Thing 7 -- Online Image Generators

This is so cool! You can use your own photos to create art! Here's a warholized image of sweet baby Grace:

Thing 6 -- Flickr Mashups

I already had a flickr account, established during a NEFLIN workshop on Digital Cameras back in the Spring of 2005. I've not used it much since then, but here's a recent photo that I took of a quilt I just finished making. It is called a Nine-Patch Scrap Quilt. I made it from scraps of fabric that I've been collecting over the last 30 years or so.

This is a picture I took at sunset in Cedar Key in the fall of 2007. Can you believe we have this beautiful natural treasure just 50 miles from Gainesville?

I also looked at a "mashup" from Flickr. It wasn't very hard to get to it. After clicking on the link for "spell with flickr," I typed my name, then photos popped up from the millions that are stored in Flickr. I had the option to change one by clicking on the letter. Once I got the photo letters I liked, I copied and pasted the html code into this post. That's all there was to it. I was able to view the photo letters once briefly during preview, but after publishing all I can see are those little red x's that say here's a picture but you can't see it. What gives????
I'm not one to give up easily, so I let this rest for a while and then came back for another look. On 2/12, checked in on my google reader, where I am receiving rss feeds from several other Millhopper staff bloggers. Two of them had successfully spelled something using mashup!!! Lucky for me, one of them included instructions. So now you can see my name spelled out with flickr photos. Hurray!
Here's my attempt to use splashr:

My Presentation

Thing 5--Flickr

This is a photo I found on Flickr, loaded by pollobarca2, and located in the "creative commons" area. It is a picture of the beach in Montorosso, on the coast of Italy. I was there last October. It was a bit chilly in October, and the beach was not so crowded. But the water was that incredible shade of aqua blue.

Thing 4--RSS feeds

OK, I finally got it. I only wish that I had watched the video first! It was a short and sweet but to the point explanation of what needed to be done. While I understood the concept of RSS feeds, I wasn't so sure why I needed to subscribe to a reader. This is explained quite adequately on the video. The reader gives you one place to check for all the websites you are interested in. So I am now a Google Reader and have feeds from ACLD bestseller fiction, CNN, several of my co-workers 23 things blogs, and the Millhopper Staff Blog. Whew! I love it when I learn something new! Now it's onward and upward to thing 5!!!

Thing 3--Blog searching

So now I've read all about Technorati and compared it to Google blog searching. I must say I prefer the Google product. It works, it is seamless and quick. A simple search for White House retrieved 42 million hits in just a few seconds. The same search in Technorati retrieved 659 hits. What's the difference? In Technorati you can limit your search to blogs only. I still liked Google best because it has an excellent ranking system that put the official White House blog at the top of the hit list. And to give credit where credit is due, didn't they come up with the first really good search engine for the web? I've always been a name brand kind of person, so I guess that I'm running true to form. I'll stick with Google for now, at least until they lose their mojo.

Site meter

Today I investigated Site Meter, and I believe I successfully installed it. It apparently counts the traffic on your blog and lets you know from whence the visitors came. Should be interesting. Hope someone comes.

Thing 2--Library 2.0

I am a fairly recent convert to Wikipedia. It is quick, thorough and as far as I can tell it's pretty accurate. Wikipedia defines Library 2.0 as a scenario in which "...library services are constantly updated and reevaluated to best serve library users. Library 2.0 ... attempts to harness the library user in the design and implementation of library services by encouraging feedback and participation." This pretty much nails it for me. We should always be looking for new ways to meet the needs of our patrons, and I love the concept of "harnessing" the library user to this end. Their needs are not the same as they were in 1992 when I graduated from library school. No one had a digital camera; very few people used email; online banking had not yet come into vogue, and no one that I knew would even consider putting their credit card number out there in cyberspace. Now these are everyday occurrences. But there are still people out there who need help -- they may not have a personal computer or an email account, but they need both in order to fill out an application. They are looking to their public library for help. This is how we can meet the public where they are and continue to be a viable public institution now and in the future. Where else can you go and get help filling out forms online for free? Only in America! Recently my husband and I vacationed in Italy. It was the vacation of a lifetime, but it could have been better if we had free access to the Internet to stay in touch with our family and friends by posting photos on our travel blog or emailing. This is an important service we can easily provide to the public in public libraries, and I believe it is the full implementation of Library 2.0 that will make it happen.