Finally....the journey is over!!!!

The 23 things project showed me different aspects that internet can offer. I can never fathom that you can find so much stuff on the internet. The discovery exercise that peeked my interest was the wikis and delicious bookmaring tool. I am a person that when I find I site that catches my interest, I love to bookmark them automatically. At first without delicious, I bookmark them through my computer, however when I travel or go somewhere else, I can't take the bookmark with me to see the page for any updates. Especially the forum pages that I go to, I like to get updates once in a while even if I am away from home. With wikis, I am so glad that I got introduced on how to use it. Now, I am using it at work and for personal use as well. This program helped with my long term goals by showing me that I can do a lot of things just by fiddling around and could learn things quickly. The only things I would change about this program is if we could give time for each of the project. If there is another program that I am able to participate, I'd be glad to join in and learn more.

Podcasting Highway

I have been doing podcasts for quite some time now. This is a first for me using podcast alley. I actually like the site since they have some intersting podcast service in their site. The two podcasts I picked were Kyoto podcast and Taste of Asia. Kyoto podcast show us the Japanese culture and the sights we can see in that country. The host also talks to Japanese students and the people in Japan on what makes the city of Tokyo so diverse. The next podcast channel that I picked was Taste of Asia. This channel talks about the food and culture of different countries in Asia. I listened to about two podcast and find it interesting on what types of foods each country have.

I have been fiddling around with Podcast for a year and a half now. If I cannot find any good shows on TV, I just go on and listen to podcast feeds. Some of them are video podcasts and some were audio podcasts.

Let's get into Overdrive!!!!!

Overdrive, our downloadable audio program is a neat tool that I find very useful. There are times that I am lazy enough to read a book that I have already read before. The neat thing about it is that I don't have to burn the audiobook from my hard drive of my PC to a disc since I am not currently using an IPOD but Creative Lab Zen M. It is pretty simple to use and everything is right on the screen. For the 23 things project, I tried listening to an exerpt of The Time Maching by H.G. Welles. It has been a while since I read the book or even listen to it. The book itself is a classic and at the time it was released, most of the scientist at the time can't believe what they were reading. Most of the scientist were clamoring that no one could time travel using a machine. According to them it would take light years for someone to do that. This book put H.G. Welles as one of the prolific Science Fiction authors to have come from the 20th century.

YouTube

YouTube....I have been fiddling around with youtube for quite some time now. I actually have a page of my own where I uploaded some videos that deemed appropriate. If you want to visit my page just click JP's Youtube site. I find youtube fun to do since I can find shows in there from foreign countries which I normally watch. I can also get updated with different shows especially from the Philippines and China where I try to watch often as well as Japanese and Korean shows. If I cannot find any videos on this site, I try other options like CrunchyRoll or Veoh. Crunchyroll is a site that normally has a lot of foreign telenovelas especially from Korea subtitled and complete while Veoh is a mix of youtube videos and crunchyroll.

This is just one of the videos that I have subscribed and put in my favorites on my youtube account. This is from the Korean show We Just Married, Episode 8:

Yelp....I need Yelp!!!!!

Yelp....What is Yelp exactly? Well, I picked this feature in the Web 2.0 award winners. I found Yelp to be a helpful tool especially at work. To answer the question that I ask on what exactly is Yelp? Well, Yelp is a search tool that allows you to check reviews on different restaurants, hotels,food, entertainment in a specific state or around your area. I tried checking one of the restaurant that my sister and I frequent too when my family and I visits her in Tampa, FL. The name of the restaurant is TC Choy's. It is a dim sum place that is located in Brandon in Tampa, FL. I was not surprised that a lot of people gave it a raving review. So far, it is one of the good dim sum place that we found in Tampa. As for its' usefulness at work, it can help the patrons especially the new ones in the area. We can use Yelp in helping them find reviews on a specific restaurant or area they are looking for. We can give them tips or general idea about the place.

Zoho...what do you think?

What do I think of Zoho writer? Welll, it is pretty interesting on what it can do. You can write documents or spreadsheets away from home and actually save it through Zoho. I only knew about Google Docs at first when we tried doing it for a project at our branch but decided to not go through with it.

