Texting

Oh, am I so ALL OVER texting lol. What better way to tell the kids what chores to do without hearing the whining??? No, seriously, you don't know how good it is till you do it. We've had the unlimited texting package on our cellphone plan for over a year now. It just makes sense. $20 covers literally thousands of messages a month. I actually used to text my husband before I left work(when I was working until midnight and beyond.) so he'd know I was on the road and on my way home. As far as the NY Times article, well, duhhh. Adults should know better, teens need to be taught better. That's all part of that, oh I can do anything, nothing will happen mindset they get in their later teens. As far as text lingo, ehh, a bit. But you have to keep in mind that I was playing mmorpg's long before they were as popular as they are now, and texting lingo has actually evolved from there. We were "leet" and "noobs" long before texting was even on the horizon. LoL, we've actually had a dinner conversation, where we had older relatives with us, and after we'd finished the conversation, they looked around and said, "OK, we have absolutely NO idea what you guys all just said." It was like we were speaking a different language. I think the next step in texting should be speech to text... it would go like this. I hop in my van, turn it on the blue tooth kicks on. I say"send text to Daddy" then, my blue tooth would take my speech (Hey, do we need anything at home) and convert it to a text. Then I say "send" and it does so. Incoming text messages would be transposed to speech as well, so I wouldn't have to read his reply at a red light. Speech to text already exists, I think it just needs a little finetuning in order to be used in this manner. Robby the robot voice just doesn't cut it.

Library 2.0 is a wonderful thing. I think we should make an effort to get more of our customers to use the HCPL website, and also to participate in iHCPL. Perhaps the library can offer the iHCPL course as part of their computer training classes. It gives a very broad overview of the things that can be done online and how useful some of them can be. Also, I think it would be great if we could have perhaps a genealogy research online class, showing how to use the different services, etc. Genealogy is such a hot topic right now, and there are more and more things showing up online.

Week 9

8-( I already did a week 9 and 10, but they seem to have been sucked up in the vortex of cyberspace. No, really. LoL I suppose its possible that I didn't actually hit the publish button, but one would think that they would be saved as drafts, as I see this save about every 30 seconds or so. Ahh well. Youtube and podcasts are very entertaining, and they can even be educational at times, depending on what type of video you're watching. My youngest son has pulled up several experiments, where they walk you thru the experiment so that you can recreate it. I think his favorite was this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-UnFb-uyYI

As for Overdrive, I've been using it for quite some time now, not that you have a choice with your digital downloads from HCPL. I think its more of a dr manager then a download manager, as it is the program that tells you when your time is up with an item, and what you can do with the item while you have it, as well as telling you to"delete any copies or cds you may have burned of this" I've not actually burned anything to cd from my e downloads, so I don't know what would happen if I put one in after my "time" with the item is up.

As for podcasts, I have to be honest, I don't particularly follow them. If I see something that might interest me, then yes, I'll watch, but I prefer to read a blog (in my own time frame) then to have to watch someone else do it in their time frame. Something that would take me 30 seconds to read, and then move on to something else, gets dragged out into 3 minutes. So therefore, I'm not big on podcasts, although I did look at them for this blog.

#52 pt Deux!

In searching for the 4th grade girls books, I used Allreaders, I had to change the parameters quite a few times, but I ended up with "A Dog's Life; Autobiography of a Stray" by Ann Martin, and Smoky , the Cowhorse by Will James. I tried to use Guysread for the boys, but kept coming back with database errors. iRead was equally unsatisfactory. I finally used FictionFinder, by the OCLC, and that was superb. I didn't use the clouds (I really don't like clouds, frankly) I used the browse genre section, and found young adult horror, which led me to the results of Tricksters by Margaret Mahy, and A Pattern of Roses, by M.K. Mahy.

#52

Ok, when I used Novelist Plus to find read alikes for Robert Jordan, it came up with Stephen R Donaldson and Raymond Feist. Ok, good choices, the writing styles are similar, but definitely not imaginative, or beyond the norm. Then I used Gnooks, and they came up with Terry Goodkind and Raymond Feist. However, at Gnooks, you can keep hitting the bar and get more and more names, and when I did, I actually saw authors there I hadn't heard of before, which is a plus. However, I don't really think Terry Goodkind = Robert Jordan. Different styles of writing, Goodkind is very humorous and tongue in cheek while Jordan was all business. Overbooked has moved to a .com as of 2/28/09 and I was unable to find a similar utility there. Using What Should I Read Next gave multiple suggestions, although it also suggested the same author you had already put in, and it also gave you the option of typing in a bunch that you liked, to narrow down your results. All in all, I think the last site was by far the best, (that's prolly why I've had it bookmarked for a long time lol) I actually used that site at work about 2 weeks ago, and one of my co horts said, omg, is that a website??? She was delighted, and I'm sure a convert now as well 8-)

week 8

Zoho is actually kinda neat. Lotsa gadgets to play with, I imagine I'll be playing around over there for a few months at least. Looks a lot like the old word, but more intuitive then open office. A lot of things coming together for cloud computing. I've also started using Plaxo, its a nice service to combine all your communications in one, and its free for comcast customers (the deluxe version) Just log in with your comcast user name and pw, and you're golden. I actually heard from an old co worker I hadn't heard from in years, that was fun 8-)

Plaxo is actually a kind of social network as well, more ala facebook then myspace. Personally, I don't care for facebook, although i've had an acct for years. I tend to use Myspace, its already established for me, and even my older relatives use it, so I can update all the family at once.

Week 7

Ahh, technology. Well, I suppose a word or two about Wikipedia is necessary, so here it is...Remember, Wikipedia is controlled by the users, so don't believe everything you read there. If enough readers believe something is true, and submit that information, Wikipedia will change the entry. Check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reidsville,_North_Carolina if you scroll down the page to Notable Reidsvillians, you'll see where some of the kids have expressed their opinion of the town, and enough of them logged in and agreed to it that now its posted there as fact. I had actually been looking for another town in NC, that back when we were house-hunting, one of the local kids had edited the entry to talk all about him, and how leet he was, and how he pwnd Wikipedia, but I can't remember the name of the town. So just be careful with that one, and make sure you always back up your research. Its like that email from the president of Zumbawe, if ya know the truth, its funny, if ya don't, there's trouble ahead!!

Week 7, pt 2...

Ahhh, something technology related.. where would I even start?? lol I am LOVING the fact of cloud computing, and how I can access just about anything from anywhere...not that I don't love my laptop, but lugging it about can get very tired!! My whole life revolves around my laptop, here is where I pay my bills, keep up with relatives, research genealogy, play my games, keep track of my banking and investments, my family's insurances and medical profiles. And now, with the help of certain websites, like Mint, and Quickenonline, I can actually have balances of accts sent via text message once a week, just to keep me in sync with what's going on where, without actually having to go to the websites and ck for updates.