weekly geekly--fun photos

I wasn't too impressed with fun photos. Maybe it's because I have a graphic designer husband who could do all of that and more for me. He created our wedding invitations (I'll bring one in if anyone cares to see it--we still have thousands it seems) and this piece of flair to use on facebook for me. Pretty nifty, I'll say.

Weekly Geekly--Google Docs

I've been using Google Docs for a little over a year now. I do a spreadsheet with all of our food spending for the month that I collaborate on with my husband. Actually, I set it up, make him a collaborator, and then do all of the updating. He admitted he rarely looks at it anymore, but I still do. I've used it for other things too. I keep a running list of all of the book's I've read that I share with my husband and my friend who likes a lot of the same books as me but don't talk to often. Also, when Ryan and I had to send out an invitation email I set up a word doc so we could both edit it at the same time. I ended up getting carried away writing little snarky comments throughout it (such as "Ryan smells like pickles"). That didn't make the final draft. So I know Google Docs has a variety of different uses (none of mine being strickly productive, but still). They kind of sound like wikis, only for individual documents. Or at least a sound board used to unleash a severe case of the sillies.

Weekly Geekly--Tags

Tags are interesting, I guess. I first really learned about them when I set up my librarything account. I end up forgetting to on shelfari because the layout is different but I do keep it up on my librarything. I find interesting information about what I read this way. Such as: out of the 144 books I have listed 111 of them are fiction and 33 of them are nonfiction. Of the 111 fiction only 47 of them are historical fiction. So I branch out of historical fiction a lot more than I thought. It's less than half of the fiction I read! So take that, people who think that's all I read! But tags as a whole are cool. Amazon used to have user-made tags regarding their books which was wonderful when trying to figure out if this vampire/supernatural/gothic paperback is a romance or a sci fi or a suspense or a...you get the idea. But they got rid of that, as far as I can tell. Anyways, despite me liking tags delicious hasn't won me over so I'll continue to use my bookmarks in my browser (I even have them saved to a word document for when the Great Computer Switch actually happens--I know, so '90s of me). C'est la vie.

Weekly Geekly--Social Networking

Shortly after starting college my friend from high school told me I just had to get on this site called Facebook. I did, and then shortly thereafter she told me I just had to get on MySpace too. I didn't. One is my limit, and it seems that the tides are turning towards Facebook now anyways. I've seen MySpace but I don't know how anyone actually communicates on there--it's all crazy backgrounds, music coming out of nowhere and people with who knows what kind of agenda wanting to be your friend. Facebook is cleaner and neater, that's for sure. I use Facebook basically to find out which of my friends are pregnant now (with who?!?!) or what their career paths are. I've found old neighbors, former coworkers and kids I went to elementary school with. That, is neat. I must say, however, that I can't really see this as a serious forum for libraries to infiltrate. I saw those librarian apps and would never consider putting something so rediculous on my page. Do we seriously think high school kids are going to ask a librarian on Facebook? If they're on Facebook, they're not wanting to do homework in the first place. Let's leave this new technology alone--there are plenty others we can geek up.

Weekly Geekly--Gaming!

What a great thing to be caught "learning" at work! I naturally tend towards pencil-and-paper word puzzles--it's in my blood: my mom's a crossword person and my grandma could do them on her death bed in pen still without making a mistake. I have ventured into sudoku and word roundups as well. I had a few little online games I'd do every once in a while (mostly from National Geographic or something geeky like that). But my coworkers have introduced me to the joy of online games. Susie and Barbara are to blame for my new favorite--big fish games. A nice site without the overabundance of ads bordering the edges. I can see online gaming as a way to relax without shutting your brain down completely. So if that's what kids are doing, at least it's a step up from being brain washed by the TV. An even better step up would be playing a game against a real person sitting in front of you. Like maybe a nice big Cracker Barrel-like checkers board...

The Weekly Geekly--Wikis

I don't really have much to say about wikis. I enjoyed exploring some of the other libraries' wiki pages, especially if the links worked. Our "sandbox" will be more interesting when more people add to it. Wikis are sort of like the public folders where people can post things for all of the staff to see. There's obviously some good uses for that, since we're already doing it. As for Wikipedia, I haven't had the disdainful lip curl automatic response impressed into me yet at library school. Maybe that's next semester.

Weekly Geekly--Flickr

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Originally uploaded by cherrycoker

OK, here's my uploaded flickr to blog photo. Unfortunately there's no easy way to get stuff from facebook to flickr (or to get the darn thing centered for this post), so I only uploaded 9. I put the few pictures I take on facebook already so I don't see the need for me to add a separate flickr account to share my photos with the people I like. As for library-wide usage I think it's cool that LOV is putting their old ones on there for people to tag. But we don't have any photo achives at CHPL...I could see individual branches having some to share between staff members (peeps anyone?) but I'm dubious about there being any legit library use...

As a side note, why is the "e" getting left out of web 2.0 gadgets? What did it ever do to blogs or pictures?

Weekly Geekly--Podcasting

I didn't do the optional twitter week. I see too much potential for snarky comments.
So podcasting. This seems to have more fun potential than RSS feeds. I played with netvibes but it was waayy too intense for me. It's like be advertized to by 15 different companies simultaneously. I went home and played with iTunes' podcasting stuff and felt better. As a side note, techy husband says that it's only "podcasting" if it's on iTunes because Apple created it and everything else is just a knock-off. That's his snarky comment, not mine. On iTunes I found a few learn Italian podcasts (still attempting to learn) and a Ricky Gervais podcast. I see potential for a lot of time wasting in my future (but not until after library school though--I have no personal time until after library school).

The Weekly Geekly--RSS Feeds

I must admit that even though I'm one of these so-called "computer natives" I'm not too impressed with RSS feeds. I set up a Google Reader account but haven't used it since. I know I'm supposed to be in love with all forms of technology but, frankly, I don't see the need of this for me. I read six blogs and use my bookmarks (not even delicious, I know) to go to each one. I know, how horrible: click, click, click. It's exhausting! Maybe if I cared more about blogs and read more of them I would see the value in RSS feeds. But I'm not, so I don't. I also see the people from work that I'm following when I sign into my blog--almost a RSS feed, but simpler. There might be some of kind of value for public libraries to use this stuff once it becomes more refined. Just no value for me.
On a lighter note, here's some of my blogs:
Not Always Right (thank you to whoever bookmarked this on the circ computer!)
Dave Barry's Blog
My Life in a Cube
Early Word (an actual work-related blog--I know)