Thing 23

The finish line, at last! I don't think I'm alone in my disappointment in not completing in time, but sometimes real life takes over. The deadline was in Easter week, for the whole of which my computer was switched off. I have a young child and had two birthdays, my husband's doctoral graduation, and a house full of guests to contend with. Any other time and I'd have made it, but face to face is still more important than facebook, and Easter is family time.

I've found the programme very useful, to the extent that I've changed the way I do things. I've revisited old friends - welcome back Paint and iGoogle - and am using them on a regular basis. I've been introduced to the mighty Picnik which is a serviceable alternative to Photoshop. I'll have another look at podcasts and ThinkFree Office and use them in the future; I think my mum would find the latter useful since her Office suite is always playing up.

I'm reconsidering some of the things that I've used before and found tiresome; Google Reader and Delicious are so boring it depresses me to go to their pages, but I could feed them into something more useful and attractive using iGoogle widgets.

I'm not sure I've any use for a work-only twitter or Flickr account, or LinkedIn. Flickr is a particular problem because of the conflict with my existing Yahoo ID. Delicious, for some reason, lets you log in with a Yahoo ID but doesn't appear to affect other Yahoo applications. I didn't want to use existing ID for 23 things because it's so public, insisting that you share and publish. Now I find that I have more personas than I can cope with!

My iGoogle sticky note now reads "loose ends - think about what ID you want to use and what for". You might call it thing 24.

Thing 22

I went for the widget with the highest number of users even though it was unrated, and it seems to work well. Actually it's nicer than the delicious page itself because it includes all the little coloured icons that aren't displayed there.Weirdly, that makes me want to use it, indeed I did use it to find this page again, so perhaps the reason I dislike delicious so much is simply because it's so dull. The tag cloud's prettier too, it has lots of colours and does the big/small thing properly even though I only have a tiny number of bookmarks. I like it for that, it's like it's making a real effort!

Thing 21

My word, what a palaver! I couldn't work out what the widget wanted when it asked for a username; usually that's the format that you login with, so I was trying kathryns23things and the associated yahoo login for ages before I worked out that it needed Kathryn's 23 Things with capitalisation, punctuation and spaces to work. I managed to get both my and my husband's personal accounts to load easily, because both are old and have simple lower case usernames that match their headers, so I knew the widget wasn't broken. Anyway, it works now, and all five library windows are displayed for your enjoyment.

Thing 20

ThinkFree Office looks really great compared to Google docs, a lot more sophisticated, and better still, appears to operate as a pdf writer. It's an excellent choice for basic home use. It uploads documents easily, and while it won't edit pdf documents, it will allow you to select text, copy and paste. It is a little slow to set up, but I think it's a better option than cheap desktop software (MS Works for example) for those without MS Office, which is extremely expensive.

Thing 19

I used Google docs to make an Easter card for Penny containing pictures of 23 eggs. I shared it with her, but oddly she could see the words but not the images. We couldn't work out why. The web link works fine though.

Thing 18

Wikipedia's like Google, in that it's the dirty secret of all librarians. Like everyone else it's the first place we look, when we think no-one's looking. Hopefully we use it as a starting point, and check our references. My favourite story is that of the hapless Daily Mirror football reporter who came unstuck when he looked up AC Omonia. Nature found that Wikipedia and Britannica were of similar value in terms of the accuracy of science articles, which caused an almighty row.

What do I think? Well it's a reasonable place to find out the first thing about something you know nothing about, and fine for things that don't really matter; minor mysteries that were discussed in the tea room, for example. Having found peer reviewed journal articles and published textbooks with inaccurate citations, I would always check the original source before I cited it myself, and I'd never cite Wikipedia, people would laugh at me. Interesting that, isn't it? They wouldn't laugh if I cited Britannica.

Thing 17

I've been looking at wikis this week, wondering whether we can use Weblearn to store, comment on and edit documents for our web team. As part of thing 17 I clicked on the socialouls link and typed in my usual username and password on the offchance that I already had an account. Turns out I do. Turns out the web team already has a wiki there too. Might have to give that a closer look!

In order to prove I'd edited something, I searched for errors at socialouls. I guess everyone else got there first... I formatted some text that was in the wrong font on the blogs page and tried to separate two links that were joined by underlining. I failed in the latter, several times, for which the history gives me several lines of credit! Removing the link and putting it back in again would probably fix it, but it seemed unnecessary and tiresome.

