on Technorati...

... which will be multiple posts until I figure this out. Talk about information overload, especially at the end of a long day, at the end of a long week.

So, I did find our humble library blog listed among the blogs on Technorati. We've been fav'd once but have no authority. Oh well. One step at a time.... :-)

Del.icio.us

It was a great day when I first discovered Delicious. No, I am serious about this. Finally, a place where all my bookmarks could live, and I could find them again! No more looking for a bookmark on the wrong PC. No more, "I know I found a site about that...." No more wading through 4 million bookmarks hoping to find that URL. Fully portable, fully findable bookmarks. With tags! Here are my bookmarks.

I tag things for friends, save articles, websites, knitting patterns, the local weather-report site, and on and on. I put the Delicious tools on my toolbar right away - highly recommend you do that, too. It's a quick login, and away you go. Click the "tag" icon, make a few notes in the comments box, adds your tags, and save.

Dislike disorganized tags? You can bundle them, rename them, delete, them; in short, you are in control of your indexing and subject headings.

And, for those of us using Firefox - when you bookmark a site using Firefox, you can add it to your Delicious account as well.

Best thing since sliced bread.

How to promote your library, ala YouTube.com

I think we could do something like this... I'd be the straight man of course. Staff may line up to be the comedy act...

Libary Thing and Goodreads..

Over at the library I set up a LibraryThing account quite a while ago and encouraged staff to add their titles - we added things we own personally as well as titles we happen to really like. Needless to say, we hit the limit on titles added for a free account in no time. So, we upgraded and have a paid account (non-profit rate). If you look at The eStory you will see random titles from our LibraryThing catalog listed down towards the bottom right.

I use Goodreads for tracking what I want to read, am reading and have read (hm, past present and future, all in one place!) I forget who introduced me to this one.... doesn't matter. It's a live-saver. I also get to see what my friends are reading and my veddy erudite little sister's fabu reading list! Love the tags too - I have my professional reading list (thin right now) and my cookbooks, and now I've added knitting. I think I may go the way of Lisa Scottoline and add the Primary To-Be-Read list, the Secondary To-Be-Read list, the Backup ... oh, you get the idea.

For when I get really good at knitting...

My slide show...

Technorati

Well, I decided, quite on my own (yes, I am stubborn), not to search out new feeds (lord knows, I find enough of those with out specially looking for more) but to take a look at Technorati. Had heard about it - but didn't really know exactly what it does. I think I'll stick with Bloglines - have too much invested there to move, or add another reader spot.

One thing I did do was "claim" the library's blog on Technorati. We'll never hit the top ranks of Technorati blogs; but, that's ok. It's just neat to have claimed our little corner of the blog-o-sphere. If you visit the eStory you'll see that you can now add the eStory to your Technorati favs list. Whee.

Bloglines.. love it hate it

Yes, I have a love/hate affair with Bloglines. It's great, when I remember to look at it, um, regularly. That "regularly" is the hate part. It is convenient for looking at a number of feeds all in one place, with short blurbs or first lines to see if I want to read more.

Problem is, I have way too much on Bloglines now. I don't really want to weed anything out; however, I also don't want to add more feeds there, even when they are really good ones!

Sigh. Information overload.

Twitter and the vote..

Ooooh - this just makes my gadget happy heart flutter - live voter reports!

Twitter has a "#votereport" hashtag you can use to tweet about your voting experience and also have it show up on the twittervotereport list... The hashtag works with a filter twitter set up to find all those tweets and bring them into the votereport log. Take a look at twitter/vote report to see a little about the work involved in creating the votereport. Here's another review of votereport.

NPR is also using the votereport idea... using twitter.

And, then there's YouTube....

There is no more hiding.

Re: Technology, in general

Technology's a great thing. Imagine if no one had invented the wheel.... And, sometimes I find techno-things a real time suck, as in hopping on the 'puter at 6pm with a promise to the husband to be in to watch the next four installments of CSI:Las Vegas (cheers for Netflix) and looking at the clock by said 'puter and discovering it's now 7:54pm. He (the husband) is being very patient; have heard no comments from him, yet. (Course, he can troll the web from midnight to 2am, no problem.)

Anyway - yes, technology is a wonderful thing. I don't mind not doing dishes by hand, and I like safe food that keeps well in my freezers and fridge, the dishwasher's nice, and I couldn't do my job without a PC, fiber, internet, and such. However, there are times I'd rather the old, less techie way of doing things. So, I like fountain pens and good paper for writing, I like the "feel" of a book (as one Kindle owner I know put it), I like making my own yarn (!), and I have a feeling that, once we get there, I'll like hand-milking the goaties even though there are good small milking machines available.

Sometimes I think the Amish have it right: take what's useful of modern inventions but don't let the gadget take over your life (which is how an Amish family can have a phone outback in a shed - it's useful technology, but would be intrusive in the house...) Hm, how can I apply this to my cell phone... which, being human and easily conned into believeing I need something, I can't live without. (How did our mothers ever survive our childhoods with us not having cell phones to call and say, "I'm on my bike on the other side of town?")