Oh, it's you . . . again.

Coming REAL soon: Vending machine books

2007-01-10T15:34:00.000-05:00

Okay, so vending machines with books in them are not that new. In an August 2005 article, Paris has traditional vending machines where consumers can purchase books. But now, the new vending machines can print and bind a book for you.

Okay, print-on-demand (POD), as it is called, is nothing new either. A Technology Review article from January 2005, The Future of Books, by Jason Epstein, discusses its use. However, according to a December 14, 2006 article in Fortune Small Business these POD vending machines are almost consumer-ready and will start to appear in libraries and bookstores this year. New York Public Library appears to be the first when they get a machine next month.

This is an idea I suggested for libraries after reading the Technology Review article. I envisioned the libraries would still keep some circulating copies that will continue to be free and a small fee to print a book (as is the case with these new POD vending machines). Except, to keep printing (and killing trees) to a minimum, patrons could receive a discount on their next printing for returning a previously printed book that is in good condition, of course. These gently used books would then be sold by the library at a reduced rate that would be less than the price to print from the POD machines.

Is it too late to patent my idea?

If you would like to see a video of a print-on-demand machine in use, visit www.OnDemandBooks.com that will be supplying New York Public Library's machine. If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, the World Bank InfoShop has one of these machines up and running.

Experimenting with "Spell with Flickr"

2007-01-09T20:24:00.000-05:00

I hate using Blogger with IE! Where are my Quick Edits! Give me my Firefox!

A co-worker had asked me how to create a post using Spell with Flickr. So, this is my fooling-around post to see how it works. Nice, when you can figure it out.

Christmas in Colonial Williamsburg, VA

2007-01-06T11:13:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday. The Friday following Christmas my Fam and I went on our annual trip down to Colonial Williamsburg to look at the Christmas decorations. Visit my profile on Flickr to see several pictures I took of the decorations. I have added them to the Colonial Williamsburg group too.

I love visiting Colonial Williamsburg during the holidays since all of the decorations are made with real plants and there are some amazing craftsmanship. Boy, was it warm that day! We threw our coats in the trunk and actually ran the A/C in the car!

For anyone visiting Williamsburg, I recommend eatting at Pierce's BBQ. Mmmm. Good stuff.

'Til next time.

23 Things Done! Finished! Completed! Conquered! Mission Accomplished!

2006-12-23T20:07:00.000-05:00

He's at the 40! He's at the 30! He's at the 20! He's at the 10! Touchdown!

Well, we have come to the end of our 23 Things and what a journey it has been! This was really fun and it was quite enjoyable to see the creativity of everyone's blogs.

It is hard to say what my favorite "Thing" is. The blog was fun to put together, and the image generators and mash-ups are great fun.

Although I had used or seen some of the resources before, I did not have a reason to use them until now. I must say, hands-n experience is a much better learning tool that simply looking around a site.

There has been a great number of new resources available that I did not know about before this program that will be a great help in the future (and now).

My only suggestion would be include more blog providers and not just Blogger. This goes for some of the other "Things" besides the most popular sites like Flickr and YouTube. Maybe move the list of Web 2.0 Award Winners as an earlier Thing to see similar sites. Lastly, I would like to see listservs added to the list of 23 Things.

If there is another program similar to this one, I will definitely participate and encourage others to do the same. I think the fact I completed all 23 Things in less than two weeks shows how much I enjoyed the program.

Thank you again for giving us the opportunity to explore and discover!

Not just a book, an electronic AUDIObook!

2006-12-23T19:26:00.000-05:00

Here we are with the second to last step (#22) and today we look at downloading audiobooks (eAudiobooks) from NetLibrary. This is a very nice site that includes a large number of eAudiobooks and eBooks.

I like that you can save an eAudiobooks information to a Favorites folder or send it via e-mail. You can listen to a short preview which is a nice feature. Another nice feature is the Similar Items list in the sidebar.

There are a lot of search options including browsing by subject, simple and advanced searches, languages, and you can search by a range of durations as well.

For anyone downloading a book, I highly recommend downloading the CD quality even though it is much larger and longer to download. The radio quality is very poor to the point that it is not worth the effort and time. It is too bad that there does not appear to have bookmarks when you listen to a book on the computer or on an Apple Ipod (not that you can listen to too many audiobooks on an Ipod).

Another eAudiobook site to check out is OverDrive, though this site requires downloading the program to your computer. However, one advantage of OverDrive over NetLibrary is the ease of moving audiobooks to an MP3 player.

