My Friend Flickr

Whew! I finally got my 5 photos uploaded into my Flickr account. It only took umpteen mistakes & re-dos! The next hurdle was getting 3 of those same images into this blog. I think that took only about 4 re-dos. Improvement! My first mistake in Flickr was pretty dumb. I unhooked my digital camera from the computer BEFORE the uploads to Flickr were complete. OK, so I learned something there. Then I discovered that I'd uploaded ALL the photos on my digital camera, not just the 5 photos that I'd intended to upload and share. So another thing I learned was how to delete photos that have been uploaded. Then one of the photos I'd taken in a vertical position, rather than horizontal. Well, when that photo uploaded, of course it was sideways. So I learned how to use the built-in editing program in Flickr called Picnik. Thankfully, adding the titles & tags to the photos, & marking them as Public seemed easy enough. A few more mistakes figured out, then I was on to Blogger & trying to get 3 photos added to the blog. I used Blogger's photo upload feature to do this. After several attempts, I learned that the "Small" photo size was best.

I haven't been brave enough to make Sets or Collections or to belong to any Groups in Flickr yet. But I think I'll call it a day & try that another time.

Who knew there were so many options for news feeds out there? I now have 16 feeds in my Bloglines account. Some are newspapers, some are NLC, some are about libraries, one is the City of Kearney's, etc. When I played around with the different search tools to locate news feeds, my favorites were Blogline's search tool and Google Blog Search. I thought they were easier &/or more intuitive to use than Topix.net or Syndic8.com. I was probably doing something wrong, but when I went to Technorati, yes, I found all sorts of blogs, but I had a hard time locating any RSS feeds within them. The problem could be that I just got impatient with all the clicking. If the RSS feed was buried deeper than about 4-5 clicks, I got impatient with the process.

Blog new titles

I'm just wondering if one could use a blog to "advertise" new titles at the library. It would be quite a lengthy list, though. Hmm...does anyone else do this?

RSS

If a person always went to certain sites to see what was going on, or what was new, then I can see where RSS feeds would come in handy. Using Bloglines, you could just log in to one site & check on all the new stuff from the various sites. So once the initial set-up is done, then it could streamline things. Bloglines becomes a place where you manage all the various blogs, news sites, etc. Kind of like one-stop shopping, it would be one-stop news information.

I think I'd use RSS most with news sites for work related information.

On a personal level, I'd have a hard time rationalizing the time spent reading other people's personal blogs.

IMing

Setting up the Google Talk IM account went smoothly enough, I guess. I extended 2 invitations to chat. But since I'm doing this after 5:00 pm, I don't expect a response to my invitations until tomorrow.

In the meantime, without yet IMing, my guess is that the greatest advantage will be communicating with someone in "real time." Much like speaking on the telephone with someone. And I guess the advantage of IM over telephone is that with IM, there are no long distance charges or charges for minutes above & beyond one's cell phone plan.

The greatest disadvantage to IM I suspect will be that it works only if the party with which you wish to communicate happens to be online when you are. So, to me, it seems kind of random.

I might want to use IM in my personal life to communicate with my children, both of whom live out-of-state. So if we each happen to be logged into the same account at the same time, then we might be able to visit a bit. I admit that I'm skeptical, cuz, at this point, the phone just seems so much more convenient.

Professionally, I've read about libraries that use IM as part of their Reference services. So I guess one would have to have a link on the library website to the IM application. But again I retain some skepticism. What if I can't get to a person's inquiry at that moment? My reference desk is not in a private office where I can control interruptions. Instead, my desk is right out on the floor of the library. So patrons walk up to my desk all the time. Just because I'm typing away at my keyboard, the walk-up patron doesn't know that I'm involved in an IM session. I can imagine the frustration from both parties, in feeling neglected, overlooked, & unimportant.

If I were a patron & saw a link to IM with a reference librarian on my library's website, yes, I'd probably give it a try. But a lot would be riding on the kind of response I got from the other end. If it were a positive experience, sure, I'd be game to try it again. But if it was an unsatisfactory session, I'd probably not waste my time trying it again. I'd probably just call them on the phone instead.

But I've said all this before I've actually IMed with anyone. So at this point, I'm really just guessing. We'll see.

Test Post #2

After viewing the "7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners" tutorial, I think the easiest habit for me is beginning with the end in mind. I'm most comfortable when I've identified a definite goal. From there I can work on the details to accomplish the goal.

The hardest habit for me is having confidence in myself as a competent, effective learner. I tend to second-guess myself a lot and always assume that everyone but me has "gotten it."

Test Post #1

Well, setting up the blog was relatively painless! A great confidence builder!