Blog Posts Across Explore ... Discover ... Play! - Explore ... Discover ... Play!

Thing 35: Micro Blogging

I created an account with Twitter and it was very straightforward through the whole process. One glitch, when I went to pull friends lists from my email accounts, Twitter kept hanging up. But searching for… Continue

Posted by Christie BW on August 17, 2008 at 11:53pm — No Comments

Thing 34: Fitness Calculators

I created accounts for both Nutridiary and FitDay and compared them with our local fitness calculator Fit City Challenge. Between… Continue

Posted by Christie BW on August 17, 2008 at 12:31am — No Comments

Thing 32: Online File Storge Redux

Two posts ago, I received some helpful comments about why Omnidrive was not working for me. Come to find out, Omnidrive is no longer an active site and is probably going out of business. But … Continue

Posted by Christie BW on August 14, 2008 at 12:29am — No Comments

Thing 33: Online Art Games

This discovery exercise was quite fun. I explored all of the online art suggestions on the Learning 2.1 blog plus Jamie's suggestion in the… Continue

Posted by Christie BW on August 10, 2008 at 5:40pm — No Comments

Thing 32: Omnidrive - Online File Storage

Omnidrive looks like a wonderful tool but was unavailable to me at the moment because it is currently in Beta and they have reached capacity in terms of number of users. I have signed up… Continue

Posted by Christie BW on August 9, 2008 at 8:42pm — No Comments

Thing 31: Plaxo - Stylish Organization

I will say that I was really impressed with this discovery exercise. Before Plaxo I had all but given up on trying to update my yearly calendar with important dates and anniversaries. Now I'll never have to…

Continue

Posted by Christie BW on August 7, 2008 at 2:15am — No Comments

Thing 30: LOLCats

more cat pictures For this discovery exercise I got to know what LOLCats were all about. I've seen many of these photos in emails that friends have sent me but just didn't realize where they were being genera… Continue

Posted by Christie BW on July 20, 2008 at 2:35am — No Comments

Thing 29 : Scrapblog - Online Scrapbooking

Continue

Posted by Christie BW on July 14, 2008 at 4:58pm — No Comments

PDF Form Filler Freeware

I have bookmarked this for future use. Any site that can do anything to make a PDF form easier has my vote. Now, if they could only come up with a program to help people print. We charge 10 cents a page for copies. Yes, that little bit on the second page does count! Yes, the extra 20 page… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on July 6, 2008 at 7:00pm — No Comments

PDF

Sometimes it breaks my heart to see someone trying to fill out a PDF form that simply cannot be filled out without being printed out. What are these companies thinking of? First of all, most of these people applying for a job have a hard time just finding the company website. They a… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on June 21, 2008 at 11:30am — No Comments

More on Image Editing

I'm still exploring Thing 36 and online image editing. Fauxto - One of Mary's suggestions was Fauxto. Since her blog entry, the service has merged with another company. It appears to be the same little utility but you get to it at www.splashup.com. This site looks like Photoshop. In theory you can work in layers, capture an image from a web cam, the tools are a lot alike - lasso, color picker, etc. Problem is, I just co… Continue

Posted by Julia Hanson on June 21, 2008 at 10:00am — No Comments

Photoshop Express

In Thing 36 Mary wrote that Photoshop was in the process of working on their online version of an image editor. Well sure enough they are up and running. Photoshop Express is very similar to Photoshop Elements. To be truthful it isn't quite as user friendly as Picnik, but I like the fact that I can edit pictures, then put them into a gallery to share with friends and everyone else in the world. They have done some pretty sophisticated things at PExp… Continue

Posted by Julia Hanson on June 18, 2008 at 1:06pm — No Comments

Thing 36: Dressing up Your Photos

Oh, I really had fun with this! Thanks for sharing, Mary. This is a great site. Actually I played around with this last year when Mary blogged about this service and loved it then. I love it even more now. Here's a picture of my youngest daughter, Emily, who graduated from high school on Saturday. … Continue

Posted by Julia Hanson on June 18, 2008 at 11:13am — No Comments

Thing 35: Mini or Micro Blogging

OK, so I'm getting to this a little late... Almost a year late. Anyway I explored some of the mini blogging sites that Mary Kyle suggested. Actually I set up my account at Twitter a year ago but haven't revisited the site until today. Personally I can't see much purpose in this service. However, if I could get my kids on board with using it, I'd love it. That way I'd be able to keep up with what they are doing. Twitteroo is a nice little utility that you can download if Twitter ever becomes an o… Continue

Posted by Julia Hanson on June 18, 2008 at 10:28am — No Comments

Catch the Reading Bug.....

