THING 31. MORE TWITTER

It's been weeks since I checked my Twitter page. I'm not a big Twitter fan. I looked at many of the suggested websites for this Thing. One of them was Twitterfall. You can see trends on Twitterfall by reading tweets as they roll down the screen. The tweets go by fast. Retweetradar.com shows trends on Twitter as a cloud. One of the tags that caught my eye was Ayn Rand. I looked at some of the tweets for her. A few weeks ago a friend told me that Rand's Atlas shrugged has been mentioned several times on talk radio because of its relevancy to the current economic conditions. I had never read the book, so I checked our catalog. All the editions have a request list. I added my name to one list and am now reading the Cliffs' notes.

RCL now has a Twitter page. It has notices of upcoming events and other library news.

THING 30. RSS AND DELICIOUS

I haven't looked at my RSS feeds for awhile. Had to stop and think of what they are on. Oh Yes, Google Reader. I added feeds from .Gov, Traffic.com and rssWeather.com. To set up the weather feed, I clicked on Ramsey County and then Shoreview. I have organized my RSS feeds into folders for News, Library, 23 things, Health and wellness, and Traffic and weather.

I signed up for FeedMyInbox. I now get the New York Times feed sent to my email. I signed up on a Monday evening. The first feed showed up the next afternoon.

I looked at Spreed. It is supposed to help you speed read information. Instead of seeing the whole text, 2-4 words flash on the screen at a time. It is very eye catching and dramatic, but also tiring. I don't think I could get used to it.

I set up a Delicious account with the first 23 Things. I liked it. Then the buttons disappeared from my homepage after computer Services did some cleanup operation. I have tried unsuccessfully in the past few days to reinstall the buttons. The process seems to be different from last year.

THING 29. GOOGLE TOOLS

I signed up for Google News. I customized my screen and tried some archive searches. That would be useful for students. Once I get past this Thing, I doubt I'll use Google News. I'm already confusing it with my iGoogle page. Maybe I'm Googled out.

I have two email accounts, my work email and Gmail. I started using Gmail last year with the first 23 Things. I love the no-spam feature. I wish I could say that about my work email. I watched the video on using Gmail. I was amazed at the comment from the person who said his band uses Gmail to compose, edit and record original songs and then email them to each other. I haven't gotten much beyond the basics.

If I ever want to put up a website, I'll try Google Sites. Right now I don't have a need for it. I watched some of the videos on getting started. It looks fun and easy-- and a whole lot cheaper than paying someone to design your website.

THING 28. CUSTOMIZED HOME PAGES

I set up a home page using iGoogle. I added the weather, Dow Jones, a sticky note, calendar, CNNMoney. com, the BBC news, the National Geographic picture, Hulu and other features. Many of the news organizations came up by default. I chose a theme for the top. This was easy and fun to put together.

I was concerned that if I created a home page with iGoogle, this would replace the home page we have on our staff Intranet. I didn't want this to happen. After asking around, I learned that to change the home page default on Internet Explorer, you have to go into Tools and then Internet options. So I won't do that. Come to think of it, I didn't find a link on iGoogle where you could make that your home page. Netvibes has an obvious link at the top of the screen to set that as the default home page.

THING 27. TWITTER

First of all the malfunction du jour. After posting Thing 26, I went to blog preview. All 26 posts were missing. The rest of the blog was there-- the title, the strawberry, the graphics down the left hand side. I logged in different ways. Still no posts. Went to lunch. When I came back and tried the blog, still no posts. I nosed around Blogger Help. I went into Settings. The time zone was set to Pacific. I changed that to Central. When I went to the blog, all the posts were there.

Watched the Common Craft video and the YouTube video on Twitter with Perry Belcher. He says he spends 3-4 hours a day on Twitter. How does he have time for that? Who does the vacuuming in his house? Belcher says he follows Steve Jobs and the first ten people Jobs followed. I found Steve Jobs and Bill Gates on Twitter and read through their updates. I have looked at other Twitter people and found that many use it as a business and marketing tool. Also news organizations. Found Obama's Twitter page. Last update was Jan. 15th, Martin Luther King Day. I guess he's been too busy to tweet since then.

I signed up for Twitter. At one point it asks for your email and email password. Big red flag. It says your password is submitted securely and they don't email without your permission. I noticed in small print at the bottom "Skip this step." I did. I don't see using Twitter very much. I'll exchange user names with people I know and then go on to the next Thing.

THING 26. NING

I haven't looked at Ning since last Fall. I thought I had several friends. When I checked my page, I was down to one. Does Ning take away your friends if you don't post any comments for awhile? I have been adding friends and comments. I joined the Ning for Ramsey County Librarians working on Things on a Stick. I added the CNN gadget and a video to my page. Both those were easy. I tried several times to add the large Ning badge to my blog, but it didn't work.

I am more likely to use email or IM to contact others in the library.

THING 25. MORE TROUBLES ON A STICK, OR, BLOGGERS' TOOLKIT

Are we having fun yet? I was until I tried adding gadgets to the layout page. I tried several different ones, but was not able to add any. Worse, for several days I couldn't scroll through my blog or sign in. I was trying to add the gadget for the Wall St. Journal when this happened. When I previewed the blog, a message came up saying Internet Explorer can't upen the blog URL (even though I had just been in it). When I clicked on OK or Close to get rid of the message, the white screen with "This screen cannot be displayed" came up. Shutting down the PC and starting up again didn't help. A different PC didn't help. Today I tried logging in through Blogger instead of my Favorites bookmark or a Google search. That took me to the Dashboard. I deleted the Wall Street Journal gadget (does anything on or about Wall St. work these days?). Then I could see my blog.

The Typealyzer needs more tweaking. A lot more tweaking. When I tried to find out my blog's type, the message came back "Detected language Vietnamese. The only supported languages are English and Swedish." My blog is in English.