Our New Homepage

Bindela is right, of course.

Instead of negativity, we should all (myself most definitely included) be guided by Mom's advice: "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

The new homepage is pretty. It is definitely a step forward for our system.

That is all. You may now return to your normal lives. :)

Digital Intimacy and Ambient Awareness

Here's a great article by Clive Thompson on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and all them kewl Web 2.0 thingies.

Specifically, Mr. Thompson tries to answer the question that so many of us have: Why do people participate in these social networking sites & services? What do people get out of them?

Twitter, in particular, has been the subject of nearly relentless scorn since it went online. “Who really cares what I am doing, every hour of the day?” wondered Alex Beam, a Boston Globe columnist, in an essay about Twitter last month. “Even I don’t care.”

Mr. Thompson tells us that:

Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it “ambient awareness.” It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.

He describes a friend's experience with Twitter:

Ben Haley, a 39-year-old documentation specialist for a software firm who lives in Seattle, told me that when he first heard about Twitter last year from an early-adopter friend who used it, his first reaction was that it seemed silly. But a few of his friends decided to give it a try, and they urged him to sign up, too.

Each day, Haley logged on to his account, and his friends’ updates would appear as a long page of one- or two-line notes. He would check and recheck the account several times a day, or even several times an hour. The updates were indeed pretty banal. One friend would post about starting to feel sick; one posted random thoughts like “I really hate it when people clip their nails on the bus”; another Twittered whenever she made a sandwich — and she made a sandwich every day. Each so-called tweet was so brief as to be virtually meaningless.

But as the days went by, something changed. Haley discovered that he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends’ lives in a way he never had before. When one friend got sick with a virulent fever, he could tell by her Twitter updates when she was getting worse and the instant she finally turned the corner. He could see when friends were heading into hellish days at work or when they’d scored a big success. Even the daily catalog of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing, a sort of metronomic click that he grew accustomed to seeing pop up in the middle of each day.

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating.

He goes on to quote another scientist:

“It’s an aggregate phenomenon,” Marc Davis, a chief scientist at Yahoo and former professor of information science at the University of California at Berkeley, told me. “No message is the single-most-important message. It’s sort of like when you’re sitting with someone and you look over and they smile at you. You’re sitting here reading the paper, and you’re doing your side-by-side thing, and you just sort of let people know you’re aware of them.” Yet it is also why it can be extremely hard to understand the phenomenon until you’ve experienced it. Merely looking at a stranger’s Twitter or Facebook feed isn’t interesting, because it seems like blather. Follow it for a day, though, and it begins to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.

I think that the regular Twitterers in our system would tend to agree with that.

There's a lot more in the article. It's really good, and I think it gives a great feeling for the appeal (as well as some of the drawbacks) of online social networking.

Google Meeting Room Calendar

Here at BCY we have our Meeting Room Calendar on Google Calendar, and it is a thing of beauty.

Want to meet every second Tuesday of the month? Sure! Click, click, type, type, and it's done. Wait, let me zip through each month to check for conflicts. Oh, in April the second Tuesday is taken, how about if we move you to the third Tuesday for that month only? Right, click, click, that's taken care of.

What? You want a list of all your group's meetings for 2009? Sure, I'll just type the group name, hit search, and print out the list for you.

Change your contact person, phone number, anything? Easy...change it once and it's all done.

Okay, I'm at HDQ for a committee meeting, and someone wants to know if we can meet at BCY on Wednesday the 14th at 2 pm. Hold on, I'll just log onto Google Calendar and check. Okay, it's free, I'll book the meeting right now.

Or we're at Bill Bateman's Bistro and someone in the costumer's group asks if the library meeting room is available on the 20th at 7 pm. Whip out my phone, log onto Google Calendar, and I can tell them at once.

But here's the kicker (and you folks at HAR and AIR, pay attention): If you ask me nicely, I will add your account to the select list of people who are allowed to view our calendar. Imagine that a patron comes into your branch and wants to use the meeting room tomorrow night. You say, "Our meeting room is booked. But I checked BCY, and they seem to be available. Do you want me to call them?"

Is that customer service, or what?

How much would you pay for this tremendous service? Don't answer yet, because we also have the following:

- Automagically repeating entries for holidays, Children's Book Week and such, and even elections! We will never have to enter Thanksgiving or Election Day again.

