Thing 21

Happy St. Lawrence Day (Aug 10) - the patron saint of libraries and librarians - also the Perseid meteor showers are called "St. Lawrence's fiery tears" (they occur between Aug 8 and Aug 13) - just something I learned when I was supposed to be learning about podcasts - oh well...

As with all things internet - there is a plethora of podcasts (forgive me - its Friday). My personal favorite Excerpts from the Constitution - with comments by the faculty of Yale (no really, it was extremely informative).

I was also happy to see some of my favorite NPR people have podcasts - Krista Tippett always has such an interesting program - sometimes I only catch a little of her program when I'm in the car and I subscribed to her podcast and Prairie Home Companion with my Bloglines account. It is good to know that there are directories for podcasts that can be searched for things that are of interest to you.

You Tube

I had looked at videos on YouTube before, so I was aware of the site, but I was surprised how easy it was to post a video to your blog. I chose Gore Vidal because I had listened to his latest memoir, Point to Point Navigation on CD. He was someone I knew very little about, but I enjoyed listening to the book. I found him to be a very intelligent voice for his generation - it inspired me to learn more about him and read his other memoirs.

Gore Vidal on the future

Things 18 & 19

I chose the "Yelp" website from the list of 2.0 awards. This is a city guide that allows locals to write reviews about restaurants, shopping, net life and all those other things that are good to know when you are traveling. This is a good site to visit to hear what the locals have to say about local happenings. I wrote a review of the MVR restaurant, and I added the site to my favorites in Technorati and Bloglines.

I also decided to go back today and play around alittle with Technorati and delicious - I wasn't sure I really understood these sites. I was able to export my feeds from Bloglines to Technorati and add them to my favorites.

I have been able to see the learning connection while doing these different things - just the act of doing them makes you feel more comfortable with technology. It is mind-boggling, though, to realize what is out there - there's even a name for us "bloggers" - Citizen Media.

Zohowriter and STARS

I imported the STARS mission statement into a document at Zohowriter. I shared it with the other STARS trainers - so I hope John, Linda, Marian and Diane will be able to access it with their zohowriter account. Lets try editing the document this way - it will be fun and give us some practice using these new tools. I was not able to post to my blog from Zohowriter, but I'm going to try again

Its pretty cool when you figure something out on your own (see last post) - yes I did create and post my last message from Google Docs and Spread sheets. I did not know these documents were available and I can see how this could make expensive software like Microsoft Office unnecessary for the average consumer who using the computer and internet to manage their personal business.

I am (hopefully) going to post this from Google Docs & Spreadsheets to my blog. It may take a while to think through some of these things to fully understand how we can use the programs and different software at work.