Casting for Pods: podcast directories

2006-12-22T21:44:00.000-05:00

For step #21 of our 23 Things, we looked at finding podcasts through three podcast directories. And, I have added a fun podcast to my Blogline account which is connected to my "And now, some real news" links located at the bottom on the left sidebar. Just look for Washington TravelCast. I know, it sounds silly to live this close to Washington, D.C. and have a podcast about traveling in our nation's capital. But, I enjoy hearing about a lot that is offered in the city that many people take for granted. Plus, there are sites (physical locations, not websites) that I have not visited and may sound quite interesting in the podcast.

Anyway, here are three podcast directories that I explored.

Podcast.net This is the site I used to find the travel podcast I have in my bloglines account. It is set up as a directory which is easy to use, but you cannot search within the categories. You can browse tags and you can search Title & Description, Keywords, Location, Host, or Episodes. Unfortunately, you cannot sort your search results either and the sidebar displays the most recent episodes of everything (I don't see the point unless what is listed is the podcast you want).

Search results allow a small summary and plenty of detail when you click on a search result. But descriptions are very brief if you use the directory only. You can sort by newest or alphabetically and the brief description includes category/categories, latest episode, author, and nothing else.

Podcast Alley is another site using the directory format, but only after choosing the "genre" from a pull down menu. On their homepage, between all those ads, they have the Top 10 for the month with no descriptions making it pretty much worthless. They also list five featured and five newest podcast, all without descriptions making them as useful as the Top 10.

One nice feature about Podcast Alley is that you will get a brief description in the same page each time you click on a podcast in the list. There are quick links for Subscribe, Vote, and Details, but I did not see where you can sort the list like you can in Podcast.net. Like Podcast.net, you cannot search within the "genres" and Boolean does not appear to be a feature.

Yahoo Podcasts is probably the best of the three. You can search Series, Episodes, or both. There is a section of Most Popular and Highly Rated podcasts with a very brief summary and links to listen or subscribe and a note on whether the podcast is free.

There is a section for Main Categories, but these are not a directory, but simply lists the podcasts with a good amount of description. Also, there is an additional search option to Search the Web that will take your request and search from Yahoo's main page. This search option will look for all results, not podcasts only. There is a section for Popular Tags in a tag cloud format.

The amount of description upfront and the amount of description in the search results is why I think it is the best choice of the three. However, I would recommend downloading Apple's ITunes for free to search podcasts. The usability of Itunes appears to be far superior to any of the three I reviewed.

One more "Thing" exercise and a summary to go and then I will be finito!

I could avoid TV, but I can't avoid YouTube

2006-12-22T17:07:00.002-05:00

YouTube is a popular video sharing website. The amount of content is amazing, but can be frustrating when you are looking for a specific post and there are several versions. What I find especially frustrating is lack of descriptions such as language in the uploads. I really hate it when I go to watch a video only to find it is not in English (okay, I know that sounds shallow and ethnocentric of me, but I only know one language: American). Also, there is a problem with duplicate uploads from different people. Because of limited size to upload a video, some people have to create separate video to make one continuous video. If you search for the clips later, it is difficult to find the video from the same person. You wind up watching an overlap of some videos.

I like the options to send to a friend and post to a blog, but keeps users from downloading to prevent intellectual property issues. Though there are a few videos that violate intellectual property. Now that Google has bought YouTube, we will have to wait and see if mega-search engine Google cracks down on the violators.

Users can search for videos, select categories, channels, or communities. I find the Channels option nearly worthless. There are few channels here and the videos have no information to explain what they are.

A co-worker asked me how she could include a video into her blog, but not as a post. I was able to add a video from YouTube, but it really made a mess of the blog, so I included it in a post instead. Click here to watch an Italian Greyhound puppy attack a Tickle Me Elmo Extreme doll. It is pretty funny.

I can definitely see how YouTube would be a good place to include movies made in the library on how to do things like use self-check out machines, search the catalog, training on using databases, etc.

Getting hungry? A review of toEat.com

2006-12-22T00:55:00.000-05:00

Finishing up week 8 (almost done, folks!) with step #19 I need to choose an award winning Web 2.0 website or an honorable mention. So, I chose one close to my heart and by heart I mean my stomach. toEat.com is a mapping browser that received an honorable mention in the category of Mapping. It allows users to find restaurants by either with the map or search by name, description, or keyword. You can search "what is around" a city, state, or zip code as well.

Tags (don't get me started) and ratings are available, although all of the areas I searched had no ratings listed. Interestingly, although toEat.com offers a restaurant's address and phone number, there are no links for the restaurant's website. Also, there is not the option to sort by type or rating, but you can limit your search by clicking on a descriptive tag.

toEat.com explains that if there are too many restaurants in one area to show on the map as a caricature, they will replace the caricature with a magnifying glass. Unfortunately, there is not enough room on the homepage to simply click on the state since there are magnifying glasses everywhere. Also, the map is a little small, making it difficult to click on those small east coast states.

Another problem I found is in the navigation. There is no easy way to go back to a previous window without using the browser's Back button. Also, the screen changes in an abrupt manner: all of the restaurants are shown as a list for a moment before the screen changes and now everything is in a list.

It is not clear where toEat.com is getting their information, since recent restaurants are not shown and not all locations for franchises like McDonald's will appear on the map.

I will probably use this site in the future especially when someone asks me what is in the area, but it would be nice to have more information such as hours, menus, or at least a website address where I can get more information.

Now, if you would excuse me, I'm getting hungry.

Web-based Apps: The good and the bad (maybe)

2006-12-22T00:05:00.000-05:00

For those of us who cannot afford to upgrade to the newest version of Microsoft Office, there is another option that will make the upgrades for you. No, they won't upgrade Office, but you can use web-based applications--and they are free.

One such application described in step #18 is Zoho offering Microsoft Office-like applications such as word processing, spreadsheets, presentation makers, databases, calenders, and more.

I experimented with both the word processor (Zoho Writer) and spreadsheet (Zoho Sheet). For anyone who is already familiar with MS Word and/or MS Excel, it will not take long to get accustomed to Zoho's version. I did find that the programs took a little time to load and there are not all the options available that you would find in an off-the-shelf product.

Zoho offers some nice features, such as the ability for various users to work on the same document, access to documents from any internet terminal, and the ability to turn documents into blogs quite easily.

However, I have some concerns with web-based applications. As I have already mentioned, Zoho does not have the range of options and utilities (I miss not having the auto-fill feature available on Excel). I also would like to know how secure the site is for saving personal and/or vital information. After all, there have been plenty of news reports of businesses releasing so-called secured information or reports of the information being stolen. Plus, if someone decides to use web-based applications exclusively, what happens if his or her internet connection is down?

On a personal note, I did not like how Zoho automatically logged me into its applications. Although this feature may seem nice in that you would not have to log-in for each new window or session, I would not like it if I was using a public computer. Apparently, this is embedded in Zoho and not with the internet browser since I tried it with both MS Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Overall, I am glad these applications are available and I may use them more and more as web-based applications' features become superior to older versions of purchased products I am using now.

Getting Wiki Sandbox sand EVERYWHERE [grin]

2006-12-21T21:31:00.000-05:00

Okay, folks, now we get to play around with the free-for-all section of wikis known as sandboxes. And to help us out for step #17, PLCMC created their own wiki sandbox for us to use.

At first I thought this site was nice and offered links to participants' blogs and links to useful web resources. But then I decided to add the link for the Italian Greyhound Club of America to the Favorite Animals page. I found out that these pages are just a list of "editors' " comments. Sorry, but I want more information than this. Sure, links would be nice and helpful, but I couldn't care less about what other people have to say is their favorite bands (especially those that are simply list without any other comments about them).

Perhaps I am missing the point. Perhaps the point of the sandbox is to get people familiar with wikis or to experiment on how to use them before creating havoc on a real wiki website. Then again, maybe it is simply a place to waste time.

Wahoo! Wiki websites

2006-12-21T20:14:00.000-05:00

Almost everyone has heard of Wikipedia, but did you know you could build your own wiki website? For step #16 I explored some library wiki websites. Basically, the difference between a library's website and a library wiki website is the wiki website is a collaboration effort from users. Plus, these wiki websites are not just for patrons (although might be). Some of the wiki websites are not associated with the local government or library, but are maintained by a dedicated person who works with the library.

I looked at two library wiki websites that were suggested in step #16. The first is BookLoversWiki by the Princeton Public Library in New Jersey. I am not sure when this wiki was created, because there is not much here. There are a few reviews that are in categories with numbers in parenthesis to show how many reviews in each category (as many as 57; as few as 1).

