WEB 2.0 Jeopardy!

1. No it wasn't.

2. Trying to guess who owned which blog.

3. Pandora

4. Second Life.

5. The original line began, " I was licking her breast, and then she said.."

6. Wondering why you finally started reading this now.

Curses Red Baron, foiled again!

I love computer gaming. I'm not sure it's why taxpayers are providing public computers, but, heck if we start down that road we'll end up back talking about Nora Roberts books or Lurleen McDonald books, or Left Behind or astrology or Disney or or or orororororororor any of the other crap we spend money on.

Let's not go there. Or go to Disney parks either. But if you like Disney parks you can go there, because that means I won't run into you, and I won't have to talk to you. That's a good thing.

At any rate, if you are bored at work try Desktop Tower Defense:http://www.handdrawngames.com/DesktopTD/Game.asp

It's quick, it's easy, it's addictive.

Just hope your boss ain't using one of these:http://www.slate.com/id/2197179/

I could talk about how excessive computer and tv use might be linked to autism, or how all the propaganda about multi-tasking and brain development, or all of the Baby Einstien/Mozart effect stuff is so much caca del toro (caca de la toro?).

Nah. I'll keep on playing DTD at the refernce desk.

Maps and geotags

I've used Google maps since it came out. It has it's advantages and it's limitations.

I love looking at Vegas when I can't get there, and it it a great way to get an overview of what the country/world really looks like-- it gives a sense of proportion that you just can't get from flat maps.

But it also doesn't tell you how old the mapping data is, and some of it is really quite out of date. Even in the US some of the data is over three years old... pasted right next to something that is one year old, with no way of knowing which you are looking at. So I'm not sure how valuable of a reference tool it really is.

I find it amusing that the first thing almost everyone does when the first use Google Earth is to look up the house or houses they grew up in.

As far as the tags, I find them more of a distraction than an aide.

How to know you are a loser.

You have a second life account.

Really. Even the kids I know who are still into D&D know how sick and stupid this is. I'd like the 3 hours of my life I spent at second life (at home, sober, on my own time) back.

Libraries that waste time on this ought to have their funding slashed. Seriously. I don't think this is an issue of taste, I think it's an issue of mental illness.

I want to hurt Ms. Dewey. What an insult.

We could have skipped this lesson.

Tools of the state, or is that the state of tools?

I've loved Google Docs ever since they wrote about it in Slate. I've always wanted an alternative to Office. And there it is, freeeee. It doesn't seem to have Open Office's formatting problems. It's a great workaround for Librarians when someone needs to create and save a document but doesn't have a disk. Even easier than e-mailing it to oneself. Home computer comes with Works when the world operates on Word? Screw MSFT. Use Google Docs and write away.

So when it came time to build the Library WIKI I tried the Google tools and the ZOHO alternative. Both are fine, free and great, but ZOHO has more features I need. There are rumours that the wp does also, so I'll check it out.

It's great to see that there are viable low cost alternative Apps out there, especially since most of the cost in major Apps seems to be updates and features noboby asked for, needed or uses.

May I take this opportunity to say that Office 2007 is a bloated productivity killing mess?

Search Engines

Soooo, lets do some testing.

Search 1: Daniel J Evans. Google excellent. Yahoo not bad second. Ask weak third. Rollyo next. Dogpile and Mama-fughettaboutit.

Search 2: Age of the earth. Google-not bad. Yahoo--very close in results to Google, with the downside of that messy Yahoo interface. Rollyo-- pert'neer the same results as Goog and the 'hoo. Mamma not bad, unlike the others Wikipedia isn't #1. Ask-crazy creationists loom large. Dogpile: Google and Yahoo results with lots of ads thrown in.

Search 3: Hategump. Only Google had useable results.

Conclusions:

1. Size does matter.
2. Thank goodness Google is better known than Dogpile. I didn't like being called the "human Google" in the newspaper, but the human dogpile....????

Podcasting

This feels like a reiteration of earlier posts... which it is in a way, because Podcasts are really just a combination of several of the other technologies that we have looked at.

So, great for shut ins, the blind, people who commute, people with boring repetitious jobs that don't require great focus. Also great for people who cannot live without stimulation and have not gained an appreciation for the value of long periods of quiet uninterrupted thought.

On the other hand:

1. I can read faster than you can speak.
2. The reader influences the actual writing.
3. Usually no footnotes or sources.
4. A bias towards the latest news and opinions.
5. I am not blind, don't have a long commute, don't have a boring repetitious job, and don't need constant external stimulation to know I am alive.
6. Note to world: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP