I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning as part of Thing 21 in Round 1, but since it came so late in the Things I didn't use it once I joined. I joined 2 other Ning networks. The first was for the Midwest Library Technology Conference 2008 and the second was a closed network used for planning an event. In both cases, use of Ning fizzled out fairly quickly. The technology conference Ning was valuable as a way for presenters to post materials, but it never generated much discussion related to the presentations. The other network suffered from the same lack of use. We discovered email was a more efficient way to discuss and resolve issues.
The 23 Things on a Stick Ning seems to be more active, unless it's just all a result of doing Thing 26! I did explore the groups without finding one that interested me. Most of them seem more relevant to public librarians than academic ones. To fulfill this Thing I uploaded a video and contributed to a discussion. I already added the Ning badge back in Thing #21.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
More with Thing #25 -- Post by email
I decided to test posting by email using my iPod Touch. It's easy,
but time consuming to type with only one finger. I can see it might
be helpful if I was doing live blogging somewhere and didn't have a
computer with me. But pretty much anywhere I'd have email access I'd
also have web access to post directly. So email posting doesn't seem
terribly useful.
but time consuming to type with only one finger. I can see it might
be helpful if I was doing live blogging somewhere and didn't have a
computer with me. But pretty much anywhere I'd have email access I'd
also have web access to post directly. So email posting doesn't seem
terribly useful.
---------------------
Sent from my iPod Touch
Thing #25 -- Bloggers' Toolkit
This is a good Thing to have at the beginning, to explore useful tools for blogging. But it's a bad Thing because there's so much to explore it can keep you from moving on to other Things. I've been stuck on #25 for a couple weeks now...
The usability article was informative. It was also validating, as I discovered I'm already following many of the suggestions. I like the one about tag clouds being more helpful than lists of previous posts by date; it makes a lot of sense. I plan to add a tag cloud to my blog--but first I have to go back and add tags to all the posts! It was something I hadn't done originally. That article also introduced me to Copyblogger, where I ended up spending a bunch of time reading.
Some of the 20 usability suggestions were frustrating, however. Since it was written using, and for, WordPress, many of the linked tools are WordPress specific. I'd see something I wanted to try, but not know how to. The frustration was compounded because I don't find Blogger's gadget lists very easy to use. Browsing categories brings up too many gadgets to page through, and searching doesn't seem to produce very helpful results. Kind of strange for a company that built itself on search!
Google Analytics is something I'm familiar with because I use it on a couple web sites I work with. It was simple to add tracking for this blog to the other sites I keep stats for. I noticed my blog has very few hits--not all that surprising. There are so many More Things on a Stick blogs that I've only looked at a small fraction myself.
With such low traffic, many of the Toolkit items don't make much sense. They'd just highlight how desolate my blog is out in cyberspace. ; - ) But I can see their value for more active blogs. I'm thinking about some of the comment tools (recent comments area, post ratings, most popular posts, etc.)
One thing I did add was the ability to subscribe to my blog. That's a key feature that I always look for on other blogs. A section I didn't even explore was the photo tools. I use a couple different imaging tools in my work on various web sites. For me, it's easier to keep using the tools I know than to work with different ones just for blogging.
The usability article was informative. It was also validating, as I discovered I'm already following many of the suggestions. I like the one about tag clouds being more helpful than lists of previous posts by date; it makes a lot of sense. I plan to add a tag cloud to my blog--but first I have to go back and add tags to all the posts! It was something I hadn't done originally. That article also introduced me to Copyblogger, where I ended up spending a bunch of time reading.
Some of the 20 usability suggestions were frustrating, however. Since it was written using, and for, WordPress, many of the linked tools are WordPress specific. I'd see something I wanted to try, but not know how to. The frustration was compounded because I don't find Blogger's gadget lists very easy to use. Browsing categories brings up too many gadgets to page through, and searching doesn't seem to produce very helpful results. Kind of strange for a company that built itself on search!
Google Analytics is something I'm familiar with because I use it on a couple web sites I work with. It was simple to add tracking for this blog to the other sites I keep stats for. I noticed my blog has very few hits--not all that surprising. There are so many More Things on a Stick blogs that I've only looked at a small fraction myself.
With such low traffic, many of the Toolkit items don't make much sense. They'd just highlight how desolate my blog is out in cyberspace. ; - ) But I can see their value for more active blogs. I'm thinking about some of the comment tools (recent comments area, post ratings, most popular posts, etc.)
One thing I did add was the ability to subscribe to my blog. That's a key feature that I always look for on other blogs. A section I didn't even explore was the photo tools. I use a couple different imaging tools in my work on various web sites. For me, it's easier to keep using the tools I know than to work with different ones just for blogging.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Thing #24 -- Refresh
When I finished 23 Things on a Stick I had all good intentions to keep up my blog, but somehow never actually did. That doesn't mean I haven't been blogging, just not on this one. A few months ago I began a blog to keep in touch with family around the country. I am also experimenting with a blog to communicate with faculty in my liaison departments. Now, with More Things on a Stick I will get back to posting to this one.
I spent quite a bit of time working on my blog design the first go-round, and still like the results. I did tweak the blog's colors a little, but don't see a need for major changes. The same goes for my avatar. I tried some of the suggested sites and others I found on my own, but didn't like many of my avatar experiments better than my first one from Yahoo!. In the end, I did create a new one I liked.
I spent quite a bit of time working on my blog design the first go-round, and still like the results. I did tweak the blog's colors a little, but don't see a need for major changes. The same goes for my avatar. I tried some of the suggested sites and others I found on my own, but didn't like many of my avatar experiments better than my first one from Yahoo!. In the end, I did create a new one I liked.
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