Twitter

Armed with a bit of knowledge about what Twitter is all about, share your thoughts on this fast growing online phenomenon.

I am not sure what to think about Twitter and Tweeting. I can see the usefulness of getting the word out regarding business opportunities, concerns, etc. I think that the almost immediate feedback for businesses to their products and services would be an invaluable asset. As an individual with limited time to spend on the computer, I don't see a lot of usefulness for me to set up a Twitter account. Some day when I have more time to "play" on the computer maybe I'll start Tweeting.

LibraryThing

Do you see any practical applications for LibraryThing either at home or at work? Will you start using this site?

I see this site as another good way to look up titles and authors and also to find some read-alike suggestions. Also, the ability to make lists of books would be helpful to some people. Because we no longer have the "my list" on the CPL website, I will suggest to customers to use LibraryThing for this purpose. I saw suggestions for lists such as: Books I have read; Books I own; Books I would like to read; Books I have loaned to other people. Members of book clubs could also use the lists capability to make lists of books that the club has read and possible book club reads for the future. The social networking aspect with other avid readers is also good, again especially for book club members.

I will not personally use this site right now because I just don't have the time to keep up with it. At some point in the future, I may start to use LibraryThing for my personal books and book lists. I will definitely use it when I am no longer at the library every day with access to our catalogue on a daily basis.

Online Productivity Tools

Do you see free online tools like these eventually replacing expensive software like MS Office?

Yes I do. I used the Google Calendar (http://www.google.com/calendar/) and added my days off and special events for the month of May 2010. I found this calendar to be very user friendly and it was comparable to both Outlook Calendar and Sharepoint Calendar that we use here at the branch. You can choose all day or timed events; recurring events; synch the events to your Outlook Calendar at work and even choose the country and time zone that you live in to co-ordinate the calendar to Canadian holidays and mountain standard time.

I have also used Open Office (http://www.openoffice.org/) for word processing (comparable to Microsoft Word) and spreadsheets (comparable to Microsoft Excel) in the past. These applications were both very close to the Microsoft equivalents and can easily be downloaded for free from the website. Because of the availability of very good, easy to use, free software programs from the internet; I see these applications becoming more popular than expensive programs from more traditional software providers.

Talking Cat - The New Fish from YouTube

YouTube

Comment on the quality, entertainment value, or usefulness of the content on these sites.

I have used YouTube to look up old jazz songs for my jazz playing daughter; "how to..." ballroom and latin dance videos to supplement dance classes my husband and I were taking; sixth sense and XBOX 720 for a look at future technology and a few fun videos for a laugh. I haven't tried uploading a video onto YouTube yet.

I have found YouTube to be very useful and entertaining, as well as containing an easy to use search function. The only thing that isn't always perfect is the quality of the original video that has been downloaded. I have been lucky, in that everything I have searched for I have found several videos to choose from. I can just keep watching different ones until I find a decent quality of video to watch.

I give YouTube a thumbs up for entertainment value and usefulness! Quality is a little more precarious, but usually a good video can be found to watch as well!

Flickr

Comment on the quality, entertainment value, or usefulness of the content on these sites.

Flickr:
I really enjoyed looking up photos on Flickr. I have searched for photos on Flickr before, but I do not have an account on the site. I did the tour and found out that you can edit your photos, make albums, coffee table books, dvds, cards, calendars, etc. from your photos. That is really cool and very useful. I think that this would be a great way to keep and organize photos as well as share them with people. I found out that you can choose the privacy settings for each photo and also you can join groups of people that are interested in the same type of photos that you are.

I give Flickr a thumbs up for quality, entertainment value and usefulness!

RSS Feeds on Bloglines

Were you able to successfully set up your RSS feed? If not, where did you run into problems? If you were successful, does this make information-gathering more convenient for you?

Yes, I was successful in setting up a Bloglines account and subscribing to some RSS feeds (or Real Simple Syndication) through Bloglines. Then I went to Food TV and clicked on RSS to find the url for them. Then I copied the url and pasted it into the Add spot on Bloglines. It was all very simple.

The idea of keeping on top of information that you want is great. I am a little overloaded with accounts to check at this point. I think the idea of having the feeds come right to your computer (like my coworker has with her Mac) would be great. She can click on her mail icon located on her computer dashboard and receive all of her feeds there. I think I will try to add a feed at home. Even though my PC with Windows XP doesn't have a dashboard, I hope that this will be simpler than checking another external site with my account there.