Monday, April 27, 2009

Things

I never seem to have enough time to work on the things. I am hoping to be able to make the deadline. Wish me luck!

Thing 30 - More ways to use RSS & Delicious

I checked out FeedRinse, FiltermyRSS, and FeedSifter and decided to go with the Feed Rinse. I signed up for a Feed Rinse account - but only after signing up realized that I won't use this tool now that I have it! I don't really use my bloglines account very much. I don't have a lot of time to check out the blogs that I get, although I would love to read them. One of my goals is to get into my bloglines and clean it up - we will see how long that really takes me. I went through my blogs and got them all organized in a way that should help me stay up on them. Working on THINGS again is giving me the chance to get to this.

Delicious is a great feature - I learned about it during 23 Things on a stick, but don't use it as much as I had anticipated I would when I first started out. I added all my favorites from school to delicious so that I know I can have access to the same information at school and at home.

I think that both the RSS and Delicious are great tools - I suggest Delicious to people all the time, because I know that finding sites is a pain and having a tool that makes that easy it awesome.

Thing 29: Google Tools

letter G Copper Square Letter O Letter O ...whiz L E letter T o40mex Wood Scrabble Tile O L letter S
Thing 29!
Alerts were the first tool that I explored for this thing. I set up an alert for anything about D.J. MacHale. He is (if you follow this blog you know this!) one of my favorite authors and now I can get fast info about what he's got coming up! I also set up an alert for Scott Westerfeld as I am currently waiting- not patiently - for another book like the midnighters books.
**This is a feature that I think could be beneficial to the library ~ we could set up alerts for authors on upcoming book releases and visit dates - only to scratch the surface of this tools usefulness.
Calendar was the other tool that I explored. I mentioned the calendar in thing 28 - but really found it to be a great tool when I checked it out more. I love the event feature that pulls from your email! I tried the quick add button on the calendar, but I don't like it as well as the create event spot.

Thing 28 - iGoogle

Thing 28 was fun to get started! I had a great time choosing what to put on my personalized home page! I have chosen the fractal background. I have added the calendar, the weather, the time/date window and such. I just added a widget from scholastic called Teacher Book Wizard. It was easy to set up - easy to work with - and I love looking at the different fractals each time I go there. One thing that is inconvenient is the time it takes to load when you have loads of games and videos coming up when you open your page. I love the calendar feature - I live by my calendar and now I can check it online! I added Bloglines RSS feed and del.ic.ious to it so I can check on my blogs that I started with 23 Things on a Stick. This is one thing that I feel like I will use a lot!