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.

Thing #16: Playing around with wikis

Well that was a pretty fun experience. I like how collaborative wikis are and how they can become a great source of information on all sorts of different topics for all those who visit it, especially amongest a group of people who can ask questions, share stories, pictures, etc.

Web 2.0 Thoughts

In my humble opinion, I think the library of the future is mostly going to serve as a hub of transition into an age where digital information will be the norm and printed items will more rapidly become obsolete. We'll serve as a source of internet access for those that still do not have it available at their homes and through our trained staff, a source of information on how to use the technology the customers need to find the information they are looking for. With more devices like the Amazon Kindle on the horizon, a portable device that display books, magazines, and newspapers digitally, customers will simply be able to download the item they want to their home computer or a portable device. In the future, perhaps libraries could continue to loan these items digitally for free, because these items are going to cost something regardless of whether they are in physical or digital form.

Library Wikis

So, I spent a little while checking out some library wikis and found them somewhat helpful, but containing mostly information that can be found fairly easily using the reference resources on our own website. I did find, however, one thing I think can be applied to our organization and that's creating a wiki, linked through our main website, where customers can submit reviews of the books they have read. For instance, if a customer is looking for a item on our website, a customer could see a link to the wiki in the item screen where they could find other customers' opinions of it, which could help them decide whether or not they wish to check the item out. Just a thought.