Relax and Reflect

Well overall this was a great, fun thing to do. I will probably always use FineTunes going forward and have now become proficient enough at blogging that I have help my mother set up her own blog and taught a couple of my family about it. I also am much more aware of all the things that are available on YouTube and Flickr. This has really assisted me in the "life long learning" department, since as I stated in my first blog, these are all things that I have been meaning to get around to learning sooner or later (later at the rate I was going- sooner now that I have had to do them as part of work). I feel lucky to work for an organization that feels this is important enough to have us take time at work to do this type of learning. I really appreciate this opportunity and experience (although I did grumble at times about finding time to do it) and would gladly do something like this again. I think the format and concept were sound and liked that it was done at our own pace and that there was wiggle room if we had a particularly busy week. I would love to do more, I am actually kind of sad it's over.

Gaming

Well, once again I have to say this was fun. I am constantly looking for online games of this kind for my son. These are great sites (although a lot of ads and requiring sign ins - see http://www.uptoten.com for a great free site with no log in required). I personally liked the 5 minute crossword. I liked being able to see right away when there was a wrong answer, and conversly when there was a correct one. I know that there is so much out there and I have barely begun to scratch the surface. Thanks once again for a fun and useful lesson, one that I will be able to use to help Patrons and also in my personal life.

Maps and geotagging

Wow, another fun, fun "thing". I found my current house, and also several childhood homes that I lived in. This is really cool, I had tried out Google Earth several years ago, and it was cool then but is more so now. I like the places of interest preset locations. I like being able to placemark home and my parents houses. I like the fact that you can tell it to show you local interest stuff in the area and I like the blue dots to see photos of the area. I checked out East Dennis, Massachusetts where I used to spend many summers and wow the photographs were spectacular! This was both a fun thing and also I would think an incredibly useful tool.

Avatars

Well Avatars are fun. I have of course heard of this and wanted to give it a try.

It could be fun to invent an avatar that is so totally different from yourself that no one would guess who you are. But on the other hand it is not like the avatars really look that much like us either.

I do not currently live in Second Life. I do not really plan to. It would seem to be a really cool, fun thing to do that would also be the type of thing that could suck up lots and lots of time. I do like games and gaming and other fun things that take up lots of time, but at this stage in my life I try to stay away from things that take up time that I do not "need" to do. I learned early on that games (in my case it was Myst and Riven) can be immersive and compelling and I can spend a lot of time playing them, but I have other things that are a better use of my time. Not to say that I do not see the fun in them, and even some educational or social aspects to them. Just that I have found it to be better for people with obsessive or compulsive personalities to stay away from immersive alternative universes.

Online Apps

This was another fun one. I had recently done a slideshow presentation and so when I tried the GoogleDocs and Zoho I tried the slideshow presentation features. I like the features on Zoho much better, lots more backgrounds to choose from and a lot more of the fun little talk boxes and other doodads to add to the page. This is something I wish I had known about when I was doing the presentation, it would have allowed me to work on it both at home and work without taking a USB stick back and forth and also let me do some fun things that my PhotoSuite doesn't do. Also, I could have shared it with more people to provide feedback and also created a link to it for the people who couldn't attend. Darn, wish I'd known about these earlier!

Metasearch Engines

Well, I tried three different searches on all three metasearch engines and it was interesting. Rollyo was different, and maybe if I was working with something like a Librarian working on reference question that I needed to mark trusted sources it would be great, but as a search engine it just seemed average to me. Also the layout of the results was not my favorite. Mamma's set up suited me better, but I got more ads back and less hits specific to what I was looking for. Dogpile yielded good specific results, but didn't split the ads out. I do a lot of searches for genealogy and I really get annoyed by ads that come back when I am searching a specific surname. I like it when the ads are split off to the side, or in a highlighted box so that I know that these are sights that are trying to sell me something and not giving me results specific to my search. It was interesting to try these sights and I think Rollyo is an interesting concept that would be handy for some types of searches, but I am going to stick with good old Google.

Podcasts

Well, Podcasts are interesting. I listened to a few minutes of different titles at Booktalks quick and Simple, also MuggleCast, and FreeAudio Book of the Month Club. I like the podcasts available at Learn Out Loud. I think that Sno-Isle and Patrons would be most interested in the Book talks and also the Learn Out Loud. The booktalks had many different categories and I listened to some kids titles which would be a nice way for a parent to preview books. Also, I learned the 3 best kitchen knives from Learn Out Loud complete with video on how to sharpen them. These seem to me to be terrific learning tools and would be very helpful to our Patrons and Sno-Isle to have for them. I personally had only used the Sno-Isle site Podcasts before for some of the children's books. I am much more fond of the video podasts than audio, as I am a visual person and tend to tune out if all I can do is listen to a book. Still, this is yet another thing that I am happy to have had the opportunity to learn about.