Lesson 15 - Search Engines

I performed a search on various sites, including Dogpile, Rollyo and Mama. Kind of fun, as I had never tried anything before other than Google. However, when I returned to Google, the answer I was looking for ended up at the top of the page and was a lot further down on the other sites. I entered "sewing AND guinea pigs", just looking for a project to make a little gift for my daughter's newest foster child, Millie. All the search engines did come up with the same site, Guineapigcages.com, though. I liked that MAMA numbered the results - just seemed easier to track. Hopefully, I will make a cute little Cuddle Cup for cute little Millie soon! As far as surprises, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Google will remain at the top of my list for search engines. On to the next lesson!

Lesson 12 - OverDrive Downloads

I checked out 1 book and 1 music CD. I would really much rather read than listen to books, so will probably not use this Overdrive feature, but found it a useful lesson, as many of our patrons do use Overdrive and I now know a little more about accessing it. I didn't realize that there was a limit of 10 checkouts and that it is not possible to return one's items, but that one must wait for them to expire. I do intend to explore the collection a little further when I have more time, but probably won't actually check anything out as long as I still have my vision!

Lesson 8 - Facebook

Just had to make another comment about Facebook. I have been having so much fun viewing the photos that family members (who condescended to accept my invites) have posted. They are all so far away - Calif, New York and DC - it brings me closer to them. I even figured out how to transfer some of their photos to my site. This lesson alone has made the WEB 2.0 course very worthwhile for me. Thank you, Judy Sasges, for offering it to PSA I's! Of course, beyond the personal rewards, the whole process has increased my comfort level with the various internet tools available today. I can't say I fully understand what I'm doing half the time; however, I'm becoming more courageous about just diving in.

(Still worried about compromising my privacy though.)

Lesson 11 - Tag, You're It - Social Bookmarking in Delicious

Whew - That was a lot of work, but I think I have completed the lesson. I created a Delicious acct to manage my bookmarks, having imported (exported?) all my Firefox bookmarks to my new Delicious acct, so that I will be able to access them from any computer. This will come in handy, I foresee. I think that I added some tags; will check back on that when a little fresher. I searched for 2 things on the Delicious site and compared my findings to a similar search on Google. It did seem a little easier on Delicious - at least it instantly directed me to what I was actually looking for, without having to look at a myriad of shopping sites, etc. I found a simple breadbaking recipe and a simple pattern to sew a stuffed pig, exactly what I was looking for. I bookmarked both sites, using the new Delicious tool tag which I had added to my Firefox toolbar, as per the instructions on the Delicious website. That reconfigured not only my toolbar, but the look of my whole frontpage. Don't know what my husband will say about that, when he sees it. Again, I will revisit that when my brain is a little fresher. The other thing that I am a little unsure about is sharing all of my bookmarks; for now, am keeping them private.

Lesson 10 - Wiki Wiki Fun

I'm not sure I see the "fun" in this. I have used Wikipedia now and again, mostly for brief bio's of people mentioned in books that I am reading. I guess it's nice to be able to click and link to things easily on a page. The time that all these websites take out of my day is becoming all-consuming...

Lesson 9 - YouTube, Hulu and Fancast

I have visited all 3 of these websites. YouTube is one that I have frequented in the past when referred there by other sites to view a particular video, such as the SNL Couric/Palin parody. It seems to be very viewer friendly and full of short clips. Yesterday, while looking at library sites, I watched people celebrate Obama's election on the steps of the Boston Public Library (which I visited last year and I fell in love with its majesty). I don't really enjoy watching movies or tv shows on line, so I don't think I will view Hulu or Fancast again. They both seemed to be inundated with ads, which is annoying. I can't really see their value to libraries, as people don't seem to get as much time as they need on the computers as it is and wouldn't they want even more, if they were just watching tv shows? I do see how YouTube could be useful, as a source of quick information, particularly for visual learners. It's also great that it pulls videos and comments from all over the world. When my daughter was living overseas, I was able to see videos from the small town in the UK where she was going to school.

Lesson 7 - Flickr

Finally, I "uploaded" a photo from my computer to my blog as a post. It seems to take forever - the icon goes around and around, and I was afraid I was transferring my entire camera contents to my blog. I am going to consider this completion of Lesson # 7. as I still hesitate to create a Yahoo acct to access Flickr.