Thing #44: Economy

Here's another Thing virtually done. My family does online banking, so I'm familiar with a lot of the features there. My husband was recently "worried" about one of the grocery bills I brought home, so the other night I was surfing coupon sites to find printable coupons. Found a few, and some recipes too! Some of the other links were pretty interesting. We do pretty good with gas, are spoiled with our cell phones, so those I didn't explore too much. I've heard of and browsed CraigsList and Freecycle. Any tips on saving money are welcome, so I'm going to really peruse some of the stuff in there. I was a little disappointed that the weekend treasure site didn't show anything for Rochester. And I've always been interested in raising a chicken or two. We'll see about that one. I heard you had to get a license to do that in Rochester within the city limits. Fun stuff. Thanks for including it.

Thing #43: Online TV & Video

I use Hulu for online TV viewing. I missed an episode of one of my favorite shows, Saving Grace, because of a recording mishap. Watched it on Hulu. It's very convenient and a lot of the major television companies are just putting their shows on their websites. I also use Netflix where you can watch movies online instead of having the disc shipped to your house. It's awesome. My husband watched the first season of Heroes that way. I haven't caught up to him on that show yet, but one of these days...

Thing #40: Mashup the Web

Hmmm... I feel like we're chasing our tails here. Aren't all these widgets and things that I've added to the blog mashups. I mean really? But it's good to get a really clear definition of it, which the video supplied. Thanks!

To be nice and play along, though, my husband and I use CrimeReports to check on our neighborhood, which we have "fondly" been calling "the 'hood" of late because of an annoying gang presence in the last couple of years. I looked at LibWorm and decided that it was just too much for me right now. The grinding gears in my head came to a screeching halt trying to figure out what I wanted to do with all that information. And I was going to do Travelr, but then I got in there and there was all this stuff about lattitude and longitude and I thought, didn't I kind of do this already with FlickrMaps. I think I did. And it was sooooo much easier. So, here's that map.

I think this is another one that I'll probably play around with more later, but right now, enough is enough. :)

Thing #42: Music 2.0

I really had fun with this Thing, despite the fact that it's not something I can really do at work (no music at our desk, no headphones allowed) and my new laptop is having issues with non-headphone sound. But, yesterday I signed up for both Pandora and Last.fm. I poked around in both of them. Today, I asked my daughter if she wanted to listen to music on the computer. She was game. Of course! She loves music! So we sat down with two sets of earbuds and logged into Last.fm. We listened to Justin Roberts, Ella Jenkins, Raffi, Backyardigans, and more. It was awesome! I had to leave for a second and when I came back, my daughter said, "Put in your ducky ears, Mommy! Hurry!" (I have ducky earbuds.) And her little feet were bobbing up and down. She was listening to "Pop Fly" by Justin Roberts. She loves Justin Roberts, but hasn't heard that one before. After a slow song, we tried some of the kid stations on Reciva. It didn't work so well. There were too many commercials. It never got to the music. That was the Disney station. I couldn't get the any other ones to work, for some reason. I tried one of Live 365 too, but just ended up at one of my local stations websites. I was probably doing something wrong, but oh well. I ended up going to the MPR website and listening to the newscast because by that time, my daughter had lost all interest and wandered away. Pretty fun stuff, regardless!

Oh yes, and another widget has been added.

Thing #41: Mashup your life

Yes. Randomly skipping around doing things now. Not skipping like the thing you do when you're a little kid, just not doing things in order. You know. But I'm trying to get through some of these, and this weekend I'm working at the public desk, so can't do some of it. I'm just working through the ones that I can.

I signed up for Lifestream. It's neat. All of your stuff together. I have no followers yet. It's new to me. I'm not sure I'm sold yet. I could see how this would be really great for libraries to use if they have all of these feelers out through twitter and facebook etc, to have it all in one place to advertise to people. Nice! I'll play with it for a few weeks and see if I like it.

Thing #39: Digital Storytelling

I'm skipping a Thing, although I've looked into it. I'll come back to it when I get a video to post. Digital Storytelling is a fun thing for me if only because it gave me the opportunity to play with things that I had wanted to anyway. I do scrapbooking as a hobby, and have recently started in on digital scrapbooking. So, even though I looked at some of the items linked, I didn't get into it a ton. I like Scrapblog. It's advertised in all the scrapbooking magazines that I read, besides the Creative Memories one, that only advertises it's own products. :) I did toodle around with some of the recommended items, but I have to post one of my own creations here. It's my favorite. And usually, I try to avoid putting my kids out there, but I just can't help it.

Thing #37: Photo Tales

We're getting into things that I really like to do through scrapbooking, which is neat to be able to learn about. I still have my account with Flickr, but haven't done much with it. My family has a photo-sharing site at SmugMug, and they have some neat features. But I would like to keep my family somewhat anonymous, so I'm not putting the link out there.

I posted a Slideoo slide in the sidebar of my Flickr pictures, registered for One True Media and Picnik. Both of these are pretty cool. I've struggled with some projects at work that involved photos because I have editing software at home and know how to use it, but not anything of note at work. So, it's neat to know that it's available out there, if needed. I love Picasa and use it at home. I've recently recommended it for use at work, but I don't have enough photos for work that I need it at this point.

Cool stuff! I'll be bookmarking a lot of the photo editing sites for use at home in my scrapbooking hobby and may use some for a slideshow I'm working on for work.