Okay, it is finally here. The day I wrap this all up. No more 23 Things. It is over! Bring out the champagne and let’s celebrate! Or more likely for me, let out a big sigh of relief and head off to something else.

So what do I think of all this? Did I learn anything? Has it been mind opening? Life changing? Are these things I will use in my professional life? Personal life? Did I waste my time or that of anyone else who stumbled across my posts?

Well as for the latter that is up to the individual who came across my posts whether they were useful and served a purpose or just wasted a few minutes of their time. I can’t speak for others, but myself….

I think overall I learned a lot. Part of that I think was because of the serious effort I put in to learn many of these things. Some of them I was already familiar with and didn’t learn anything new, such as Google Docs, wikis, and Bloglines. Some I was familiar with, but built upon what I knew, such as Flickr, libraries enhanced with Web 2.0, social bookmarking, mashups, YouTube and Google Maps. While others I knew little or nothing about and learned a great deal about such as Rollyo, Twitter, LibraryThing, image generators, Technoratti, and del.icio.us. Some of these I may never use again, such as Technoratti, Rollyo or Twitter, but then again you never know I may come to use them at a later date and find that my understanding of them was a great benefit. Maybe I might be working with or helping someone who is interested in some of these services then my knowledge of them would be of great benefit. I think what I learned from many of these things it that they are a great benefit in enriching my activities outside of work and in what I do at work. Already I have come up with ideas just from playing with these tools and am working to implement some of these ideas within my branch.

I think also it is good to be aware of the technology out there and I encourage all library staff to take a look at some of the online resources that are out there and whether they may be of benefit to their work, people they know or even for themselves. These 23 Things I beleive are barely a fraction of the Web 2.0 tools out there and as technology and the times move forward I’m sure many more will come, and perhaps some of them will even replace some that are the current fashion. As information professionals we owe it to our profession to aware of the ever changing variety of information resources out there and how they are being used within our society. A couple of great finds to continue your Web 2.0 journey are TechCrunch (Michael Arrington’s impressive site covering the Internet and various Web 2.0 companies) and Learning 2.1.

Well, that is all for now… Boy, now I need to find something else to blab about…

Okay, I am truly not sure how to answer this…

I have helped many in the past use some of these resources including staff, friends and family. My family and friends I have introduced them to Flickr and shown them how to get set up, adding photos, adding keyword tags, creating a set and other features from within the site. A few of the patrons who have come into the library I have shown them Google Docs and Spreadsheets. I wish I would have shown more, but one thing I notice is that sometimes we forget that we could have  shown someone a great resource until they have already left. Various staffmembers  I have introduced or taught them how to use various Web 2.0 resources including blogs, Flickr, image generators and Bloglines. Various other tools or resources I have learned about I have even shared with staff. I have noticed that at times while moving through the 23 Things I have shared what I learned with other staffmembers.

It is good to teach others, to share what you know or have learned. You empower those around you with the knowledge you give them. Besides that you help build relationships with the people around you by being open to help, learn, teach and understand the needs and interests of the people you come across. By teaching someone something you have learned you potentially open doorways of new thoughts, ideas or paths for that person. I highly encourage everyone to share their knowledge and their expertise with someone even if it is one person. We each hold the potential of enriching the lives of others through a very simple exchange of information.

Okay, I hope I didn’t babble too much on this one or get too preachy or sound like a fortune cookie…

Ahh, one last one….

Okay, I’m ready to cross the finish line. No more 23 things. So, until the next post, see ya!

Okay, down to the wire…

Podcasting, for those who don’t know is basically an audio file with RSS. This allows one to develop audio shows, on just about anything from informative podcasts, to news gathering, humor, interviews, poetry readings or whatever and then one can subscribe to these podcasts using an RSS feed reader. You can save an audio file in various formats, but saving it as an MP3 is best in order to allow the most users to access the broadcast using whatever multimedia player they have on their computer. You don’t need to subscribe to listen to a podcast, that is only a feature podcasts allow you to do. If you want to listen depending on what your multimedia software is, such as Windows Media Player, GOM (my favorite), Realplayer, or whatever else you might have, you can save it to your computer and open it to play the file. Some multimedia programs will let you automatically listen to the file if you simply click on the podcast.

I thought it was pretty hilarious that the link we were given to check out search services for podcasts was for Yahoo Podcasts, just happen to have a large message at the top of the screen that they were closing down the site effective October 31st. Apparently, a podcasting division must not have worked out for them. On the other hand their well known music service, Yahoo! Music Engine (aka Yahoo! Music Jukebox) apparently has a plugin to allow you to subscribe to podcasts. It would appear that they were using this to help develop their podcasting web directory. One thing I really liked about Yahoo’s Podcasting service was their clear explanation of not only how to subscribe to podcasts, but how to create your own podcasts. I felt this was one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen so far. (Note: I’ve created links to some of the things talked about on Yahoo’s Podcasting service, but once the site goes down these might not be effective anymore.)

