Week 5 Thing #11

I am so glad I had this assignment. I did not know about Farecast -- I saved so much money on airfare to visit my goddaughter in Honduras over Christmas. No wonder it was an award winner. I also checked for airfare to the Rose Bowl. Farecast didn't have the best price -- Travelocity did, but Farecast told me to wait a week until the price went down $50 more. It's a GREAT site. Ning was also a GREAT discovery. I created a private Ning social network for my Media Center Club members. So far it includes profile questions about favorite genre, author, books, characters and has videos about reading. I hope they think it's as great as I do. More later . . .

Week 5 Thing #10

I spent entirely too much time with the Image Generator. Image Chef was fun, but I haven't figured out any practical educational uses for it. I found Build Your Wild Self and BeFunky while surfing through SMARTBoard blogs. They were fun too. But it was when my OCD kicked in and I decided I had to edit the results that all time was lost. More later . . .

Week 4 Thing #9

Assignment: 1. Explore some search tools that can help you locate some news feeds. 2. Create a blog post about your experience. Don't know what to blog about? Here some questions to think about ...Which method of finding feeds did you find easiest to use? Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing? What kind of unuseful feeds did you find in your travels? Or what kind of unusual ones did you find? What other tools or ways did you find to locate newsfeeds?

I looked for an RSS feed icon on my local newspaper's webpage but wasn't surprised not to find one -- disappointed but not surprised. I found boingboing -- I enjoyed the gadget update. I wish I could find a feed that would let me keep up with just that column. More later . . .

Week 4 Thing #8

Assignment: 1. Learn about the difference between RSS feed readers, Bloglines, and Google Reader. 2. Create a free "RSS aggregator" account from either Bloglines or Google Reader and subscribe to at least 5 newsfeeds to your reader. 3. Create a post about this exercise.
I think RSS is amazing. And, it seems so simple I have to suspect whether or not it is legitimate. How can something so beneficial be so free and easy to use? Is there a difference between newsreaders, newsfeeds and the old method of just letting magazines pile up on my desk? I'm a librarian! -- I hate to admit to not finding enough time to read. But I had to laugh when I read BiblioTechie's comment. It's just the truth!
I created a Bloglines account first. Then I saw that my WorkinProgress blog gives me the option to import feeds from Google Reader to my Dashboard. (yet more evidence that Mr. Potato Head might be a better reader than I am -- sigh) So I created a Google Reader account. I have a Yahoo page, but enough is enough! And I might end up changing my mind about that because what I like about newsreaders is that I only have to go looking for the feeds once. After that they come to me wherever I choose to have them delivered. The URL for my public bloglines account is: http://www.bloglines.com/public/WorkinProgress@yourlibrary