Thing #13 - Del.icio.us

Spent some time this afteroon exploring the del.icio.us world of website tagging. I searched the most recently and most popularly tagged websites about all sorts of things. The tricky part is knowing just how vast the database of search terms or tags must be since everyone tags their chosen websites independent of everyone else. Two word possibilities could be two separate tags or they could be one tag (i.e. montgomery+county vs. montgomerycounty). Incidentally, the most popular site tagged with montgomerycounty is our very own Montgomery County Public Libraries. We were beaten out in montgomery tags by a youtube video about a Flea Market Montgomery but we win again if you count the 34 people (as of today) who also tagged our webcat (ibistro) page. One could probably search for hours here. I also checked out the tag libraries and I have a connection to the most popular hit there too - the IPL (Internet Public Library), formerly housed at my alma mater, the University of Michigan. I answered virtual reference questions there while in grad school. Ah, the good old days!

Thing #12 - Rollyo

Today I tried to explore the search engine creation site rollyo.com. Unfortunately, rollyo.com seems to be too popular for its own good. Several times I got a "Too many connections" message while trying to explore the site. I did look at just a few of the searches created by rollyo users but not enough to comment on yet. I tried creating my own but again got that dreaded "Too many users" message. If rollyo.com really wants to be a player in Web 2.0, it will have to find a way to fix its bandwith issues. I will continue to explore the site and update this blog as necessary.

Thing 11 - Library Thing

Today, I explored the world of Library Thing. I thought I had initally started a Library Thing library many moons ago, but I was able to find it. Although, someone was using the username I wanted (LibrarianChris). I wonder if it's me? Anyway, you can visit my Library Thing library at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/LibrarianChristopher. I've just started to get my feet wet, so there are only a view books listed and no tagging as of yet. Searching for these books was harder than I thought. You would think finding a American copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix would be easy using Amazon as the search database, but alas it took me several pages of results to find something close. I searched LC and Maryland Interlibrary Consortium too with no luck. Very odd!

Thing 10: Online Image Generators

I was ahead of the game on this one, having created an avatar for our Staff Development Day back in October. Visit http://www.meez.com/ to create your own. :) Yes, some of the physical attributes, clothing, and accessories require coins, but many, including everything about my meez, are free.