I actually do find Zoho a useful site especially when you are at school and you need to save a document or a spreadsheet for a project. As for work purposes, if you are giving a presentation, you can use Zoho to save your documents or other materials that you will be needing for your presentation. Below is just a test where I can attach a photo of a book and write a little bit about the book.

The title of the book is The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of 
           Chinese Food. This book is a non-fiction book that talks about the myth of chinese food in Western countries. Did you know that Fortune Cookies were not invented by Chinese but by Americans. This book is a very funny, intuitive book about how the western countries percieve Chinese culture and food. At one point in the book, she actually talks about on how some people won a powerball lottery with the same exact numbers. She tracked down the winners and found out that they got the combination numbers from a fortune cookie that they got from a chinese restaurant. The author of the book is Jennifer 8 Lee, from California but she grew up in a Chinese environment with her parents being from Shanghai. 

Wild and Wacky World of Wiki

I have heard of wiki or wikipedia for a while now. I thought that there is only one wiki that I could search on and that was wikipedia. I did not know at first that in wikis, the information are added by people who has knowledge on a specific subject. I assumed that all the information on a wiki are correct but I was mistaken. I did not know that there are a lot of other types of wikis aside from Wikipedia.

It just happened that I am working on a wiki project at our branch for a committe that I am in. So, this project helped me a bit of understanding what can we do with wikis. I actually added a wiki on the PBCLS wiki under the Favorite Shows. The show that I added is MBC We Got Married which is a Korean Reality Show. I also added one in the Favorite Books section which is Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck.

Wikis.....

I checked the SJCPL Wiki and BullRunLibrary Wiki and found that their wikis can help libraries by posting information about current events or reference resources. Wikis can also encourage staff to add information that could help the patrons in the long run.

For example, we could use wikis to give advice on what kind of books or movies we offer. We could write a synopsis about a DVD title that we offer at the library.

Web 2.0

I looked at two articles. The first article (Away from Icebergs) hit an accord with me since we are in the age where technology is much more dominant as oppose to printed materials. Everything in this time and age rely mostly on technology to do their projects and so fort. Others use downloadable books to read as opposed to borrowing printed books from the library.

The second article ( To a temporary place and time), I think that the writer has a point that library is not just about books and information. She wrote and I quote "Libraries are not merely in communities, they are communities: they preserve and promote community memories; they provide mentors not only for the exploration of stored memory, but also for the creation of new artifacts of memory." She also mentioned that we cannot stray and rely solely on technology and we can still offer things that are not technology based alone.

With these two articles, if we combine them both, we can utilize web 2.0 technologically and non-technological purpose. We can offer them with knowledge that is gathered online or any resources that comes from different sources as opposed to computers.

Technorati....another social engine

I just looked at the Technorati social engine site today. I did try doing a search by typing in our web address and what I mostly found in there is some programs that we offer and Mouse tutorials. Aside from that, nothing really much that is related to PBCLS. As for tagging Web 2.0, not much of a hit either. It would be useful to me if I am using it to look up information on specific article or shows around the world that I keep an eye on online especially youtube or Veoh.

Del.icio.us.....Yummy

Del.icio.us, I have heard of this site for quite some time from a friend that used it for his research project to tag his work and bookmark the pages that he needs. He told me how good it was that he can actually open the bookmarked page from other computers aside from his own. I dismissed the fact and told him that I really won't need it at all. Since starting with this project in 23 things, I finally understand how useful it is if you are doing projects aside from your own computer at home especially if you have important bookmarks.

I opened an account with Del.icio.us however, I have not added any bookmarks of the sites that I have at home yet at this time but will be adding it soon. At first, I found the site a bit hard but as I played around with it more, it is not bad at all. I can actually use this site to my advantage since I often visit my sister up in Tampa and sometimes leave my laptop at home and can't access the bookmarked sites that I bookmarked on my laptop. This could save me time by just putting the bookmarks in the site and have it handy anywhere i go by loogging into my account.

Web Feat

Web Feat is a site where we can search a lot of things that varies from health, genealogy, history, and other things that could benefit someone who is looking for information. The best thing about it is that it lists all the hits that it gets from the search that you input on the search button in the same page with the links. You can also eliminate or pick the hits by doing all or just pinpointing the specific target that you need for the specific topic.

I did a search of my hometown in the Philippines and actually did get a lot of hits ranging from the history of the country, the current events and how it is now compare to the past from different web pages. Not only that, I also narrowed my search to jut the town the I was born and raised and actually was surprised to get a hit from the genealogy department of the chinese communities and about my last name.

