Marylandsandbox

Its a good thing that I checked the box to be notified of changes to the Sandbox. I got an email saying that someone had erased most of the entries in the sandbox. Sure enough I went in to see if my post under Favorite books was still there and it was gone. If we are suppose to have people monitoring that site to see if we added our blog address and posted something there and somebody erases the entry how can we prove that we complete one of the exercises in the Maryland 2.0 23 Things? At least my Blog address was still registered.

Thing #23

I made it! This has been and interesting learning experience. I'll try to answer thing #23 questions in order but I know I have a tendency to jump all over the place when something catches my attention.1. My favorite discoveries were the Merlin community, RSS feeds, Gutenburg and Web 2.0 awards list. 2. I found that these sites will help me the most in my job and with learning new skills. 3. The unexpected takeaways was learning what could possiby keep our younger customers glued to the computer screens all day. It was fun exploring all the new sites and finding the links for Meez, online radio sites, youtube, google images. Its so much out there. 4. What could you do to improve the program. I'll have to think on that one. I'm hoping that the links are left on our website so that I can go back in and do more exploring. Some of the sites referred you to additional websites. 5. If the another program was offered I would definitely participate. Who knew I would have so much fun creating and maintaining a Blog. Now that I have more time I want to go back and work on my Blogline account, Technorati, Library Thing, Wikis and Del-icio-us. 6. This has been interesting, frustrating and rewarding all at the same time. I learned a lot and now that customers think we know it all(and I do mean Know It All!) I can actually help more of them when they ask me about blogs etc. I've been sharing my Blog with friends outside of our Library community and they've been learning right along with me.

Thing #22 EBooks

I looked at the ebook information today. Since our Library already has NetLibrary and Overdrive I was already familiar with them. I checked out Gutenberg ebooks. I didn't know that there was a free ebook distribution center that operates on donations and with volunteer workers. Its nice to know there is a third source for ebooks.I also found that Gutenburg is available in different countries. I took some time going through their website to see what was available. Going futher into the website Ifound a link that allows you to download CDs and DVDs. I had never heard about Jigdo, BitTorrent or Edonkey. These are sites to download free software when you download movies. They also have a RSS feed for new books that are downloaded to their website. They even have digitized music sheets.Whoo Hoo!!!!!! I've got to go back and explore some more.

Saga of the Grog and Gryphon

I finally found a podcast I liked. I originally had thought to get the Sci-Fi Bad boys podcast. Took me a while to figure out how to get a RSS feed for the podcast. I finally saw that some were feeds and others were downloaded directly to your MP3 player or computer. I managed to get it from Podcast.net. It was a little easier than the other two sites. But Hey you might find the other two easier to use. Onward to thing 22. I finally got this added to my Blogline account. I kept trying to open it from my Blogger account and couldn't so I went back and reread the instructions and added it to my Bloglines account.

Podcast Thing #21

I read through the podcast information on thing #21. I actually made it through the information while on the information desk. Yahoo has a very comprehensive tutorial and give you quite a bit of information. I plan to explore all the different links for podcasts. I'm not sure I'm ready to produce and publish my own podcast yet. I was surprised by all the different podcast available.

Thing #19 Web 2.0 Awards

There's quite a few awards in the Web2.0 link. I chose to follow the health awards link. There were four links under the health link. I took my time going into all of them. The PeerTrainer link gave information on exercise and health(weightloss).There were links for online support groups, daily logs and meal logs. From those links you cold go into other related websites. MedStory allows you to type in a query and gives you the results by categories. Under each category it allows you to view all information related to it and rates? it by relevance. It also gives you at the bottom of the page web results, articles and website links. Healia I found to be simular to Medline or the NIH websites. The honorable mention revolutionhealth.com was set up like a community webpage newsletter with links to conditions, health news, insurance, doctors and hospitals etc. Covered a wide range of topics. It was not like Medstory which gave you a link to Medical trial studies.

Thing #18

Well I tried a flyer in Zoho. It turned out alright but some of the options available in Microsoft Office are not available in Zoho. When I published it to my Blog it took over the page. I guest it was just too big for it. I should have tried something smaller. Some of my words were cut off or shifted to the next line. It great for memo reports etc. It does allow you to insert pictures but not borders. I tried editing what I typed. When I tried changing the font size by highlighting it and clicking on the font size it wouldn't let me change it that way. I had to delete and retype. I printed out a copy of my flyer and what seemed so large in Zoho documents was actually very small on paper.