- Access from home. Have an emergency closing? Want to notify the groups that are scheduled to use the meeting room? Log onto Google Calendar and there are all the names, phone numbers, and other contact information you could wish.

- Slices and even makes julienne potatoes at the click of a mouse *

NOW how much would you pay? Put away your wallets, because it's free.



* Potato-slicing options only available in Idaho.

Vacation and Web 2.0

I'm on vacation for the next two weeks; we're taking a road trip out to Denver for the World Science Fiction Convention.

Not to worry, though, I will keep in practice with my Web 2.0 skillz. I'll be blogging on my personal blog (meerkatmeade.blogspot.com) and will send updates via Twitter.

Back on August 18th. Everyone behave themselves while I'm gone. :)

Learning To Learn Online

I just experienced the "Learn How to Learn Online" class given by Jennifer Falkowski and Trina Panagos of SMRLA.

Great experience. The Horizon Wimba software is fairly easy to naviagte, but it does a good job of replicating the classroom/training environment. You can raise your hand, speak, write on the whiteboard, and even make snarky comments to another participant behind the teacher's back.

I'm eager to take more classes using this environment. I think anybody who's having fun with the Web 2.0 assignment would like this training.

Tony's Tree

The Staff Association got us this tree in memory of Tony Hodges, who worked here at BCY until he died. Today the tree is in full bloom, and I thought it would be appropriate to share this picture.

If you remember Tony...please spare a second for a smile and a thought. And if you never met him, just enjoy the tree.

The Web 2.0 Blog

Dudes & Dudettes:

Wheck out what someone (orangerful, probably) has done on the Web 2.0 Exploration blog. In the sidebar there is a list of links to everyone's blogs, and it tells you how recently there's been a new post (1 day, 2 days, 1 month, etc.)

This is going to make surfing the blogs a lot easier.

Thanks!

Twitterers

I've posted a preliminary list of twitterers as a comment on the Web 2.0 Exploration blog at http://aacplexploration.blogspot.com/2008/01/optional-exploration-twitter-badges-and.html

Procrastinating/Having Fun

Sometimes when I'm reading a book that I really enjoy, I find myself slowing down as I reach the end. I'll put off reading it, especially when it gets down to the last chapter. It's because I don't want the fun to end; sometimes I quit reading the book altogether for a few days.

I think the same thing is happening with this Web 2.0 assignment, especially now that I'm reading posts from people who've finished. Meanwhile, I've glanced at the wiki assignment, but I haven't watched the video and I keep finding reasons excuses to do other things. (Fortunately, there are always other things to do.)

See, if I'm still working on the Web 2.0 assignment, then all this reading blogs and commenting and twittering like mad is productive, it's for the assignment. But once I'm done the assignment, I'll just be fooling around for the self-indulgent fun of it. If I never finish the assignment, I'll never have to stop the fun.

Sigh. What am I to do?

More Flickr Thoughts

This falls under the heading of "duh, should hve thought of this much sooner."

We always have patrons interested in local history, especially pictures. Why couldn't the library do something with Flickr to help facilitate that interest? On the high end, we could partner with the Historical Society in getting a collection of their photos online; on the low end, we could publicize an "official" list of tags that people could use on their local-history photos, thus facilitating virtual collections. And I'm sure there are many options in between.

More Bloggers, More Explorations

More bloggers are coming on board every day, it's great to see.

Things I'm really liking about this assignment:

• Reading blogs written by clever, interesting people
  
• Twitter
  
• Google Maps
  
• New people coming onboard
  

Things I could do without:

• Typing "xquulksqk" and "cwuvlpq" when I want to leave a comment
  
• Twitter behaving badly
  
• Work, which keeps getting in the way of all this fun
  
• People who don't update their blogs often enough, hint, hint (you know who you are)
  

Time

I find that I am slowing down on this assignment. Instead of tackling a new module, I'm spending my time reading other participants' blogs, making comments, and twittering.

I don't think this is a bad thing, it's just a consideration. And as more staffers join the project, keeping up with them all is going to take even more time.

I want the ultimate mashup: a single page with feeds from all our bloggers, our whole twitterstream, everybody's Flickr photos and YouTube videos...plus a forum where we can have discussions of all the various topics. Yes, as the saying goes, I want to have us "all on the same page."

