Mash-ups

Well, I read up on mash-ups and played around with a couple of them. I think they are fascinating and a lot of fun. I'm sure there are many out there that are perfect in professional atmospheres, too.

From what the wikipedia article said, mash-ups are becoming more and more the norm to see online. It just makes me wonder what else "they" will come up with in a few years that makes mash-ups look antiquated. That seems to be the general trend with all of technology.

SMS

I was around for all the excitement about Vodaphone. England, Europe, Japan and Korea have been way ahead of us on using SMS as individuals and in England they have been finding ways to apply the technology to library services for more than a decade. We have just switched to sending emailed notices to people when we know that most of our patrons don't have computers at home..... We can be sure that upwards of 85% have cell phones, maybe we should have leapfrogged over email.

I use text messaging with my kids--- Ashamed to admit especially when I know they are in class...
but, I pay per message so I don't use it all that much.

I hate what txtng is doing to the informality of kids written language--- I had to stop somebody from sending a cover letter with his resume "that u requested"

Janet

Google Labs

To consider oneself technologically aware it is imperitive to keep abreast of everything Google is doing. They can change the entire environment with one product, much like Google Reader has changed RSS aggregators or iGoogle has changed start pages.

I have used Google applications and APIs for many projects and will do so in the future as long as they continue to "Do no evil."

Instant Messaging

I love IMing. I have been big into it since I was in college.

I used to have AIM and MSN Messenger on my computer at home. They were fine, but took up a lot of space on my harddrive. I switched over to Trillian when I found out about that, but I'm now on Meebo. Meebo is wonderful because it's all web-based and can be used anywhere.

As for the IM lingo... there's no way I could memorize that list from the one website. I'm lucky I know the few that I know right now! :o)

Michelle

Google Applications

Sarah introduced me to the Google Documents application when I started doing ILL's on Thursdays. Since then, I've created one of my own, added the notepad application, and now have a private Google calendar to keep track of what's going on in the world of Michelle. It's very helpful to have all of these kept in one place online, and available to access anywhere. It looks like there is plenty of other applications for me to play with in the future, too.

Google Documents

Google has added lots of great templates to the Google Documents suit. It has some pretty cool slideshow, database, and document templates. Especially interesting to our patrons may be the resume templates.

Flickr

I use Flickr extensively. I use it for personal images such as my upcoming wedding photos (creating a larger, more complete, and free image viewing gallery for the guests), and I use it to store, organize, display, and export and import the images taken by the Library. I am even considering a way to use it as storage with PHP/MySQL over layer to store, tag, and make searchable our historical images (far, far in the future).

I also like to use Flickr to find Creative Common images that I have used for various websites/fliers I have designed.

Some of my friends also are on Flickr and I enjoy following them as they take pictures of events.

Some people say, "I don't want anybody I don't know looking at me." I believe this is a naive attitude for many reasons, none of which I feel like going in to at the moment. Suffice to say, you are being photographed, seen, observed everyday regardless.

Flickr is an excellent website and I highly recommend it.