Tweets for my Peeps!

I seem to be in the same boat alot of people are by falling behind a little. I'm just now getting to posting about Twitter. I signed up for it earlier in the week, and even linked it to my blog along the right hand column. But before commenting on it in a post I wanted to play around with it a bit since I had never used it before (afterall it is play week). Initially, I couldn't really figure out what the purpose was for someone to use the service. Am I really that interesting that people would want to follow me around just to know what I am doing? Do I want people I don't know following me? I'm still a little skeptical about the latter, but the former I have resolved. I've seen several people refer to tweeting as "micro blogging" but I have a different analogy. Simply put, this is web-based texting, except that anyone can see your texts. Instead of sending multiple texts to people I know and care about, and who know and care about me, I can write one Tweet and everyone is updated. My family has recently gone through some medical crises, and we relied on texting to keep everyone up-to-date about what was going on. If we had tweeted instead, more people could have been reached because it isn't limited to the people I know who have cell phones that accept texts. Plus I don't bug anyone that has a cell with those capabilities but who has to pay for the text each time one comes in. After playing with it a little I figured out how to set Twitter up to automatically update my Facebook account too. Pretty cool. I think I am converted, at least for limited uses. My twitter account can be found here.

LibraryThing

Another tool we are supposed to "play" around on this week is LibraryThing. Okay, now this is something I can really play with. I already have an account with Shelfari, and even have "My Shelf" on the side of my blog. I have heard a couple of fellow librarians discussing LibraryThing but never really took the time to look at it beyond the first page. I guess I fell into that all too often familiar trap of "I already signed up for this one, do I really have time to sign up for another?". I'm so glad that I did take the time to look into LibraryThing. I really like it. My "Library" can be found here. If interested, my Shelfari shelf can be found here.

Sticky Notes!

Okay, I found one I totally love using! Sticky Notes. I have a thing for buying and using sticky notes so this is very appropriate.

Image Generators

I've been playing around with these for a little while now (a couple hours tops) and although entertaining, I've not found much use for them personally. The only one that really seems more than just a time waster is FD Toys that uses images from Flickr for various entertainment. It is the same one that we saw earlier on with the Librarian Trading Cards, but you can also use Flickr images for other entertainment. I especially liked the jigsaw puzzle maker, followed closely by the motivational poster maker.