summary

Well, the 23 things have been interesting. Not as much fun as the weekly explorations but one cannot have everything in life. These serve well as introductions to certain types of technology. They might be more helpful and useful to people who are not comfortable just trying out new things on a whim, but can be a little tedious for people who are familiar with what these things are. However, I am grateful that they have forced me into looking into forms of electronic information sharing that I would otherwise not have touched with a ten foot pole. I think that the most useful items were the ones about blogs, wikis, and online documents since I see those as being the ones that people would find most useful. I found them personally to be the most interesting.

As far as life-long learning goals go, I think that librarything.com might be a tool that I would use long-term for book recommendations. When I'm not sure about what shoudl be read next, I often just fall back on reading my old favorites again and again and the opportunity to read recommendations and exchange reading lists with others in my free time might motivate me to try reading something I would not think to try on my own.

If an update of this program was offered in another three years or so I would probably find it helpful and be interested in reviewing the items that I was not already familiar with.

netlibrary

I like downloadable books. I started using them when I was working on my masters at Northern and did not have much time to read. They are just like books on tape or cd without the pain of hauling the cd player around. Before cars came equipped with built in mp3 players and adapters were cheap, the inability to listen to audiobooks with others was disappointing, but advancing technology has elimimated that problem.

Marley and Me is available for download, I have been meaning to read it but haven't had the time.

podcasts

The only podcasts I ever listen to with any frequency are from npr, so I had a feeling I knew that there were a lot of people out there making podcasts, but was still surprised by the sheer amount of them. More than anyone could ever listen to. So, how does one find the best? I'm not really sure. Podcastalley and podcast.net did break things down by genre, but there are still so many shows available to listen to that I'm not sure how I would recommend a person start without suggesting that he just try some. I suppose that blogs and podcasts would work together well, if the person doing them was willing to provide both. I'm sure that nany people also recommend podcasts to others the same way one would recommend a book, so I guess that I would tell someone to keep an eye for podcast recommendations from people you like (or despise) to read.

I found lots of manga and comic book review podcasts mixed in with other book review podcasts that did not explicitly state what they were in the title. Part of the difficulty of the directory, is that it does not list with the author is next to the show. If there is author information listed, you need to expand the menu to see it. Sometimes it is not listed at all. So, until further verified, author credibility must always be suspect.

electric company

Ahh....Youtube. What can one say about it. It is the most bizarre combination of really interesting educational information and completely worthless junk out there. However, I know that almost always, if someone tells me about something hysterical or fascinating that happened on TV the evening before, I can almost always watch a replay on YouTube. I am not always very fond of how their search engine works and wonder how the results are determined, but overall, YouTube works extremely well at disseminating pop culture.

I chose this video of as my video since it is a demonstration of how long technology innovations have been educating people. It is just a matter of harnessing the education properly.

lookandtaste.com

I like this site. Video and print versions of the recipes are available so if one does not want to watch a video about how to make pork fried rice, you can just exercise your eyes. Most of the otehr cooking sites I've seen, cooks.com recipies.com, don't offer video so that could be a nice option for a new cook. The restaurant recommendations that they offer only for a couple of cities so I felt slightly cheated by that since the thriving metropolis of Madison, WI is not one of them. This may be a small thing, but I find it annoying that the site mixes metric and non-metric measurements and does not provide a conversion table. Also, 366 recipes is not that many. Most cooking sites I've been to have a lot more, but making a video version of each recipe would be very time consuming.

This site might go well as a companion to a basic recipe book for a beginning cook.

zoho!

Wow, I see the attraction. I have used Google docs before and liked it, but think I actually like the layout of Zoho more. I find the sheet application particularly nice. For school and home, great. I wouldn't use it for work simply because I deal with a lot of confidential information that I would feel comfortable storing on-line, but eliminating the need for flash drives for students is awesome. The layout is so similar to Office (hate it though I do), the a person cannot help but feel comfortable with the way that it looks. I love how easy it is to share and track changes as well as the versatility it gives in deciding how you want the document to be shared. All in all, I like it.

sandbox

I entered the sandbox and tried to participate, but didn't see "edit" on any of the pages. That is one definite danger of technology. It is easy for it to change and then things, like the directions that instruct you to use the edit button, aren't correct anymore. That is why I would always be afraid to depend on a digital library.