#20 Relax & Reflect (Completion)

I think this was a very cool project - it's so important these days to keep abreast of changes and developments in the online culture, and I think that this program gave me some kind of an idea how to keep on top of what's out there. Electronic literacy is rapidly becoming an essential skill in today's world - and is perhaps THE essential skill in the information marketplace, so I think the general awareness of new developments instilled by this program was very helpful to me not only as a library professional, but as a library patron.

Thanks everyone!

#19 Gaming

This was cool! I have been using Yahoo for 7 or 8 years for email, but I had no idea that there were so many games on there - very cool. There are some great time-killing games in there - I especially liked the Word Search came and the Scrabble. Fun.

#18 Maps and Geotagging

I was pretty familiar with Google Earth prior to this section, just from working on the reference desk. Google Earth has always delivered something extra when Google Maps doesn't quite get the job done - one feature, though that I was unware of was the star maps available through Google Earth. That was pretty amazing!

Geotagging is another feature I've found very useful for some time - I have been using Flickr's geotagging feature quite a bit through the past month or two, surveying flood damage in my Indiana hometown. The geotagging feature has helped me to easily locate the most recently uploaded images. Very useful!

#17 Avatars & Second Life

This is the avatar I created for the Teen Librarian page. Actually, I should probably update my avatar, I don't have the beard anymore.

When I think of an "avatar," I think of Timothy Leary calling the Beatles "divine avatars." Either that, or the episode of Star Trek: TNG called "Silicon Avatar" (which is actually one of the few decent episodes from the 5th season) , both of which predate the current usage by a number of years.

Avatars are fun. I guess in the online sense, I think of an avatar as more of a cartoony caricature of one's self, or the virtual characters created on sites like Gaia. I downloaded the Second Life software and was a little overwhelmed! It was fun to explore, but I definitely don't live there and don't think I'd like to! It's definitely a cool environment, but it was sort of an "information overload" type of situation for me. It will be intersting to see how this total-immersion virtual environment evolves, I have a feeling that this is the direction the online environment is moving!

#16 Online Applications & Tools

This was an interesting project.

I created a spreadsheet in Google docs, andshared it with myself, using one of my other email accounts. This is actually pretty cool. I had no idea that this service existed.

I then moved over to Zoho, and - to be honest - was a little overwhelmed, there were so many bells and whistles on Zoho, I wasn't exactly sure where to even get started! Clearly, Zoho has a lot more functionality than Google Docs (for now, anyway), but it's kind of a double-edged sword - while Zoho does have the extra functionality, I think that Google Docs is a lot easier to use.

#14 Podcasting: something for everyone

This was really cool - I was aware of podcasts before we started this section, but I wasn't aware of the RSS angle. I have a couple of friends who do some podcasting, and what I'd been doing in the past is going to the website, checking for updates, and downloading the podcast to my desktop and listening to it from there.

I had no idea that, using RSS feeds, it's so easy to subscribe to cool podcasts and have them sent directly to my Bloglines and/or Google Reader account, where I can just click on a button and listen to them - without having to download them to my desktop and open them through iTunes. I really learned something w/ this section. Very cool.

#15 Search Engines

I use Google. ALl the time. I like Google. I have, from the very beginning. I remember when I began using Google - late 90s, or whenever they first got started. The simple, streamlined interface was (and is) a refreshing change from the confusing, overly busy, WTF interface of many other (some of them long-gone) search engines. Ask.com must like Google's interface, too - they've borrowed heavily from it. Here's a question for ask.com - "why did you get rid of Jeeves?" Jeeves was, potential Wodehouse-estate lawsuits notwithstanding, cool!

Anyway, I have been really impressed with the way, over the years, that Google has progressively supplemented their basic web-search capability. Google maps, newsgroup searches, blog searching, and Google Books are all features that I use regularly. Even though I have serious reservations about how Google has become the monolithic Wal-Mart of online information-seeking resources, I feel like their success is well-deserved. Sort of like Starbuck's.

Anyway, aside from those slight reservations about Google taking over the planet, I am 100% OK with Google. I just don't see anything at Yahoo or Ask that really even makes them much of a serious competitor to Google.