Learn & Play @ CML Completed! Or is it...?

Wow, what a scramble at the end of the program, but what a great program it was! Loved learning about Delicious and Wikis. Twitter, not so much, but at least I know how it works and how it can be used in the workplace. I was excited to see people participate in the program I thought never would. It was even more exciting to see those same people relying on their peers for assistance. This was a great team building exercise.

Now to keep on learning. And like I said when Learn & Play @CML was kicked off, now I don't feel guilty exploring new technologies at work. It does relate to work in so many ways!

MOLDI

Electronic access to materials is a great idea and I see libraries moving more and more of their collection access engergy and monies into this endeavor. For years, MOLDI has provided access to some pretty good titles available in ebook and audiobook format. Now, that being said the selection eflicks so far is mediocre at best. When I heard that they began to offer movies, I decided to browse the various genres to see what they had. I didn't recognize any of the titles, but did recognize Todd Bridges on the cover of a movie called "I Got Five On It" Seriously?

If you haven't used this service before take a look. Its the future for our audiobook, music and movie collections. And just think, no more worries about scratched DVDs or CDs with smeared with jelly...at least I hope that's jelly. Eew!

Podcasting

Wow, this one took me a lot longer to get a handle on than I thought it would. I started poking around the podcast directories last night as I was trying to rush towards a midnight finish, but alas I got too sleepy.

All the directories I used seemed kind of clunky to me. I've been listening to podcasts for years, but only when I came across them by accident or more recently through iTunes. After two days of searching I did find a couple of new podcasts that seem promising. I added them to my Google Reader aggregator. One talks about the automobile industry and the other helps teach listeners Japanese. Yes, I do love cars and my taste change every week. The Japanese language site is fun. Its hosted by a native English speaker and a native Japanese language teacher.

Once found, adding them to Google reader was e-a-s-y! Yippee!

Youtube!

I've been a fan of Youtube for a while for both its amatuer and commercial content. Recently, I was able to watch an entire Japanese drama through Youtube, I would not have known about or have been able to view otherwise. Unfortnately, for my partner and a friend at work it was a sappy sad drama that I couldn't get enough of. This fan made music video does a great job of summarizing the drama, even if you can't understand the lyrics...I need a tissue...sniff.

Tooling Around

The library toolbar is a cool addition to your browser, especially for the library's power users. With one click, customers can see the latest additions to the catalog, search the catalog without visiting the library's homepage and so much more! At work, I don't use it as much because I can't get my default search tool to be Google (always reverts back to the catalog), and I'm always on Aquabrowser any way.

I was surprised by the recent additions to the Power Tools page. I enjoyed learning about Lively. I had not heard of it before and I'm curious if our teens are using it. Hmmm...

Web 2.0 Award Winner: Revolution Health

At first I couldn't figure out why this site was an award winner. It isn't any different that a lot of other health sites I've seen. Then I found the option to maintain all of my health records online and talk with others in their online community. Now I've watched those interviews on t.v. where people say, "I saw doctor after doctor and they couldn't diagnose my problem, then I found an online community of regular people like you and me and I found out what I had!" Hmmm...okay. I guess I'm lucky to be heathy, because I wouldn't feel comfortable taking medical advice from some anonomous stranger. However, the Web 2.0 list was interesting.

Google Docs

So I've been updating my resume and instead of keeping a copy saved in emails to myself, I thought I would try Google Docs and complete thing #17 to boot. Well, I was a little disapointed. My uploaded resume, originally created in Word, lost some important formating and ended up looking kinda funky and not good funky either. While this didn't work, I can see how Google Docs can be useful if you don't always have access to Word. For me, turning my documents into PDFs makes the most sense when I need to be able to access them from anywhere. Long live student pricing on overpriced software!