I'm testing out how...

I'm testing out how to blog using Jott. This is really weird. listen

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Wrap it up (and put a tag on it?)

Here I go, under the wire.

There were times during Project Play when I really thought that my head was going to explode. Even so, this was completely and totally the right way for me to dangle my feet in the water of these applications and ideas.

I'm not entirely ready to embrace every part of Web 2.0. I'm a Productivity Enhancer, and not sure I'll ever be an Omnivore, but I'm OK with that. I've learned a lot, and I'm looking forward to learning more.

Over the past few days, I've been thinking a lot about the whole information overload thing. I can't recall any of the specific numbers, but I remember about 20 years ago it was a truism that we had to absorb more information in [some short period of time] than [some previous generation] had to process in a lifetime. Think of how that increased with the advent of the Internet. Web 2.0 must represent another order of magnitude beyond even that.

No wonder I sometimes feel like my head will explode.

I like blogging more than I thought I would, although that casual, punchy writing style that characterizes my favorite bloggers tends to elude me. I am also severely impaired in the visual design department, so I fear I will never have the cool graphics I envy so much on other blogs.

I was skeptical about Bloglines, but I'm a convert. It's a real timesaver.

Flickr made me slightly insane, but I feel motivated now to get my personal digital pics uploaded and tagged--just not for the whole world to see.

My 2.0 goals before Semester 2 starts up: read more Project Play-er's blogs to get other perspectives on these issues; get some photos uploaded and tagged for my personal use; work on setting up del.icio.us to do my bidding rather than just annoying me; explore the idea of a staff wiki for my branch to capture all that "How do we do this?" and "Where do we keep that?" information.

That's a little ambitious, and no iPod dangling out there in front of me to spur me on to action.

We'll see how it goes.

OK, so I'm a little behind......

Here's my Week 3 post.....during, what is it, Week 9? I had good intentions. Now I'm using part of my day off to try to catch up. Even though I am allowed to do this on work time, I never seem to be able to make that happen.


Bloglines. Hmmm. I set up an account long before Project Play came along. And promptly ignored it.


I'm a creature of habit. I have some sites I check regularly, including things like my bank account and my kids' lunch accounts, that I can't use a newsreader for. Stubbornly, I insist on visiting my bookmarked sites in order, regardless of whether they could be "RSSd" or not. Clearly, I am not living in the Web 2.0 world.

If I were a wise person, I would just bookmark Bloglines, and get rid of the "RSSable" bookmarks entirely.


Perhaps wisdom will visit me someday.



What I like about Bloglines (or what I would like if I would use it):


Eliminating the need to check on sites that haven't been updated after all.



What I don't like (or think I don't like):


I'm a bit afraid of getting buried in content, so I am hesitant to subscribe to sites--like news sites--with frequent updates. When I check a news site now, I'm seeing what' s going on now. If I missed something that happened yesterday, well, what I don't know won't hurt me. I'll just have to struggle through my life without knowing about the latest development in the Britney/K-Fed custody battle. I am concerned that if I add news to my Bloglines account, it will be the same as saving up unread newspapers and feeling as though I need to read all the old ones. Whoosh, there goes all that time I just saved not repeatedly checking websites, and then some.



I dislike that you lose some of a blogger's personality when viewing their content through Bloglines. The blogs all look the same, and that makes me a little sad...like I'm having a cup of coffee at Starbucks instead of the neighborhood coffee shop.

I didn't need to know about that.....

I signed in intending to write something else, but was distracted by the rolling list of recently-updated blogs displaying themselves on the blogger sign in page.

Pantie pissing?

Fistingxxx?

Is this really necessary?

I don't have a problem with whatever it is that floats your boat, but really, the rest of us just don't need to know about it.

TMI

So I guess I have information overload issues with Web 2.0.

Take Week 2's Project Play assignments. Lots of interesting reading in there. But one link just leads to another, and I'm clicking around, going off on lots of tangents and before I know it, I've been at the 'puter for two hours and I'm taking a quiz to see what I can do to improve my sleep.

Not that it wasn't all fun and interesting. [Well, actually, a lot of it was just stupid or mediocre comments to blog posts, but that's another topic.] And yeah, I know, one link leading to another is Kind of The Point.

But I get a little frustrated with all the jumping around from thing to thing. I either lose the thread I was pursuing, or I see something tangential that is interesting and can't find my way back to it later.

This might not be so bad if I had no other life, but I really don't have time for all this. It isn't only a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff; there's just Too Much Stuff out there, both good and bad. How to keep it from taking over my brain and my life.......?

Testing...1-2-3

My first blog post. Assuming it works, that is.

Setting this blog up was an astonishingly angst-ridden process. What should I call it? What should my name be? How to be clever, but not too cute? How will any of these decisions come back to haunt me in the future?

And, perhaps most important, why will anyone care?

I have much more to say, but for now I'm just trying to get my PP homework done. And see if this works.