Delivr

Last week, a friend had a birthday. I wanted to send him an e-card, but had trouble finding one I liked that was free (I willingly pay for the paper cards, but for some reason, I think that e-cards should be free :-P). So when I was looking at the third party applications on flickr, I was interested in the idea of the application delivr (http://www.delivr.net/). I was disappointed when I tried to use the application because there were not many photos available in the categories I chose, and sometimes the photos didn't seem to be very applicable to the category in which they had been placed.

However, with a little (or maybe a lot) of work this application could be very useful. Imagine being able to create an e-card from any public photo in flickr...

Come to the library, IF YOU DARE!

Come to the library, IF YOU DARE!
Originally uploaded by Manatee County Public Library

I was interested in what other Florida libraries were doing for halloween this year, so that's what I searched for in Flickr. This picture is from the Manatee County Public Library Central Library and it was posted at 6:55 AM this morning--that is dedication especially since they didn't open until 9AM today according to thier web site.

It also lets me know that libraries in Florida are using Flickr to help promote their libraries (note the caption: "Come to the Library, IF YOU DARE!" I wonder how useful flickr is as a promotional tool. Do people in the local community come across photos in Flickr posted by the library?

RSS Feed Search Engines

After exploring some the the RSS Feed Search tools, I think my favorites are Topix.net and Feedster. I liked Topix.net net for searching for feeds on a broad topics such as "libraries." I liked that you could view "all topics" on one page. Once they were on one page, it was easy to scroll through or do a Control + F search of the page for a particular topic. I like Feedster better when I was searching for blogs on more obsure subjects such as "taiwanese dramas." After a few searches, I wasn't a big fan of either Syndic8.com or Technorati, since they returned 0 hits for more obscure topics and didn't seem very useful to me for broad topics but I'll continue to play with them as I get time to see if there are particular situations in which they are useful.

RSS feeds and Bloglines

I just completed the RSS exercise and created a bloglines account. I ran into a little trouble finding my public page on bloglines, but then I realized I needed to fill out the "blog settings" section in order to be able to view my public page. My page is http://www.bloglines.com/public/eknapp .

Lifelong Learning

After listening to the Lifelong Learning presentation, I think that the easiest habit for me is to use technology to my advantage. Because I already have this habit, I am open and even prefer learning in non-traditional environments such as the online environment we are using for TLC 2.0. I think that taking responsibility for my own learning beyond the things that we will be learning specifically for the BCL 23 things will be the hardest habit to apply because of time constraints, both in work and in the amount of free time I have.