The penultimate post!

I'm down to the last two activities, yay! Today's activity: Netlibrary.

I realize that the signing in from a library computer has to do with licensing issues, but that meant I had to wait until I was back at work to work to do so. Aside from that it was quick and painless!

It looks like they have a pretty good selection available, although the search function seemed to lack "oomph." It works, and I've got a few books earmarked for download to my MP3 player at some future date. Right now I don't seem to have the time for listening to anything, much less audio books. But as they say, there's a first time for everything and now that I know where to find them, I'll certainly be giving them a try.

Podcasts

Argh, Again with the not being on the cutting edge of technology.

I have no iPod, nor iTunes. I am a relatively unambitious listener of music, so all of these new releases and hot hot tunes on podcastalley.com mean little to me. Same for audiobooks.

Yes, I know it's "teh future", maybe, but I like reading. books.

I did manage to find an interesting physics podcast, something 'twixt an interview and a lecture here. On the winds from black holes, of all things. Ooooh, science. But otherwise... I know there are podcasts for all sorts of things, music, videos, personal trainers, etc. but I don't really see the point. I guess if you've always got your earbuds in, you need to listen to something.

Week the 10!

Counting down the final stretch now! Today's activity: Youtube.

The biggest, bestest waste of bandwith ever, yay!

No, really. I don't visit Youtube very much, mostly because it doesn't play well with dialup. But I also waste enough of my time without having to watch poorly copied movies and TV shows, or "hey look at me I have a video camera!" There are a few useful how-to videos, but I'm the sort of person that learns by doing.

But I did find this gem, from "The National Clean up - Paint Up - Fix Up Bureau"

THE HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE. dun dun dun.


Basically, why your house should be clean, OR ELSE!
Suddenly, I understand the 50's cleanliness mania.

It might save you from "teh bomz!"

A thing, most useful!

http://www.cocktailbuilder.com/

This was the most useful thing I could find on the 2.0 awards site. No really! Most of the winners were so specialized in areas that had absolutely no appeal to me. The ones that did, I already use. That's probably why they're winners.

But this, this is useful. No more trying to find the bar book and figure out what you can make with what you've got. There's also no danger of getting wrinkly or stuck pages if you spill something either!

Huzzah!

See what's on the slab...

...Down in Google labs.

A whole lot of, shiny crap. Really. Mars maps? ...Why?
All the really useful things have made it out of the labs already, although most of the city specific widgets lack my city. The few things that actually look interesting take more bandwidth than I've got at the moment. Google accelerator, for example.
"Optimized for Cable and DSL" Of which I have neither.

On the other hand, some of the tools might be handy. If very, very specialized. The computer code search, the accessible search for the visually impaired. That one could actually be useful at the library, if it could be implemented on an institutional level.

I did play with Google trends, and sets.

Frankly, I didn't see the point. Why would I care about what people are looking for? I'm not in advertising, or the news. (not that celebrities making fools of themselves is news, but it sure was popular today) And really, what is the point of the sets? It's like the tag clouds from flickr, or clustering, only crappy. The search I tried didn't work in the small set, and was full of completely irrelevant terms in the large set. I don't see any of these making their way onto the main site anytime soon.

Again, just another example of my fuddy-duddyness. Now in my day computers were hand-cranked! and built from scraps...!

Well, Here goes.

Using GoogleDocs, and trying to post to my blog. Simultaneously!

While the concept of online applications is truly interesting, I really don't see myself using any of them. Ever. The idea of being able to access my documents from anywhere is nice, but not applicable. At least, not for me. Greater than 95% of the time I spend on the computer is one my personal machine, which is where I do all my word processing, spreadsheets, and the like. The slim margin of time spent on other machines is for nothing more intensive than checking email. For me, the ability to access my documents from anywhere is a non-issue. All of my documents are in one place, true, but that place is the only place I ever need to access them from.

I can see how it might be more useful for calender and scheduling applications, but again, you need access to a computer to, well, access them. My own personal calender consists of a pad of paper. In my pocket. It's always with me, it has no turn-on lag, and the battery never dies, because there isn't one. I'm just a big fuddy-duddy, but I've already blogged about the fact that I am not always aligned with my hyper-connected information-hungry generation.

Return the blog triumphant

Finally getting around to finishing week eight... Wow, that was a very long week!
Search engines used;

Yahoo-very commercial
Mooter-Interesting way of clustering by relevance/popularity
Clusty-Funny name? Plain vanilla search engine.

Search: Canon rangefinder lenses (Because I like old cameras)

I found it surprising that the top five results were so very different. There were several that were in two of the three lists, but none on all three. If I'd paid attention in math class I'd be able to tell you how many combinations that would be, but I didn't so I can't.

I really didn't like the auto-complete suggestion thing on yahoo. Too big brother-y for my taste, especially now that MS is trying to eat them up. Blergh!

On to Step... 22! (week the 9)