Thing 7

I've seen librarians do these trading cards for themselves. Each librarian has a card and it lists silly super powers and funny things about them. From what I've heard, kids love coming to the library to collect the newest librarian trading card. I, personally, know that I wouldn't want my picture and name on a card to give out freely, but I guess it depends on where your library is located. After this past weekend at our library, I'm not even sure I want to wear my name badge. Is it coincidence that my name tag always turns itself backwards....I think not...I mean surely it's an accident!

Using trading cards to promote events sounds like a wonderful way to reach our patrons. Partially because it's small enough to fit in a wallet and also because its new and different and people like new and different.

Ok, so I went to ToonDoo to create mine. I do not judge books by their cover(all the time)...but I do ALWAYS judge a webpage by it's name...is that wrong?? Registering for this website was probably the easiest I've ever used.
It takes all of 3 steps:
1.What user name do you want?
2. What password do you want?
3. What's your email address?

I wish all registrations were this simple.

Ok so I just stepped into the creation zone and I must say I am very impressed. It's like photoshop for kids and without the big download! Kids would love this website just to create their own comics. Whoever created this website is a genius! I'll be back in...uh....ok this could become my new hobby.

No one freak out when they see this...ok....promise.

Thing 6

I love my name like this!! I think these Mashups are extremly cool. I could definitely see us using these for flyers in the library. They add something new to the usual Microsoft Publisher options that we always use. The cool thing about this spelling Mashup is that you can type anything you want spelled and it generates it in seconds. Then you can change each letter if it's not to your liking. I've noticed with my name, everytime I load my blog it's in a different format. Kinda cool!

Thing 5

While I think Flickr is nice, I have used Photobucket all my life and I'm not sure why I should switch. They seem to be relatively the same. I did create my Flickr account and upload some pictures. I tagged the Giraffe in our library under http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/23thingsneflin/. Check him out!

On one last note I think its really cool that the Library of Congress has a Flickr account.

Thing 4

Ok, so I did "Thing 4" like a week ago but I didn't feel like adding a ton of stuff onto my page because it looks crowded. I did add other peoples blogs onto my page and to be honest I'm not even really thrilled about that. The sound of RSS sounds wonderful. I love the idea of being able to navigate to every website you really like just by visiting one(if you have it set up right). Although for me, it kind of takes away from the fun of clicking on my favorites. Would favorites become extinct?? I don't think I could handle that.

Is anyone else feeling like these "Things" are getting harder and harder? I think I'm going to pass out!

Thing 3

I have entered the blogosphere....it's dark and somewhat scary...I wonder if there are aliens here or if it's just a bunch of lazy humans writing about their existence....hmmm...

Alright enough of that...today's challenge was to try out Technorati. I really like the looks of this website. It has current blogs listed on the main page as well as different tabs for photo's, video's and the most popular blogs. Since today is the inauguration of the President, all the blogs on the main page seem to be on this historical event. The other blog search engine I used was Google Blog Search. I really love Google as a regular search engine and wanted to see what it produced in terms of blogs. I searched for "Children's Books" and found that Google was much more effective in finding what I searched for. Technorati came up with blogs pertaining to moms, traveling, beauty, AND then Children's Books, where as Google came up with blogs just pertaining to Children's Books. So while the look of Technorati is more appealing, the search of Google is much more effective. In fact google came up with 278,580 blogs whereas Technorati came up with 1,235.

This just goes to show that beauty is only...uhh....monitor deep?

Thing 2

Ok so Im an idiot. I just read more about Web 2.0 and realize that I use it nearly everyday. I had no idea that Myspace, Youtube, and Facebook fit into this category. When did the term "Web 2.0" come into existence?
As for Library 2.0, I think the idea is catchy. I would be interested to see some kind of a forum on our library website that both patrons and employees of the library could use to stay in touch. Personally, I have never been a big fan of blogs or forums but as the popularity rises for this sort of thing, I do find myself viewing them now and then. One of my favorite forums connects with the local newspaper. I love reading the news online and then seeing people's posts underneath the column. I also was recently introduced to www.teachertube.com which is similar to Youtube but for teachers. It's amazing what kinds of technology goes on around you when you just stick to the same websites you always have. This Neflin challenge has definitely opened my eyes up to technology that I didn't even know existed and I'm only on Thing 2!

Thing 1

Blogging is not really my thing and I'm not sure how good I'll be at keeping up with this but it's worth a try. So far, I have not found this blog spot to be all that user friendly. Maybe it's just me but I am constantly trying to find out how to get back to my main page. I have used other programs to blog and have not found them to be this difficult.

Well.... if no one else is having this problem then I'll just blame it on the fact that it's a rainy, cold, miserable Tuesday. Which leads me to a totally different point...why should anyone have to go out in this weather? They should declare it a National stay-in-your-PJ's-and-watch-movies-day. Yes, I would vote for that!

As for Web 2.0 World, Ive never even heard of it and I use a computer every day. Here is what Wikipedia says:
"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

All I have to say is "huh?!" Yeah....no wonder I've never heard of it...not even Wikipedia really knows what it is. Isn't it great when you go to look up the definition of something and become more confused than when you started? That happens to me a lot. Obviously, today is not a good day for me. Hopefully day 2 of this thing will be better.