Thing 8, conclusion

By far the most fun Things so far have been those involving photos. I LOVED Picture Trail, and think it offers so many options for ways to display your photos. I've seen what must have been this program used on friends' My Space pages and could not figure out how they got it to work; I guess I now know! This was another site that made uploading to the blog really easy, as it AutoPosts to certain blog sites (including Blogger). Another nice thing is that even if you make changes, you don't have to re-post it or anything, they are automatically made on your blog as well. Anything that doesn't require a lot of computer language is good for me.
As far as how my slide show went, I don't really like how it looks on my blog, but I still think the idea of it is great, and would probably use it for presentations in the future, just not on my blog.
I wasn't able to get Lazybase to load for some reason, so I may have to go back and check that out at a future date. And I looked through the Minnesota eFolio site and saw some sample portfolios, but I'm not sure that's something I'm ready to dive into yet. Plus, since I'm working on this at work I definitely don't have all of the information I would need to make it a cohesive site at this point. Maybe in the future.
I could definitely see the library using something like PictureTrail to exhibit photos taken from events; I could also see something like a Staff Picks database through Lazybones, even though I didn't personally get to learn much about that site - at least not yet.

23Things

Thing 6, part 2

So this is actually a pretty cool site, and it was only because I feel like I'm getting really far behind that I forced myself not to spend too much time browsing around. I could definitely see this being used for event programming and creating signs, posters, etc. The fact that it doesn't take much time is also helpful.
I also played around a little bit with Toondoo and created my own comic strip; keep in mind this only took me about 15 minutes, so it's by no means a work of art (although it kind of is to me, and I do like it).

Thing 5 - More fun (?) with flickr

I really do not understand the point of all of these mash-ups, besides as a way to waste time. I mean, I guess it's interesting that you can do these things on the web, but really, I don't see how they would benefit libraries all that much. If, for example, you used Spell with Flickr to create posters for events, the posters would look more like ransom notes than anything else. And if that's the look you're going for, then great, but if not, then it seems like a bit of a waste. And I feel like I did waste a lot of time on this Thing. Sure, Retrievr is fun (drawing on the computer and seeing the images that "match" what you drew), but as for the practical value of it, I guess I'm just not seeing it. And, contrary to what the 23 Things instructions said, there were NOT easy-to-follow instructions on how to upload any of these creations to my blog, which just added another level of frustration to this Thing. I see the benefit of Flickr itself and how that could be useful in a library setting, but as for all the mash-ups? Seems like a waste of time.