MySpace

I dutifully met the minimum requirements for this exercise because I just don't want to invest any time in figuring out this social networking tool. So, did everyone meet Tom, the president of MySpace? Did you see how many women and men were hitting on him! Eeewww! And I resisted the urge to check out the swingers involved in the MySpace community. Maybe if there was a group for old married Goody Two Shoes like myself I would be more inclined to perk up my profile in MySpace, as it is, I'll stick with my safe blog which I'm loving!

Google Labs/Google Base

I'm officially unthrilled with Google Base. Don't see any need for it whatsoever. I'm thinking what content would I need to post for Google users to see? After some thought, came up with nada, zilch, zero. Figure if I needed to advertise our rental, I would be an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy and place an ad in the News Miner. Wouldn't this be more effective than using Google Base? The News Miner's online anyway.

And I wouldn't go through here to buy any product either. Ebay and Amazon are my two top choices, along with some established companies I would search out directly.

Did some searches for my favorite yummy treats: chocolate pudding and rhubarb recipes resulting in hits not so different if I searched through Google itself since limiting the search by cuisine, serving size, main ingredient doesn't refine much.

I felt my techno-Pollyanna spirit wilting! But then Google Labs pulled me out of my Learning 2.0 funk a bit.

One of their latest ideas is displaying search results by time or by geographic location. Viewed Thomas Jefferson and the Civil Rights Movement queries and found that my search results were enhanced by the timeline feature.

Google Maps/Google Earth

Found a satellite shot of my house from far, far away. Zoomed in as close as I could get, and couldn't make out much except to notice that it was an older shot before the addition was built on.

I'm a big fan of Google Maps and use it to get directions and to find distances to new destinations. Really interesting maps are featured on this website and was mostly impressed with America's highway: oral histories of Route 66.

Looked through the Gmaps directory, the online mapping mashups guide and found Favorite Run, a great tool to use when mapping out running routes on established streets and roads, but not so handy for Equinox Marathon training since a lot of the course is on trails.

I got airsick flying in Google Earth! Traveled to more places in 20 minutes than I will fit into my whole life while playing on this website.

Podcast Search Tools

I added Endurance Planet to my Bloglines account. I really had no idea there was this big podcast world out there. Being the ignorant one, I thought ITunes was pretty much it.

How about we add podcasts to Rasmuson's homepage? For Book Festival next year we can podcast a really enthusiastic advertisement about the festival events and record some authors reading short excerpts from their books. What other events are coming up? Let's podcast them. Why not?

Web 2.0 Awards List

See my new clock over there to the right? I'm all about the widgets. Maybe not so useful but at least I'm getting experience embedding and exploring the different tools. Noticed LibraryThing came in 3rd place for the Books category! For shame! Also, noticed several more tools listed on the "short list" are ones we're working on for Learning 2.0. Recognizing a lot of them makes me feel like a Web 2.0 aficionado.

Online Productivity Tools

I'll be using Zoho from now on. I have so many word documents on our old PC in the garage and stored on discs stashed in our home office. Whoa to me if I need to find a particular document and fast. Plus, I like these Emoticon faces. And the ability to post to my blog and insert Web links and images.