Thing 16: Streaming Music

Streaming music is awesome! I tried Pandora mainly because I've heard of it before, but also because my husband loads my i-pod shuffle with music from our i-Tunes library and it was mentioned that you can conveniently purchase songs from i-Tunes through a link on the Pandora site. In my opinion, Pandora is fabulous! Listening to music is one of my favorite things and if I could, I'd be plugged into the Pandora site 24/7.

So, I registered and began to create my first station by searching an artist that I like. The first song was, of course, by that same artist. But after that, Pandora just kept a variety of great songs coming one after the other. I only rejected a few of them, and there were some that I had never heard before (along with a couple new artists). They have a "thumbs up/down" feature that reminds me of Tivo. When you click the thumbs up button, you're telling Pandora that you like that song, and from there the site actually gets to know you and what music you will probably enjoy... very cool. The only negative thing that I've noticed so far, is that you're limited on how many times you can skip a song. If you reach the limit, a note pops up to tell you that you can't skip any more songs. Therefore, I tried to click thumbs down on it and the message was an apology and a promise that once the song was finished, it would never be played for me again. But, I still had to listen to the entire song anyway. 

Anyway, the station I'm creating has a lot of variety and is a work in progress. I will definitely be visiting this site in the future and exploring all it has to offer for personal use. Thanks for the introduction!

Thing 15: Podcasts

Well, I watched and listened to many podcasts from both Podbean.com and Podcast.com. I guess I found Podcast to be the easiest to use out of the two that I was able to access. Personally, unless I were stranded somewhere with only a computer to feed the current events, news and media to me, I have to say that watching podcasts just doesn't interest me. There may have been a couple of news and some music videos that I found a bit interesting, but overall, it's just not for me. I suppose we could post short news or informational clips about upcoming programs at the library as another way to advertise, but I'm not convinced that it would be very productive. That said, I've included a link to a podcast that I found of a cool way to cook a turkey....


http://food.podcast.com/episode/41378807/13043/

Thing 14: Online Video

Okay... who doesn't love YouTube? I watched some great videos, and I thought that "Introducing the book (repost)" was pretty funny. It wasn't my first time on YouTube, so I didn't have any difficulty navigating. You have to be careful because it's easy to lose track of time watching one after another and there's definitely a lot of garbage out there as well. I wish the videos were organized differently or categorized, though. Searching with just one or two keywords results in too wide of a range of videos in my opinion.
As I mentioned on my blog about Thing 13, I believe that we should be creating short videos about our library programs and special events regularly to post on YouTube. We could post a clip about the new R.G.'s Bookmark Cafe, the Foundation, our ELL program... etc. There are many possibilities, and the more creative and fun we make them, the more attention we'll get!
Okay, I also blogged about growing hot chili peppers recently, and this video is of someone eating one of the peppers that my husband and I are planning to grow. Anyone like eating or cooking with really hot peppers?....

Check this out...

Thing 13: Tracking Our Library

This "Thing" is great! Once I got past the issues with the new Internet browser blocking the social sites, and it's ever so slow response time... I successfully customized my page and set up my bookmark on Addictomatic. There was some buzz on our library, but not enough. It seemed to mostly be about Genealogy and our English Language Learning programs, which wasn't a surprise considering how popular those topics are.
Next, I set up my Social Mention alert and sadly, I didn't find anything regarding our library yet (and I chose all types). So, I decided to search for a hot chili pepper that my husband and I are getting ready to grow. We heard about the peppers on the food network and was able to purchase the seeds online recently. This search engine found some great articles from people who have grown them, made hot sauces and even balms out of the peppers to be used for arthritis. I will surely use this one again personally.
I established Google Alerts to come in to my email account, but so far nothing has shown up yet. Everything that I viewed was positive, but I don't think that we have enough of a presence at all. I believe that most people respond to visual effects best, and maybe if we took more photo's an video clips of our programs and events and posted them on our blogs, Youtube, Facebook etc. we may be able to increase the public's interest and curiosity about what's going on in "Largo's living room", and maybe, at the very least, raise awareness.

Thing 12

Well, I explored the LibraryThing site, took the tour, checked out the tools and groups and even read lots of blog posts from one of the groups that I was interested in. So, next I created an account and began to add my books, when the internet crashed. When I was able to return to the site and try again, I wasn't able to save the book or any of the information I had entered. Therefore, I decided to try Shelfari instead in hopes that I would have success, and I did!


I created an account, and started forming my library of books. I think it's interesting to see what others are thinking of the same titles that I've read and to see what they might suggest for my next read, but other than that, I really don't think that I will find myself using it much. I enjoy spending time reading books, but I don't think I'll find the time to organize a computerized version of my library and maintain it. That would only cause me to take time away from reading more books! 

Anyway, here's what my bookshelf looks like: 

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

T12..LibraryThing

For those of you reading this blog you may wonder if these are actual books that I own, if they are books I have read or if they are books I pulled out of thin air. Well....I'm not telling!! But what I will say is that even though I took the tour I still don't see a use for this except to find out more PERSONAL information about people by snooping instead of just talking to them. No wonder stalkers who escalate to violence know so much about their victims.

Thing 9

Well, for someone coordinating lots of correspondence to and fro, I can see this as a very useful tool.