Thing 33 - Travel 2.0

Wow, is this stuff fun! Creating a travel journal, blogging about your experiences, mapping the route and inserting pictures and videos. I liked the blogs and the travel journal sites. As internet access grows, I see computers being so much a part of daily like, just like cell phones. It is kind of like blogging though, who has time to look at all this stuff?

Thing 32 - Google Maps

I liked this Thing. It combines two of my favorite things, maps and Google. Maps because I was a geography major and Google because who doesn't love Google? I played around and made a map of states I have visited. That was kind of depressing, I would love to travel way more than I have!!

Google maps would be useful in the media center to create book promos. You could create a map of different book settings, books about different cultures, etc. You could map out your favorite authors, libraries, colleges, the list is endless.

I could definitely waste a couple of weeks on Google maps.

Thing 31 - More Twitter

Twitter is much like RSS, it can be so overwhelming. I like following just a few local people I know. I follow some local politicians and libraries and Sam at CMLE, to name a few. I prefer to keep it kind of small. I am a "Twitter Pragmatist", only following 30-50 people. I once stumbled on a guy I though might be kind of fun to follow and what a mistake that was. He was way into it and have 16,000 followers. After I started following him all kinds of people started following me and it got so overwhelming. Who has the time to read all this information!! There is a whole world out there I don't want to be a part of. Maybe later down the Things journey I may change my mind. Right now even the ALA posts get overwhelming. It kind of stinks to look at your Twitter feed and see nothing good.

Thing 30 - More RSS and Delicious

I have been struggling on this thing. I just don't surf the web enough to check my RSS feeds all that much. It is just too much....information overload. Occasionally I will check my Google Reader and that is sufficient for my needs. I don't post that often, or even want to. Same with texting and IM.

Delicious is ok, it is kind of cumbersome to use. You have to log in and I really don't like the layout of it. I have been trying out the Delicious sidebar, which I really don't like that much either. I like the look of Microsoft Internet Favorites better than Delicious. Of course Delicious has the advantage of being on any machine you are on, but I pretty much use the same computer all the time and haven't utilized it much.

Thing 29 - Google Tools

Well here I go gushing about Google...again! I feel like this is all I ever blog about. I love my iGoogle homepage. I heavily utilize Google Docs. I have done Google Sites, Google Calendar, Google Reader, etc.

If you are not a user of Google Docs, you should be. I love it, it is not as fancy and as user friendly as Microsoft Office. But, it is free and online and always accessible. You do not have to save your documents to a flash drive or CD or disc. You can easily share documents with other people, you can give them read-only access or editorial privileges. I have so many documents for all my work and volunteer groups.

I did a Google Site. It is not the best for making webpages and a little frustrating at times. But, like I said...it is free. What can one expect?

p.s. Try National Geographic Picture of the Day. It is fun to get a new picture every day. I frequently change my desktop wallpaper to one of their pictures.

Thing 28 - Customized Home Pages

Once again, a Thing I already have done. I love this project! and I love Google. I have iGoogle set as my homepage with my Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Groups, Weather, To-Do List, Gmail, Google Reader etc...... There is no end to the amount of gadgets you can put on your iGoogle page. I try to keep it to a minimum though. Who has time to go through that much stuff everyday? I went to Widget box and tried to do a blidget, I liked how it turned out. But I just can't seem to get it on my blog page. Oh well. On to the next thing.

I also have a MyYahoo! page, but I much prefer the iGoogle page. With all the add ons Google beats Yahoo! hands down. I do prefer Yahoo! groups and Yahoo! email though. I have long done away with email accounts from my ISP and solely rely on my Yahoo! email address.

Thing 27 -- Twitter

Once again, an easy Thing. I found twitter through a learning workshop at school. I like it and got a few friends to join also, unfortunately they don't post very often. But then again, you can also follow public people. I am a follower of MN govenor, Tim Pawlenty, and Barack Obama (who is also following me). Yes, I am that important!

If you are already on twitter, also check out twhirl. It is a widget you can put on your desktop and it will feed your twitter posts.

So, look me up on twitter as dianehopkins

Thing 26 -- 23 Things on a Stick Ning

I love when the Things are easy. This one all I had to do was renew some info. I already had an account and a picture. I joined the CMLE Central Perk and School Librarian groups. I started a couple of discussions and posted a few things. Once again, it is hard to do at school because all the pictures are blocked.

OK, I did send some photos to Ning. It was surprisingly easy. All you do is email them to the address provided by Ning. I like the Ning Thing a lot, but I don't think it will ever be engrained into me like Facebook.

I joined Facebook in the first round of Things on a Stick and really did stick with that one. Hey everyone out there, give social networking a try.

Thing 25 Blog Tools....to be continued

I am still working on all those blog tools that are available. The biggest hindrance to me, is most of the things I need to access are blocked at school. I have been having a lot of fun lately taking videos with my new digital camera and posting them on YouTube and Facebook. So, I will probably keep posting about blog tools, but now on to Thing 26!

Fund our school media centers!

KSPTP story about outdated school media center library books
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S760112.shtml?cat=5