Lesson 5---Assignment 2

Pick some activity that will keep you involved and learning new things. Make a commitment to keep your blog up, use the tools you’ve learned about in this class, find a new thing a week. Decide if this commitment means spending 15 minutes a day, or a posting on Facebook once a week or some other benchmark. Post your pledge to your blog or Twitter it.

I am going to stay with facebook mostly because of the new friends I've made there, old friends and old classmates I have found. And besides I think I am addicted to Farm Town...lol. I am going to stay with Twitter at least for awhile and see if I can get some of my patrons to use it and stay in touch with me when they need a renewal or want to see if a particular book is on the shelves, or even make an ILL request. I am also going to try and keep my blog going. I never thought I would kind of like doing the blog thing. My goal is spend 15-30 minutes a day playing with my new found toys. Time will tell this time next year if I am able use them in a productive manner. But even if I lose my interest in some or all of them I would like to thank Lauren, Tracy, Meredith and Suzanne for this challenge and reawakening my interest in the internet.

Cute little App

There are so many apps out there its like a jungle. There are a few I already knew about but there are alot I had no idea existed. I spent my days off just searching and reading about many of them trying to find something that appealed to me and something that I thought I could use in my little corner of Library Land. After much searching and reading I finally found a wee little one that caught my eye. It is called Desktop Notes. Its like having little yellow(or other colors if you want) sticky notes on your desktop, or not so small because you make it the size you want. It is very easy to use. You have a choice of many different fonts, you can make them fairly transparent if you want. Your notes can be bold, italic and or underlined. You can change the size and color of your font if you want. I am going to use it at the library for all those little things you use sticky notes for that you usually throw away at the end of the day. It will also stay at the bottom of your desktop for easy access. And the best part is I will help save a tree (hahaha).

HOW TO: Find Out What Those Odd Twitter Trends Are About

After much searching trying to find a topic that interested me, and finding sites that I could not embbed an RSS feed, I stumbled across this site on Mashable. I started to read and decided to pick this one thinking it might have some pretty good information on it. The SuperBowl feed I chose because I love the SuperBowl adds.....and I do watch most of the game also. Now the funny sites feed I decided to put on here just to lighten things up a bit because thats just the way I am.......and a little humor everyday is a good thing.

Netvibes

I chose to make a page for myself on Netvibes. I am not quite done getting it set up but will put up the url anyway.
netvibes.com/redneckgirl51
I will work on this some more tomorrow.

Billings Gazette RSS

Facebook, etc.

I spent the last couple of days checking out LinkedIn, Bebo, Ning and a couple of others. It's really amazing how many sites there are. I am having fun on facebook. Have reconnected with a few friends and playing the games and taking the quizes are fun as well. Am glad I joined Facebook. Still not sure I can use this in connection with the library. Time will tell.

Facebook, MySpace, and others.

I have been checking out the social networking sites the last few days. I am familiar with a couple so I know how they operate. I chose Facebook first and pretty much decided not to do MySpace, but saw a few friends that used to live here so joined it too but only to find friends and classmates at a later date. Facebook has been pretty much what I expected it to be. Seems to be alot of teenagers using MySpace. There seems to be alot of people using Facebook in the professional fields which that surprised me. But it is a good tool for just that reason. In exploring around the site I've seen many different professions represented here. What a neat way to be able to communicate with others from all over about your interests and ideas in your chosen field, and to be able to "compare notes". These sites are definately nice for staying in touch with family and friends and finding classmates. I went to several high schools so am excited about the possiblity of hooking up with some I haven't been in touch with for years. So far my only new friends on Facebook are librarians. I have found 1 old friend, my renter who is also my neighbor, a cousin, a few people I know from our community, and someone I used to work with in a different field found me already. We really do live in a very small world.

I plan on looking around Facebook more and who knows? I may even find old friends from my junior high days. Won't that be a kick in the pants!