Image Generator

Bead photo
Originally uploaded by DrStrange1981

Well, I played around with the image generator and actually did a lot of trial and error on what photo to use and all. I also tried doing a movie poster but in the end, I decided to use the bead maker. It was actually fun to play around with the photos and seeing how it reacts to the tools that was used.
http://flickr.com/photos/26613545@N02/2563139220/

Library Things

With Library Thing, I can actually find and add favorite books and other genres of books that I am interested in. It can also help me find subjects in History and Science that I am particulary interested. Library thing is a neat tool to search books and easy to use. All you have to do is write the author's name or the title of the book.

The link to my library thing catalog is :
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/chuaj

RSS Feeds, and how helpful it is

RSS feeds are a helpful tool to use in libraries and for personal use. It could be useful for libraries to gather feeds or articles that are related to library like book reviews or articles that deals with the library. I have been using RSS feeds for a while now, so it is pretty common for me when I saw that our next topic is RSS feeds. I used RSS feeds and still actually do for world news related articles, foreign films articles and reviews, Entertainment news around the world. However, I have never used bloglines before. So it was a bit new for me but it was easy to add rss feeds into it. So far on bloglines, I just added BBC News, book reviews, another feeds that I found interesting as I was looking around what feed link to put.

Technology in Video Games and its Advancement

How technology has advanced throughout the years? I still remember when Socrates, an educational program that was released back in 1987 when I was just 6 years old. I still recall vividly playing with the system where it has different cartridges for different subjects like Math, English, and other things. How heavy that system was and you have to be staring on your TV in order to play it. The graphics was an 8-bit program and could hardly see the shape of the robot that was giving the instructions and questions for each different subject.
Now with the advancement of technology like the Leapfrog Pads that our libraries have, kids can enjoy the comfort of fun and education with an easy, lightweight machine that can practically do phonics skills, math skills, and other different skills that the pad can offer. Kids can even carry it anywhere they go since it doesn't have to be plug into a TV set .

As for the video games system goes, the advancement of the technology has gone far beyond that I as a kid could ever imagine. As a kid, I was big into video games especially Nintendo NES.
With this system, I can play different genre of games from adventure, puzzle, fighting, and family games. The graphics is moderately good but as opposed to what we have now, it is a totally different ball game. With the release of Microsoft Xbox 360, PS3, Nintendo Wii, everyone can access the internet and play the game with other people from different areas around the world. The graphics of these three systems are almost lifelike. It feels like the characters in the game are real and actually do exist in reality. As for the Nintendo Wii, I could not imagine or fathom that I can actually play a game using a controller that looks like a remote control. You could actually literally play the game by just waving the control left, right, up, down and could do different moves by a flick of the control.

In the near future, technology could go much more further than what it can do now. In Japan, even their technology is far, far more advanced than what we have here in the United States. I actually saw one technology on TV that just boggled my mind where one person can use the bathroom toilet seat by using their voice commands and the lavatory would actually do it for them without a touch of their hands. With the further advancement, technology could go far beyond on what it could do today.

Flickr Photo and experience

Originally uploaded by DrStrange1981

So far, this is the first time I actually played around with Flickr. Actually, the program is pretty simple and self explanatory. Posting photos is very easy to do. I have posted photos using different programs that is much more advanced compare to the Flickr before; the photo that I decided to upload on Flickr and post in the blog is the Tie Tuesday that we the guys at Southwest County have decided to do every Tuesdays of every week.

Blogging

How can blogging be used in libraries? Blogging can help a little with the libraries by giving us input on different ways each branch or other libraries from different states on how they operate. It can show us or we can get some information or tips on what other branches do with different situations that can come up in our daily activities. Blogging is mostly used not specifically as a quick help tool, but mostly to post anything you are thinking about that will be able to solve a problem or giving tips.

7 1/2 Habits

7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Learning showed us different ways of achieving our goals. It shows us steps and ways on how we can improve our goals at work and other things in life.  I don't think I found any difficulty with the program that was mentioned in the 7 1/2 habits of highly successful learning.  So far, the steps are pretty simple and self explanatory. Therefore, I find it easy enough to follow through the steps of the program.