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on June 5, 2008 at 8:00am — No Comments

Facebook and more Facebook

I finally joined FB and it is truly enjoyable. Annabel was very persuasive-thank you! Most of my family and their friends have private FB-and to them I say-thank you. I think this is a great site to connect to the library. Speaking of advertising and connections-cost aside-why do libraries d… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on June 2, 2008 at 8:30pm — No Comments

Some thoughts about blogging...

Just finished an article in The New York Times Magazine about a blogger's experience. It is a long article, but worth the read. Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on June 1, 2008 at 7:00pm — No Comments

Facebook

Ah-Facebook. I've been asked to join several times over the year. I was asked several times not to join by my children and I respect their opinion and space. I enjoy this learning site and keeping up my site for my branch. I have had situations this month that really made me take a step back and think about the internet and how people are using it in their own way. My father passed away suddenly April 30th. What made it worse, I received a phone call at work from the police in his town in Ohio,… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on May 23, 2008 at 9:00am — 1 Comment

Authorsontheweb

Although I'm the children's person I also have A LOT of desk time, sometimes as many as 4 hours if we are short staffed. We are a small branch with a small staff, but actually have one of the highest circulations. I have to up on the lastest books, especially the authors with a huge… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on May 1, 2008 at 11:00am — No Comments

Google going green!

Blackle.com is an energy saving browser by Google. Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. It has a continous watt hours saved counter as well. They have an energy saving tips page along with suggested sites for saving energy… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on April 28, 2008 at 7:30pm — No Comments

My original Twitter post revisited

I've recently had cause to revisit my earlier learning 2.1 posts, and back on January 5 I posted about Twitter. Twitter What amuses me most, looking back on that post, is where I said "I'm not really sure what I would use twitter for - it seems like an online version of sms (although you can access it on your mobile phone as well). Between my 'normal' blogs and sms on my phone. I went on to say th… Continue

Posted by fiona m on April 23, 2008 at 5:00am — 2 Comments

Happy Earth Day

Remember when plastic grocery bags were the new best thing? Now some cities are banning their use. According to a recent People Magazine article, one such city is San Francisco. Each year Americans consume between 30 and 100 billion plastic bags-enough to encircle the planet at least… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on April 22, 2008 at 10:30am — 1 Comment

Food and Memories

Most of my recipes have a story or a memory attached to them. My grandmother shared her love of cooking and gardening with me. We lived on the same street and bless her heart she was so patient and a wonderful teacher. I still make a lot of her dishes. I actually have her famous waln… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on April 20, 2008 at 3:30pm — 1 Comment

Thing 28: Magazine Image Generators

After looking at the magazine image generators featured in this discovery exercise, I chose the… Continue

Posted by Christie BW on April 20, 2008 at 2:54pm — No Comments

The QL Blog Gets a Makeover!

I've been wanting a 3 column template for the Questing Librarian blog for a while and have been looking at many examples. I wanted something that didn't have obvious margins so that if I put something in, like the Photobucket video, it wouldn't look like it had run off the column and into the sidebar. Three sites that I really got idea… Continue

Posted by Christie BW on April 17, 2008 at 11:53pm — No Comments

Smilebox

I have added Smilebox to some of my favorites sites. Making a creation is fast and easy. The pictures on this blog are from a campaign at PLCMC called Paint the town Read. This campaign wraps up April 18th. You can read more about this at PLCMC. org. All the little cuties are from my various storytime groups-how cute are they? They love to have their picture taken and you can see more of them along with others at… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on April 8, 2008 at 6:00pm — No Comments

Slideshare

This is a wonderful site for sharing all presentations with others. My first thought was senior exit projects. For those of you not familiar with this, it is a requirement for graduation from Charlotte the Mecklenburg School system-often called the "dreaded senior exit project". It c… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on April 2, 2008 at 8:00pm — No Comments