Thing 16

I started a conversation, and retweeted a couple of posts about the exciting developments by #cern today. Can't tell you the result, since there's been no time for a reply and I have no followers to share my excitement with!

Thing 15

Set up librarykathryn on twitter, as opposed to own time Kathryn. Found a few people I know by searching for #ox23 and adding people who'd used the hashtag, then looking at who/what they were following. librarykathryn really has nothing to say. Own time Kathryn uses twitter occasionally to keep in touch with friends and stalk random celebrities who also, broadly speaking, have nothing to say. Why would a stranger care who Marcus Brigstocke is sitting next to on a train? Why do we do it? Voyeurism?

Thing 14

I'm already on LinkedIn. To begin with, when I was invited, I thought it was some dodgy spam, but the friend concerned confirmed that he had meant to send it, and so I signed up, out of politeness mostly. I rarely use it, all of the people I'm linked to are either colleagues at work or former colleagues. If any of them wanted to contact me it would be much easier for them to send me an email.

A schoolfriend once gave me his opinion that social networking requires a monopoly. I think he's got a point. LinkedIn might be useful if you're the sort of person who posts drunken photos on facebook that you wouldn't want a future employer to see. I think it wise to assume that everything on the internet is visible to everyone and will stay there forever.

Thing 13

I'm glad to see that thing 13 doesn't require setting up a facebook account, probably because it's the thing most of us have already done. Even my mother in law has one. In terms of library use, in the Bodleian Law Library we have used it mostly as an additional way to disseminate information. We also use twitter, a blog, instant messaging, rss and our webpage.

Perhaps we could interact better with our users; in terms of actual contact with individuals we operate mainly face-to-face and by email. It's really a question of time; rss and twitter feed into web pages and facebook without extra work, and allow our readers to choose to use the method of communication they're most comfortable with. I wonder how long it will be before library posts include social networking in the job description? Perhaps they already do!

Thing 12

Ah, YouTube. My Dad's very fond of it since they did a deal with the record companies and he can find his favourite music free of charge. I mostly watch clips posted by friends on facebook, either amusing time-passers or videos of grotty club gigs we attended in the 90s. I'm immortalised myself, in a video posted by a friend who thought it would be fun to spend an afternoon at the ice rink. I don't think I'm going to be troubling the winter olympics.

Thing 11

I've had a hiatus. No, that's not a medical condition. I've been keeping 23 things for that lull in activity during Friday afternoon desk duty, and suddenly I required headphones and couldn't see the readers appreciating my apparent lack of interest in their 'finding the red book I had last week' query. Actually, that was yesterday's query, but you get the idea.

I subscribed to a couple of BBC podcasts, but I could lose days listening to Punt and Dennis dismantling the week's news, so haven't dared play them. Podcast.com could do with a more effective search engine; I typed library uk into the box and got numerous hits including "The Worldwide Funk & Soul Music Show Funkopathe, Worldwide, Funk, Soul, Boogaloo, Lp, Vinyl, collection". I don't know what Funkopathe is; perhaps I should subscribe. I dread to think what would happen if I ticked the "Show Explicit Content" box.

Thing 10

Well, the instructions simply didn't work for me, adding someone to my network didn't give me easy access to their bookmarks. It actually didn't do anything at all, perhaps they need to confirm that they want to network! Since I don't really want to create a reciprocal virtual link with people that I don't know, I found the easiest way to access someones bookmarks was to use the Delicious toolbar to bookmark their Delicious page. I did find it hilarious that a sharing colleague listed the BBC guide to alcohol units under personal shopping. Perhaps there is a use for that privacy checkbox after all!

Thing 9

Delicious. Well, I suppose it's good that it no longer contains all those full stops; what was that all about? I've used it before, built up lots of bookmarks that I thought might be useful when I was on a different computer, on holiday, or whatever, then I found I simply didn't use them. Google was quicker for finding the few things I required urgently, and since I generally used either the same computer or a roving profile, all del.icio.us gave me was the same bookmarks, twice. I only ever knew a couple of people who used it, and didn't send them links; I tend to use facebook to share frivolous web content, but I rarely revisit the sites I share at a later date. The site looks pretty much as it always did, and it doesn't excite me. Still, I've done my bit and bookmarked and tagged five sites, all of which I had already saved on my computer.

