Thing 24 - Revolution OS

This documentary is a history of the "open source movement" or free software - how it began and why. It also deals with the origins and development of Linux. The documentary brings up philosophical issues like issues of community building, sharing and creativity. During the '70s and '80s there was a lot of collaboration between people writing software code. Then when Microsoft came along the code became proprietary and this practice wasn't as wide spread. Also featured in the film are interviews with prominent people involved in the movement.

Week 9, Thing 23

I enjoyed my journey through 23 things. I feel that I now know more about different technologies that I only had heard about but never experienced. I would definitely participate if another discovery program was offered in the future. Some of my favorite exercises were week 3 exploring Flickr and week 5 playing with an online image generator. I found that I took longer to complete the assignments than I thought I would, but that was my choice. I completed some exercises more quickly when I didn't look at each discovery resource and went straight to the discovery exercise.

Week 9, Thing 22

I looked at the Overdrive site and found a lot of current titles to download. I do like to listen to audio books on long car rides, but otherwise I prefer the paper copy of a book. However, not as many titles can be downloaded to a CD which I would use in my car. Project Gutenberg is useful for finding titles now under public domain. I did not know that it also includes music, some video and sheet music.

Week 9, Thing 21

I checked out all 3 podcast directories. I was surprised to see that Yahoo podcasts has an announcement that it is shutting down the site as of Oct. 31, 2007. I rather like this podcast directory as it also indexes YouTube. I searched for podcasts about birdwatching and found that Yahoo podcasts listed many more than Podcast.net. I added the show Ray Brown's talking birds as an RSS feed to my Bloglines account.

Week 9, Thing 20

YouTube is a very popular site, and I can see why. It is a great site for people to share homemade videos on all kinds of topics. I chose the video Marc Cataloging because it shows how much cataloging has changed over the years and that it is still relevant in today's online world. I also found many other library related videos. Some were demonstrations on how to use the library or how to use a particular tool. Another video I liked was about music cataloging, produced by a library grad student to fulfill a course requirement. Posting videos of past events on the library's website might be a good way to encourage participation in future events.

Week 8, Thing 19

I chose to explore the site Medstory. This site helps you search for health related topics. It's fairly easy to use. First step is to type in a topic. I tried Alzheimer's and it took me to a page with different categories to refine the search. Some of the categories were drugs, procedures, complimentary medicine, nutrition, clinical studies. There was also a tab for research articles if you want more technical information. It's also possible to find professional associations and blogs related to a topic.

This site would be useful for our Health Collection.

Week 8, Thing 18

Using Zoho Writer

I'm creating this document using Zoho Writer for my 23 Things, Thing 18. So far it seems easy to use and similar to other word processors that I have used. It has the usual fonts, spell check, etc. I like that I can create this document in Zoho Writer and send it directly to my blog.