A little humor...

I thought this was funny, especially with all of the struggles we've gone through with computers over the last few weeks! I hope you enjoy the "Medieval Helpdesk"!

Thing #23

There were days when I was sure that I would never reach this Thing!!!

I discovered so many things that I had no idea even existed! It was fun to find ways to create posters, learn how to post blogs, add videos to blog posts, and so much more. I'm not sure that everything "stuck" in my brain, but I am sure that after this introduction I will be able to "relearn" if necessary.

I enjoyed the fact that all of our staff worked on this project. We shared tips and helped each other solve problems to complete each Thing. We also had someone to share our frustrations with when things just wouldn't go right! It makes me feel better when I can "vent" to someone who understands what I'm going through.

There were many things in this program that I was curious about before but never took the time to learn about. Or maybe I just wasn't sure where to go to learn about them! I had heard about blogs, RSS feeds, Flickr, wikis, etc. and it's great to now have some idea of what people are talking about when they use these terms!

Thanks to Pam for forcing me out of my comfort zone and making me learn something new!

Thing #22

I browsed some of the directories of podcasts and listened to several. There are some interesting podcasts available, though I don't think I have time to listen to all of them! I tried one on Harry & Bess Houdini, which was biographical information, and a science one from NOVA about possible life on Mars. I listened to and subscribed to the Book Talk Radio Broadcasts from the NLC. I found some interesting books and authors there that I wasn't familiar with.

Thing #21

YouTube is a fascinating site. I have used it to search for old songs, scenes from "The Muppet Show," skits from "Saturday Night Live," performances of Christian music for church, performances by a magician who wanted to do a show at our library, etc. etc. Yesterday I watched a couple of videos that a friend posted so that everyone could see how his father was doing in physical therapy at Madonna in Lincoln. We had a patron in one day with her son and grandchild. The son was visiting with the baby but Mom was still at home working, and he wanted to get on a computer so he could put a video on YouTube so Mom could see the baby waving goodbye or something. What a neat way for people to keep in touch!




There is a LOT on YouTube that is not fit to watch, but I guess you just skip over that. I think kids need some education about using this site, and perhaps supervision while using it. But that goes for everything on the Web!

Thing #20

I looked at Picasa under "Photos and Digital Images."

It says, "Google's photo sharing service comes with excellent software for editing your pictures" and I found this to be true. The editing is very easy to use, and I like that the software is free. I tried out the cropping and some of the other editing features, but would like to try to make a collage too.

I could use Picasa to edit photos taken at library events to improve the quality of the pictures. I would like to get photos of library activities posted on our web page. We have a photo release form for patrons to sign. I guess I need to know if we take group photos of activities and no one in the photo is identified, can they be posted without permission from everyone in the shot? I try to take photos of all of our kids' programs, but then they sit on the computer and we don't currently use them for anything. I think that kids would enjoy seeing themselves on our web page, and maybe it would increase the number of visitors to our page.

Thing #19 - Presentation (once again!)

I've decided after spending all that time getting frustrated with the Googledocs presentation troubles I had, it is my computer that doesn't like Googledocs. I opened the presentation on another computer and it seemed to work fine. So once again I am going to try to publish the presentation here in my blog:

Thing #19 - Presentation

I went into Googledocs and created a presentation using one of their templates. I was going to embed it in this blog. However, after spending 2 hours on it I have nothing to show for my time. The application kept locking up my computer, which was very frustrating. I was hitting "save" every few seconds because I never knew when it would freeze up. When I finally got it done, I embedded it in a blog post. However, when I tried to view it almost all of the images I'd put in were gone. I closed out Googledocs and went back in to try to copy the html again, but now the images are gone from the presentation also! I know that they were there originally because I saved it to my computer as a powerpoint first before trying to post it to my blog, and the powerpoint is still there and looks fine. I'd go in to Googledocs and start over but I don't think it's worth it. I guess you could say that this was a learning experience, but what I learned was that I have no use for Googledocs! The concept sounds great, but the actuality left a lot to be desired as far as I was concerned.