Thing 8

Picnik: oh yes! Now that's more like it; having said in Thing 3 that I quite liked the idea of using Paint for simple screen shots, I've been having to use it all week to add images to a manual, and have tired of its clunky and poor quality editing facilities. Fine, you can save a jpeg, that's a good thing, but doing anything with the image is another matter entirely. Picnik is fast, intuitive, doesn't require registration or download, and it really works. Woo hoo! I have created a sepia monstrosity to prove its worth (another window, natch.)

Thing 7

This is the first thing I've really not wanted to do. Yes, I do have a Flickr account, I had one long before they were bought by Yahoo! Yes, I have a Yahoo! ID, it's been my primary address for about a decade. Yes, I know that if you really want to see the photos of my parents' wedding or my grandmother in her greenhouse, you probably could, but I'm not going to invite you. I also use my Yahoo! ID on a daily basis, so creating a new one and signing in has been a nuisance. What I've done is to use an old version of Internet Explorer for 23 Things and nothing else, while my usual ID defaults to Firefox. Unfortunately the click and drag functionality in Flickr isn't working at all, so I've been unable to create a set of my lovely photos (on a theme of 'the view out of the window of the library' - very artistic).

Thing 6

I had a look for vaguely libraryish sites to add to my RSS reader. I found a couple of well-known ones, the web 2.0 blog run by Phil Bradley and iLibrarian, but I also came across an aggregate page that puts lots of feeds from other places into one webpage, all with a library news theme. It's called The Library News, and I was astonished when I clicked on the 'share button', and then +more, to see just how many tools there are on the web for sharing bookmarks. Literally hundreds. How can social networking be of use if everyone's using a different network?

Thing 5

Well, that was easy. All I did was click on my Blogger dashboard, scroll down to 'other stuff' and click on Google Reader. Hey presto! Signed in, set up and blogs I'm following automatically subscribed to. A time-saver at last.

Thing 4.2

Layout's very interesting, especially the gadgets. I've added a 'subscribe to' button and rearranged the sidebar, but made a mental note to revisit it when I have a 23 Things dedicated RSS reader to feed into. I think that's next.

Thing 4.1

So many blogs, so little time! I've had a quick flick as it were, made the occasional comment (mainly commiserating with others who've fallen as woefully behind as me) and found a couple of interest to follow. I can't work out for the life of me how to follow the 23 Things Oxford blog, even though it too is powered by Blogger; somehow the obvious button's been removed, and I've faffed with it for long enough. Another time perhaps.

Thing 3

This, as demonstrated by the post labelled Thing 2 below (are you following me? I realise the continuity's reminiscent of Memento: feel free to tattoo a reminder on your torso), is where I learned something. Something oh so simple; so much so that I really feel I ought to have known it already. It's that Paint (formerly Paintbrush for Windows, if that rustles your mental archives) can save as a jpeg. Really, I'd written off that simple program that nestles on almost every computer years ago, as only producing bitmaps that were never what I wanted. Times have changed, and next time I need a simple crop or screenshot I won't be waiting five minutes for Photoshop to fire up.

Thing 2

iGoogle is something I use a lot; I particularly like being able to have a homepage with sticky notes and simple tools like a calculator close to hand. Of course I could find a calculator easily enough by typing one word into Google, but I like it to be there waiting for me. I had however forgotten how irritating it is to set up. Half of the gadgets work intermittently or not at all, and often it says something has been added that doesn't appear, until you do it again when it appears twice. Still, once it's right it's right, and I think of it as a friendly space that works for me.

Thing 1

Blooming annoying this was, mostly because I have so many Google IDs and email addresses and couldn't remember what I'd used where. Eventually I managed to set a new Google ID up with my work email address, verify it and log in using that same ID. For a while I was doing Thing 2 with the wrong, unverified login, and couldn't understand why all my efforts disappeared into the electronic ether. A mixture of stupidity and it being Friday afternoon most likely.

23 Things

While I'm not new to many of these things, it's always useful to have a refresher and see how other people approach them. Although I have many different IDs, pages, blogs, profiles and albums scattered across the interweb, I'm starting from scratch. You don't want to see my baby photos or meet my schoolfriends anyway. I'm hoping I'll pick up some useful titbits - indeed I already have (see Thing 3, which doesn't exist yet, but it will...)