BookJetty

Searching libraries far and wide is a great feature of BookJetty. Our locations are an all in one search. Search for a book and it searches all 23 of our library locations. Too bad one couldn't combine the best of the best features to create a book site. I usually suggest… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on March 31, 2008 at 9:00am — No Comments

Litlovers

Litlovers is a very useful site for people that work in a library helping patrons, or anyone just interested in finding something to read. I found the reading guides the most interesting. It not only gives a brief summery of the book,… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on March 24, 2008 at 10:00am — No Comments

Thing 27: Photobucket - Photosharing and More

I created a remix of Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies to explore the site. Photobucket introduced me t… Continue

Posted by Christie BW on March 17, 2008 at 11:30pm — No Comments

Clipmark-ing

Say goodbye to those little scraps of paper, with quotes and other information that needs to be saved for future use. This is a wonderful site for gathering information either on the same subjects if you were doing a report or gathering various information. I had a little… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on March 9, 2008 at 1:30pm — No Comments

Surprise-Surprise

I have enjoyed discovering different sites and am always amazed what's out there to be discovered. My coworkers, family and friends have also benefited and for this they are grateful. Is everyone as amazed as me? Probably not. I have found enjoyment in passing along helpful sites to library patrons and they are always g… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on February 28, 2008 at 7:00pm — 1 Comment

imcooked

I knew I liked Christoper Walken. He bakes chicken exactly the same way I do. I call it stand up chicken and it's delicious and crispy. I hadn't thought about the pears that he baked with the chicken, but it looks like a great idea. I have a family member that loves the food network, so we watch it a lot at our house. He and his… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on February 20, 2008 at 4:00am — No Comments

Soundsnap-ing

This is a great site to download favorite sounds to an IPod. Of course I downloaded wave sounds from the ocean. Search for a favorite sound and you can narrow down your search by sorting criteria by most popular. I had what I thought was a great idea to promote summer reading "Catch the…

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on January 30, 2008 at 8:18pm — No Comments

Getting the hang of RSS feeds

We have recently upgraded to IE7 at work and I am trying to set up my RSS feed reader. I'm not sure that I am doing it correctly as it seems that all the feeds I subscribe to one day are missing from the reader the next day. I have subscribed to 3 feeds this morning. I logged out of my browser and re-started it and all my feeds were still there. If they aren't there tomorrow, I'll have to find out more about why they are disappearing. Stay tuned! Continue

Posted by InfoSleuth on January 21, 2008 at 8:03pm — 2 Comments

Music Download-ing

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio

Music downloading is most enjoyable and the possibilites are endless. This is also a great option for new musicians to get their music out. This is also a way to find new music. There is a very fine line about what can and cannot be downloaded and o… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on January 21, 2008 at 12:46pm — No Comments

Jamstudio-ing

Music, music, music-it makes the world go 'round. Ugg on the manufactured music. I'm actually musically inclined and I can see how this site might have potential. I hope they add the bass clef and give you the option of giving notes certain value. I added a simple children's song and it sounded like Linus playing his tiny piano for Lucy. It would be fun for a beginner learning the sounds of the notes. I found the best combination was…

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on January 18, 2008 at 7:58pm — No Comments

#24 Looking Back at Learning 2.0: Top 100 Learning Tools for 2007

My favourite current awareness tool, ResourceShelf, has alerted me to this excellent list of the Top 100 Learning Tools for 2007, many of which I became familiar with through the Learning 2.0 course. Some I now use regularly, like the Firefox browser, Delicious bookmarks, Ning, Skype and more. There are many more that I haven't heard of but which could be very useful to explore. All were chos… Continue

Posted by InfoSleuth on January 15, 2008 at 2:31am — No Comments

Thing 26: Widgets on YourMinis

Ok I spent wayyyy too much time on this one. I actually have tried several start pages in the past so I went back and reviewed them first and worked with the YourMinis startpage last. Some of the others I tried were: Netvibes, Pageflakes, … Continue

Posted by Christie BW on January 11, 2008 at 11:36pm — No Comments

Keeping up to date with 2.0 sites

I visit some of my favorite 2.0 sites all the time. LibraryThing is vastly different from the 2.0 days. It has gone through major changes with many more to come and has gone through some growning pains. They are making improvements to the site because of their growth and always expl… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on January 10, 2008 at 1:00pm — No Comments

Pepper-the angel kitty

This is Pepper. She just appeared on our front porch one day about a month before Spice got sick. She was very kind to Spice. I dont' know where she came from and have checked the lost and found and my neighbors have never seen her. She is very sweet, eats like a dog and never leaves our porch. She has come to us on angel wi…

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on January 1, 2008 at 7:01pm — No Comments

Spice-we miss ya-12/18/2007

Thanks for a fun 17 years!

