Thing 13 - del.icio.us

When pronouncing the name of this bookmarking site - do y'all just say "delicious" - don't want to sound foolish...ok, kidding aside. What a great tool. My literature students can bookmark literary criticism sites! I can bookmark my recipe sites! And I do enjoy browsing other people's tagged sites. Great ideas are swirling around out there!

Thing 12 - Rollyo, HO!!!!

OK - this was entirely new for me - had no idea this was an option. WAY helpful. I'm rolling in about 20 categories now. I've been counting on Yahoo to roll for me up to this point, sad but true. When I go to Yahoo - I read their news and entertainment suggestions. Now I have to organize all of these tools. I'll probably add it all to my Yahoo home page since that's the place I start every time. There goes more of my social life...good-bye city life! Being tech savvy is a double-edged sword....

Thing 11 -LibraryThing

New toy. Something else bright and shiny to distract me. I can see it now...my social life is going to waste away because I'm going to be glued to my laptop. Hold up - that's just crazy talk....anyways, I started my LibraryThing catalog. It made me think about those particular titles for a little bit and remember back to how they made me feel. It's also made me think of that slogan "so many books, too little time.." I did like the "top" lists ...very interesting. If you look at the top authors, it's a great mix of classic and contemporary. I'm still a little miffed that Steph Meyer's not there...YET.

Thing 10 - Proud momma

The trading card generator, really, is very easy. I can totally see how students would love this. For instance, when I taught middle school science, we could've made trading cards for scientists, the elements, plants, animals...endless possibilities. I decided to make a trading card for my daughter...a sophomore Architecture major at LSU...GEAUX TIGERS!!!!!!! Ok, I'm better now...

Thing 10, part 1

Before I forget - here's a link to make your own custom RSS feed button - just in case you want to confuse everyone and make your RSS feed button unique. http://www.rssbuttons.com/ - more later.

Thing 9

And so I finally set up RSS feeds for some grown-up topics like my work and our government. It was time. I've procrastinated long enough. I am totally on board for the whole thing - but quite honestly, I tend to bite off more than I can chew so I have avoided "signing up" for too many RSS feeds. So the beginning of my "circle" was well chosen I think. So with Thing 9, I learned how to search blogs to find the ones I want to take the time to read. I'm so glad that the orange feedicon is usually present - it makes it so much easier to find the orange box and click it. Sidenote: I still am a terrible commentator - I think that's the term - or would it be commentor? Whatever. In other words, I'm bad about commenting on other people's blogs. And I know everyone wants feedback. I'm working on it. I'm just overwhelmed I think. OK, back to the task at hand. I think the easiest search tool for me is feedster. It's more of a one-stop shop for me and that tickles me pink. The categories save me time - when I want news, I want news and not someone's thoughts on the news.

Thing 8, RSS feeds

Since I already subscribe to a few RSS feeds for entertainment purposes, I was already familiar with the lingo. But this did make me think about it. Sometimes, I just can't be bothered to read a movie blogger's comments but I almost always find something interesting in an educational blog.

Thing 7 - whoa

I was supposed to choose 2 projects after exploring Google. I thought I knew Google. After all, I had Google Earth WAY before my contemporaries. Boy, was I naive. OMG. OK, it all started when I decided on the notebook module - tres cool - I could organize my thoughts, no? Naturally I got distracted by the other pretty buttons so I was in calendar and there were more pretty buttons especially the DOCUMENTS button where I've started a spreadsheet and then I clicked "more" and there's even more under "even more" (KISS) and then I found the best thing EVER near the bottom of the list. BOOK SEARCH. We're talking full-text, table of contents, classics and LITERARY CRITICISM books are there, too! And you can click on "about this book" and OMG again. There are WEB references, related books, and a MAP with cute red push pins showing all of the PLACES MENTIONED IN THE BOOK. Ok, that's just scary. WHO ARE THESE GOOGLE PEOPLE? I'm so glad they don't have a life and they are busy putting this GENIUS package together for me. I wonder how much the ads cost? How do they keep ADDING products for free? I want to kiss them.