Once you click on a category, you get a thumbnail of the book cover, a rating using so-many stars (there is a legend, but you have to go to the Frequently Asked Questions to find it), the reviewer, and the review. There is, of course, the title of the book that will link to the library's catalog. But as I already mentioned, some of these wikis are not controlled by the library, so there does not appear to be a link from the catalog to the review. I know Loudoun County Public Library has professional reviews as part of the bibliographic records. It should not be too hard to include patron reviews or links to other reviews for the item.

Another library wiki website I visited is the Bull Run Library in neighboring Prince William County, Virginia. The first thing that struck my interest is the fact that Bull Run is only one branch of the county's library system. If you read the Disclaimer, you will find that this is one example of a wiki website that is not associated with the library nor the county government.

This is a nice site with a lot of nice features. There are links to neighboring library systems, links to the library's services, links for news and entertainment, and too many more links to name.

Some features that I really liked include a link to LibraryThing, that I reviewed in a previous post. Then there is Library Elf, a site that will consolidate your library records for your family, send notices either as an RSS feed, an e-mail, or text message telling you your library items are due soon. Pretty neat.

The other feature that Bull Run Library's wiki website offers in a search tool from WorldCat that will allow you to search for items in libraries in the area, not just Prince William County. You see Prince William County Public Library system has a reciprocal agreement allowing their patrons to get library cards from the surrounding library systems.

As nice as these wiki websites seem to be, I wonder who is moderating it? What happens to the site when that person or persons stops moderating? How long should news and links stay on the site before archiving? If it is a library wiki website and it has no affiliation with the library, how do you get people to use it?

Hopefully, red tape will not prevent libraries from advertising these highly useful websites.

What is this Library 2.0, anyway?

2006-12-20T23:44:00.000-05:00

So here we are with step #15 and we finally get around to answering what is Library 2.0. Well, as I understand it, it is taking the technology available on the Internet and putting it into the hands of the masses. Kinda like a digital Prometheus.

So, did you click on word "Prometheus" and get transported to Wikipedia? Wikipedia is an example of Web 2.0; instead of a bunch of experts writing an encyclopedia and we read it, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia created by contributors like you or me. Web 2.0 is a more hands-on, cooperative approach to utilities and features found on the internet.

A good article regarding the future of libraries with Web 2.0 is John J. Riemer's OCLC newsletter article, To Better Bibliographic Services. He describes utilizing and combining features to help patrons/users locate information more effectively and to focus in on their needs and interests with utilities like RSS. For instance, RSS feeds can be made to deliver specific content to a user like information on Italian Greyhounds.

Interestingly, Reimer discusses how metadata creation should be streamlined and how duplication can be avoided with "advocacy and coordination of a bibliographic utility, such as OCLC." But he also says how libraries should be open to features found on Amazon and Google including tagging from anyone, not just those people who are recognized as authorities on a subject. But, as I have said in a previous post, I do not like tags and I believe there needs to be something akin to a "bibliographic utility" or a central location like OCLC or Del.icio.us to verify tags, to add synonym rings, and to create a hierarchy or taxonomy.

I should point out that I am not against the idea of tagging, but I would like to see better structure before we allow the untrained masses to haphazardly assign tags.

Let me give you an example of a tagging problem that I mistakenly made. On my post about a technology item, I discussed an online game created to help label or tag images on the web so that visually impaired users can identify what the images are. Because the game is timed, there is no real way to research the images. Therefore, during a game, the image of Justin Timberlake came up and I began adding tags such as "gay" and "homosexual." This was in no way meant to be a homophobic attack or commentary on Mr. Timberlake. I simply confused him with his 'N Sync bandmate, Lance Bass who had recently announced his homosexuality.

So, as I said before, is there anyone verifying these tags? If so, how well known is the utility or website/instituition? These are questions that need to be answered before we have to go back and clean years of messy tagging.

Attack Elmo!

2006-12-20T19:40:00.001-05:00

Testing Testy Technorati

2006-12-19T22:39:00.001-05:00

For step #14, I am looking at Technorati, a blog search website I reviewed in my post More RSS. For starters, I have created a Technorati Profile. So far, whatever I search, even starting to search this blog's URL specifically has resulted in, well, no results.

There are three ways to get Technorati to recognize a blog, so I hope I did it right. I followed the instructions, so it is a wait and see. There was probably another step (there is always another step) and I missed it.