In any case Yahoo isn’t the only place where you can go to find podcasts, there are plenty of other directories on the Internet, including podfeed.net, pluggd, or pod-planet to name a few. Of course, the monster of them all is Apple’s I-Tunes podcasting service, which helped make podcasting so common throughout the world.

Okay, who hasn’t heard of YouTube? The place is filled with all kinds of stuff, all kinds of videos have been uploaded there, stuff from around the world, so talk about going global!

Anyhoo, personally I am addicted to Taiwanese and Japanese dramas that you can find uploaded there. Some of them just make me laugh, so much like GTO. A great show I highly recommend you check out. Or if you are looking for something that will make you cry like a baby, even you big, tough guys, check out One Litre of Tears. 

What I am most amazed by is how there is an entire subculture that works to make these dramas available to the public. They literally spend their free time not just downloading and uploading them to YouTube, but translating them and subtitling them into English. The work some of these groups do is often phenomenally good. They also tend to give themselves or their team cute names or cool names depending on how you look at it.

YouTube has a lot of other functions built in besides just viewing videos, you can e-mail videos to your friends or paste your favorite video into a blog, website or your friends’ MySpace site. You can post comments to videos that are on the site. If you create an account not only can you upload your own videos, but you can subscribe to watch some videos that won’t be listed on the public end of the site or you can share videos you are watching at the same time with other users like your friends.

Other aspects of YouTube that are pretty cool is the Video Toolbox where they actually teach you how to make a good video for the internet. They have tricks about editing, lighting and other production tips.

If you have some technical chops behind you, then they have the API available for if you want to create your own mashup or plugin. Just check out their Developer Corner. Which for me personally, the great find being a YouTube plugin someone created for Wordpress. Now that is cool!

Other things YouTube is working on can be found in their TestTube area. Some cool finds are floating around here if you weren’t aware that YouTube was about more than just looking at stupid videos people have posted. Two that sound really promising here are Remixer and AudioSwap, one seems to be a way to edit your video and another allows you to use music from “officially licensed sources” in your video.

Yeah, YouTube is a lot of fun. Power to the people!

One final thought before I skedaddle. Apparently YouTube isn’t the only video uploading site out there, no I’m not talking GoogleVideo or anything like that. No, apparently there are numerous video uploading sites out there, but YouTube just happens to be the giant gorilla that everyone notices. I haven’t checked out many of these other sites, but I’m sure many of them have their good points.

Oh, and finally if you are looking for a lot of cool stuff that happens to be in the public domain and you might want to use it to make your own creations check out the Internet Archive.

Okay, Google Maps is it cool or what? Yeah, I got to hand it to them they’ve developed a pretty cool app, even though I prefer to get my driving directions from Mapquest. There is so much more to Google Maps than you realize at first.

I understand that they have gotten a few people unhappy with their feature that allows you to roam around some cities at street level, but personally I really enjoyed the experience and, hey, it is a public place that this is occurring in, you know? I took my online street level tour by using Google Maps to move around the streets of San Francisco. It was pretty easy to navigate down streets, make turns onto another street and even move into traffic to get a really interesting experience. Unfortunately, this isn’t available for all cities, so you have to kind of take a guess, whether the city you are interested has that feature. I took a gamble and, lucky for me San Francisco was a good guess. Tip think big…

Google Maps has a lot built in. The whole satellite image of the area you are looking at is pretty cool, although that feature is available with other map services out there.  One thing I really like is the way you can create a hybrid that places the names of the streets onto the satellite photo. One creepy thing was the fact that images of locations appear without any people in them. They remind me of a photo I saw in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Another great thing, which was in the news a while back, is how the API is available to create your own Mashups. Further, if you login you can see and use a lot of cool mashups that others have developed using the Google Maps API. My favorite was a nifty one that if you click a spot on the map would show you where you would wind up if you dug your way through the Earth. It is pretty cool and gives new life to the phrase, “Digging your way to China.”

Of course, other great features are how you can insert or create a link of a map you create and place it on your webpage or blog. I did this to place a map and picture of the library I work at in the sidebar. I had to do a lot of work to adjust the size, so it would appear decently in my sidebar, but after a week I decided it was time for the map to go. I could see a lot of great uses to this, such as explaining where an event is taking place and simply embedding a map in the web page showing the location of the place. Using a similar idea Google Maps lets you e-mail the map you have created to a particular e-mail account, I suppose in case you want to view it later  or send it to friends.

Google Maps is pretty easy to use and although you can type in an address to move in to a location, I found it pretty easy to simply zoom in and navigate using the map with nothing more than the mouse and the zoom in and out functions built into the map.

In any case, I think they have a great product and not only did I have a lot of fun playing around with it, but founnd that it can be a very useful tool to use for a variety of purposes. All right, I guess a babbled enough about Google Maps, too bad they don’t pay me after gushing over how cool they are. You know like a marketing fee or something. Nah, nevermind…