Sunday, August 24, 2008

Thing #18 YouTube

This is a fun one. I thought I'd try to link to the late Randy Pausch's Last Lecture.
Here I go:

Thing #17 ELM Productivity Tools

I'm familiar with Minneapolis Public Library's databases, which is a variation on this, I suppose. I use it for a couple of databases we don't have access to at work, one is JSTOR which is a terrific resource for older academic articles not found on NEXIS, and the digital archive of the New York Times.

I also refer public calls to the public library databases, when people want to be able to do fairly sophisticated research, but don't know how to get started.

An incredible resource. I wish more people knew about it.

Thing #16 Student Tools

I don't work in a student environment, so this was of much interest to me. It looks like research in a perfect work and it makes me wonder if kids REALLY use this. All very idealized. I'm going to be curious to look at the other participants comments about this. Gee I sound cynical don't I?

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Thing #15 Second Life

Second Life: what a strange, alternate universe! I wandered around a bit. Kinda creepy. Not at all sure what role libraries could play in it. yikes.

Thing #14 Library Thing

I know I'll probably be in the minority on this, but Library Thing just didn't interest me. Not for my personal collection nor anything work related. I'm moving on.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Thing # 13 Productivity Tools

At home I work on a Mac, and the productivity tools like igoogle etc. are very similar to the widgets you can load on the Mac's dashboard. I have to admit that i rarely use dashboard, it's nice to be able to check the temperature once in a while, and i have a sticky note that i sometimes use, but that's about it. I'm not seeing the productivity aspect of it yet, but i'm interested in seeing what else is out there, so i'll read and experiment on.

I couldn't get the countdown widget to work. it's very cool though.

The to do lists. I'm a list maker, and these were something I really wanted to like, but really, they looked like more work than they were worth. I just keep a simple to do list in Word and when I complete something I cross it out in yellow (my little flourish). Good enough for me. And what's with all this damn sharing? Enough already.

As for the calendars,again my Mac has a perfectly useful one built in. I confess I still use a paper book-type calendar, the problem with that is that i use it for both my business and personal stuff and it's a little cumbersome to coordinate. After seeing the igoogle calendar, I'm thinking I could use it for both work and home. So my New Year's resolution is to ditch the paper calendar and use igoogle instead. Did I mention that my paper calendar is a lovely moleskin? But I can see this switch is indeed efficient and easy. I'm choosing igoogle because I'm liking the idea of consolidating stuff under one brand. they seem to have good quality products, so unless a competitor has a feature that blows me out of the water, I'll stick with them. I don't have any use for calendar sharing.

What I keep looking for in a sticky is one that I could attach to a document I'm sending someone so I could add a note or clarification. I've read through all the stickies featured here and I don't see that application. Did I miss it? I'm going to think about the sticky that you can attach to websites, that might have some usefulness, other than that, they just seem to be glorified notes.

As for the other stuff, I dragged the tinyurl to my toolbar, that'll be useful. I'm always sending people links.

In conclusion, I found a few useful bits here, new ways of doing things, but I think productivity might be too strong a word.