Thing 44

This was a fairly easy assignment. I find Jott interesting. I'm not sure if I'll use it much, though, since I rarely use my cell phone and don't tend to think of calling myself with a To Do List. I think it's easier to write a list on paper. Also, it doesn't seem to work very well on my computer--maybe it's a software issue, but you can't listen to the Jott messages, just read what it transcribed.

I did use Jott with Twitter & Blogger. I even added a Jott widget to my sidebar. Then, since I didn't like it, I deleted the Jott posts and widget.

The only library application I can think of would be to link a library cell phone with Jott and post announcements to an official library blog. For example, if we had a blog with daily announcments on it--you could just call Jott to add your newest announcement--say it's to announce the Library closed due to weather, the person with the cell phone could call that in.

Thing 43

This is the only assignment I’ve come across that absolutely requires downloading and installing software—not something I could recommend for our library computers as installing on public computers requires an administrative logon. For home use, I can see the possibilities—particularly for any musicians or other musically oriented people. The sheet music application would also be a big plus for them. They should add in the assignment instructions that you will also need to download winzip to unzip and install the jazz sequencer program. At least they do have a link to the winzip download on the same page as the sequencer download. Really, this is something I'll think about using on my home computer once I have high speed internet access--looks like it could be a lot of fun making my own version of some song.

Thing 42

Neat, this lesson showed that something that was around before WWW is still here today and still in use. Harley Hahn does give a great, fact-filled tutorial about usenet.

I visited the Library usenet group: soc.libraries.talk. Not a lot of activity—Activity Low--only 20 recent authors. Much as it says its all things library related, I found an obvious spam posting that made it into the group. It was most used in 1996 and 1997, actually, there was lots of usage from 1994 through first months of 2000, then it really drops off, hardly ever getting up to 100 posts per month after that.

Since you have to pay to access Harley Hahn's Internet Yellow Pages, Google Groups is a great free way to find usenet groups. I had a lot of fun as you can search for groups on anything—vampires, authors, movies, cars (I searched my car make & model), etc. Main thing to keep in mind is that all the information is informal, undocumented, opinions. As groups also have RSS feeds, Usenet seems to be very similar to the news groups/social marketing sites we learned about in Library 2.0: Bloglines, Technorati, Topix, etc.

Thing 41

I am so glad to finally reach this assigment. Live Mocha is a great language learning site--best of all its free!!!

I have signed up for a French class to remind myself what I’ve lost in the 15 years since I last took French in college. This is something that I’ve wanted to do. If this site really works at helping me relearn my French, I plan to try other languages in the future.

This would be very useful for all of us in learning new languages to speak with our visitors and immigrants from other lands--improve library communications and improve library relations with our public.

Thing 40

Very enjoyable assignment. I really like visiting Retroland. Lots of fun to go through and find my old favorite foods, movies, etc. I did a TV show I had forgotten that I liked—Kids Incorporated—and my favorite breakfast cereal as a kid—Quisp. I added a few memories. Good place to search for information on everything. I like all the information in the About section for each item and the links to official sites some items have under External Links.