Thing 34-Is this our competition

I think the appeal of online answer sites is multi-fold. Users can find quick (albeit not necessarily accurate) answers to questions without much effort. Others can share their supposed knowledge about many subjects (Think Cliff Claven here). The ability to feel a connection with others might be another reason some people hit these sites, based on some of the questions I've seen posted.

Questions I encountered ranged from how to tell if your car needed new spark plugs to what can I make if I have these ingredients to what is your take on the current administration.

Some questions I saw would be appropriately addressed at a library, but many seem to be more for the purpose of socialization. I believe that others use these sites because they either don't know of other resources or they are not comfortable or have a negative memory associated with libraries. The library (and librarians) they remember might not be as friendly ;-) as they might find were they to visit one today-or so I hope.

I think the Slam the Boards events sound like a wonderful idea. I might participate in the future.

I didn't answer any questions today, but I have in the past. They were gardening questions.

Thing 35-Books 2.0

I think that with careful selection, Book 2.0 tools can enhance a person's reading experience. Tools that I explored include Shelfari, Booktagger, What Should I Read Next?, Living Social, Reading Group Choices, Podio books, Paperback Swap, One Minute Critic, Silly Books and Booksfree.

Tools I will use again include Shelfari, because I like the ability to keep track of what I've read and I like their system; Living Social/facebook app for the ability to share book suggestions with friends on fb. I was just having a discussion with a friend today who was looking for book suggestions. I also shared the Readers Advisory suggestions from More Things with her.

I am signed up with paperback swap, but will never use it because why pay to ship a book when you can get it from the library? I enjoyed One Minute Critic, but wish there was a listing by book instead of by month. This would make book reviews easier to find instead of wading through pages of books I have no interest in.

Silly Books was fun and I could see having this saved to the desktop for kids to explore.

Booksfree and bookswim rank right up there with and Paperback Swap as tools I would not use because I get my books from the library. One of my patrons uses Paperback Swap and is thrilled with it, however.

Thing 37...grrr

I created a great photo story of my daughter serving during a volleyball match. I saved it to Flickr and supposedly uploaded it to my blog...but it isn't here. It was easy until it didn't work. I'll have to try again at another time to get it to work.

Well, I've tried and tried again to no avail...now I'm just posting a link to it on Flickr...I've got messages posted asking if anyone else has had this problem...

Thing 36

I have found a Toondoo that made me chuckle and posted it at the bottom of my blog. Then I created a very un-funny cartoon of my own and posted it also. (I've never had much for a sense of humor!) I tried the Excus-o-mat and think it would be fun on a teen page, but it has no practical value. I've created a funny with the lolcat generator at big huge labs, but it didn't post very well. It's very blurry. If anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know. I think the airline sign generator (found through 1000 online generators) is fun, but I couldn't find a way to publish it once it was created.I may go back later and try to work more to help it post more clearly, but for now I must press on to finish 10 Things!

Thing 29-Google Tools

The Search Tool I chose to use was Web History. It was easy to set up, and easy to remove, which I did shortly after installing it. I think that the concern for privacy is somewhat generational, but also experiential. People who have not had problems with privacy violations will not be as concerned as someone who has had such an experience.

I am personally not interested in sharing my browsing history. Internet searches as I have experienced them have been neither difficult or frustrating without a record of where I have searched. If I am really interested in returning to a particular site, I bookmark it on my computer.

I wasn't that impressed with Web History, and I have no interest in an aggregated list of headline news (Google News).

When I explored Gmail more with the activities in this Thing, I was surprised to discover I had already done some of it already. I already had a new look (theme) for my gmail account, but didn't recall having done it. I must have checked it out when they first introduced it. I really like the search feature in gmail. I have used it to find old email that was from a particular sender that I needed. It was kind of annoying to send email from one account to another. The reason I have separate accounts is different email uses and it just cluttered up both accounts. Overall, I have been much more satisfied with my email experiences since I switched to gmail.

Thing 28-iGoogle

I chose to set up an iGoogle homepage. I chose this because I already use several Google products so it just made sense to do so. It was very easy to set up and customize. I added many gadgets-too many actually. The page took forever to load because I had so many gadgets. I then went through and deleted those that didn't seem as interesting once they were actually on the page. It now loads much more efficiently.

Gadgets I am using include Quick gmail, Search You Tube, Flower of the day, Word of the day, Useless Knowledge, Live Weather, Google Calendar. One thing I really liked about the listing of Gadgets is the commentary people have supplied as to whether they like how the Gadget works-or doesn't. That saved having to try it and reject it myself if the review was too bad.

I don't have any gadget suggestions at this time.

Thing 26-Ning

I joined the 23 Things Ning and the SMILE group on the Ning. I replied to a post about having a 10 Things for Library Patrons...what a great idea!

I have belonged to a Ning group before but keeping being an active participant takes time that I don't have...