Thing 5: Flickr

I'm now going to attempt the daring feat of uploading a picture from Flickr to my blog. Well, it is about an hour later, and I have not been successful in my attempts. I will continue to try.

Finally, success!! This little guy's name is Mel, and he was photographed by "Difusa". I found this photo on Flickr. I wasn't able to upload it directly from Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/difusa/135964682/, but Beth suggested saving it to my desktop and then uploading it. That worked very well, except I didn't understand that it was in Html to start with. I have to have help from someone who is more computer savvy than I to do some of these assignments. At least, I had to have help with this one. We'll see how things go. It can be very frustrating, but I must admit that I learned something useful and enjoyed perusing the photos in Flickr.

Thing 4: RSS and Newsreaders

Okay, I set up some RSS feeds. I am a little frustrated with this whole process. I feel like I need to work on it at home when I have more time to really explore the topics and spaces and all of the options. I did go to Google Reader and subscribe to three RSS feeds, but I don't know when I will have time to read them. Basically, I think it is good to have an overview of these technologies, but I think they are very time consuming. Who has time for this?!!!! I think a lot of this is great for students and/or professors. It could be wonderful for anyone trying to keep up with the latest information in a specific field, but it is too much for me. I don't have time to read all the books I want to read as it is. I can see where it would be great for a news junkie friend of mine. He probably already does this kind of stuff. I know he has a blog already.

On another subject, I wanted a way to keep a kind of diet/exercise diary and started a blog on that last night from home. However, I just really wanted it for myself, so I changed the properties, and I ended up changing the properties for both blogs. Can't I make one more private than another? Again, I got so frustrated trying to figure it out that I just gave up. Maybe I'll be able to figure it out when I have more time.

Thing 3: Blog Search Tools

I compared Technorati to Google Blog Search. I looked up my name and found nothing relevant on either site. Then I looked up a couple of other people I know who have blogs, but I could not find anything for them either. I looked up a subject with a name in that field and found 12 articles on Google but none on Technorati. It was kind of an obscure topic (geochronology), so there may not be too many people in that field who are blogging. I wish I had lots and lots of time to explore this, but I cannot say it is high on my priority list of ways to spend my spare (or work) time.

Thing 2: What is Web 2.0?

So far, I have watched Stephen Abram's video and read John Blyberg's blog post. I'm hoping to complete the Thing #2 assignment today. I understood most of the acronyms used in Blyberg's blog but did not know what ILS stood for, so I looked it up on an online acronym dictionary and decided it must mean Integrated Library System, so I sent out an email to all of the ACLD staff to let them know, in case they had the same problem I did. It made a lot more sense after figuring out what that meant. I finished Thing #2 or at least as much as I am going to do with it for the time being. There is a lot of material to read and not enough time to do it.

Thing 1: Set Up a Blog and Register

I created my first blog today. It has been interesting learning how to do this. I'm not sure it is something that I will continue to do after the 23 Things project is completed, but it is nice to know how to do it and have an understanding of what others are doing. I have been playing around with my profile and plan to do more to customize my blog later.