Monday, March 30, 2009

Thing 14: Technorati

So I browsed through Technorati's most popular blogs and I have to say, only one blog that that I read on a daily basis made the cut (yay, locats!). I was, however, excited to see Mythbusters on there (show of awesomeness), but I really hadn't heard of most of the others. I think this is because they are primarily geared towards tech-type people, and I am certainly not one. This doesn't mean I didn't find anything worthwhile; Lifehacker looks extremely useful. There's a lot of great info there, not just on techie stuff but how to buy a mattress, or what to save your money on, etc., and it's compiled in a very user-friendly and easy to deal with manner. Technorati, thank you, for helping me find even more blogs to waste my time (ahem, I mean, read) on.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Lucky #13: delicious!

I first used del.icio.us a couple years ago for a library school assignment, and I recently revisited my meager list of library blogs today. Pathetic. It occurred to me that I could really make the site useful by actually adding sites I go to ALL the time instead of for one assignment. So, done! I have used the social aspect of it perhaps once, namely, searching other people's lists for library blogs, but I have yet to really make my list useful for anyone else. Apparently, I'm determined to tag my sites in a way only I can appreciate or understand. Selfish? Maybe. Yeah, yeah, I'll go back and fix that. But only because it's Lent and guilt floats around me like a gray cloud.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Rollyo is awesome

Creating your own customized search engine is pretty darn fun and useful. I always have to cycle through my long list of bookmarks to find what I want - but not any more! I'm inspired to do another, non-work-related one; maybe I'll post that too. This ESL Resources roll will definitely save me some time.

My Rollyo ESL Resources Search Engine

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Thing 11: Library Thing

I've been on Shelfari for a while now, but never tried LibraryThing until today. I can't quite tell which one is easier to work with; but all I know is that cataloging all my books would be an impossible project. If you add to that ones I've read but don't own (a majority of them) it would take a while. So I'm not really sold on the idea of having your own personal catalog online somewhere, though I'm all for sharing. That being said, here it is:

My LibraryThing

Thing 10: John Stamos is a miracle

Okay, I had no idea how many cool generators (image and what have you) were out there on the Interwebs. This 23 Things project has now become even more worthwhile, now that this site has come to my attention:




Amazing. So this little nugget is from Make your own genuine miracle. I think if I saw John Stamos on my pancake, it would make my day. Hopefully, this will make yours!




Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Thing 9: Technorati is clearly superior

I'm kidding, sort of. I have no real authority to make such a proclamation. But! After taking a peek through a few of the available news feed search tools, I think Technorati is the most user-friendly. I really liked browsing through their most popular. The bonus with all of these search sites is that I'm made aware of other great blogs out there with which to waste my time on. :) I found Bloglines to be time-consuming, and I had to register and re-register for it over and over again before my email was validated. I also wasn't impressed with Syndic8 or Topix.net, but then again, I'm not looking for strictly news feeds, just blogs with information that appeals to me (see: college basketball addiction). Now having used these search tools, I'm still more likely to add feeds from blogs that I already read instead of looking for new ones.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Thing 8: RSS-ing

Holy smokes, are there a lot of blogs out there or WHAT? The closest I've ever come to playing around with aggregators is My Yahoo, and that's limited to the amount of bloggage you can follow. Ah, but NOW! Bloglines is a pretty handy tool, I've got to say. We're supposed to find 10 but the more I search around, the more I find to follow. The Bloglines Quick Picks is by far the easiest thing to use to add stuff, but I did manage to find the rockin' cool orange button on the blogs I already read pretty quickly. It's convenient to have everything in one place - especially for library school. We're expected to keep up with all the latest, and this is a good way to do it. Libraries can really get news and new title information out to the masses easily with feeds, as long as patrons think to subscribe to them. They may not know the wonder that is Bloglines yet, right?