What's so special about 2.0?

I'm sitting here in front of my laptop, where I was thinking about catching up with my 2.0 homework. I realized that I was completely absorbed in 2.0 technologies without even realizing it. I had some photos uploading to my Flickr account, while downloading a song off iTunes and looking through the recommendations on my Netflix queue. This stuff is truly a part of my life anymore. It's not so special. In fact, it's fairly routine. We just don't always stop to think about it. And maybe I should be thinking about it, and what makes these services cool, and how to use what I've learned from them to improve the user experience for my customers.

Image Generators

I've played with these a bit before. I've got an image somewhere in my files (couldn't find it, of course) with a leather-clad punker with a spiked mohawk holding a sign saying "I love my library". I also once created a "Turning 40 For Dummies" book cover for a friend's birthday with one of these.

So this time, I figured I had better try something new. I was cruising around several sites, just having fun with them. One of my favorites is a blatant plug for a Bob Dylan album, but it uses the classic video footage from "Subterranean Homesick Blues" where Dylan is holding all the signs and dropping them one at a time to display the message. Only you get to insert your own, except for the album plug at the end. It doesn't let you download the results, though, just email a link to someone to go to the site to watch it (and get the album plug). The Cover Browser lets you insert text into the cover of an old comic book. The Church Sign Generator is kind of obvious. I liked the Bart Simpson Chalkboard, but it wouldn't let me save my work of genius. I found the most variety and was able to save the images at ImageGenerator.net -- including this one.

Flickr, part 2

So I played around a little, added a badge to my blog. I decided to try out the trading card thing, but I didn't find a picture I liked, so I created an avatar on the Simpsons movie site. Then I made the trading card. This was kind of fun, but I don't see myself actually passing it around much!

Lake La Ronge Sunset HDR

Lake La Ronge Sunset HDR
Originally uploaded by ccarterfile13

This is a recent photo from one of my Flickr contacts. I don't know any more about the guy except that he lives in Montana, but he has some great shots.

Flickr

Man, I'm behind on my assignments. Maybe this one seemed like I could breeze through it since I love Flickr. I've been using it for a while now, up to the point of ponying up so that I could have more space. If it was just a spot to park pictures to show to family and friends, that would be useful enough, but you can do that on dozens of sites. With Flickr, it's really all about the social aspect. I have friends with accounts and I love seeing what they've been up to. I belong to the local group, and have seen some pretty cool pictures of my home town. I've added other members of my groups to my contacts, just because I like their stuff. I wouldn't know them if I bumped into them on the street, but we know each other on Flickr. I've even made contact with people in other countries (France and India) who emailed me about using my photos. I use it mostly for my travel photos.

So, anyway, I did Discovery exercise (a), because I hadn't blogged from Flickr previously, and I already had an account and had previously posted to the Montana Libraries group. Setting up the blogging permissions was pretty easy, and actually blogging the photo was even easier. I may be doing this again!

Feed me!!

Using RSS feeds is something I've been doing for a while. I started with My Yahoo, but wasn't crazy about it. I now use Google Reader and have it set up with seven or eight tabs for the various aspects of my life and topics I'm interested in. So I was mentally whining about whether or not I needed to go through the exercise, but scolded myself that it's about the journey and not the destination. So I set up a Bloglines account, and found it interesting to go through the process on a different provider. That being said, I'm sticking with Google Reader, as I think it's easier. Or at least I'm used to it. Here's a fuzzy screenshot.

What do I like about using feeds? Well, I do try to keep up with what's going on in the world of libraries, and much of that happens in blogs anymore. I love having them aggregated in one place, where I can see if there's a new posting and if it's of interest to me and even open it right there instead of maintaining a list of all the various blogs. And when there's a link to something in another blog I hadn't yet discovered, it's easy to add it to the list.

A year or so ago, our library got involved as an innocent bystander in an overblown dispute on the library blogs about us supposedly monitoring the content that ILL borrowers were using. I hasten to say, the whole thing was based on a conversation overheard and wholly misunderstood by another library's patron who posted about it. We found out about it after outrage and blame had already aired around the blogosphere. A more sensible soul contacted us directly to ask if it was true. Since that time, one of the feeds I've maintained is a Technorati search on our library's name. Any time we're mentioned in a blog, I look at it! It gives us a chance to comment and respond if necessary. I consider it part of marketing.

We just put up a new hosted website this year with the capability of offering RSS feeds. I keep meaning to set up feeds for programs and events, new titles, staff recommendations, etc. All of this is already posted on our site ... why aren't we making it easier for our users to find them? New goal: learn how to set these up and get 'er done!

All the rest of you ...

I've just been skipping through all of the other participant's blogs. I recommend it! I've been enjoying getting a sense of everyone's personality just by the style of the blog, let alone the content. Thanks to Halloweengirl for the idea of adding everybody to my blogroll. That's what got me started!