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...