Web 2.0 Directory

First I went to the entire directory and browsed a little bit. I'm thinking about trying my hand at cooking, ok, stop laughing, so after looking at a couple of sites, I signed up with one called Foodari (kind of like my favotire site shelfari but only for recipes). You don't need to register if you only want to browse recipes, but if you want to store your own recipes and find friends that can share recipes then you need a profile. I decided to register just to check it out. What I didn't realize is that although you can view videos on how to make different things and get tons of recipes, the site is UK based so everything is in grams and a lot of the items used in the recipes are not normal to the things you'd find in US recipes.

Then I looked at the Top 20 list and was surprised as to how many of the applications I've actually used at one time or another especially now that I have an iphone. I have the Urbanspoon, Yelp, Twitter, Pandoa, Flickr, Zillow and Facebook apps on my phone.

Friends have sent me links to Bebo and LinkedIn so although I looked at them and have accounts, I don't really use them.

I tried using Flock as a browser at home for a while, but didn't take advantage of all of its uses and wasn't completely enjoying it so I went back to Internet Explorer.

I have a Pageflakes account and use that on occasion, but not very often. It's kind of like having your own Google page where you can customize what links are on it - flickr, games, calendars, facebook, etc. so everything is within the same interface without having to go to separate pages to use them. I learned about Pageflakes at the last LI Library Conference I went to I gave it a try. It's too bad I'm set in my own ways and that it takes forever to load.

I've shopped on Etsy before and really like it. They have such cool and unusual stuff which is right up my alley. Sometimes things can be a little expensive, but it's cute so who cares! :)

I also have apps on my phone for Foursquare and MyTown where you check into the places you visit to earn points and badges. You can post where you've been to Twitter and Facebook and can also add your friends from there as well. I'm still getting used to them so half the time I go someplace I forget to check in until I'm already on my way home.

There are so many cool apps out there that I'll probably keep looking. I hope you guys find one that you like as well.

Google Docs

I've actually used Google Docs as part of a committee that I joined last year. There was a list of books, about 15 or so, that the 6 members needed to read. Instead of trying to get everyone together for a meeting, Barbara Moon loaded all of the books onto a spread sheet, made a column for each member and sent the link to everyone on the committee. We were able to read the books in any order we wanted and as soon as we were done with a book, we logged on to the Google Docs site and added our commentary. It was very easy and we were able to see each other's comments immediately.

Another plus was that the members could see if a particular book wasn't getting read. Since everything needed to be covered, a user who wasn't sure which book to read next could look at the list, see which titles hadn't been read yet then choose one of those titles in order to benefit the group.

This program is very easy to use and it definitely solves the problem of having to worry about remembering to save something you're working on at work onto a flash drive, etc. so you can bring it home and work on it there as well.

Wiki Editing

The wiki editing was quite easy but also quite boring. I didn't like how you could see the different people who have edited a particular page but not exactly which items they added. I want to know who else thinks Criminal Minds is a great show that way we can discuss it or who else likes to eat at The Library Cafe because then maybe we can plan to meet there for dinner one night.

I guess since it's really only supposed to be informational it fits its purpose, but I wish it was a bit more dynamic.