So, this is the end of our beginning

Well, for starters, I'd like to thank Joy, Gerald, and the many others who've spent a great deal of time putting this whole thing together and making it as fun as humanly possible. It's been very enjoyable and I've been able to try a good deal of different things that I probably wouldn't have otherwise. It probably hasn't greatly altered my learning habits, considering I've been into technology for most of my life, but it's given me a greater understanding of whats out there on the web. As for my favorite thing, I'd probably have to say it'd be a tie between Flickr and Youtube. I loved being able to flip through thousands of different pictures and videos of just about anything, seeing things I could have only imagined before. Definitely a good way to kill the boredom if need be. A site that surprised me, in a good way, was del.icio.us. I had absolutely no clue before trying it with Learn and Play the many different things that could be done with it.

As for the program as a whole, I can't really think of what could be done differently that could make it any more enjoyable or interactive than it was this time round. If the library chooses to offer a program similar to this one in the future, I would strongly consider participating in it. Once again, thanks to everyone who helped put this whole thing together. It's been great.

MOLDI

I've become a big fan of MOLDI ever since it became compatible with my Ipod. It's a service that I will most definitely be taking advantage of if for no other reason than it eliminates the hassle of having to reserve the books on CD, burning them onto my computer, and transferring them to my Ipod. Yes, I know that sounds like such an incredible hassle. Those precious several minutes I've lost having to do it that way. All in all, it's definitely a very nice and convenient resource.

Podcasts

Podcasts are a really nice innovation that can help keep a person updated on practically any subject matter they wish to stay up to date on. It's not something I'll probably get in to, but I could definitely see how others could enjoy the conveniences of podcasts, especially being able to download them to a person's Ipod or MP3 player. In terms of podcasts the library could use, perhaps we could do a weekly podcast talking about upcoming library/community events, a library staff member or customer doing a "book of the week" type of thing where they can do like a mini review of the book they're recommending. There's some good possibilities there.

Youtube

So, this one was especially easy. I've been on youtube dozens of times and like it a lot. You can find videos for just about anything you're interested in. Since I could not decide between two good youtube videos, I decided to post both of them. The first one is a cool video of a meteor falling to earth and the other is a restaurant in Japan that, because of the economy, is using two trained monkeys to wait tables in order to save money.

CML Toolbox

I decided to make this post especially easy on myself by choosing to write about easily my favorite web browser right now, Mozilla Firefox. It's the only browser I'll use on my home computer or laptop. It runs faster than Internet Explorer and has hundreds of what are called addons, which are little programs that run within your web browser and can help you perform a great number of tasks. It's really a great web browser.

Here's the addons page for Firefox in case you want to take a look:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Discovering Web 2.0 tools

Well, I spent a few minutes looking at some of the winners of the "Web 2.0 Awards", and wanting to get a little more play than work out of this particular "thing", I looked in the Music section and spent a good deal of time on the website http://www.pandora.com/

For those that haven't heard of it, it's basically an online music service that is customized to the type of music/artists you're interested in. When you first go to the site, you'll immediately be asked for a favorite song or music artist and once you've entered that in, it'll create a "radio station" playing songs similar in style to the artist or song you've chosen. As each song is playing, you'll be given an opportunity to further customize what types of songs you'll be hearing on that station by giving a thumbs up or down to that song. Now, you can also start fresh, create a whole other "radio station", and go in a completely different musical direction if you wish. If you want to save the stations you've created and be able to access them again, you can click on the register link towards the top of the screen and create an account, which is free by the way.

It's really a tremendous website for anyone who enjoys being able to listen to good music for free while working on the computer.

Web-based apps

I had actually never tried Google Docs before, but I had heard of it. I do especially like the flexibility it gives people in that they don't have to spend over a hundred bucks to get Microsoft Office on their computers if it doesn't already come pre-loaded on the machine. I also like the fact that documents can be saved to a person's google docs account as opposed to having to save them on a computer, flash drive, or in an e-mail in order to be able to access the documents on a different computer. Definitely something that can come in handy sometime.