Showing posts with label north texas 23. Show all posts
Showing posts with label north texas 23. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Thing #3: Flickr
It sure feels redundant opening yet another e-mail account, this time on Yahoo! Did it anyway, and opened the Flickr account as well, but I don't have a camera here at work, so I've uploaded the image of an open book. This is ironic, since I'm being extremely private about this whole North Texas 23 things effort and am specifically not posting any information that is indicative of my job, life, and particulars, beyond commonalities.
Obviously, I don't get the whole social networking thing. I'm just a troglodyte.
Hey, has anyone tried the new search from MSN, called Bing? There's a gorgeous photo of a desert with colorful hot-air balloons on the homepage and you can roll your mouse over the landscape to get little pop-up windows with interesting trivia, here and there all around. I particularly like the image search. Try "librarian" and you get some primo quality images, plus as you scroll down the page you get more-&-more hits, rather than having to keep hitting "page forward". Lots of nice, thoughtful features. Pretty cool.
I know thing #3 is about Flickr, but I figure blogging is a great way to share new stuff and this is an image source!
Obviously, I don't get the whole social networking thing. I'm just a troglodyte.
Hey, has anyone tried the new search from MSN, called Bing? There's a gorgeous photo of a desert with colorful hot-air balloons on the homepage and you can roll your mouse over the landscape to get little pop-up windows with interesting trivia, here and there all around. I particularly like the image search. Try "librarian" and you get some primo quality images, plus as you scroll down the page you get more-&-more hits, rather than having to keep hitting "page forward". Lots of nice, thoughtful features. Pretty cool.
I know thing #3 is about Flickr, but I figure blogging is a great way to share new stuff and this is an image source!
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thing #2: Learning About 2.0
Oh, bad girl! I told myself I would do this North Texas 23 things and here I am already behind.
The hoopla around Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 is somewhat disquieting for me. I like the fact that the World Wide Web is getting back to its roots and people are doing what the Web was initially intended for, but calling it 2.0 is hype. Granted, maybe it's necessary hype. You have to understand that I've always used the Web to share and communicate. My problem has been that I was often all alone in posting content.
As a Webmaster for a non-profit association in the mid-90s, I was constantly pleading with my constituents for content and feedback. My effort often felt like an empty bowl—not of much use without something in it. I'd take Word documents, PDFs, e-mail messages, whatever I could get my hands on to create pages of informative content. Blasphemy, I'd even take printed brochures and type them into the computer to get useful materials—ugh.
This always reminds me of the Star Trek episode where the Enterprise visits a penal colony and discover that they are using a new device to put socially acceptable thoughts into the minds of the inmates. Toward the end of the episode, the "bad guy" gets left in the chair and there's no one talking to him, so he turns into a drooling idiot with an empty mind. Please, please won't someone give me content, something to think about, ideas to cogitate, material to turn into informative pages?!
I'm so glad that people are realizing how much more powerful electronic text is and are collaborating, uploading, sharing. To my mind, that's the whole point of the Web!
The hoopla around Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 is somewhat disquieting for me. I like the fact that the World Wide Web is getting back to its roots and people are doing what the Web was initially intended for, but calling it 2.0 is hype. Granted, maybe it's necessary hype. You have to understand that I've always used the Web to share and communicate. My problem has been that I was often all alone in posting content.
As a Webmaster for a non-profit association in the mid-90s, I was constantly pleading with my constituents for content and feedback. My effort often felt like an empty bowl—not of much use without something in it. I'd take Word documents, PDFs, e-mail messages, whatever I could get my hands on to create pages of informative content. Blasphemy, I'd even take printed brochures and type them into the computer to get useful materials—ugh.
This always reminds me of the Star Trek episode where the Enterprise visits a penal colony and discover that they are using a new device to put socially acceptable thoughts into the minds of the inmates. Toward the end of the episode, the "bad guy" gets left in the chair and there's no one talking to him, so he turns into a drooling idiot with an empty mind. Please, please won't someone give me content, something to think about, ideas to cogitate, material to turn into informative pages?!
I'm so glad that people are realizing how much more powerful electronic text is and are collaborating, uploading, sharing. To my mind, that's the whole point of the Web!
Monday, May 11, 2009
Thing #1: Setting Up My Blog
I'm blogging for the "North Texas 23 Things". Hello, fellow North Texas librarians and welcome to my blog.
"Librarian Tech Guru Goddess" is a bit much, but it's kind of a conglomeration of titles I've picked up along the way. As librarians we wear many hats and the folks we help are often grateful. In my case, when I was a systems operator for a private CompuServe forum in the early '90s, my members called me the "SysOp Guru Goddess". Since we're now in the age of mashups, I decided to mash a few of my titles together. Ta-da!
"Librarian Tech Guru Goddess" is a bit much, but it's kind of a conglomeration of titles I've picked up along the way. As librarians we wear many hats and the folks we help are often grateful. In my case, when I was a systems operator for a private CompuServe forum in the early '90s, my members called me the "SysOp Guru Goddess". Since we're now in the age of mashups, I decided to mash a few of my titles together. Ta-da!
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