Music Streaming and Sharing -Thing 17

I selected Pandora for learning about music streaming. It is easy to use and you have instant gratification when you create your "special station." You can select your favorite artists and Pandora gives you some of their songs to choose from (thumbs up) and it also gives you some suggestions of other artists who sings in the same styles as your selected artists. You have the capability to bookmark songs and artists so you can come back to them.

There are some rules on Pandora that places limits on you as to how many songs you can skip, so you need to make careful selection of your favorite artists. If this is a problem to you, you can select other music streaming sites which give you the ablility to play specific songs such as Last.fm.

You can create special stations for your different moods - slow and easy to fast and loud. If you create a profile, you can save your stations, but if you choose not to do this you can make quick selections each time you log in. The ads are a little off putting, but worth it. Nice!

Google Maps - Thing 15

Google Maps were a surprise to me. I have done quick search and even printed maps from here, but I have never explored the other options. I started out by "visited" my daughter's home town library (compete with picture), checking out the traffic and sights along the way and ended by dragging my destination to her house.

Just for giggles I turned the URL into a Tiny URL: http://tinyurl.com/Karen

Tiny URL and You Send It - Things 13 & 14

Tiny URL are small wonders. I love this! I can't say the number of times I have given a patron the URL for an atricle I have found for a research paper and thought about the chances of them going home and pulling it up again. This would be a great way to make it so much easier them! I an anxious to get a phone request for infromation from Novel List, so I can created a Tiny URL and send it to them. I love this one.



You Send It. I will past this information to some of my family and patrons that need it so they can use it to expand the size of the attachments they send. Pictures are the way of the world and this will help them send larger files. As they say, "Bigger is Better."

Barbara, Janet, and Facebook - Thing 12

Facebook. Everybody is talking about it, participating in it and have fun with it. I think that having a library a Facebook wall page would be a great place to communicate with all kinds of library acitivies!

I decided to create an alter ego for my Facebook entry and opted to use the name of my character in my senior play. Now this is not the first time I have used this name as I have a great fondness for Janet. My Janet didn't have a last name so I decided on Brown. You can find her as janet_brown6810@yahoo.com. I am younger and live in Duncanville, but for Facebook purposes I am happy to be her and live there.

I enjoyed this experience and had fun with it and maybe one day soon I will join as me, but for now this was good for me.

Linked In - Thing 11

Looking at this professional web site certainly gives me a better perspective of some of the other social web sites at which we have been looking. On a professional level, the primary focus of Linked In is tied to recruiting and professional networking with others. But, it also serves as a social connection for people in a common profession to see what others are reading. You can sign up to become a member of a wide variety of Groups. Imagine my surprise when upon completing my registration and being directed to the home page I saw my City of Frisco colleagues that had already sign up; I discovered I could correspond with them in a whole different way.

It was neat to see what others in the "Government Administration" industry are reading. Some members of this group correspond in a different language, like Arjen Doosje who is currently reading L'ipnotista.

Linked In has a verification process that helps ensure only "real" people are allowed to join in; this helps this site to be more closely monitored than most. The "Jobs" tab was interesting and opens another option to offer to our patron seeking jobs, especially in a professional area.

From job seeking and networking to finding out what others in your interest areas are reading, this site might interest some of our patrons especially those who read a lot or are looking for a new job or helping build their businesses.

LibraryThing - Thing 10

LibraryThing was fun! I had plans to get in there, sign up, look around, and post ~ that's it - Done! But, how could anyone not want to stay and play. It is a great social networking site, something for every book lover. You can interact with readers of like taste or you can build, organize, and catalog your own little ole library. I really enjoyed the"Hot Review" ~ it was really fun to ready - an "Oh, Yeah, I read time time". The Topics and On This Day were great. I can see how this would really work for Book Clubs!

I played with a few of my autographed books from my days as a Children's Librarian and had a ball!

Delicious - /Thing 9

Delicious: Yum Yum!

Delicious is a wonderful convenience. Having all your bookmarks in one place and able to access them from any computer is the primary reason I would recommend Delicious to busy people that need to organize web sites~ at home, work or play. Strong relative tags are the key to organization and you should put thought into the ones you choose for each of your bookmarked sites. At this time I am not sharing my Delicious bookmarks with others, but I can see how that practice could benefit coworkers, family or community people with whom you were doing a project.

This set of bookmarks groups the Mayan Ruins we have visited on cruises we have taken.

http://delicious.com/janet_brown6810