Podcasting

I checked out Google Podcast directory and Podcast alley. While it appears that there is alot of podcasting going on, several of the podcasts I investigated were from 2007 and earlier. I did add one feed to my bloglines account, but I don't think I'll add any more.

As for the library, I suppose it might be kind of fun to promote events using podcasting. Using podcasts for that would give them a limited shelf life. Perhaps they could also be used for tutorials.

YouTube and MyTube

I looked at some of the political junk and decided it was all too depressing. So I looked for fun and found ...Corgis!!!

I can now add Corgi to my language expertise.

Tooling Around the CML toolbox

I was familiar with most of the tools in the toolbox but I had fun playing around with the ones I hadn't encountered before.

StumbleUpon was the most fun, although it might really be more fun to stumble upon the sites by myself. Of course, that would require much more time than I want to devote to the search.

I like that the content in Digg seemed to be refreshed quickly.

MAKE and TechCrunch would be favorites of mine if I were more techie inclined.

All in all, CML has collected a pretty interesting, useful and fun "tools" for the toolbox.

Web 2.0 Apps

It was fun trying out several of these sites. You can tell many of them are still in their "infancy" - they are waiting for more input. As far as the library is concerned, I might use these sites for information or recommendations. I don't think any of them would replace our premium resources.

The sites I tried were Urbanspoon, MyHeritage, Standout Jobs and Biblio. Once Urbanspoon has more reviews, it will be more useful. At present, the resturants by neighborhood is pretty neat. The genealogy site looks like it would be easy to use. I have used both Heritage Quest and Ancestry Plus - at some point I'll have to compare this new site to those. Standout Jobs has some interesting software that looks like it would be useful in searching for employees. As for Biblio, I've used them in the past to find the value of old titles. That was really interesting.

All in all, I'd enjoy trying more of these sites if I had the time.

Documenting Google Docs

I have been using Google docs for almost a year. I find them very handy when I need to create a document or presentation when I'm away from my personal computer. It certainly is handier than carrying a flash drive or a floppy disc. In fact, I have taken to recommending them to customers who need to create something (usually for school) and have no way to save it. I know we have been talking about adding space for our customers to save through their CML account. Until we decide to do something similar, Google docs fills the bill.

That being said, one has to remember that these documents are not under our control. If Google should decide that we need to pay to have access, I'm certain that somewhere in the fine print of all those user agreements there is language to the effect that Google is the ultimate owner.