One step ahead?

Relax and Reflect

2008-07-23T15:43:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-30T18:30:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-24T17:57:00.001-07:00

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

2008-06-20T16:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-12T09:41:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Online Image Generators

2008-05-29T14:45:00.000-07:00

Well, this was fun. I have played with Photoshop and Digital Image Suite 10 a lot at home and had fun creating Christmas cards and other fun things. The online images are fun and neat that they have some licensed stuff to manipulate. I can see this will be another thing that I found useful and fun, and will continue to play with in everyday life. I liked especially the magazine covers and the scrap booking pages (although the volume on one of the scrapbook sites was way too high and kept blasting me). The only thing that was not cool was the ways to adjust the photos, I am used to drag and drop with the photomanipulation that I use at home, this was a little harder to move the text and artwork to exactly where I wanted. I still was able to do it, but it took longer. Overall, another cool thing.

Overdrive

2008-05-29T14:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, after many attempts by myself and a very helpful Tech and IT having to install the Ovedrive Media Player onto my computer I finally got to play with Overdrive. It was fun to look around and see what was available. There seems to be a fair amount available and I even found one of my favorite authors, Elizabeth Peters, on the always available list and I checked out her book "Crocodile and the Sandbank". This was a fun one. I think that if the installation was easier I would have spent more time playing around with it. I asked around and most people seem to have been able to download the player just fine, so if that was easier I think most people would be glad to know and use this service. It would be very conveinent if you also had a laptop and therefore could play the book where ever go. A very handy and interesting "thing".

Not so Delicious

2008-05-20T20:09:00.000-07:00

Well, this was another one that didn't really grab me. I really don't think that it is something that I will use on my own, but it is good to know about it and how it works. I did create an account, but honestly I do not want to post my link to it. I am uncomfortable with some of the social networking stuff especially when associating it with other things about me. I probably sound paranoid, but when I first started doing genealogical research I posted some family tree stuff, and my experience is that once something is out on the Internet, it is out there forever. Others copy it, it gets cached, whatever. I like the concept of some of the social networking stuff as a way to share things that you want to share, but honestly I am a little hesitant about it and what a marketing company could do with it for instance. On the other hand as a place to search, it is a great tool. I tried some searches on genealogy and found some pages that I had not heard of before and did not come up on Google, until way down the list. I think that as a place to look for information links, it is wonderful with all the tags to suggest other keywords to search. Overall, good thing, just not for me.

Wiki Wiki Fun?

2008-05-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I do think the concept of Wikis is a cool one. I have used Wikipedia at home for quite a while and find it very useful and a great jumping off point. I have taught my son to use it with the caveat that (as with most information on the Web) he needs to cross reference with a more reliable source, but it can be a great place to get started. I did like the video about the camping trip, but both myself and a co-worker could not get the embedded video to play and so had to go to YouTube to find a different version that would play without hanging. This part was not "wiki", in fact it was very slow. Anyhow, Wikis=cool and fun, waiting for not very streaming video=frustrating.

Streaming Video

2008-05-05T20:22:00.000-07:00

I went to YouTube and searched for Libraries, and found Mr. Bean and the Library http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJeZqqwWEzo that I had not seen before. It was fun to also find videos of Library cart drill teams - I had heard of them, but not seen any. Has Sno-Isle ever had a cart drill team? Then I searched under the key word genealogy and there were some tutorials and the like, but also a video of the Muppets singing "I'm my own Grandpa" which was funny. At Hulu I found things like an episode of House that I missed the last five minutes of, which I will use at home. Also, it had some Chilly Willy and Pink Panther cartoons that I will use at home. However, Fancast seemed better to me. It seems to have as much as Hulu and provides much more information that might be useful to Patrons (and me) like listing the actor/actresses other shows and films, and whether they are on dvd or TV and what is playing in the theaters. Also, it had Jericho episodes which Hulu didn't. Overall, I would wrap this up with: I already use You Tube, and I will probably use Fancast, but Hulu doesn't fit what I am generally looking for. This was a fun "Thing".