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on December 30, 2007 at 4:40pm — 1 Comment

Australians looking for Learning 2.1!

Those of you who haven't been on holidays as well as some of you who have may have noticed a flurry of Australian activity on this network! That little widget on the side shows it and makes Victoria pulsate if one of us is online. Why is this so, some of you might be asking. Well, late in 2007 about 1000 Victorian public librarians participated in a Victorian Public Libraries Learning 2.0. This finished in December and now some of us who finished are in search of life after #23.

We are… Continue

Posted by Annabel on December 29, 2007 at 4:57am — No Comments

Thing 29: Scrapblog - my favourite author

Scrapblog is an easy and fun application it can also be used for serious work as well such as promoting happenings in the library. The only drawback I found is that you don’t have control on the transition time for the slides, but overall I liked the application. Below is my creation.…

Continue

Posted by Rhonda on December 8, 2007 at 6:10am — No Comments

Learning 2.0 was very educational, it gave me confidence to try, and try I did. I enjoyed it so much…

Learning 2.0 was very educational, it gave me confidence to try, and try I did. I enjoyed it so much that I am continuing until I have done all 43 things. What I enjoyed most was playing around with HTML, formatting test, changing colour schemes even re-sizing. Another thing I enjoyed was completing Learning 2.0 in a work environment, interacting wit…

Continue

Posted by Rhonda on December 1, 2007 at 5:43am — No Comments

Bubbl.us-ing

Bubble.us is a mind map site that lets everyone share their ideas and add them to a "map". This would be a great site for students doing outlines of books, senior exit projects, or family trees. My map is of my favorite websites, which would be great if everyone could also add their favorites. It reminds me of a hug… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on November 23, 2007 at 6:57pm — No Comments

Gliffy-ing

The above drawing is of my soon to be finished deck, hopefully. It is has been a work in progress-seven years from when the first holes were dug. There were a few hurtles along the way, including money, health and time. I have been promised that it will be finished although s…

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on November 22, 2007 at 8:25pm — No Comments

Jott-ing

-

Aaaah-the cellphone. Yes-my cellphone is actually charged and ready to go. Thinking of ways to use this product- the hearing impaired, the sight impaired, voice impaired and I know this sounds strange, but people stuck in unusual situations. People buried in earthquakes, landslides, lost on hiking trails, skiing trails or anyone that wants to be foun… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on November 7, 2007 at 6:00pm — No Comments

Midi File-ing

Great for people that would like to compose and rearrange music. I heard an interview with Ringo Starr about "real" drummers and how many there really were. My hope is that there are many as well as other musicians. There's nothing like the real thing. The option to turn it into sheet music is great for those that play guitar-not so great for other…

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on October 21, 2007 at 8:49pm — No Comments

Starting is Hard...

I really have so much else to be doing right now... I've gotten interested in David Allen (Getting Things Done) and so, I realize now, I have a boat-load of projects... fortunately, I'm still in the 'collecting' phase, so I can put them all on the back burner for a little bit longer. :-)

I really want to start using my Web 2.0 stuff on a regular basis... you know, as these lists of projects grow, I look at them and say, how can I use the new stuff I've learned... That's my new goal, re…

Continue

Posted by IrmBrown on October 19, 2007 at 5:23pm — No Comments

Usenet-ing

I wanted to find some articles not related to the library, books, etc. so I searched for the Cleveland Indians-yes folks it's playoff time. Never ending talk about the bug infestation-those were Canadian Soldiers otherwise know as midges or fishflies that plagued the last game at Jacobs Field-that's what makes f…

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on October 15, 2007 at 1:34pm — No Comments

Thing 25: Letterpop.com - Online Newsletter Tool

LetterPop.com is an online newsletter creation service. It is similar to other online applications such as Google Docs or Zoho Writer for word processing, in that it allows you to create documents on the fly from any computer that has access to the Internet. Also like them it's free. It draws comparison to MS…

Continue

Posted by Christie BW on October 3, 2007 at 12:24am — No Comments

Live Mocha-ing

Hola!

