Exercise 5 - RSS feeds

I hadn't really ever thought about that blinking orange button at the top of my web browser. Once in awhile, in a fleeting moment, I would wonder what it was. But then something flashy would distract me and I'd forget all about it. So imagine my surprise when I learned that Exercise 5 was about these orange things and that they're called RSS feeds.

About a week ago, I looked around at all of my favorite sites in anticipation of seeing that orange button light up. But alas, no luck. So I went to some other sites I like, such as www.ew.com, and added them to my feeds list. I also added "Imogen Heap News" and "Netflix Top 10" just for fun.

Unfortunately, I would check my feeds every day, and it didn't seem like there were that many updates. Ew.com had some, but that's about it. I don't think I'll be using this option again any time soon.

Exercise 4 - Play Day (Pandora)

I went to Pandora.com today to explore what it's all about. I was really excited about this one from the get-go because I'm such a music buff!

First of all, what a cool website! I set up my account and tried typing in "John Mayer" to see what it would do. It started me off with a John Mayer song then moved on to similiar artists, such as Maroon 5. So then I created 2 more stations: one with Imogen Heap and one with Coldplay. I liked that it let me say yay or boo to a song. If I said boo, like I did with the Dave Matthews song (I hate Dave Matthews!), it told me it would never play the song again. You can choose to retire a song for a month if it's been played too much lately. You can also click Quick Mix and it'll shuffle all of your stations for you. Then I went ahead and invited some friends to check it out.

I love this site!

Exercise 4 - Play Day (Image Generators)

Today was all about image generators. Seeing as I'm such a bakery nut, it was natural that I gravitated toward the cookie generator first. Above is the product of my exploration.

I also liked the post it note generator:

Some of the sites were really fun, but some that I was really interested in, like the mosaic generator, were defunct. :(

All in all, this was a fun exercise.

Exercise 4 - Play Day (Readers Advisory)

Today I visited some Readers Advisory sites. I started with ShelfAwareness, which is a good site, but I opted not to subscribe to the daily newsletter. I have a hard enough time keeping my inbox cleaned out without adding more to it! I visited the Webrary, which is a good tool, but I think I'll need a LOT more exploring time just to see half of it. I liked that GoodReads was included on the list, seeing as I am already a member. I love how I add a ton of books to my To-Read list just by looking at what my friends have read. I checked out OverBooked and somehow wound up at Rocky River Public Library's page. I even checked out Nancy Pearl's recommendations for 2008. I found a book there that I'm going to add to my To-Read list. And of course, I LOVE Fantastic Fiction, seeing as how I have to use it just about every day to answer patrons' questions. Thinking about how many books I want to read now is making my head swim...

...TBC...

Exercise 4 - Play Day (WebJunction)

...Today I played around with WebJunction. I browsed through the site map and clicked on "Financial Assistance". Then I tried looking at some other links I might find useful, such as "Programming" or "Readers Advisory". I also went to WebJunction's wiki page and snooped around there. I looked under "History, Art, and Culture". I found a couple of good sites there, but when I search other topics, they were sparse or completely empty. I honestly didn't really care for these sources. I might use them again in the future, but they weren't my favorite sites.

To be continued again...

Exercise 4 - Play Day (Rollyo)

Today I explored Rollyo.com. I searched for "painting" under "Home Repair" and got a couple good websites: doityourself.com and bobvilla.com. Then I clicked the "Explore" tab and searched for "vintage clothing" in "Boutique Search". I came up site that had gorgeous, but very expensive things! Although, I did fine one site: somelikeitvintage.com, had some really cool things at a halfway decent price. I added that one to my favorites.

My next task was to create my own search roll. I made one called "Shoes and More Search" and made a list of all of my favorite places to shop online. I added site such as ebay.com, endless.com, and topshop.com.

To be continued...

Exercise 3

I just finished Exercise 3 - Tagging. I explored LibraryThing, Amazon, and the Ann Arbor Library website. Then I went back to Amazon and tagged the book "Magical Thinking" by Augusten Burroughs. I used the tag "essays" then clicked on it to see what other books had been tagged as essays. I got the usual suspects: more Augusten Burroughs, David Sedaris, etc. But I also got some surprises that I'm going to have to look into reading.