Happy Anniversary to me!  Sites & Soundbytes is four years old today!  I started this blog to work with my List of Links, which is now loaded on del.icio.us rather than on its own website.  You can visit my links at del.icio.us/menashalibrary.  Of course, not all of my featured sites make it to the more serious list.  They used to all match, but when Web 2.0 appeared that kind of stopped and now I collect both the more informational sites of use to librarians and also the 2.0 sites that fascinate me. 

I thank you so much for reading this blog.  I have such fun doing it that even if no one read it, I would find it hard to stop.  It makes it so much better that people actually read it!  So thank you.

FORA offers the best of the world’s public forums with video clips from cultural programs, government hearings, press conferences, and lectures.  You can see the most recent additions, most popular programs, and browse the archives.  Get a free membership and you will be able to join in the discussion about the programs and participate in the community. 

The Stingy Scholar is a great blog filled with resources for teachers and life-long learners who are looking for ways to learn for free online.  They have a list of the top free educational sites online, links to fascinating sites, and tips on how to find original documents, books, and much more online.

Splashr.com is a slick way to interact with your Flickr photographs. You can create a presentation of photographs by selecting photos from your Flickr account and then deciding how you want them to display on the screen. You can do Flash frames, HTML slide shows, film strips, postcards, mosaics, and more.

Just finished my first Web 2.0 class for the public, and it went really well. We did have some raw beginners who didn’t follow the entire thing, but afterwards I was happy with the questions and with people wanting to revisit the sites. I did a very general overview of Web 2.0 and then showed them the most popular 2.0 sites.
We visited 43 Things, Google, Blogger, BlogLines, Del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, Netvibes, Pandora, Podcast.net, Ta-Da List, Wikipedia, and YouTube. I did a handout with the URLs, a paragraph on IM, a salespitch for Firefox, and then ended it with our library blogs and a pitch for our upcoming new website.
I had a ball, I hope the patrons did too, and we have had requests for an evening repeat. I would be happy to share my handouts with anyone. They are really basic and simple.

WikiSeek is an interesting search engine that searches ONLY Wikipedia entries and the websites that they reference.  This limited scope allows them to have fewer mis-hits and more quality sites.  It is nice to find a limited number of results rather than the millions that you can otherwise see.  I would recommend this for those awful broad searches that you are sometimes asked to do.  It will return good results without being overwhelming for patrons.

I have read many posts on how video gaming is a great program for teens. I have done programming for teens with great success, getting teens to do something positive in the library is so very important. But video games can serve another purpose in the library that I have never heard discussed.
I started directing a different library about 6 months ago. The staff is willing to go along with my myriad of new ideas. But yesterday’s staff meeting took the cake. Keep in mind that this is the very first quarterly staff meeting our library has had in years and years. This is new for them with a new director.
So, we are going to be doing a DDR series for teens starting in February. But the staff had never done DDR and many had no idea what it was. So I set up the dance pads before the early morning staff meeting. I did it with a certain hesitation. Would they be willing to see their new director demo DDR in a spectacularly wooden fashion? Would they be willing to let go themselves?
The answer was an amazing YES! We had people who wanted to try it out, ones who threw in great arm movements as their feet searched for the right arrow, and one who managed on her first few tries to score a high score! Those who did not try, called encouragement to the dancers, applauded even when the awful TRY AGAIN swam into view, and were willing to laugh along. No one shook their heads in dismay, no one refused to join in the fun.
So I heartily recommend DDR for staff meetings. It got us all started in a friendly, laughing way. It took the formality from the situation and gave us plenty of stories to share and remember. But most of all, it unified the room with a shared experience: laughter. What a joy to have this staff, this willingness to play, this joy in the early morning.
Now to come up with a video game for our April meeting…

Practically Edible claims to be the web’s biggest food encyclopedia. The site offers gorgeous photos of foods, lengthy articles on specific foods’ history, storage and preparation tips, plus recipes and information on cuisines from around the world, both modern and historical. This is really the place to go for concrete information on food.

RealTravel is a neat site that was voted one of the twelve essential travel sites by Forbes.  It offers real advice and real experiences of actual travelers.  You can read their recommendations, find out about specific destinations, join in the discussion on the forums, or create your own trip plan. 

This is another fun website.  It features your favorite actors and actresses and the roles they did NOT get.  You can browse by actor or movie and see who almost got a role.  I enjoyed their look back at 2006 and its biggest films and who did not get a role in them.