#12: Rollyo

I didn't find Rollyo as easy to use as some of the other Web 2.0 sites. I can see the purpose of it if you regularly want to be able to search a list of sites on a regular basis. It seems to me like it's creating your own meta-search engine. I created a search engine that would search some scrapbook sites that I visit, but I don't think I will use it as I enjoy visiting the sites directly. Maybe I just don't understand this Rollyo too well.

Select Search Engine...Digital ScrappingSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

#11: LibraryThing

There is lots of discussion on the Next Gen catalog, and always LibraryThing comes up. I will admit that I hadn't actually played with it until today. I have seen some demo's of it though.

I created my library very quickly - the interface, while not pretty, is easy to use. Chick lit is one of guilty pleasures so I added some chick lit titles and joined the Chick Lit group. I can see definite usage of this for my own reading list - to find out about new authors from other people who read the same type of books as me and to keep track of my reading list. Love the tag cloud and Book Suggester. The Unsuggester is an interesting concept.

I hope that this is a type of technology with tagging and reviews is something we can use at MCPL for our catalog. Here's my library.

#10: Online Image Generators

I created an avatar using Meez. Their site is really easy to use and most of all, it's fun; and I've added my avatar to my blog profile, and we are using our Meez avatars on Teensite. Check out the Teensite Advisory Group Librarians. Here's my Meez girl.

#9: Merlin

I had never heard of Merlin before, but what a great site with a lot of potential. What kind of software are they using to power it? Wouldn't it be great to use this type of technology for our MCPL intranet? I like the calendar features, and the forums, which could be a great way to reduce my never ending email clutter problem. Instead of email discussion threads, we could move our discussions to a threaded discussion forum that would be archived and all in one place. The widget of the month is a fun feature too - always looking for new toys.

Found the Merlin RSS feed icon, and I subscribed using Live Bookmarks in my Firefox browser. Live bookmarks are one of my favorite web things. Did you know that IE 7 has live bookmarks now too, and tabbed browsing? We just got our new computers here in Collection Development complete with IE 7. Sweet! So fast - extra ram goes a long way.

#8: RSS

I started using RSS and Bloglines several years ago after hearing Karen Schneider and Stephen Cohen speak about it at Computers in Libraries. It is a very handy way to keep current bringing all of your news reads to one place. Since then, I've tried a few different readers. While I still do like Bloglines, my current favorites are Firefox's live bookmarks that display right in your browser window and Google Reader. Firefox is particularly useful for keeping track of feeds related to libraryland, and I like Google Reader since it sync's so easily with my iGoogle page.

Here's a few feeds from my Bloglines.

New Technology Finds: #7

My latest tech discovery is Kaboodle. It's a site where you can save your shopping list or wish list and share it with friends and family. People can add comments to your items or even purchase gifts from your list For example, if you visit Art.com and find a painting that you would like, you can store it to your Kaboodle list.

Another new site I am using A LOT is iGoogle. Not only can you have your news feeds in one place, but you can also use your Google Calendar there too. The Google calendar has been a great find for me (and my family). We used to keep a calendar in our kitchen, but we were always forgetting to write things down, but now we can share our calendars from anywhere.

Flickr exploration: #5 and #6

This is a timely topic as I am am working on collecting all of our branch photos for MCPL's flickr account. At ALA, a number of different presenters talked about using flickr for library photos so I am creating flickr badges for each branch. Here are some branch photos.

I also recently discovered fd's flickr toys, which I used on Teensite for the Teensite Advisory Group photos. This is the Andy Warholizer tool.