Does anyone know if there's a tool that would allow me to construct that page? It doesn't look like a wiki would do it, but I may be missing something in the wiki module.

Anonymity

I figured out a way we can refer to our branches and still keep anonymity. We can just use code names! Think of it as secret identities for our branches.

Here's a list that I came up with, including cute three-letter codes:

WST (West Street)
CSC (Cape S.C.)
BCY (Big City)
BOW (Bowie)
HIL (Hillsmere)
MAY (Mayo)
AIR (Airport)
LAU (Laurel)
GIB (Gibson)
HAR (Harundale)
FTM (Fort M)
PAS (Pasadena)
MCK (McKinsey)
DEA (Deale)
PIN (Piney)

It's easy enough for us to figure out which branch is which (especially in the order I've given them), but it would take a lot of detective work for someone from outside to sleuth it all out. (Not that I'm challenging anyone, of course.)

So now the world can know that I work at BCY, that hravan and bookpusher and the others work at MAY, and that our patron saint and den mother, orangerful, hails from CSC.

And HDQ? It doesn't really need a secret identity, does it?

Rethinking Zoho

I've had a little more time to play with Zoho, and I've read some of the comments from our other bloggers. And I guess I'm softening a bit.

I can see that it could have its uses. And it does have that best quality of all, it's FREE.

For experienced users who can figure things out themselves, I would not hesitate to recommend that they give Zoho a try. For inexperienced users, or those who are (shall we say) not in the habit of comprehending & following onscreen directions...not so much.

As the Scots say (and I'm sure Bob Erle knows this well), "It's a good thing everybody doesn't like the same things...or else think of the oatmeal shortage."

Reflections

Don Sakers 20 June 2008

These are my reflections on using Zoho for the first time. After setting up my account, I wasted more than a few minutes by importing contacts from Yahoo! Unfortunately, Zoho only imported first names, not last names...which made my list of 600+ contacts useless. So then I decided to delete them. Big mistake! Not only did Zoho freeze up, but it froze up the browser entirely -- I couldn't get to any other browser windows, and finally had to quit the browser completely. After this happened several times, I learned to delete contacts only in groups of less than 25 at a time. Even then, it took minutes to finish each deletion -- and the browser stayed frozen while it was doing so. As you can imagine, deleting 600+ contacts took quite a while.

Less than enchanted, I opened Zoho Writer for the next stage of my exploration.

I inserted a picture (above) and resized it using the resize gadgets. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to get numeric control, i.e. to shrink the picture to exactly 33% or to a specific size in inches.

Here is a bullet list of some things I like about Zoho Writer:

• Autosave
• Online availability of documents
• Seems to use HTML or XML as a native format
• Seems to be available via iPhone

Here are some things I don't like:

1. Reverts to Verdana whenever there's a format change
2. Doesn't seem to be a way to rename an existing document, other than saving it under new name and then deleting old version - perhaps useful in version control, but potentially allows you to mistakenly delete the wrong document
3. No keyboard shortcuts and limited menus - have to use the button icons, whose meanings are not always intuitive
4. Can change the font of items in a numbered list, but the numbers stay in Verdana
5. Not intuitively obvious how to terminate list mode
6. Damn thing can't keep up with normal typing speed. Very obnoxious and distracting.
   

Animal	Vegetable	Mineral	Abstract
Meerkat	Trees	Sand	Community
Velociraptor	Ferns	Fossils	Extinction
Cow	Grass	Calcium	Lactose Intolerance
Human	Salad	Plutonium	Termonuclear Annihilation

Okay, clicking on an alignment button while several cells are selected really, really messes up your table. And once a table is messed up, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to fix it. I finally had to delete the whole table and start over. That was a whole lot of no fun. Then I tried to make my heading row bold -- not only did it add a new row and move a heading over, but it undid some of my changes.

I think one of the big advantages of using online tools is the availability of documents anywhere there's an Internet connection. Unfortunately, that could also be a disadvantage...we are all overachievers and workaholics, and I can see us taking work home a lot more.

