Gina of All Trades Master of None

I can NOT believe I am DONE...

The Learn & Play experience has been overwelming and frustrating, and wonderful and fascinating. It was an assume challenge to get through all the incredible technological resources, and I can't say I didn't faulter along the way. However, I am so glad I participated. While I certainly have not mastered RSS feeds or wiki's or the like, I feel I have a working knowledge of them. Moreover, this opportunity to learn and discover has been invaluable to me professionally and personally. I will continue to explore, and I hope one day I will be able to Flickr and Twitter with the best of them!

I am very grateful to the Learn & Play team for providing this opportunity and for all their help during each step. If a similar discovery program was offered, I definitely will rise (and fall) to the challenge, again.

MOLDI Beach

Exploring MOLDI brought back great memories of my past two summer vacations. I loaded up my MP3 player with audio books and hit the OBX beaches. I am very excited to see that as of November of this year, I can by-pass my computer and MP3 player and download right to my ipod.

Overall, this initiative is a great service to the public; however, I can't help but wish there were more titles, more readily available. MidOhio does say the projects is "not intended to be a complete list of what is available to the public, but one which focuses on regional identity and what our librarians feel to be the most useful to the public."

I only hope that MOLDI will lead to other digital projects for Ohio libraries.

Travel Pod

As I think I mentioned before, I have the travel bug. I try to go abroad every other year. Therefore, I found a friend at ipodtraveller (see podcast link below). Nick Hall, like me, was desperate to share his travel experiences. He netjets around Europe for readers of The Guardian. As Apple transformed the word Podcast overnight, he found a listening audience. Since September 2005, he has bee sharing valuable travel tips through podcasts for the uber-cool iPod crowd. I am now one of his biggest fans!


http://www.ipodtraveller.net/

Who is Watching You on the Tube?

My son, now ten years old, introduced me to YouTube, because he loves to watch his shows on it, esp. Yu-Gi-Oh. I then started in on the same. I mostly check out Grey's Anatomy episodes. It is a fantastic tool, and, now, a household name. Even friends of mine who are not very computer savy, wil say "we should put this on YouTube." I also love how YouTube creates Elebrities, famous and infamous. There is truly nowhere you can hide!

I Can "Make" It!

As I looked through the Power Tools Page, the MAKE link in the Tool Box caught my eye. This was not covered in Learn & Play, and it interested me not for myself, but for my husband, Patrick. He is the ultimate "wanna-be" do-it-yourselfer," often times with dissasterous results. I can't tell you how many times he has said to me, "I can make that." MAKE claims to "bring the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life." Therefore, I felt duty bound to explore it for him. I was very impressed. This is more than just an online DIY magazine: "it's a possibility engine." A medium for a new way of thinking about DIY for the Home Depot junkie. This is, without a doubt, going to be my husband's favorite online resource for DIY projects. My only concern with it, is that he will quit his day job to gain free time to try everything he'd like to do.

Web 2.0 Travel Tool

I love to travel. And my Mom and I go abroad just about every other year. I spend hours online comparing flight, hotel and tour rates. Moreover, many library customers ask me about comparing airline ticket costs with various sights like travelocity or the airlines themselves, ie us air. So, I decided to explore the travel list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees. I choose the number one winner http://farecast.live.com/. This site is amazing, allowing you to put in one search, like a flight schedule, and jump from hotwire to travelocity to expedia to compare prices. A great time saver for those of us who know their is a cheaper ticket out there somewhere.

Documenting my Google Docs Experience

I really like Google Docs. My tactic team is looking to use Edu 2.0 to share training documents; however, I found Google Docs much easier to use. I also couldn't help but think how great this would be for our frequent computer customers. Instead of carrying around numerous flash drives, they could organize their work on Google Docs. I already know a few I'm going to mention it to the next time they ask for help attaching a document to an email.