Thing 4 - Mashups

Wow, this Flickr Speller is AWESOME! A couple years ago a woman who graduated from my college began creating alphabets from letters she photographed. These were letters she happened upon in her travels. Now anyone can do it by using this program that pulls the appropriate photos from the huge cauldron of Flickr. I feel somewhat conflicted...it's also too bad that I don't know how to adjust the screen so that my "words" always fit...



From Retrievr. Hmmm, don't think that embedded either. Sigh!

And then I went to Big Huge Labs...! I feel like I have been run over by a truck! Too many things to do with photos! I think I will go stand outside, in the dark, and listen to the wind brush the recent rain around. Whew...

Thing 3 - Flickr

I love Flickr. Our family started with a Yahoo account, but then my husband found Flickr (then Yahoo photos migrated to Flickr), and so we have had a Flickr family account for the last three years. I talk it up with all my family and friends. What a great service! It's easy to upload photos, you get tons of space, and best of all, I don't have to try to email photos to said friends and family anymore. I control how people view my photos (who can view what, grouping of photos, tags), and I don't have to worry that my photos are going to clog up anyone's email account. Plus, I like to see what everyone else in the world is looking at. It's amazing how much we are all alike. How may cute baby pictures could there be?!

Here is one of my favorites from our account.

My only beef with Flickr is that it orders all photos by when you upload them. This means that if you upload a bunch of photos that you took last week, and then you upload a bunch of photos you took last year, it orders the oldest ones first because they are the newest to be uploaded. And what this means is that my husband refuses to let me upload any recent photos because he hasn't finished uploading photos from last year. While I appreciate his fastidiousness in regard to "order", I wish I could share the photos of our son's recent 6th birthday with all of our friends and family, and not have to wait for someone else to find the time to "order" everything. I don't blame my husband, I blame the technology. Change, Flickr! Allow for alternative ordering!

Thing 2 - Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

I thought the interview with Stephen Abram was interesting mostly for his curious insight as to whether or not people would be able to find the time to complete the 23 things. He admitted to all the time he used on smoke breaks (before he got cancer), and said that if people were as addicted to learning the new technologies, they wouldn't have any trouble finding 15 minutes a day to do so.

I thought John Blyberg's piece on Library 2.0 was a nice contrast to the lengthy O'Reilly read on Web 2.0. I found myself agreeing with most of what Blyberg said about the future of libraries and what patrons/users will demand from their libraries. I did feel that he was off when he made the argument that new patrons would be increasingly from the younger segment of society. "Is “they” the dwindling elderly population, the soon-to-retire baby-boomers? " I'm pretty sure that the most rapidly growing segment of society ARE the elderly and the baby-boomers! Plus, they are the ones with money, commitment, and time to get what they want.

However, being "pretty sure" that something is true does not make it so. And in the back of my mind I heard my husband saying "I need a citation for that!" So I harnessed the great brain of the internet to find the article I vaguely remembered reading that supported my statement. Of course, my search came up empty, as is so often the case. This served to remind me that even the greatest tool is useless if you don't know how to wield it correctly. My information is out there somewhere, floating in the ether, and I just have to come up with the proper query...sigh...

Thing 1 - My First Blog...

Wow, I am blogging. Hello fellow 23 Things participants. I am arriving a little late in the game, but hope to catch up...

So many bells and whistles with which to play. Voila! A picture of me! And now a link to something I like... and lastly, how about some movie magic: