Playing with video

The topic of video came up because online booktalks are cool! Thought I'd play around with posting video and so found this cool clip of my puppy a few years back trying on booties to protect his little paws from the snow. The hope was to get him to play in the snow, but as you'll see, he didn't go near it. He seemed so much happier to be outside in the cold with the booties on. Fun!

Winter is here...

I winterized my avatar. I guess it's time to admit that winter is finally here. Shoveling the driveway will do that for ya!

My Dewey Number

Who knew? I have a Dewey number. Here's the scoop!

Froggy's Dewey Decimal Section:
460 Spanish & Portuguese languages
Froggy = 685775 = 685+775 = 1460

Class:
400 Language

Contains:
Linguistics and language books.

What it says about you:
You value communication, even with people who are different from you. You like trying new things don't mind being exposed to unfamiliar territory. You get bored with routines that never change.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Shelfari

A friend of mine was using Shelfari instead of Library Thing. No limits, as far as I can tell, on how many books you can add! Pretty cool. And you can see my shelf of what I'm reading now on the left side of my blog here. I'm trying to decide if I can use this somehow on our library website. Hmmmm...

Froggy finds Thing #23 liberating

Hah! I finished! I seriously didn't think I'd get through all 23 things. Now that I'm done, I wish there was more. I will definitely make it a higher priority to keep up on new technology.

I already blogged a bit about my experience in my last post. I will say that my favorite things were Flickr, Digg, and Facebook. I had no idea how many of my friends were out there on Facebook! What fun. I actually found several old buddies from high school and college that I've lost touch with over the years. Great stuff.

Here's hoping this is just the beginning and not truly the end!

Froggy finds Thing #22 inspiring

I have to keep this up, huh. Well, I guess.

First of all, I'm going to find out who else in my library has finished the program so that we can chat about everything. I have to say I learned a lot. As part of my resolution to continue, I'll work towards actually using many of the tools that I did find useful. It's a bit overwhelming to put it all together. And I have to confess that I kept at it with Bloglines and like it more now. That was one of the things that I just struggled with, and complained about, in my blog. After I kept with it, it wasn't so bad.

I had originally thought I might turn this blog into a children's reading blog for grades 3 - 8 to talk about all the books that I'm reading for the Maud Hart Lovelace Award nominees. But since I have to keep going with this one, I guess I'll just have to create another blog. Or just use LibraryThing. Something to discuss with my supervisor for a fun task. I've hit babble now. Will stop.

Froggy finds Thing #21 a little bit of old, a little bit of new

I'm sitting at home with a crummy cold in front of the tv with nothing to watch, so thought I'd play around more with the 23 things. Yes, I have a book sitting next to me too, but my eyes hurt. And my head hurts. I'm not sure how looking at a screen is any different than looking at pages in a book, but it doesn't seem to hurt as much.

Thing #21: I read the two articles, which seem to validate what we're hoping to learn by doing the 23 things. Get out there in the webspace as a library or librarian and make it work for us. Sounds good to me. I joined the 23 things ning, put my picture up with my cutesy little girl when she just turned a year old. And posted a comment on a couple of co-worker's pages. Hi Louise and Pam!

I looked at some of the other sites that were listed. I'm gonna have to find a scrapbooking network out there somewhere one of these days. I had joined WebJunction a while ago. One of my colleagues is always sending out articles from the site. It must be a great way to share information. They've just undergone a total revamp of their website. I need to set aside some time to explore all the changes.

That means, Thing #21 = done!

Froggy finds Thing #20. Yep. I found it.

I actually appreciate that MySpace and Facebook are part of the 23 things. This is another one where my husband's whole family is involved in this kind of sport. I did check out Hennepin county's MySpace site. They're always on top of the web world. I heard that they have a whole department devoted to their website and web work. If only we had that at our library.

I signed up for a Facebook account. I'm not telling what I signed up under, though, because I'm actually going to use it for "real". It turns out that lots of friends and family have already signed up! This is another thing that could turn out to be addicting.

Froggy finds Thing #19 good for her MP3 player

Podcasts are lots of fun, and I haven't played with them as much as I would like. I have a really great MP3 player that was gifted to me by my techie husband who may have been planning to give me a present that would last me my entire life. I definitely don't plan on upgrading any time soon. I went to MPR and subscribed to their How's the Family podcast. I listened to the podcast called Families are Consuming MORE! I agree. You can see the list of recent podcasts for this show here: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/podcasts/hows_the_family/.

I can see using my MP3 player a lot more to listen to podcasts, where I haven't used it for that in the past. I see there's a lot out there that's library-related also. My husband was just telling me the other day about a podcast that the creators of Digg have out there. I might have to go check that out. First, I'll have to check back with him to see what it was about... Can't go too overboard, here.

I also checked out Gcast. I have nothing to create a podcast about at this point. And I don't want to put anything out there and waste space and time. We're thinking about posting a class by podcast on our staff wiki in the future. I'll consider using this site to do that.

Froggy finds Thing #18 already done!

Yay! The other night, I was reading Little Loon and Papa by Toni Buzzeo to my 2-year-old daughter. It has loon sounds in the text that you're supposed to make. Honestly, I'm from Oklahoma. We don't have loons. I've heard the loon song, but couldn't replicate. Anyway, my daughter couldn't sleep, for whatever reason 2-year-olds can't sleep, and insisted on being downstairs with me in the den. I was on the computer (probably working on my 23 things) and thought it would be fun to find out what a loon really sounds like. So on to YouTube to show my little girl what a real loon looks and sounds like.

This is one of the videos that we found:


There were more that had better video of the loons. My daughter thought this was so great! And what a cool way to bring a fiction book to life for a little girl. It was very easy to find more like this one. In fact, we moved on to moose videos, and beavers, and so on with all the animals featured in the book. So fun! And it seemed to calm my daughter down so that she finally decided to go to bed, you know, so that we could read the book one more time...or two or three times...maybe more.

Froggy finds Thing #17 familiar

Thing #17 contained a lot of to do's. I think I got through it all. I'll recap. ELM. I worked with these databases a lot while I was getting my library degree, which was not too long ago. I set up a search alert for myself. Search alerts were a new find for me. I think I got it to work okay, even though there was a lot of confusion. I mean, confusion on the 23 things blog and as I fumbled around with it. I made up a webpage in EBSCO. I really don't see a use for it for me. So, I deleted it after I played around a bit with it. I e-mailed the ProQuest webpage to myself. That was interesting. And I set up an account with NetLibrary (I thought I had one already, but couldn't remember the login) and made a note.

I like NetLibrary. I don't use it much, but it has some awesome features. I did a presentation on it for my colleagues at one point when we first started using it at our library. I even remember mentioning the cool notes feature. I didn't realize there were so many new features in EBSCO and ELM. I learned a lot on this Thing.

Froggy finds Thing #16 helpful

I wish we had something like the Assignment Calculator and Research Project Calculator when I was an undergraduate student. I would have used it if only to keep myself on task. Working in libraries all my life, I knew how to do the research, but sometimes needed help with the non-book related research. There's so much more out there now.

These tools will be useful to help students do their research papers. It seems that research is dying, in that students no longer know about any resource except for the internet and Google. We're constantly explaining to kids that it has to be a reputable site and you have to know how to tell the difference online.

I find it strange that kids are so trusting of anything that's out there. Our world is getting so small because of internet access. You can visit with people halfway across the world. Identity theft is rampant. There's a new type of stalker, a new type of pervert trying to meet young kids. And kids seem so naive about all this. My rant for the day, I guess. It's late. Tangents happen.

I'm glad this tool is out there so that we can help students learn about true research.

Froggy finds Thing #15 to be a part of her every day life...

Yeppers. That's right. Every day life. No kidding! I've mentioned my husband, the software engineer, and all of his techy-ness that rubs off on me. I watched the Second Life video of Info Island and have to say that the graphics are not that great compared to some of the awesome games that are out there.

Our family (extended) is a family of WOWers. For a while, family didn't call, they chatted on World of Warcraft. All my husband's family had accounts, even his dad. It's odd, how it becomes one of your social circles. I had my own account for a while, and it was fun. I realized after a certain point, that it took up too much of my time. I played a lot while I was pregnant with our first child because I wasn't playing soccer or biking or doing much active for that matter. For some reason, it wasn't that relaxing for me, though. I'm too goal-driven. I wanted to finish all the quests, and there were always more.

It's something that my husband does to get away and relax. I think gaming is for him, what reading is for me. MMORPGs are so big for socializing! My husband has conversations with people from other countries while he's playing. Our world is getting so small now. It's just amazing!

Now there are systems like the Wii that are revolutionizing console play and making it that much more like online socializing. Our library has a teen game night with Wii, PS2 and computer games, which I think is so necessary, since this is the world that our kids are growing up in. I'm excited to see what else the future will hold for my little ones as they get older.

Froggy finds Thing #14 very useful and fun!

I explored Library Thing for Thing #14. This type of program has come up a few times in one of my committees. I am a reader for the Maud Hart Lovelace Award in MN. One of our members has brought it up a couple of times, but it seems like our group is more of a notecard collecting type of group. Now that I know what this is all about and have taken the time to explore, I think I might support that committee member in her wishes to start this way of organizing the group. Or I'll at least join her in keeping track in this way.

As part of Thing #14, I added my most recent reads to my Library Thing account. These are books I have just read, am reading, or am getting ready to read. I didn't review them yet, but I think that would be a nice way to keep track. Enjoy!

Thing #13: Not too bad

Ah, productivity. I must already realize that I'm terribly disorganized and am try, try, trying to fix the problem.... constantly. I think I mentioned in another thing post that I already use My Yahoo as a homepage on my home computer. I love it. It's so very simple. I checked out all the other tools mentioned, but I am one of those people that uses a PDA. It keeps me going. I carry it everywhere because it is also my phone. And I try to keep my work and private life separate, so I don't worry about syncing the two calendars (and etc.) together. I could see where these would be handy to those who are inclined to use them. I love to do lists. But that's just too tempting to constantly do that, so I have to restrain myself on that one. I'd be doing it all day long and nothing else. I'm considering this one done.

Thing #12: Addicted to News

I have to say that I have a love-hate relationship with news. Thing #12 is one that I have to be careful about how much time I devote. My father was a news reporter. It's a rough life, and I got to hear about all the horrible car accidents, bombings, riots, etc that he covered. Being a radio journalist, his main goal was to get a "sound bite." Generally this means that you either have to get someone saying something, or you have to get the "boom" of the explosion, the "honking" of the traffic jam caused by the accident. Anyway, because of my father's all-consuming relationship with news, I'm not so big on it. Not only is it depressing, but it's all too overwhelming. I like to scan. Just the headlines. I don't read the really bad stuff. It's enough to know it happened. I don't need the details.

That said, the sites that compose the articles by vote are kinda interesting to me because I truly can just scan. Every once in a while, I like a good long read, like the New York Times provides. I looked at Mixx, Digg, Newsvine, and Reddit. I liked Digg the most. I was sad to see that Ian Hibell passed away in a car accident, on his bike. Mixx was okay. I didn't like the other two at all. They seemed to be all politics right now. Not too big on politics either.

I tried to "share" the op-ed article Sarah Palin Speaks! from the NY Times, but YahooBuzz didn't work for me. I signed up for Digg, but have to do all the verifying etc. Cool tool!

Thing #11: Delicious, but not tasty

Neat-oh. I think that's something that my dad always said as I was growing up. It might date me a little. This particular thing had to do with the website del.icio.us. I could have a lot of fun with this site. I'm always trying to set up bookmarks, but don't often use them. If I actually saw them and could organize them like delicious does, I think I'd use them more.

Well, for record-keeping, I watched the podcast, checked out the Minn23 account, took a look at Lookybook and went through Lemons Are Not Red (a book I have to check out for my two-year-old), made my own account (which I hope to play around more with in the future), and I tagged my Thing #8 post with biking/Freewheel tags. Fun stuff!

I remember mention of this being discussed at this year's PLA conference, about using this type of tagging in library catalogs. It sounds revolutionary to me. A lot of people would be able to find books on Native Americans if they didn't have to look up "Indian Americans." How useful this would be for local communities that have their own way of saying things: dialects could be used. It all reminds me of Sandy Berman and the work that he did in revamping subject headings.

Thing #10: Wikis!

I like wikis. Our library has a staff wiki for their intranet. Pretty cool. I've created a page or two on it. Still learning, but it's fun. I watched the video that the 23things blog says too. Neat presentation. And I put in the "more blah blahs" in the Meta:Sandbox. I kind of feel funny about changing stuff unless I'm actually knowledgeable about it. And even then, I hesitate. I think it'll be fun to browse through the bookie/library wikis mentioned also.

Thing #9: Not sure about this one

Thing #9 had to do with online word processing software. I'm not sure how I feel about this. I'm trying to think of applications in the library world, and I come up with all those people out there who can't afford Microsoft Office. And yet, they can come into their library and get on the internet. Where I think this might get a little dicey is when you have these personal documents floating around online that people might be able to hack into. And then again, no one is really safe, because your personal computer can just as easily be hacked into. It's kind of an interesting debate and/or thought.

One other pro that I can see would be the ability to NOT carry around a thumb drive/disk (does anyone use disks anymore)/whatever you use to carry your documents around. Hmmm... I like it, minus the security issues.

Oh, and for the record, I edited on Zoho. Mine was the Texas comment, as they truly think they are their own nation, per my mum and good ol' Lance Armstrong, among others who have claimed this untruth. I couldn't get the document to come through on GoogleDocs, but am still working on it. I requested access.

Thing #8: more photo fun

I really enjoy photo fun. I don't have a ton of time to play around with it, but I really wish I did because there are some really cool tools out there. I did take some time to use picturetrail.com and set up an awesome slideshow. The really neat thing about this slideshow is that my husband, Mr. Programmer, was working on something very similar to this for our family website. It was very cool-looking. Unfortunately, our family website broke, and with two little ones and lacking time, he didn't have the time to fix the code. Now, using PictureTrail.com, I can post the same type of thing on Flickr or whatever phot-sharing program I choose! Awesome!

So, here it is. While biking across the state of Oklahoma on the yearly organized bike ride called Freewheel, I had my husband snap shots of me and libraries along the way. We've since done this bike ride another couple of times, but in different areas of the state.

Thing #7 is a lotta stuff!

So, I decided I should keep plugging away at the Things. I'm glad I get the e-mails that prompt me to work on them. I did a couple of the things that the e-mail suggested, then went back to the Things webpage and, lo and behold, there's a ton more that I have to do. Let's see if I can get it all down.

I have e-mail accounts, way too many, and thinking about adding another and using a current one for wanted spam. I IM and text message lots with my cool Palm Centro phone. In fact, that was the way that I communicated with my husband while he was at work and I was on maternity leave recently. Unfortunately, IM and texting aren't allowed at work. I would love it if we could IM at work. It just seems so much easier to me than using the phone. On the phone I sit and say "um" a lot. With IM, I can just type the message and they can get to it when they have the time. But then, I used to use IM to chat with family and friends when we moved out of state. It was an easy and cheap way to keep in touch. I love IM. Text messaging costs money, so I avoid that if possible. But that's an easier way than calling if you just have something quick to say to a friend. We have an IM account set up for Children's Reference, but never use it. I kind of wish we could since it's probably how our main audience communicates. Something to investigate...

What else? Watched the couple of videos. Again, same sentiment as above. Very cool! Wish we could do that at our library in the children's area. We actually do in our adult reference area.

Okay, moving on. I listened to an interview with Connie Fairbanks and learned about her writing a cookbook, Scratch That: Seasonal Menus and Perfect Pairings. I never really thought about the process of writing a cookbook except for cooking a lot and testing out the recipes. I felt like I learned a thing or two.

And last, but not least, Webjunction has done a major overhaul on their website, so the article we are supposed to read is no longer available. But I get it, I've participated in web conferences and webinars. No biggy. So, on I go to the next Thing...