Social networking

2008-04-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is something that I am not so good at in real life and so now I am supposed to do this on the web? Honestly, I can see that this was a valuable lesson and a good thing to learn about, however, I don't know if I just missed it or if this is something where you need to be using your real name. I tried several ways to remove my real name from the facebook site, but I couldn't find a way to do it. I did find the way to hide my birthdate, and I did mark the information as only available to my friends. I am just really uncomfortable with the idea of sharing this kind of information. However, it was still a good learning experience and I can see why teens think it is fun.

Flickr thing

2008-04-23T13:47:00.001-07:00

Stovin Island Cliff Jumping
Originally uploaded by Brieanna's Lover

Well, Flickr is fun. I was not aware of what it was, I had heard of it and was meaning to explore it, and now I am really glad I got the chance to do so. I love to work on genealogy when I have the spare time. So the first thing that I thought of when I started reading about Flickr was that it would be a great way for people in my extended family to post their family photos and we could still have it be private. I have for years tried to institute a policy of sharing common ancestor's photos but people from the family either did not want to send photos for me to scan and post on my genealogy site, or they had privacy issues about posting the pictures on a public site. It sounds like Flickr may be the solution to my problems (in this area). Also, I tried a few family names and locations that I remember off the top of my head and found this beautiful photo of Stovin Island (). I did find some photos with family names that I recognize too! This will be another thing that I will definately be using in the future. ~~By the way, I have had so much fun with Finetunes from the last thing that I now have a play list of over 150 songs (accumulated from home, not work!).

Lots of fun with Music

2008-04-12T14:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I really enjoyed this "thing". I first tried Pandora and it was okay, but seemed kind of uninteresting to me. I then tried the Fine Tune sight. This was more like it, I had lots of fun adding music to my playlist and no trouble at all finding 45 songs. As a matter of fact, I loved the way that this was set up, I started with some of my favorite songs and then clicked off and followed a link to some of the "similar artists" and had 45 songs in no time at all, some of which were songs that I hadn't thought of in years! I felt this sight was more intuitive as far as the set up and suggestions to make my playlist. Overall, lots of fun and something that I now intend to set up on my computer at home.

RSS Feeds

2008-04-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

The RSS feeds are cool. I can see that these would come in very handy if say I watched certain stocks, or wanted the weather on a really up to date basis. Also, I guess if my kids school had a feed, that could come in handy. Overall, I think that the idea of having the news come to me to save my time is a great idea. What will they think of next??

IM having fun

2008-03-26T16:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, the IM part of the learning was lots of fun. I can see that it would come in handy at times, easier than a phone call, but kind of distracting to have it on at all times while trying to get work done. Also, I need to learn all the acronyms, and this is something I do want to do. I printed up the list of acronyms that the link went to and it is helpful, but I take longer finding what I want to say in acronyms than it would take to type out the whole sentence. The You Tube links were fun to share too! Overall "IM" having fun, but not sure if it is something I would use a lot otherwise.

Keeping up is fun to do!

2008-03-17T18:12:00.000-07:00

Well, for someone who talks as much as I do, I find that I have very little to say in a blog. I have been having fun with the "things" and am excited by having more to do. I think I want to find a good photo to put up, or maybe a quote. I'll try to find something tomorrow. I am having fun, just thinking what to say seems the hardest for me.

My first Blog

2008-03-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

Wow, this is much easier than I had expected! I am really excited about this whole process and looking forward to the many things we will be learning over the coming months. I have a son and I am desperately trying to stay one step ahead of him technologically speaking (hence the name of my blog). I have a list of things that I have been meaning to learn to do, and now I will have no excuse not to get around to doing them since most of them are part of our "things". The "Shift Happens" video really emphasized to me how on top of technology I will need to be in order to not be left in the dust by him and his entire generation. I am looking forward to the other "things".