23 hamsters

After taking a look around Technorati I can’t say I’m sold…yet.  Maybe I’ll like it more after a few looks, but at the moment I’m just finding it way to busy.  Having said that, I think Technorati does what it’s supposed to do, maybe more. 

From my experience tagging has helped me label whatever content I put up on the web, like a goofy video about bike riding.  But I’ve also noticed that tags lead to some interesting discoveries when I go  web surfing.  For example, I went from “Olympics” to ”Canada” to ”Borders” to “Aliens” just by following the tag cloud.  This, for me, is what is fun about information seeking: starting in one place and ending up in Canada.

Found a pretty cool teen services wiki:

http://yalibrarian.com/yalib_wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

a fine looking YA wiki

Love it.  I wish I had checked this one out sooner.  I started out with Wilco and was curious to see how accurate it could be.  Within three songs Pandora was playing a song from anthor band I’m fond of and that I consider close in style, My Morning Jacket.  Uncanny.

Until about 2 weeks ago, I played Scrabulous, a version of Scrabble, on Facebook religously.  Unfortunately, the creators of Scrabulous are  facing a copyright infringement lawsuit from Hasbro.  The game was taken down and the fun is very much over for everyone involved.

I checked OnlineGames and found one that challenges you to pop as many zits off an acne infested teen in 60 seconds as you can.  I actually found it pretty satisfying, much like popping real zits.  This game provided some comic relief from my scrabbling withdrawal.   http://www.onlinegames.net/games/1111/acne-be-gone.html

I found out that Denver Public Library has a google map on their “locations” page, which allows you to zoom in on a branch location and get directions as well as view satallite images.  This is a nice feature for Denver since they have so many branches, but I think it would useful for our patrons, too.  Here is the link to the DPL’s locations page where the mashup is:

http://denverlibrary.org/locations_hours/index.html

This is a shrine in Hita, Japan, where I lived for a couple years.  Found this photo using Flickr’s World Map application.  World Map seems like a fun feature since it shows you the exact location of the images on their interactive map and then scroll through the search results.  I’m not sure how useful World Map is since you could just as easily search for “shrine” and “Hita Japan” in their standard search box.

I have been using Google Reader for a little over a year now with feeds from the Shifted Librarian, ILibrarian, Steven’s Lighthouse, Boing Boing, 3 Quarks Daily, and a few others.  When I first discovered RSS, I was “reading” (more like skimming) through many blogs each day.  But since the initial excitement wore off, I only occassionally visit my Google Reader account.  Now, instead of skimming through blog after blog, I am more laser focused.  If there is something specific I am looking for the Reader allows me to enter search terms. 

I also like to share posts with friends who also have a Reader account.  Recently a friend shared this with me: http://consumerist.com/5028906/dominos-tests-the-limits-of-what-humans-will-eat.  Priceless!

I checked out gizmodo and stumbled upon a cheese wheel with a pc inside http://gizmodo.com/5026177/cheese-wheel-pc-becausewe-actually-dont-know , which lead me to a pc made from Duct Tape.  I was dissapointed to discover that the guts of the pc were not actually Duct Tape, though, just the tower. http://gizmodo.com/394121/if-you-build-a-pc-case-out-of-duct-tape-geeks-will-come .  That lead me to discover an automatic cat faucet that turns on whenever the cat is in the sink, then turns off when the cat is out of the sink.  http://gizmodo.com/5024588/automatic-cat-faucet-is-one-diy-hack-that-felines-will-love .  I guess this is the beauty of the Web…stumbling upon completely useless but entertaining tidbits.

Listening to the radio last night I heard a discussion on how blogging, when blogging was new, was a popular tool used by political junkies to express themselves.  There were some who used blogs only as a forum to rant and rave (like a.m. radio), but others saw an opportunity to interact with the world.  I’m an occassional reader of blogs (I like boing boing, the shifted librarian, etc), but I tend to keep to myself.  Maybe that will change…

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