Item 8: RSS & Newsreaders - Find Some Feeds

RSS feeds are really interesting. The Technorati site I found confusing although it was listed as most popular. I found the Google Blog search the easiest and have added a few RSS feeds to my Bloglines. I added the National Geographic , a couple of dog feeds, the Untours RSS feed for Bavaria, the NYT book review (very handy to get coming automatically instead of searching for new titles!), the Librarians Internet Indexm the Shifted Librarian and a couple of staff blogs. Now the only problem is finding time to keep up!

#7 RSS & Newsreaders

This is so cool because I had just figured out how to set up a RSS feed onto my toolbar for the Untours Cafe about a month ago so that I could get updated on new posts from members about traveling in Germany, but I had no idea I could set up so many different kinds of RSS feeds into Bloglines. This really helps keep my toolbar clutter free. I've switched a couple of things that were sending me updates onto my toolbar into Bloglines and now the toolbar doesn't curl around the edges.
I sent a link to Bloglines to a few other people who I think will really like the system of handling their internet information.

#6 Flickr color picker

This tool was really neat. Once I got the hang of pulling a photo and it creating a montage of other photos into a replica of itself it was interesting to see how different photos worked. Some of the less colorful ones were really boring. I like the photos with bright colors best.

#5 Flickr

After first creating my Flickr account about a year ago I have finally figured it out and uploaded some family photos.
I tried to upload the photos from my new digital camera, but ran into unforeseen problems. The cords have disappeared! A thorough search and tossup of the house leads me to think I lost them on one of our trips and have no hope of finding them. And a search on the Sony website shows them as no longer available for purchase. This has started a search of camera shops in the hopes of obtaining the necessary tools to download our own pictures into Flickr, but for now I have uploaded pictures family and friends have emailed us in the past couple of years that I was able to find in the archives of my email.
Check out our Flickr pictures at http://flickr.com/birchleaves
Update! I have downloaded some of the pictures that we took into Flickr. One picture of beach lilacs has been viewed 4 times already by other people! Cool!

7 ½ Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners

Our library is encouraging staff to learn about 2.0 Internet tools with FVRL Discover 2.0 Learning. The first assignment we have is studying the 7 1/2 Habits of Lifelong Learners.
The easiest one of these habits for me is habit 4-having confidence in myself as a competent effective learner. I have always enjoyed learning and discovering new things so it isn't threatening to me to try something new.
The hardest one is probably Habit 5: Create your own learning toolbox. I generally stumble upon something that catches my interest and then I seek out bits and pieces. I hardly ever know in advance where the learning is going and I end up finding my way intuitively.