Thing #41: Mashup Your Life

I signed up for a Lifestream.fm account and added some of my services: Facebook, Twitter, last.fm and delicious. It was cool but also kind of spooky to see a whole stream of everything I've posted in all these different places suddenly appear in my Lifestream feed.

I could see possibly using this for institutional purposes once we get more Web 2.0 stuff up and running and really used in the Library. Not sure about that yet. As for personal use, I don't think I'll use it. I've got things set up the way I like with my personal 2.0 accounts, so I don't feel I need to rock the boat by changing how I get my news. Also, it feels like overload to me. I don't need to know what all my friends have bookmarked, etc. in a continual stream. Still, these are powerful tools, and it's fun to try them out and know they exist.

Thing #40: Mashup the Web

I had fun exploring this. I looked at a few mash-ups in all the categories. I enjoyed looking with BookTour, Lunchbox, CrimeReports, and Walkable, in particular. I already knew the restaurants listed on Lunchbox, but it was fun to see them on a map. And I found out that my neighborhood is indeed as walkable as I already knew it was. :)

I could imagine using the Lunchbox mash-up to find good eats in an unfamiliar place.

Here I tried BubblR to put a caption with a photo. I was attracted to this kitty, who looks just like my long-haired guy at home! This was easy and fun.

Thing #39: Digital Storytelling

I used VoiceThread for yet another version of my DCTC Library virtual tour. I found VoiceThread really easy to use. I could see polishing this up, adding voice (which I didn't this time as I'm at a public desk with no microphone) and more links. It also meshed really well with my Flickr account.

Thing #38: Screencasting

For this Thing, I used Jing. I was eager to try this Thing, because we do want to produce some screencasts for our Web page and for our distance learners. I'd heard Jing was really easy and worked well, so that's the one I chose.

I found it a little tricky, but that may just be me and my clunky tech skills. For example, it took me a while to figure out how to use the arrow, because I was trying to "drag" it. I never did figure out how to get the Text feature to work. I'm sure it's something simple that I'm neglecting to do.

It looks like you can't edit screens once you save them, which is unfortunate, but oh, well.

I produced this two-screen image capture demonstrating 1) the way to find the DCTC Library page from the main DCTC page, and 2) where to find the useful links (MnPALS catalog, Ebsco for articles, chat screen.)

It's a start! I wanted to start off simply, with images. But in the future I'm going to try a video.

P.S. Uh-oh -- in viewing my published post, I see the screens are too big. I'm sure there's a way to resize them, and at some point, I'll figure out how to do that. But I've spent a long time on this Thing and must move along.