20th Thing

I enjoyed exploring the various applications and concepts. I didn't find too many that I would use at work or even at home, but I gained an understanding of what they're all about. I now feel that I am better prepared to assist people at the library when they are discussing or trying to use this stuff.
I would certainly participate in a future program like this in order to broaden my horizon and be more technosavvy.

Gaming

After trying a few games I remembered why I always watched my friends place Frogger and Centipede and all those other 80's games: I'm not very good and I get too frustrated by my ineptitude.
I also enjoy watching my daughters play online games and am amazed how fast they surpass me.
I'm not sure of the ramifications this has for the library. Does this mean that staff who are gamers need constant rewards/praises to produce/improve? Do the war games cause our patrons to be more competitive or violent? Are professional sports teams in serious jeopardy or not having future recruits because soon everyone will rather be playing virtual baseball/hockey/deathmage?

Google Earth

Google Earth was fun to browse and watch the map spin from one spot to focus on another. I enjoyed seeing my house from above and zooming through canyons like one of those Disneyland virtual helicopter rides.
But I'm not sure I'd turn to it very often as a reference tool. Too many times the screen went blackish-grey when focussing on a spot, or else one quadrant of a map would be blurry with weird colors. I also noticed that geotaggers were often inaccurate with their tagging.

Avatars & Second Life

This is my Tektek avatar...


And this is my DoppelMe avatar.

I think avatars are an interesting way to create an anonymous visual persona.

I've never gotten into virtual communities like Second Life because I'd rather spend my free time with my wife and kids and friends exploring and living real life.

Online Applications

I can see Googledocs, Zoho and similar web-based applications being very useful. I could see using the Share feature to collaborate with others, and I really like the idea of being able to access a document anytime, from anywhere.
I liked the simplicity of Googledocs and the easy composing and save features. Zoho is also pretty cool, and seems to have more options.

Search Engines

Comparisons of metasearch engines:
We worked on an Information Request this week trying to find specific facts about the Green Parrot Snake which lives in Central and South America. It took us a while to find exactly what the patron wanted, so I thought I'd do a simple search in these search engines.
Dogpile -
Seemed to bring just as many commercial sites selling green snake products as it did informational info.
Mamma -
Less commercial sites showed up in the results, but very little informational sites came up. Most of the results were sites which just provided photos.
Rollyo -
Had a few more informational sites than than the other two.

So in this case the best search was Rollyo.

However I would still use Google, since these 3 didn't give that many results, and I kept feeling like I was missing the really good stuff that Google and the other Google products find (Scholar, Books, etc.).

Podcasting

I listened to:
1) In Good Company - a booktalk podcast from Wadsworth Public Library
2) An Introduction to the WSU Owen Library Map Library
3) KPLU's BirdNote

I have never created a podcast nor really listened to one before, but I can see their usefulness in libraries. Booktalks and reading stories are good uses of this technology.