Patrons could use this service to make their own documents portable. Also, Zoho offers a lot of tools that we don't provide for patrons: spreadsheet, database, presentation, etc. However, with staffing the way it is, we already don't have time to teach patrons how to use Word -- I don't see any chance that we could effectively coach them in using all of Zoho's tools. (Heck, I don't see our staff having time to learn all Zoho's tools themselves.) And the sort of computer-savvy patron who wouldn't need help, is probably at home or at the office on their own pc. So it's difficult for me to see how these tools could be useful to the majority of our patrons.

This is my first experience with online office tools, and I am underwhelmed. In terms of providing basic office tools for those who don't have access to the real things, I guess they could be helpful -- but I don't see myself using them very much. I am particularly bothered by the slowness of the wordprocessor, and the user-unfriendly interface. I've used a lot of wordprocessing programs in my time, on a lot of different platforms -- this one reminds me of the very early versions of MacWrite, or perhaps one of the later wordprocessing programs I used on my old Commodore 64. I certainly wouldn't write a book, or even a short story, with this tool.

And now that I go to publish this thing on my blog (damn it, I wish it would STOP reverting to Verdana!), I'm not sure how to tell it which blog to use...and I realize that I don't see any button or menu item for "help" -- this seems like an odd thing to leave out. Well, I will hold my breath and hope for the best.

Passed this Baltimore City bus today, and it had a familiar banner on the side.

Social Networking Sites

I think Facebook and MySpace are popular among tweens and teens because such sites provide a way for the kids to be creative and express their individuality...while at the same time staying connected with their friends.

That adolescent/teen time is so filled with the tension between individuality and conformity. ("Why can't you be unique and original like everyone else?") A kid sees a friend put up a picture of his dog on his page, and the kid thinks, "Okay, I'll put up three pictures of my dog doing tricks." Then a third friend says, "I'll make a movie of my cat doing tricks and put that up."

I've seen kids spend their whole hour of pc time working on getting the background of their MySpace page just right, or asking another kid "How did you get it to do that?" It's all about fitting in while being yourself.

(And face it, aren't some of us doing the same thing right now with our blogs? We see something kewl on Chocolate Chai, and we want to do something similar on our own blog.)

Still, I'm an old fogey at heart, and I just don't have the passion (or the time)(or the energy) for MySpace or Facebook the way all these young whippersnappers do. Back in my day, if we wanted to be social, we gathered in Jim Cummings' parents' basement and watched Saturday Night Live. (This was in between walking 12 miles to school in the driving snow and working ten hours a day in the factory, thank you very much.) :)

Web 2.0 and Our (Unnamed) System

Thing is, a lot of this Web 2.0 stuff is decentralized and empowering. Unfortunately, those are two things that our (unnamed) system doesn't do too well.

I'm looking at all the libraries that have up Flickr albums of their programs, and I'm imagining the response -- all those photos without written permission! Can't have that!

And all these great ideas about promoting our events and things on blogs and RSS and such...yeah, right! We're not even allowed to use our names, or the name of our system, or branches, or anything like that.

I guess what I'm saying is: it's hard to get excited about Web 2.0 when our corporate culture still hasn't mastered Web 1.0 yet.

Is the Heat Getting to Twitter?

One bad thing about Twitter is when the service is running very slow or is not working at all, as it seems to be a lot lately....

Tower Bridge on Twitter

Okay, this is strange and wonderful. Tower Bridge (in London) is on Twitter. It tells you when it opens or closes, and what ship is passing through on the Thames.

The idea of having objects that can announce changes in their status opens up whole new vistas of possibility.

I can't, offhand, think of a library application for this kind of thing, other than the trivial (9:00 am The XYZ Branch Library is now open; 5:00 pm The XYZ Branch Library is now closed) -- but they have to be there.

Oooo, oooo, I just thought of a great use of Twitter: tweeting patrons when their hold materials are available.

Twitter

All right, I've set up a Twitter account. Look to the right and click to start following me.

I still need to think about how we could use this in the library. But right now, it's lunch time.

Shout Out to Other Bloggers

Are you following any of the other blogs associated with this project? Man, we have a lot of articulate, intelligent, talented people in this system!

On Changing As We Speak, Happier Blue is an old-timer who's jumped into Web 2.0 unreservedly, and is sharing great ideas right and left.

Bookpusher on Sunny Days and HCR on Chocolate Chai work at the same branch, and they've been egging each other on -- video-ing, flickring, tweeting, and generally making the rest of us look bad. You go, girls!

