New York Times about web growth in First Cells, Then Species, Now the Web. He reported on the flurry of research and papers from scientists who have watched the Internet grow and proliferate like a living organism, concluding that "it may be designed according to the same rules that nature uses to spin webs of its own. The networks of molecules in a cell, of species in an ecosystem, and of people in a social group may be woven on the same mathematical loom as the Internet and the World Wide Web." The body of information and connections out there are so huge no one can hope to absorb even a fraction. So we become more and more specialized, just like individual cells in a living organism.

One of my library school professors laughed that librarians are "professional dilettantes." At the time I liked the description because in our profession we learn new things every day. But there is also the negative connotation of "dilettante," an implication of shallowness, a lack of depth of knowledge of any particular subject. We try to learn everything we can about what is new and available on the web, but in the end we have to choose what is most useful in our lives. It is ultimately more desirable and satisfying, I feel, to know a few subjects well than to dabble in everything that comes our way. After all, life is short. So we learn what we can about what's out there, choose what we want, and then leave the rest behind.

Surfacing for Air

Now that I've made a few breakthroughs, it's time to take a few deep breaths and see how far I've come. Thing 1 and Thing 2 were freebies, if a bit more trouble for The Cat in the Hat. After much consternation and frustration, I have finally set up and registered my blog, which takes care of Thing 3 and Thing 4.

Flickr interested me long before this learning challenge and I signed up for an account when I bought my latest digital camera. While I only recently learned how to upload photos to Flickr, I have discovered there is a lot more to this site than just storing and displaying photos. I had no idea there are so many applications, especially from third party sites, and never thought of it as a social networking tool. Like many, I played with the Flickr spelling tool, and toyed with the photo montages and mashups. I can see how many people find these (trading cards, moo cards, etc.)fun, but they take up a lot of time and I would much rather spend my time learning to use Flickr in more depth for storing and displaying photos, which is my plan for the near future. So that takes care of Thing 5 and Thing 6. Thing 7 can wait until tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving

I think I'm finally getting the hang of downloading links with the help of a little HTML. Cheers!

Do Not Set Self on Fire

Do not set self on fire
Originally uploaded by Jonas B

Eureka! After weeks of driving myself crazy over not being able to post a photo to this blog, finally, success! I read the Blogger FAQs. I watched the tutorials. I bought and consulted books on Blogger and Flickr. Still, no photo. And then, Dear Reader, I asked Sharon Kugler, librarian extraordinaire, who quickly and calmly pointed out the apparently simple path to posting pictures. It wasn't rocket science after all! Rethinking the habits of lifelong learners, I have to admit my biggest obstacle to learning new things, especially involving technology, is making the task more difficult than it needs to be. I feel I need to know everything about a subject before trying it, instead of just jumping in and learning the fine points later. Then information overload becomes a mental block. Well, I am indescribably relieved at finally making it over this wall. Thanks, Sharon!

Response to 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners

Hmmmm. Of all the habits in the tutorial, I think the one I am best at is # 7 1/2:

PLAY!

The fun of learning a new skill is a great motivator. I feel confident because I have have always been a rabid reader with an irrepressible curiosity. When we stop learning, we stop growing. What I am finding most difficult right now is the two-edged sword of technology. While technology is the crux of this learning challenge and arguably the most crucial and rapidly-changing area in modern life, for me it is also the most frustrating area I've encountered since high school chemistry. And much more time-consuming. It's hard to view these frequent frustrations as challenges, but it is exhilarating when I finally figure something out by myself. At this point I don't feel confident that I'll finish the 23 1/2 things before the December deadline, but each one down is a victory.

So is it play time yet?