week 5, thing 12

Rollyo... i'd never even heard of it before. i signed up & rolled a search but i forgot the password & email i used, so i signed up again and rolled a new search.

i'm not sure i like Rollyo. in both my searches i get a lot of results that aren't related to what i want (like i searched for a two-word song title and it gave me people's myspace sites that contain those words & other completely unrelated stuff). quotes help but still it provides some junk results.

i guess i kind of see the point in it... i think it's just easier to use google. i used google to find the sites to add to my rollyo in the first place. maybe i should give Rollyo more of a chance.

week 5, thing 11

i already have a Librarything account... two actually. i like how easy it is to search & add books, and how you can see covers. i also like the connections so you can connect to readers w/ similar libraries. i used to use librarything more, but my collection outgrew the 200 book limit, so i switched to shelfari.

i made a widget of my favorite authors...


also i took the tour of LibraryThing for Libraries, it looks spiffy. it costs money though doesn't it?

Week 5, Thing 10

wow there are so many generators to choose from. fun! i could spend all day playing with them.

i made this glitter text at http://www.glittermaker.com/

then i used this hero machine to knock out this thingy:
customizing my hero was fun... but not very useful.

then i used http://www.dumpr.net/celebrity-pics.php to make this:
(i had to get it a cat pic in this somewhere!)

then i used this puzzle maker to make a puzzle out of a photo i took.
this puzzle maker was my favorite generator. it was easy to use, though cutting & pasting the html didn't work on this blog. i also noticed that site has many other cool tools for images.

week 4, thing 9

Finding Feeds... or not.

i tried all the different ways to search for feeds. i searched for 6 or 7 different topics (mostly music related) but only found one or two feeds using the search tools, much to my disapointment. i think all the sites were all confusing and not much help at all so i think i'll be avoiding them. but perhaps i wasn't using the correct terms, or perhaps i just have odd interests that no one blogs about, lol. however i poked around my favorite sites and found that some of them have rss so i subscribed to those. most of the feeds i've found are the ones they recommend.
i must say, this excerise was immensely frustrating.

just some frustrated rambles!

today i'm typing this while trying to do the exercise about finding feeds. i've found a few i want to add but bloglines is giving me nothing but problems... now i'm sad. it was taking forever just to think so i started writing this blog while i was waiting. that still took too long, so i tried the "easier way" of adding the sub to bloglines to my favorites. still it's taking forever!

speaking of taking forever... i STILL haven't gotten my validation email from bloglines. i even had them resend it... three more times. is *hmm better not post my real name*@omahapubliclibrary.org not my email address? am i really that impatient?

Week 4, Thing 8

I rather liked this exercise. I knew a tad about RSS feeds but i'd never heard of newsreaders before. the tutorials were quite helpful, especially the video. At first i thought i wouldn't be able to find anything to subscribe to, but already i have 15 subscriptions, and that's without searching, lol.
I can already tell i'll use these in my personal life for things like lolcats & bands & books & other random stuff. As for work, i think bloglines be very useful while working on the myspace & facebook pages for keeping up to date.
I like that bloglines keeps all the blogs & feeds in one tidy place because i'm always finding blogs i like then forgetting about them. i also like how easy it is to add more feeds to your reader. the only issue i had was when i tried to add OPL's evanced RSS. It kept saying "There is a problem with the database. Please try again later" and "No feeds were found. Please verify that the website publishes an RSS feed" until i gave up.
i know OPL already uses RSS for events (which i love btw, it makes doing the myspace & facebook so much easier!) & closings. perhaps OPL could also have a newsfeed for press releases and things like that. i'd subscribe to that... if bloglines would let me! :)