Thing 38: Comic Relief

To be honest, the way the pics move makes me feel sort of dizzy!!! But when you actually get to the site, the shelf check series are hilarious- toondoo doesn't make them move, I discovered. I couldn't embed my fave into my blog though.

I guess you can print them, so this could be a pretty cool way of making publicity for a youth service event or something like that, rather than a usual poster.

Thing 37: Music to our ears

Last FM is a funny little site. I quite like it, but even though I have a pretty good download limit, I try to avoid it a bit, since youtube already takes a great deal of my quota.
The pc I'm on at the moment blocks this site, but I have used it a little before, so I guess that's okay. It is neat to find a way to check out music that other people have liked, if they liked something of yours. Of course, I like to borrow a lot of cds from the library that I wouldn't come across either, but actually, I'm a bit of a passive music person, I wait for sounds to come to me, either through recommendations, or if I like a track used in a TV show, rather than seeking stuff out much of the time.

Thing 36: Dressing up your photos

Hurrah! My favourite thing! Messing around with photos! A lot of people use our pcs and we have only the basics, and maybe some of them would like to enhance their digital pics. I used Picnik and I was pretty amazed by how easy many of the features were to use. They all have equivelants on photoshop, but photoshop is a lot bigger and a lot less intuitive! The only features that I really missed were layering, and to be honest, the text is pretty limited. Still, for a free program, that was pretty impressive!

So, from this...

... to this!
Pretty neat, since I visited the Hundertwasserhaus in twilight and it was really hard to get a good shot, so this makes it more interesting!

Thing 35: Mini or Micro Blogging

Twitter is quite the in thing at the moment from what I can figure. I have a couple of thoughts. A blog I used to read quite happily has become a lot less interesting since the writer now updates almost solely from twitter meaning that there are pretty much only out of context single sentences rather than what used to be a pretty interesting blog. On the other hand, I find the updating of facebook status/having a little corner of the blog devoted to twitter is fine. I guess this is the crux of it- in small doses it's fun and even useful- in large doses, it's not!!!

Thing 34: Using the Web for Better Health

Hmm. The idea of using the web for better health is one thing, but I don't know, these seemed like weight loss websites and not health websites. Also, since I think community and food go hand in hand, the forum/community aspect seemed a little lacking to me... Honestly, with all the negative press about pro anorexia sites lately, I've had a little squirrel around, and much as the net can be used for good, it seems a little sad how many 'pro-ana'/'pro-unhealthy' choices sites there are... These don't seem that far removed, honestly.

Okay, this makes me angry, I'm going to stop!!!

Thing 33: Express Yourself Through Online Art

Online art... I went to the art gallery at Fed Square the other day and I found it really cool to see non digital art. It had been a while since I had appreciated something that wasn't created in photoshop. Anyway, as the 2.1 site suggests, there's no purpose to any of these but to while away the hours, but I can certainly attest to having fun and purpose in photoshop many a time!

Thing 31: Get Organized with Plaxo

This one really serves to remind that I am going on Annual Leave in 65 days! Yes, this was the main event I put into the calendar, and I did kind of like that it counted down... but since this means it's 64 days until my last assignment for the semester is due in, I've really been sticking my head in the sand about this!!!

I do like this, and I think it's pretty useful for use all round, although I think in a way, phones that can do all the calendar type things may have already superceded an online calendar- now, I did see that the premium version offers the chance to sync to a windows based phone (not sure what a windows phone is, I can't even figure out how to attach my phone to my pc to get the pictures off it), but I do find it good in general when things go together, in the sense that I'm impressed with the way a google account is more than an email account these days.

For the library, I would say the most useful way of this kind of tool is in the larger scale internet demos such as the google one I remember we did last year. The coolest feature, imo, is being able to share calendars, and I have used this kind of feature before to make holiday/itinerary plans with people before.

For me, though, my little A5 calendar is somehow the easiest thing to slip into my bag and keep myself organised...

Thing #30- Lolcats

Meh. I mean, I know the caption doesn't go with the picture, but I couldn't force myself to deliberately use wrong grammar. I get that Anil Dash has a whole article about the idea that lolcats can have a particular grammar, but I just doubt everyone making lolcats realises this!

Anyway, of all the things we've done so far, I think this is probably the least useful for us at the library.

Thing 29- Scrapblog

It would appear I've been having a busy 2.1 day. And yes, I found one I like quite a lot, after a few things that weren't really my cup of tea.

Like Anne, the photobucket thing/link didn't work for me, but it wasn't too much of a hassle to save my pics to my pc, then just upload them. So my album is... here! Tada!



Um, yep, Twilight... pretty much. My only other thing about the thing that I didn't like was the shortage of darker pics/backgrounds- not specifically because I wanted to make a vampire book promo (which I did), more because there's more than cutesy stuff that a person might want to make... like so much, it's limited, and I'm sure there's a way to make it more interesting than just using the defaults available.

The thing for me is, I love technology, my laptop and I are practically attached by an umbilical cord, and I LOVE photoshop (not that I made the pics in my scrapblog, I stole them and I have no idea who made them), but I really like scrapbooks to be scrap books.

/end rant, since I already said I liked this new toy!

Thing #28 Well, we're big rock singers...

...so I made a Twilight cover, since it's my latest craze, but to be honest, the program didn't thrill me, there just wasn't enough room for variables that I could find- much as I hate to say it, I think there's a lot more opportunity for creativity with microsoft programs like publisher, using their templates...

Thing 27: Photobucket

What I like about Photobucket: the url that each pic gets assigned! Super handy for just putting the image into any kind of webpage as a signature image, or just as a pretty addition to a post...


...such as this, the cover of the latest book I read.

What I don't like about photobucket is how easy it is to not have a private account, meaning that anything you find in anyone's account might not have been put there by them, so giving credit to the person/account where you found the art might be redundant...

Thing 26: Little bits of the Internet, on your desktop

Random observation: yes, vista comes with widgets, minis, all sorts of fun. It also takes a very long time to open, even with 2gb of ram... Yep, I'm an XP gal! Just upgraded two weeks ago, and I'm very happy with my shiny new (old) operating system!

Okay, so I had a little look at putting a widget into my blog, which is fine- you'll find it right here above my post- but that's the thing- wouldn't I want a widget thingy in my sidebar, not my main content? And I noticed Livejournal wasn't catered for, so I found that a little strange, so it's pretty limited to not have the option of getting some kind of code to put in wherever appropriate...

#25 Making Newsletters

All that comes to mind is, if I was still doing the Hawthorn Historical Society newsletter, it would be a useful tool. Letterpop.com, that is.

As it is, somebody show this site to Emma, stat!

Actually, I might be able to find a use or two for it... it also makes me think about those Christmas Card newsletters a lot of my American friends do, so if I was that kind of person, that would be cool too. But the problem I am having is I can't figure out if I can create my own background pictures or use my own pictures in the headers- making this another version of LiveJournal (except completely and utterly different, except for the fact I'm not savvy enough to code my own layout...)

To be continued...

#24- Back to it, Summer break is OVER!!!

Zamzar... file conversion... this, that, the other... *snaps back from daze*
Well, hasn't there been some problems with people using vista and creating word documents, then not being able to open them on our pcs? This rings a bell- perhaps this is a good way for us to combat this problem. If I recall rightly, these vista docs are '.docx'?
In any case, either I did something wrong, or when it says it takes a while, it wasn't kidding, since my converted file isn't yet in my inbox... *waits patiently*

Edit: File arrived, converted and shiny... and identical to the old file, except different. All good.