Thing #11

So, for this portion I decided to have a look around the SEOmoz site showcasing the Web's best resources. I agree that many of these are good resources and am familiar with and use many including LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Etsy and Zillow. There were certainly many interesting resources that I may use, such as iStats Fitness to keep track of my workouts. However, one of my all-time favorites on this list is Pandora Radio.. This is one of the coolest applications ever. All I have to do is type in a particular band, and I get streaming music of that band or similar type music and/or bands right at my workstation. It's also how amazingly accurate Pandora is at linking up my faves with other bands out there that are similar.You can mix your "radio stations" and also share your lists with other users int he Pandora radio community.

I also looked around at some of the collaborative possibilities with Ning communities. I signed up for the Library 2.0, but also have been a member of the American Library Association Ning community for quite a while. I definitely see these types of communities as an effective way to learn from your peers, as a way to get the word out on professional development events, and learn about new technologies. If you don't find a network that fits your needsm you can always create your own. Imagine the possibilities of creating one specifically for CSM.

Item 11.....check.

I played around with a few of the image generators, and in fact, created my own librarian trading card in a previous post. However, I also discovered the Palette Generator. Using a picture that I took at a recent visit to the California Academy of Sciences, I was able to generate a really cool palette using this tool. I am really quite pleased with myself on this one, and am thankful to Big Huge Labs for bringing this tool to the masses. Thing #10....check.

I've moved on to part 9 of this assignment, and discovered that I already have enough RSS feeds in my life, but did find some interesting ones out there. Yes, there are millions out there all begging for your attention. I did get a chance play around with Technorati and Topix and found them to be easy to use (once you find the search box in the upper right hand corner of both sites). Both sites are a bit overwhelming at first because not a pixel of space goes to waste on either site. So much for white space, though I think Technorati does a better job of it as the visual design was less distracting and I was able to find useful blogs in my never ending quest of technology in libraries, and knitting, or knitting in libraries.

I also found that Blog Pulse is a fun source to use if you want to get the word on the street about a certain blog or info source. well, that's it for now. part 9......check.

I am a longtime rss feed subscriber of the Librarian in Black and the Librarian's Internet Index feeds. So, part of the assignment was to set up a newsreader account which I've already done in the past, and add a library related blog or two, so I added the Library Juice blog to my growing list of library feeds. This was an interesting assignment since it made me go out and look at some old and new library blogs that I may have overlooked in the past. I found that besides offering a great perspective on "libraries, politics and culture", Library Juice also has a great Blog roll for me to explore. Part 8.....check.