Flickr

Flicker was a little frustrating to set up. First you have to set up a whole new e-mail account with Yahoo and then you get to set up with Flickr. Once I got set up, though, I found downloading my pictures to be quite easy.
The use for libraries would be to post pictures of events and programs to help advertise what is going on in the libraries. Personally, the fact that the pictures are now backed up online is great in case anything happens to the hard copies.
Here is the picture I posted on Flickr. It was taken on my trip to Italy with my choir in 2005. This is the "Bridge of Sighs" in Venice. Convicts would walk across the bridge from the left side (court house) to the right side (prison) after their sentence. The view of Venice from the windows was usually their last and they were reported to sigh as they went across. I got to walk across the bridge later that day during a tour of both buildings!

Pandora

I really like Pandora as a cool music listening tool. I like the fact that once you type in your favorite artist it gives you other music you might like. I tend to get stuck listening to one artist and forget there are others out there. I used the mix feature to combine my stations and I got a great eclectic mix to listen to. One funny anecdote: When I started to tell my dad what I was about to learn in this project and couldn't remember the name of the web site he immediately said "Oh, you mean Pandora?". He then brought up his playlist and told me all about it. I should have known. He is a music teacher and a musicophile. Anyway, one more reason I should be online, right?

RSS Feeds

I wasn't as impressed with RSS feeds as I thought I would be. Personally, I am so new to blogging and following blogs that the relevance of this whole new world hasn't quite sunk in. I do plan to visit this again when I have more time and maybe I'll understand it better.
I do think it is a great idea to be able to have information come to you rather than search all your favorite blogs etc. each time you go on-line. I just don't have any favorite blogs yet.
For librarians, this might be useful for organizing incoming information to save time. I do think, though, that to remain fresh, the user would still have to visit new blog sites and weed out old sites that don't apply anymore.

Instant Messaging

Hey, this is pretty cool.

I think this is similar to how the 24/7 librarians do their work with patrons online. The real time communication makes asking and answering questions easier than e-mail. It would also be a good way for hard of hearing people to communicate with anyone without using a phone service with an operator. Not everyone has access to TTY but most people (myself excluded) have a computer. I haven't tried instant messaging with multiple people but I have visited a few chat rooms before. It can get confusing and the conversation becomes pretty shallow so everyone can follow and contribute but it is fun. There are lot's of abbreviations and common phrases like "LOL" for "laugh out loud". Anyway, It is good to know more about this and I plan to use instant messaging in the future.

Testing 123...

I can't figure out how to transfer the URL for blogs to the tracking log. Let's see if I can get this one to work.

It worked! Now on to instant messaging.