I like Technorati, but I would like to see more descriptions as to where I am going. For instance, on the Popular page, one of the Top Blogs is listed as ?? ??? ??BLOG with 14,417 blogs linking to it--probably to find out what the heck it is.

The Discovery page isn't much better. There are too few topics here. We have five main areas with tabs for about five more in each. But, I don't see tabs for pets, cars, hockey, etc. and no place to add these.

What I do like is the results page. Here we have sections for finding results by blog, photos, video, podcast, music, and/or people.

What I don't like are tags. As I ranted--I mean, explained, in my previous post, there are too many variables with tags and Technorati proved this to be true. Using my default search phrase, Italian Greyhound, I got 13 results. However, if I searched the plural form, I get no results and it is not as if there are no tags for Italian Greyhounds. The photo search goes from 2,408 for the singular form to 194 for the plural. If the two tags were amalgamated, then I would get the same number of search results.

Another nice site hampered by these awful tags.

Del.icio.us leaves me with a bad taste

2006-12-19T19:55:00.000-05:00

*DANGER* RANTING ALERT *DANGER* RANTING ALERT *DANGER* RANTING ALERT

Appropriately, Step #13 is about tagging. Here is my thoughts about tagging (aka bookmarking): I don't like them.

Sure, I use them, but I find tagging to be too unstructured for my taste. I mean, when I enter a tag, I don't know if I need to make it singular or plural, does it even matter? What about English spelling versus American standard? Is someone checking spelling? Am I using the most effective term possible? Do I need synonyms? Or a hierarchy? If I use initials or an acronym, is there someway others will know what it means?

I think tagging needs to be rethought. Why not create a central website with links from Blogs, Flickr, etc. that will be like wikipedia, moreover dmoz (an open directory project) where everyone can contribute and edit existing entries, create and edit hierarchies or taxonomies, and/or create a controlled vocabulary. This way we can avoid the issues I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

For step #13 we focused on Del.icio.us, a popular social bookmarking website. The good news about Del.icio.us is that it is popular so we have a good start for a site we can use to make a standardized tagging protocol. Plus, it is easy to use. Once you have an account, you can link a website to Del.icio.us and start making tags. Most importantly, Del.icio.us will help you choose tags and allow you to make your own.

A good start, but it still does not answer all of my questions. Furthermore, would someone explain why there is all this emphasis on blogger names? Am I supposed to know and/or recognize people by their user name and somehow realize he or she is an authority?

Okay, breathe. Hopefully, step #14 and/or #15 will be of some help.

Rolling Along with Rollyo

2006-12-19T12:34:00.000-05:00

Rollyo is a search engine builder where you can search websites you have added to your own search engine. A nice idea, but it was a little difficult to navigate. Every time I would click on a search engine that someone had created, a little window would appear with that search engine's information and a search box. The problem is, the box opens at the top of the page. If you are clicking on a search engine further down the page, you don't see this window.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting website and a nice way to search only those websites that you use and trust.

For instance, I created a search engine for information about cars. You can link to it here. However, Rollyo decided that my search engine should have the word "My" in front of it (originally, I called it Car News & Research). Why? I have no idea and it would not let me change it. Very odd and annoying.

Worse, sometimes that little window would open too close to the top of the page so half of it would be off the screen and I could not move it to access it.

Nice site, but would someone please work on the bugs? I suggest they open the search box in a new window, that would fix a lot of the problems.

This thing called LibraryThing

2006-12-18T23:42:00.000-05:00

LibraryThing lets you create your own catalog of books. It is easy to use. Simply enter the title, or author, or ISBN and LibraryThing will search Amazon or over 75 libraries including the Library of Congress to find the book. You can choose the amount of information that is entered including tags, reviews, and ratings.

I really liked this site. I especially enjoyed the Fun Statistics about myself and the Tag Cloud, Author Cloud, and Author Gallery. But I am not totally convinced on the free-form tags. I would think a good controlled vocabulary would work nicely here. After all, they are pulling from Amazon and libraries. I would think they could take the information from one of these sources. Plus, you cannot search a book by the ISBN, which seems quite odd to me. All well, maybe sometime down the line they can do something about this.

Click here for the first of my entries.

Unfortunately for bibliophiles, you can only add 200 books without paying for an account.

When I entered the first book I used the Tags to Add option, but when I checked my list after I finished, the tags were not there. Plus, the icons on the Recently Added list do not tell you what they are, not even with a mouse rollover.