On Blogging...Me No Likely, eon.girl pretends that she's new at this and doing it reluctantly, but she can't fool us...she's doing a great job and coming up with some really kewl thoughts as well.

AimeeReads is a great place to check if you're feeling unsure about all this stuff (and aren't we all?) She's plugging away and sharing her thoughts as she goes.

Lisa C. has a Web 2.0 Exploration blog in which she's jumping around among topics, in true anarchist Librarian style. Plus, she's going out and finding thought-provoking articles to share as well.

Tom LATI has a much more philosophical approach, I can't read any of his posts without pondering all kinds of questions and deeper meanings of all this stuff. Plus, he's a historical re-enactor...how kewl is that?

On Smile Without A Cat, A.L. (Alice Liddell, do you suppose?) is another one of these people who sheds ideas like a cat sheds fur. Get ready to think and learn when you read her posts.

Silverlining is just having all kinds of adventures and posting all kinds of great pictures. Check out Sneaks...and the surprise in the mailbox.

We're all holding our breath waiting for further adventures of Indiana Joans.

Orangerful has started up to read is to empower again for this project, but she hasn't listed it in the sidebar on the Web 2.0 Exploration site. Are you trying to hide from us?

And Bob Erle is being enigmatic on Gnaritas Vox, is anyone surprised?

I have to say, I really have mixed feelings about the anonymity. In one sense, I'm frustrated by not knowing which identities belong to which of my colleagues (although some of you aren't working any harder than I am at maintaining your secret identities...Bookpusher and Bob Erle, I have my eye on you two...gad, we'd make lousy superheroes). OTOH, It's kind a fun to see people in a new light.

Orangerful, for example...okay, I thought she was someone else entirely. And the person I thought she was, isn't exactly someone I expected to be so comfortable with the online world. Now that I know her real identity, I'm not so surprised.

As you can see, I've reached the point where I feel like I want some back-and-forth contact with all you guys. A forum. I'm guessing that's coming up in a future module.

Podcasting

I think podcasting is a lot like audiobooks. Either you're a big fan, or you just don't get it. I'm afraid I fit into the "just don't get it" crowd (with both audiobooks and podcasting).

Maybe it's just because I can read a whole lot faster than I can listen to things. I would much rather read a website or blog entry than have to listen to the same information. (Also, I have a ten-minute commute to work. I barely have time to hear the news on NPR, much less listen to a book or podcast.)

All that being said, I do subscribe to the weekly podcast of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. It's a great way to keep up with a radio show that you can't usually hear live. (OTOH, I'm three weeks behind, which lets you know how much time I spend listening to podcasts.)

Anyway, folks who like podcasts are very enthusiastic about them. So how could the library use podcasts? Same ways we've all mentioned for blogs, rss, and video: to keep patrons informed of what's going on in the library, for instruction, for entertainment, to showcase the talents of staff, for "Not Checked In" -- part of the lesson I'm learning is that we should present information in as many formats as possible.

If there was a monthly library podcast, featuring news, upcoming events, book reviews, some entertainment...would regular listeners be ready to spring to the library's defense when we need them (say, in a difficult budget period, to pick an example totally at random)? Podcasts (and videocasts) can be so much more intimate than print. When NPR and PBS appeal for donations, they get money...why couldn't we have a brief appeal for donations to the Foundation on every podcast/videocast?

YouTube

Above, a short (3.5 minutes) video of a presentation that the Greater Columbia Fantasy Costumers Guild gave at the 2001 World SF Convention in Philadelphia. You might see a familiar face among the players.

What could the library use YouTube for? My first thoughts revolve around demos, especially with the new website design coming Real Soon Now. I think patrons would love video demos of how to request a book, how to renew items, how to use the various databases, etc. Maybe we could record some parts of the various "Click Here" presentations and have them on YouTube for patrons to watch at their leisure.

In an earlier post, I suggested that we might syndicate the Board President's column from Happenings via RSS. Why not also have a video version?

We have dozens of talented storytellers in our system...why not record the best stories of each one, and build up an archive of great storytelling for kids/parents/caregivers? Heck, we could embed those videos in a blog or web page that also features book lists, patterns for crafts, etc. Sort of a virtual, online "Read-to-Me" Kit.