Live Mocha has many different things to explore while trying to learn a different language. Learn at your own pace and if you don't finish a certain lesson you can resume the lesson where you left off. Read, listen or use the magnet function to drag and drop the correct answer. You can also chat online w… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on October 2, 2007 at 6:52pm — No Comments

Thing 24: Zamzar File Conversions

I took one of my word processing documents (size 7.1 MB) and converted the file to .pdf using the file conversion tool, Zamzar. It was very easy to follow. No complicated instructions needed.

I tested it by sending it to my Yahoo, Google, and MS Outlook mail accounts to see which one would get it the fastest. It took several minutes for them to show up. And the the stats look like this:
1. Yahoo Mail - I sent…

Continue

Posted by Christie BW on September 30, 2007 at 10:53pm — No Comments

Learning 2.1 & Ning Network - The Learning Continues

Well, I have decided to take the plunge and participate in Learning 2.1--the continuation of the Learning 2.0 program that PLCMC started last May (2006). Announced during the May 2007 Technology Summit : Virtual Worlds, Gaming & Beyond, the exploration continues of new Web 2.0 tools but now th…

Continue

Posted by Christie BW on September 30, 2007 at 10:52pm — No Comments

Thing 36 - Photo Editing

The picture with the text Summer Hibiscus was edited using photo editor Picnik. I enjoy taking pictures and I found this site very easy to use. I already have quite a few pictures stored in photobucket and Flickr so I like the flexibility of being able to upload pictures from those sites. Picnik Release 28 is their…

Continue

Posted by Aura Main on September 28, 2007 at 10:12pm — No Comments

Retroland-ing

Wow-What great fun this site is-earth shoes, id bracelets, Bullwinkle and Rocket J. Squirrel! It made me wonder if the local talent that I grew up with also had a website. Yes, Mr. Jingeling, keeper of the keys has a website and yes I still know all the words to the Mr. Jingeling jingle.

…

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on September 22, 2007 at 6:24pm — No Comments

Thing 35 - Mini or Microblogging

The term "Microblogging" is used to describe short posts which contain no more than 140 characters. The site I chose to explore is Jaiku and opened an account. It is free and is also considered a networking service because you can find friends and receive updates about their blogs, their Flickr pictures, etc...I have not figured out yet how to post my minblogs or "jaikus" using Instant Messenger. Reading Wikepedia I found out that Jaiku was founded on July 2…

Continue

Posted by Aura Main on September 20, 2007 at 10:14pm — No Comments

Meez "Aura"

You can view my "Meez" if you visit my other blog which I started when we did the Learning 2.0 exercises at: Knitting Diva.

Continue

Posted by Aura Main on September 20, 2007 at 9:28pm — No Comments

Animoto-ing

This site just went online August 14th-read their blog about the startup. Animoto is super easy to use and they have a how to video. This would be useful for advertisments, senior exit projects, weddings and sending to family and friends. I created two with different music. You can have one picture highlighted. I did this with the beach picture. It was interesting to see how differently it was featured in both and how the different music chan… Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on September 13, 2007 at 11:41am — No Comments

Every song has a story....

My favorite of all the sites was last.fm.com. I love music of all kinds and this was my favorite ning thing so far-it doesn't get a…

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on September 13, 2007 at 11:37am — 1 Comment

Toondo-ing

My favorite site for cartooning was toondo.com. It was very easy to use and had the most to offer. Lots of backgrounds, people and extras-just drag and drop. I enjoy library fun and if you do too check out unshelved.com. You can subscribe and receive it every day-they also have an archive of cartoons-as they say on their website-read responsibly.

See my car…

Continue

Posted by Sandy Nicholls on September 13, 2007 at 11:34am — No Comments

Getting Healthy Online

FitDay is a great website for those who want to keep track of the nutritional value of the food they eat daily. I am definitely into eating well and watching calories. It's so easy to gain but such hard work to maintain the ideal weight. The hard part was remembering what food I had eaten today. I was able to find out approximately how many calories I consumed today and the nutritional value of each food I had listed. For those who want to lose a few pounds the We… Continue

Posted by Aura Main on September 7, 2007 at 10:31pm — No Comments