I can see myself using this site and I hope others will too.

Image Generators. Cool stuff!

2006-12-18T22:00:00.000-05:00

If you are keeping score at home, I am up to step 10 in our 23 Things program. This section was on Image Generators. Boy, there are a lot of them out there and boy are they fun!

Here are some that I had fun using:

Letter James This site lets you put limited text in some images like lights in a building, soccer player's jerseys, and my favorite, graffiti (a sample is here on this post). The only thing about Letter James is that I think it links to a for-profit site. No matter, you can still have fun with this one.

Another site that has some fun image generators is FD's Flickr Toys. In this site I made a magazine cover of my new nephew and a trading card (also here on this post--cute little stinker, isn't he?). By the way, to make sure I live long enough to open my stocking this Christmas, that is not my nephew's real name on the trading card.

The magazine cover was a little tricky. You can't put too much on one line and you can't see what the fonts are ahead of time. Plus, you can choose colors from a color wheel, but it is difficult to get the same color exactly if you are using more than one line. Not to mention you have no control over the size fonts. I didn't see the template until after I tried to generate my first attempt. Once you get the hang of it, it is a another fun image generator.

The trading card generator, on the other hand, was great fun. Too bad there isn't a way to print front and back of the cards on proper paper stock to make them as real as possible.

If you are looking for more image generators, check out The Generator Blog.

More RSS

2006-12-18T10:41:00.000-05:00

For step 9 in the 23 Things, we are to review four RSS search tool websites. For testing the searches, I will use my favorite search phrase "Italian Greyhound".

Technorati This is a nice site with Popular, Top Searches, and Top Tags visible on the homepage. There is a simple search and an advanced search. Interestingly, I got no results when I search Italian Greyhound as a phrase, but I still found plenty of IG information if I used the all words option.

On the results page, I really like the "In [24 hours; 2 days, 3 days, etc.]" along the left side. There is a graph showing Mentions by Day which is pretty neat. Furthermore, there are a number of options where you can limit your search. Too bad I found the site buggy; I got an error message every third search.

The one thing I did not like is the Featured Bloggers. All you have are thumbnail images and you have to either roll the mouse over each image to get a name or click on it to get more information. I think they need to rethink this one.

Feedster Not as colorful as Technorati and the search options are limited, but at least I would remember the name better than Technorati.

Feedster offers Content Channels, Popular Searches, Business Solutions, Feed of the Day (with a thumbnail screenshot), and Feedster in the News.

The worst thing is the search options or lack thereof. Plus, Feedster does not show the link for each feed. I like to know where I am getting my information. Of course, neither did Technorati, so maybe that just isn't part of RSS feed searches.

Topix appears like an online newspaper with Top Story, Latest News, and Local News. I especially like the Recent Comments where you can find some interesting stuff.

The Advance Search doesn't offer as many options as Technorati, but it is designed more for searching news that subjects.

At the bottom of the homepage are additional news separated by topic like sections in a print newspaper. Overall, a nice site for news and comments.

Syndic8 I left this one for last. What a mess. This site is designed as a "community-driven effort" (think Wikipedia).

There's a lot going on on this page, but a lot of garbage too. Why should I care about random sites and random headlines? Moreover, why should I care about the 10 Newest Users? Am I supposed to know these people?

The only redeeming quality of this site is the search results, but not the search itself (I'll get to that). I like that I can see the site names, when it was created, "feed changed" (I'm assuming that means last updated), and language. Plus, I can sort by each of these columns.

There is a Recent Search list, but it seems to have recent searches for everyone since it shows searches like Car Insurance. I didn't search for any car insurance. Does this mean I can get a discount on my car insurance if I have an Italian Greyhound?

Although there are a number of options for various sources (listed along the top of the page in no particular order), Syndic8 offers no advanced search and using quotations for a phrase search resulted in no hits.

In conclusion, I would stay away from this site.

RSS: Really Simple . . . Something

2006-12-18T00:49:00.000-05:00

RSS feeds sounded really cool when I first heard about them. But I found two problems: (1) I had no time to pay attention to them, and (2) the feeds were sucking up all the memory on my poor ancient computer.

Under About Me on the left, you can see my feeds that I have signed up for including the required three for the 23 Things exercise.

Plus, I have signed up for RSS feeds from some of my co-workers' blogs. Unfortunately, not everyone has a blog posted and some blogs have only one entry--and some have even less than that.