Thing #6: Quick and Easy

I kind of played around with a card generator. Picked my favorite Homer picture and put it on. Looks like fun. Again, my husband got excited because he used to play Magic, the card game. These cards are just like those, but you can make them your own. Anyway, got it all set up, picked a background color, put in text and photo. Did not realize that this particular color had spiders on the background until I e-mailed it to myself and looked at it enlarged. Now my beautiful relaxed puppy looks like the spiders are coming to get him!!! Oh well. It was still fun to do, and I could see applications within the library world.

Froggy finds Thing #5 too time consuming

How many mashups are there for Flickr? I found a list with 365, some of which didn't really seem to be related. I did get my husband interested in Flickr. Now he's off to other sites, comparing, researching, trying to find the best option for our once a year subscription to a photo site. I may have created a monster. It's a good thing my husband is the detail-oriented type. I've been looking through some of the tools for an hour or so and just feel exhausted.

In playing around with Thing #5, I did get to do something a little fun. Here's my effort to use a mashup:




You can also view some of the pictures I posted on my Flickr site .

Froggy finds Thing #4 AWESOME!!!!

I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the stupendous options, but since I do a bit of scrapbooking (read: major hobby), Flickr looks like a dream come true. I can't wait to explore a lot more and hook all my family members and friends! I uploaded a picture and sent it off to a "friend" to see what they think. Our personal family webpage is currently broken. We've been wondering what to do. It consists mostly of a truckload (no I mean it, the dump truck type) of photos. Flickr just might be our solution.

Love the tagging feature too! Because from a scrap perspective, that means that you can pull together all the photos on a particular topic and put 'em in a cool creative album. I'm feeling a bit like I may have found a new addiction. What to do, what to do...

Froggy finds Thing #3 frustrating...

Many months ago I kept hearing the buzz about RSS. Actually, I'd been hearing about it for a long time, but finally got fed up and decided that I needed to learn about it or I was going to fall way behind. This was while I was still pregnant and not sleeping well. So one night at about 3:00 in the morning, I got onto my Yahoo account and set up a My Yahoo page. It was great! I felst so relieved. I had all my news there, a link to my e-mail account, weather for both my homes, and goofiness besides.

In doing this project, I went to Bloglines as recommended and was overwhelmed by the messiness. I'm not sure why, but it just seemed difficult to get the page the way I wanted it. And I'm sure already being set up with a page full of RSS feeds in a different display with Yahoo didn't help any. I like My Yahoo, and I'm sticking with it. I suppose I'll check the Bloglines every once in a while, but it's not my cup of tea. I would recommend My Yahoo for anyone out there that likes to play with the colors of their page and get things to look the way they want. Click and drag, etc. That's all for just this minute folks!

Froggy finds Thing #2 interesting and thought-provoking...

Thing #2 involved watching a film and reading a couple of articles. The film mentioned "fitting Things in" which hit a chord with me. I've always been one to cram everything into life that I can. I play sports and enjoy it. When I had my first child, many people told me that I would find my life too busy to continue sports. But I have continued. I've made it a priority in my life and am lucky enough to have family that supports me in this. So I see what Mr. Abram was saying about making learning Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 a priority. Make the time. I continue to "make time" to do what I want to do even though I now have a second child. And it's hard, but life is that much more interesting because I insist on living it to its fullest.



I was also reminded of the role of libraries throughout the years reading the blog and article recommended. I've always felt that libraries have been on the cutting edge of technology even going way back to scrolls and the printing press. The internet and all the tools that have evolved because of the internet are the same as scrolls and the printing press for libraries. They are revolutionary. They will change our lives. And the library will give access to these tools to communities that might not be able to access them on their own. I look forward to learning the 23 Things so that I can participate in assisting our library community with their life-long learning endeavors. Isn't that what being a librarian is all about?

Froggy finds Thing #1...

Liking all things froggy, I decided to name my new blog "Froggy Finds". So far, I like the background for my blog. It seems pretty froggy. I'm hoping I can find some other froggy things along the way. The next part of Thing #1 is to create an avatar. Should be interesting. I wonder if they have frog avatars...