Twitter & Facebook

I officially joined Twitter this morning...while I did not set myself up to start twittering I am following some favorite funny people (Daniel Tosh, Weird Al, Zach Galifianakis to name a few) as well as some art museums.  I'll start slow and see how it goes.  As much as I love social networking I find it easily sucks up my time.  I think that is why I have been hesitant to join Twitter.  As for Facebook, I maintain my page, try to log on periodically. All my notifications are sent to my phone so I don't always have to log on to see what is happening on my wall or who is messaging me (Thank you phone for being amazing).  So I stay pretty up to date with it.  As I mentioned about the whole time sucking thinking I sometimes log onto Facebook to message someone and next thing I know I am 100 pictures deep in someones vacation to Mexico and an hour has gone by.  Do I really need to spend my time doing this? Do I care? Yes, sometimes I care and it is fun to keep up with people and not have to call them to catch up.  And not having to catch up in real time is nice.  And sometimes I do need to spend my time sashaying around Facebook...especially when I am procrastinating doing housework.  So it has it's advantages!  Plus I do love connecting with my childhood BFF's from elementary school who moved away when we were young!  It gives me someone to reminisce my Cabbage Patch Kid playing years with. 
As for Twitter and Facebook in the Library...I know my system has a facebook page for teens and I think our Readers Advisory committee twitters about books.  They seem like great PR tools for those that love to use them. 

Some photos

While playing around flickr and looking for some photos to upload I came across these old photos (not that old...maybe 2005).  I uploaded them onto my blog to practice tagging.  They are of Christo and Jeanne Claude's Gates in Central Park, NYC.  I went right after a big snowfall which made the orange gates look even more beautiful against the white snow.  I stll have my piece of gate fabric that they were handing out.

I must move on...

I have been playing with the image generators for way too long now! I have emailed things to friends, created and recreated, and spent most of my morning having fun!  Not only was it fun but I can see the use for a lot of these on calendars, advertisements, etc at work.  I'll be back to play later.  Check out my map I made on Big Huge Labs of where I've been in the US...It made me realize I have a lot of traveling to do!  Road trip in an Airstream is my dream and then maybe I'll fill up this map!

http://bighugelabs.com/map.php

My blog needs a picture!

My cat has laser eyes and too many toys in her bed.

Adding it on...

I've never paid much attention to Firefox.  While my boyfriend has it downloaded on all our computers and prefers it I can't use it at work so I've always stuck to IE.  But I am always open to change.  After playing around with it for a bit it could win me over with its Add Ons.  I downloaded Zotero, but it is too early on a Sunday morning for me to really take it all in!  It seems useful if I get back in to doing research.  When I am more awake I plan on re-checking it out.  In the meantime I found colored tabs that are just my speed while I enjoy my first cup of coffee.  I am a visual person (and easy to please!) so something so simple could pull me over to Firefox.  I love to customize things, like adding apps to my phone, so playing around with the add ons could be the deciding force between IE or Firefox.

Wiki

I have been playing around with creating a wiki, but have been a bit OCD with it and trying all the different platforms...plus on Wikia I got held up with their featured Mad Men Wiki that detoured me from this project!  But now I am back and while I've never created a wiki (until now) I do use reference a few library related ones at work.  While I don't think wiki's are difficult to use or create I am getting hung up on how to organize the info within the wiki (but that is me ODC'ing).  I have never thought of using them for project planning.  I am currently putting together a presentation on programming with a coworker and aswe  were brainstorming I realized a wiki would be a great place for us to organize the info we are working on as well as creating a wiki to present to the participants. 

Tracking

I have used google alerts with the town I live in for news.  I have never used Social Mention or Addictomatic.  I've signed up for them all and am still pondering the questions about using them with my library.  I really like Addictomatic's interface...there is a lot going on, but so much info.  I tried a few other searches and found it to be a great one stop searching tool for what is happening with different topics.  I plan on playing around with these sites more.  They seem very useful!

Delicious

Here is another thing I have gotten away from and am now reconnected with...my Delicious account!!! Luckily my account is still there with all my wonderful sites.  I don't know how I lost touch with it because I used to use it so much.  Especially with having two computers at my house and using my work computer.  Delicious and I are now friends again.  When I used it in the past I used it for more personal use.  I did save sites for use at work on there too.  However I haven't thought of using it with co-workers, customers, etc.  After looking at LaGrange Park's and Holdrege's sites I realize how useful this would be to use at work.  Especially with homework sites.  While thinking of using delicious professionally I just realized another way I can use the social networking side of it...I do a workshop for teachers on realiable online resources.  This would be a great way for me not only to organize the sites I come across as I plan the workshop, but for the participants to check out my delicious page after the workshop for more sites.

Google Reader

I use RSS feeds on my phone to read my news daily.  I once set up a bloglines account and was following a bunch of blogs...but somewhere along the way I moved away from it and eventually forgot about it until now!  I just signed up for a Google Reader and think this might work better for me because I use my gmail account daily and can easily access Reader when I am logged into my gmail.  Signing up was easy and I added some blogs to follow.  I hope this helps me stay ontop of my favorite blogs and become more organized with them.  Right now I randomly go onto them and go through pages of backlog since the last time I was on and I find myself forgetting about blogs I like to go to.  We'll see how this goes!

I Just Ate Too Many Cookies

I do a really good job of aimlessly cruising around the Internet and eating cookies at the same time. I guess that is what happens after a busy day of work. Of course the cookies are homemade, I am selective and wouldn't waste a stomachache on anything but homemade chocolate chip. While I am on the topic of cookies I don't know what people did for recipes before the Internet. I do have a million cookbooks (and I know that is what people used pre-Internet). But the luxury of googling recipes that you've lost or had at a party is wonderful and I can't get enough of food blogs and their beautiful pictures that make me want to try everything I see. I guess technology has changed my relationship with the kitchen! Aside from food, technology is constantly changing my life. I feel I am constantly asking what we did before the Internet...even though I grew up without it. It makes me realize that I adapt so quickly to changing technology that I forget what life was like without it...it's a little scary or a lot scary at times! Even with my phone, for the past year I've had a smart phone and I can't imagine what I did before having the Internet on my phone. When I was out of the country recently it was really hard not to use the Internet on my phone (otherwise I would be charged millions of dollars for using it). I was going through withdrawal from checking emails and looking up restaurants. I adapted and could function...but there were so many moments that I wanted to pull my phone out and use it. Luckily all our hotels had wi-fi and I had my laptop with me.