Come on, people! If you don't hurry up you won't get an RCA MP3 player with Taser for those screaming kids and cellphone jammer capability.

Wait. What do you mean it doesn't come with those options?

Public url: http://www.bloglines.com/public/Argonaut15

The ESP Game (it's not what you think)

2006-12-17T13:57:00.000-05:00

In an article in the Washington Post, I learned of a fun and addictive game called the ESP Game. The purpose of the game is give short descriptions to random images. You have an anonymous partner who is doing the same. When the two of you match a description, you get another picture. The game is timed so you will be partnered with different people each game.

So, why is this game important? Well, the article explains that there are programs that can read aloud words from the internet for people who are visually impaired, but these programs cannot recognize images unless they are tagged or labeled. Because there are so many images on the web that are without tags, Luis Von Ahn of the Carnegie Mellon University created the ESP Game to get the masses (that's us) to tag a lot of those images.

Here is the link for the Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/20/AR2006112001200_pf.html

And the link for the game: http://www.espgame.org

Check out their other game Phetch where players are given a description and they hunt down a picture from the internet.

Have fun!

Mashing-up Flickr

2006-12-17T13:41:00.000-05:00

There are some fun mash-ups that Flickr offers that were created by third parties. http://www.flickr.com/services/

I enjoyed Retrievr by System One Labs . Here you can make a rough sketch with colors and the program will find images on Flickr that roughly matches your sketch. Most of the time the matches were REALLY rough matches. Some retrieved images were not family-friendly, if you know what I mean.

But, Retrievr was an addictive program. Not very helpful, but addictive as a game, nonetheless.

More Flickr-ing

2006-12-17T13:34:00.000-05:00

I have uploaded roughly 26 pics of Victoria to Flickr and tried to get the photos to link with this blog. For whatever reason, when I went to set up a Google account so that Flickr would recognize the blog, Google never sent me the verification e-mail to the Netzero account I was using.

Ugh, there are too many steps with Flickr to simply grab a pic and go. Why make it so complicated?

Any way, look for Victoria in the Italian Greyhound group or search for me, Argonaut15. Have fun!

7.5 Habits of a Lifelong Learner

2006-12-15T14:31:00.000-05:00

Recently, I completed PLCMC's Learning 2.0 activity of the 7.5 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners. And to show we actually paid attention, we are asked to create a blog about the habits. So here goes.

Habit 1: Begin with the end in mind. Well, I would hope so! Are you just going to wander about?

Habit 2: Accept responsibility for your own learning. Alright, this is a toughy for me. I want to get done as soon as possible (see Habit 1) so I tend to, um, skim and skirt.

Habit 3: View problems as challenges. I really don't have anything to say about this one.

Habit 4: Have confidence in yourself as a competent, effective learner. Well, if you say you can't do it, then you are not going to learn anything.

Habit 5: Create your own learning toolbox. This is the only one on the list that doesn't explain itself. Basically, it is all your training, sources, tricks of the trade, and whatnot.

Habit 6: Use technology to your advantage. This is the easy one for me. I like to create spreadsheets, visit websites, utilitize gadgets and programs whenever I can.

Habit 7: Teach/mentor others. To me this one goes hand-in-hand with Habit 6 since I am constantly sharing websites and articles with others.

Habit 7.5: Play. In other words, explore what's out there.

Til next time!

It's Flickr time!

2006-12-13T23:27:00.000-05:00

Flickr is a image sharing program by Yahoo! Today I started uploading some pics of my little girl, Victoria. She is an 8 pound Italian Greyhound and her 13th B-day is next month. It must be nice you say your age is almost twice your weight.

What's an Italian Greyhound (or IG or Iggy), you say? Well, as I said in my profile, Italian Greyhounds look like the much larger English Greyhounds, but MUCH smaller. They were designed to be lap dogs and the AKC has them in the Toy Group for this reason rather than the Hound or Sporting Dogs groups.

So, this is a blog

2006-12-13T10:29:00.000-05:00

Okay, I have read Blogs and I have contributed to forums and listservs, but I have never written a blog before. I feel as if I need to start each entry with "Dear Diary, today I . . ." and then write something witty.

You know, this can be quite intimidating; sitting here looking at a blank screen trying to figure out what to write. Do I make commentary? Is it work related? Who is going to read it? Will they care? Will I care?

Well, this is a start. Let's see how far I can get with this Blog-thing.