Zoho zounds good

A real eye-opener that warrants further exploration. Wonderful potential for collaborative editing for brochures, reports, etc. I see another opportunity here to impress my daughter with my new found knowledge and to let her in on a tool she could readily use for doing her job.

(posted from Zoho)

DISCOVERIES: Week 7, Thing 17

Playing in the sand box was fun, as promised, and I managed to add this blog to the list. Wow! So many interesting new things to try.

DISCOVERIES: Week 7, Thing 16

Veni, Vidi, Wiki (or was it Vici) and explored with great interest the many uses and possibilities of Wikis (not to mention the plethora of imaginative names given to the tool - as another variation I offer up the word "stikiwiki" for consideration). Purist that I am (to put it politely), I was disappointed that I could not try my hand at editing the misspelling of "congreagation" in one of the entries because I didn't have the necessary password and couldn't take the time to get one. But that was my only disappointment. The possibilities seem endless. Princeton's Book Lovers Wiki was amazing as was St. Joe's Subject Guides. There's all kinds of potential for the creation of community wikis and great repositories for collecting customer testimonials, not to mention idea sharing. Of particular interest to me are the possibilities for collaborative editing of things like brochures. Some of the examples on MERLIN such as You Send It invite further exploration. Right now I want to play in the Sandbox.

PEACE AND QUIET

Libraries serve
as "mind gyms"
away from technohastle
with comfy chairs,
quiet and good light.

DISCOVERIES: Week 6, Thing 15

Libraries worry too much about their future. After reading Perspectives and Library 2.0 definitions, it's clear to me that some of their best thinkers and leaders already have the right ideas and ultimately neo-Library 4.0 will emerge. All libraries have to do is stay tuned to their users and "what floats their boat," and eventually as promised the effects of connecting the digital and the sensual will evolve into libraries that become mind gyms - better yet, "knowledge spas" (I love that term) - for meditation, relaxation, and immersion in a luxury of ideas and thought, existing in WiFREE space, away from technohastle, with comfy yet practical chairs (yes, vinyl can be comfortable, please don't take the chairs away), peace and quiet, good light, coffee and a few desserts.

DISCOVERIES: Week 6, Things 13 and 14

Things 13: Had to pass on the alternative podcast tutorials for del.icio.us on my home computer which operates on dial-up. After a cursory exploration of us.ef.ul and Habits of Successful del.icio.us Users, etc., I decided to move on to something that would be more useful for my purposes. I wondered if the prevalence of tagging is making searches by Google etc. too cumbersome in the long run by bringing up too many possibilities. It was, however, interesting to view other library home pages. I thought one library's Lost in Blogs idea of "What's for Dinner" with recipes from a book or magazine in the collection was a good idea for summer reading for adults.

Things 14: The idea of trying to organize the 100 million blogs that probably exist in blogsphere by now seems like a daunting task. In the process of examining the process and results, after locating and bookmarking Boing Boing, I inadvertently stumbled across the No. 1 video "everything in the known universe about noelia." Hmm, I wondered, who is that, before finding my answer on Videochismes, along with links to many sites that could have resulted in being tossed out and banned from the library forever had I been sitting at one of the public computers. Foiled once again, this time because of my Adobe Flash which is out of date, I was unable to view Noelia or any other video on YouTube. Incidentally, I wondered whether or not tagging is providing challenges to blocking and filtering materials not meant to be seen by eyes of the very young.

Random Thoughts About Aging

Since it's not fashionable to reveal one's age, I didn't give one in my profile. There must be a reason for hiding one's age, for example in resumes and news releases: it keeps people from thinking "he's too old," "he's not old enough" or "he's old enough to know better." In my case, suffice it to say I'm old enough that being cool doesn't matter to me anymore. An advantage of this is that I don't have to run around with my underwear showing (not that I ever did).

Let's just say I'm old enough to become confused by some of the terms I've run across lately while wading my way though 23 Things and discovering they're not what I thought they were, e.g., MERLIN (a magician), MEEZ (someone's last name), RSS (the initials of a friend), OPAL (a gem stone), ROLLYO (something you do with your hole card in poker), pod (housing for peas), AVATAR (some kind of automobile), Del.icio.us (a thick coffee milkshake made with coffee ice cream and coffee syrup), tag (a game played in the back yard). Not to mention WIKIs (what burns in the middle of a candle) and WIIs (as in "whee," that was great).

Even so, although I might never find a constructive use for Rollyoing and some of the other cataloging-type tools that would force me to become organized, I realize that where there's a will there could be a Wii (something I long to have). Besides, there have been some rewarding "ahas" that have occurred along the way, and so I forge ahead.

How old am I? I'll never tell. :-)