How about staff training? Do our database vendors have YouTube videos on how to use their products? (If not, why not?) And there are the GSM breakout sessions...can't some of them be recorded and available for later viewing? And now that Mr. Gannon is no longer with us, don't you wish you could go back and watch some of his presentations when you need a laugh? As a matter of fact, with every training opportunity that comes up, we should ask ourselves, "Would this be appropriate for a YouTube video?"

As a huge fan of Not Checked In, I wish they would record some of their classic songs and put them on YouTube.

Okay, those are just a few ideas off the top of my head.

Library Thing

I can see that this could be a whole lot of fun, in my Copious Free Time.

But seriously, folks, what a kewl source for reader's advisory suggestions and leads...although it depends a lot on the popularity of the books. I looked up a couple of my books (not among the most popular) and some of the recommendations were rather bizarre. I think when there are few recommendations, it kinda grasps at straws. Or delivers no recommendations at all.

Still, I look forward to browsing some of the suggestions of some of my colleagues.

(Meanwhile, I added a pretty cover montage in the sidebar of this blog. Uh-oh, more books covers...some of which I do not own copyright for. I suppose I will be first against the wall when the Book Cover Police show up...but it's going to have to be a pretty big wall, with all those thousands of Library Thing users.)

RSS

I love RSS. Years ago I set up a "My Yahoo" page that basically serves as my daily newspaper. Among other things, it had 26 RSS feeds.

Now it has more. I've added our own Web 2.0 Exploration blog, and a selection of fellow explorers' blogs.

As to what the library could do with RSS, the options are unlimited, really. As other folks have said, we could have feeds of upcoming events (systemwide, area-wide, and branch-specific, so patrons could choose the ones that were most relevant to them). I also like the idea of a feed of new titles...surely that could be automated through Sirsi? Someone should ask our Sirsi rep about it...fellow named McGarty, isn't he? :)

The Board President's message from Happenings -- couldn't that be put on a blog, and thence available on RSS?

The kewl thing about RSS is that it's literally as easy as setting up a blog. Well, okay, it's a little harder, because it has to be kept up-to-date...which has always been a challenge for our system. I know the feeling of disappointment when you look at your feeds and one of them has the same five posts, week after week....

BTW, you can add RSS feeds to the sidebar of your own blog. Take a look to the right....

Flickr

Hooray, I have a Flickr account. Actually, I already had a Yahoo account, and Flickr came with it.

I uploaded some pictures, played with tags and such, and even designed a Flickr badge to go on my blog. It's to the right, above the poll.

Okay, that was fun. Let's see what mischief I can get into next....

Hello World

Okay, so I watched the Web 2.0 video The Machine is Us/ing Us. Seemed a nice introduction to Web 2.0, although I wonder if the creator wasn't misunderstanding the point of formatting codes in HTML. After all, the HTML standard was meant to be pretty portable and format-independent -- formatting codes started out as very minimal, simple things like bold and italic.

Only later, when people from the page-layout crowd got ahold of it, did HTML start to have codes for choosing font, size, and other complex (and sometimes not-so-portable) formatting. Only after CSS came in did portability become a dead issue. (Me, I've never used CSS in constructing web pages, and I've constructed quite a few in my time.)

ANYway...

I hope I'm not going to get in trouble for adding this blog to my stable of other blogs under my existing Google account. Setting up Yet Another New Account is just such a pain, for something as simple as a blog like this. So if you can figure out who I am, I'm sorry to blow my anonymity so soon in the game.

Oh, I guess we'll want the fun and experience of posting a photo, so here's one. Yes, it's a book cover, and I know that's another no-no...but I own the copyright, so so all is well.

What else? Oh, yeah, if you want this blog as an RSS feed, just click on the link below. It's something that Blogger does for you. (If you don't know what that means, don't worry...I'm sure it's coming up in a future module.)

My thoughts on picking out a blog and customizing it...well, this is something like the dozeneth blog I've created, so my major thoughts were along the lines of "what templates haven't I used yet" and "what can I stick in here that won't reveal too much personal information?"

I'm glad we're all doing this, and I hope it helps us all to be a little more familiar with the Web (both 1.0 and 2.0). This part may be familiar to me, but I'm looking forward to learning more in future explorations.

Plus, I'm earning CEUs. Whoo-hoo!