Avatars and blue hair

So, here's my avatar. I finally have a chance to have blue hair without all those expensive salon treatments! It was fun to create--sort of like an electronic paper doll. I was a bit disappointed that, as far as I could tell, the footwear choices didn't include Manolos (the only way I can afford them), but I'll get over it. I'm not all that keen on second life. I began it only for this assignment. I guess it's a nice chance to escape the humdrum of everyday RL, but as for me, I have enough trouble just keeping up with my personal email. So no, I'll not continue this. But it will be fun to show my family and friends an alternate view... And it's an interesting way to identify with our customers who enjoy it.

Search engines

Our task was to perform a similar search in rollyo, mamma.com, and dogpile.com. I tried looking for audience participation stories for children, since Sarah and I recently finished our school visits. For my search, I found the results from mamma.com the most useful. It produced a very focused set of about 45 results, and I found several items that weren't included in other searches. One was an interview with Hap Palmer, a popular children's performer.

Doing this assignment will improve the way I search in the future, both for work and in my personal life. It makes sense to me to use some of the other search engines discussed to broaden (or perhaps I should say enrich) my searches. Yes, I have used google.com too much. At least I'm not the only one...I was surprised by the richness of the results for my topic in other search engines.

Since my last blog post I have found some interesting blogs on sewing, which is one of my hobbies. I found pattern reviews, stories about people who bargained for fabric on business trips to Asia, and much more. One blog that I enjoyed reading is missceliespants.blogspot.com. I think it's great to find out more about this community of people who like to sew, and I wish my mom could have been involved too--I think it's something she would have enjoyed.

RSS

This was my first experience with RSS, and I find it useful. I thought I might be overwhelmed with info, but it's nice to go out to Bloglines.com when I have a few extra minutes. It's not another email that I need to read. I signed up for slate.com, salon.com, and some book-related sites that I haven't taken the time before this assignment to explore. I can see using this technology in my personal life and also recommending it to some of our library customers to keep updated on topics that they're interested in. It's nice to get posts right when they're published, but for me, going out to a lot of different sites every day wasn't an issue. Still, this is a way to keep things more manageable, and I'm glad I got a chance to try it.

Today I also learned about saving drafts of my blog posts. I was just going to change a word or two and post, but then I thought I lost everything. I started to re-write and then found my original post. So, some good news on that front. And now, on to the next assignment. . .

Instant messaging

This lesson was interesting since I'm an IM noob. Yes, that's right! Until this assignment I had managed to avoid IM in both my personal and professional lives. I was nervous to try it, because even though I can usually type pretty fast, I like to think about what I write and, as a former copy editor, I'm embarrassed if I make typos. Fortunately, though, my IM partner was patient. We exchanged pleasantries about previous IM use for reference work, and he has also used it when he's on vacation in exotic places. We tried adding another person to our IM session for a group chat but found that we had to log in again after the invitation so that we were all included. I was pleasantly surprised that at least this IM experience wasn't so bad. I appreciate the way the Google program explains that a person is typing so you can see evidence of an attempted quick reply. I signed up for Meebo too, but I haven't used it yet. I think it would be challenging to do IM with teens who use it all the time, but it's great that we have another way to offer service to our customers. I don't think I'll use IM much IRL, but it's nice to know that I've had a chance to work with an interesting tool. TTFN.