Flickr and tagging

I've found the tagging feature on Flickr to be very useful for both work and personal items. When searching for a good vacation hotel, I used Flickr to type in hotel names and places and came up with much more realistic photos of rooms and views from views that I ever would have found on the hotel site. Great thing is some of those tags also let me know "DON'T STAY HERE EVER!" or worst hotels were a big clue in.

For work purposes I've used Flickr to help me develop Power Point presentations for assisting people in coming up with ideas for interesting library displays, finding fresh pictures for other presentations, and ideas for my own creative displays of materials. It's a great place to use tagging for a certain library to see what they are up to. (See Hennepin County or Charlotte Mecklenberg libraries for their new, fresh teen programs.)

Flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/meanjavaidyll/846174354/

Here's my photo, which was taken in Seattle on my most recent vacation. Flickr has been the most successful social tool I have ever used. We made some friends on a cruise we went on two years ago and now all the friends post their photos on Flickr and that's how we keep up with each other. Because of Flickr, we're now taking another vacation with the same group in February. It's a great site and fun to search for new photos!

Pandora music site

I LOVE to use Pandora at home. (I used to love to use it at work, but now it's BLOCKED!) Pandora creates your own "radio station" based on favorites that you have listed. It is a great way to discover new artists based on artists you enjoy now. Particularly great for me is putting in some Idie artists that aren't often found on other music sites such as these and then getting back suggestions that include mainstream and independent artists. As the music plays, you rank whether you enjoyed the song or not and then the site improves on suggestions to you based on your thumbs up or down. VERY big brother like in a nice way. :)

Technorati

I must Technorati is a lot more attractive than it used to be, but I'm not sure if it is much more useful. The one feature I do enjoy in searching for items is that you can look at only video postings. Came in handy as I was searching for training videos for my new dog! I like that the site has more color to it than previously and it is a nice way to search strickly for blog information rather than weed through on Google. Haven't tried tagging posts with Technorati and don't think I will, but the process looks easy enough.

Yummy and Delicious

Since we all work at different work stations around our buildings, Delicious give us a way to travel with bookmarks in hand. There are many times when I want to search a certain spot on the Internet and can't quite remember the URL of the site. As with all the tools so far, creating the account was VERY easy and tagging will certainly help keep track of favorites. I'm not much of an Internet Surfer because I get lost in time when I do, so this will help me do a minimum amount of searching on some favorite spots. It's yummy and nutritious for the mind!

I haven't used it as a social tool yet, so I'm going to try that out with some personal subjects of interest, like playing the banjo.

My Own Space

Well, creating a MySpace account couldn't be easier and I must say it has been a great place to check in the past for people from my past. I found my prom date from his MySpace account and it was nice to be able to check up and see what he's doing now.

I don't think this will be something I'll keep up with as far as myself though. I use Flickr a lot and I blog a lot, but MySpace? Don't think so.

VBPL, MySpace, and Teens

While I don't think a MySpace account would particularly connect to NEW teens, I don't think it would be a great forum to connect to teens that have already been coming in and who can easily see what we're up to rather than checking the rather unattractive web page "events" pages. PA's teen group would love to hve a MySpace page so they can keep up with each other when they've moved on to college and so they can post their events to encourage their friends to come. So, the answer is Yes! We should be using Facebook or My Space to keep connections going.

Reader's Advisory Wiki

I purposely hadn't been reading the reader's advisory wiki so that I could learn it as I was going through 2.0. Couldn't be easier to edit. Simply follow the leads! I think the wiki is an excellent way for teams to communicate their work to the entire system and to get input from those who have expertise or interest in the topic, but can't necessarily be on the team. It's nice to see the VBPL reader's advisory wiki populated with staff picks!

Wiki Wiki Woo!

Taking a look at the Wikis provided really makes me think the most effective use of Wikis really is to help with meeting management. It's great to have a tool that your entire team can post to that is semi-attractive and can hold more information and has more sharing capabilities than shared drives. The Subject guide wiki is interesting, but so unattractive that I think people would tire of it quickly. That's the trick to any of these tools though! They look better the more you learn about them and sometimes simple works best!