Good Reads

I've heard of Library Thing--in fact, my brother-in-law, a librarian, uses it--but I decided to try Good Reads.

I'm not sure I like it. It's a bit tricky to navigate and it doesn't seem completely intuitive to find my bookshelves. But it's OK.

Despite being an English major, for me, reading is really a pretty solitary activity. I don't belong to book groups, and I just have a few friends and relatives I talk with about books. I have done some sharing of booklists on my blog, nesmithfamilyblog.blogspot.com. This is quicker.

But, of course, it's ONE MORE social network to go to. Which is why I'm ready to consolidate everything with Google Reader or something similar!

Despite this handy site, I'll probably continue to keep track of books I want to read by writing titles on a tiny slip of paper I keep in my wallet . . .

and keep track of what I have read in my reader's journal.

Fun with Google Maps

I didn't notice that Google Maps was a "thing" but I was having fun with it tonight! Here's what I made. Click on the little blue tags to get photos!

View Nesmiths in NYC in a larger map

Google Reader

Is anyone else having fun with Google Reader? Helps you keep track of blogs you read, etc. Maybe it'll be a "thing."

I'm thinking it'll be useful for RSS feeds, which is one of our upcoming "things."

So far, I find reader useful--one place to look to see if my fave bloggers have posted anything. I've subscribed to several of your blogs!

You Tube Time

Everyone loves that one!

But really, here are some videos you MUST watch: Mine!

I sold this one and another to the Gazette a while ago. It's amazing how little money I got for so much work. Video creation really eats up your time. Still, I enjoyed doing it.

Here's Bruce with one of his songs. I hope to do another music video soon.

Here's MY cute kitty video!

I use YouTube for teaching quite often. Sometimes it helps to get an animation or short clip to illustrate something. You can find important speeches on NYT.com (which also posts the typed text and indexes speeches), but some things can best be found on YouTube.

Recently, I found clips from the Carol Burnett show after she'd been on NPR doing an interview. It was fun to watch those again.

You can be my YouTube friend by adding me, jcnesmith, or just going to one of these videos! Let me know what you think!

My Delicious!

I LOVE Delicious! I use it all the time--have tons of pages with links to good articles for teaching, crochet, etc. etc. The tags are useful.

OK, plus I love the name: "let me check my delicious" hee hee!

I learned about it at a journalism teaching conference and it makes so much sense. I used to bookmark on my computer but I never do that now--it only works for THAT computer, and I'm often using different machines.

I recently joined another social network for yarn-arts called Ravelry. It has a bookmarking tool, so I won't need to bookmark crochet patterns on delicious again.

I don't do too much with the social networking aspect of delicious . . . .yet. I've shared my delicious name with my students in the past, but they don't use delicious or any social bookmarking tools (again, I'm way ahead of the "digital natives"), so I don't think they took advantage of it.

As for getting others' bookmarks: I get enough of my own bookmarks without having to look thru others' bookmarks. That's my "limit the impact of Web 2.0" mantra, I guess.

my delicious is jcnesmith! add me to your network!

I tweet

I got a twitter account this winter, so I could be hip, like my students. (They are PR majors, mostly.)

Turned out, none of them--none--had accounts. I was ahead of the "digital natives" once again.

I'm not crazy about twitter. It would be great for someone who has a mobile device--but I don't even use a cell phone (and don't want to). (Now an I-pad . . . that would be nice!)

But if I'm at my laptop, I might as well just post a short 140-character update on FB! And everyone I want to alert will be on it. Not many of my friends tweet.

So I did it for a while. It was nice to:

• do a quick update when I didn't have time for a blog. For example, I tweeted about seeing 2 wild turkeys walking along 2nd Ave. SE near 17th street.
• follow funny people like Steven Fry and The Onion (even a 140 character post from The Onion is enough to give you a lift!)
• that's about it.

People I follow that others might enjoy

• Steven Fry
• The Onion
• American Ballet Theatre (ballerinas tweet their day/performances--kinda fun.
• Sarah Prineus, Iowa City YA author
• Christopher Trappe, Gazette author who's ALSO FOLLOWING ME!

Not many people follow me. I have way more friends/followers on FB.

You can find me @jcnesmith.

I'll tweet a bit so you know I'm alive :-)

Web album posted from Picasa

Des Moines Sculpture Garden

Click on the picture to view the entire album.
Posted from Picasa.

I thought this sculpture looked familiar . . .

Posted from Picasa. I wanted to post the entire album. I'll try again.

Flickr or Picasa?

Sometimes Web 2.0 seems a bit overwhelming. As of now, I have 3 active blogs (and 2 non-active ones), I'm a member of facebook and ravelry, I have a YouTube account, and I occasionally send out a tweet. So when I saw the new "thing" required me to join TWO MORE web 2.0 sites, Yahoo and Flickr, I was a bit hesitant.

I was particularly hesitant because I already have photo albums on another photo-sharing site, Picasa.

In fact, if you've ever posted any pictures on Blogger by clicking on the little photo icon, you have photo albums, too.

I found this out a year or so ago, when I was looking for some photos I'd deleted from my camera. I found out they were alive and well in a Picasa Album! Blogger put them into a Picasa Album without me doing anything!

So I have one album for each blog except for Taekwondomom, which I can't seem to add to anymore, either (I last posted in June 2007). Could be I changed my password since then!

But I do have albums from:

Nesmith Family Blog, which includes this photo of no-knead bread.

And Jane's Journalism Blog, which I kept in spring of 2009. This was my visual for a "backpack journalist."

I even have a photo album of just random stuff. What is that yarn thing on the signpost? :-)

Unfortunately, with these sites is that you can't just easily grab a photo and insert it into a post you're already writing. If you click on "Post on Blogger" it creates a whole new blog post. So what's the point of uploading your photos to them if you're just going to share the photos on your blog anyway? I suppose for photo storage . . .

What I do with photos when blogging is just upload them from my camera into the blog post. You click on the little photo icon at the top of the blogger frame. Find your picture and upload it.

Blogger puts your pictures at the top of your post, in reverse order, but you can move them around. And Picasa will save every last one of them in a web album without you having to do that separately.

On Picasa, you can type in captions, etc. and share them with friends. You can also add a map, so people know that the yarntag is located at 4th Avenue SW between 1st and 2nd street. So if you want to add additional stuff, or to send to people who don't read your blog, or send albums of photos that don't make it onto your blog, you're cool.

So, am I missing out on any cool aspects of Flickr by not joining?