Google Wave Made Simple, a YouTube video done by a kid that finally allows me to make sense of this new technology.

Great post on the fear of failure in publishing that I think works for any field.

Facebook & Twitter users are affluent and urban.

Podcasts that will make you smarter.  I subscribed to a bunch!

The FCC has found that broadband Internet access is up to 50% slower than claimed.  Meaning that you are paying for speed that you never see, especially during busy times.

Google Wave will start doing previews!!  Anyone else all excited for this new technology? 

I am completely hooked on Shirt.Woot and now discovered Tee Fury!

Every day find articles, websites, cool items and more that I long to share, but don’t have the time to write up on my blog.  I often post them on Twitter, but that too is hit and miss. 

So I’ve decided to try doing a summary of my online activity on days that I spend time online.  I will just include the more interesting items, not everywhere I go.  Hopefully this will be useful to you!

How Your Library May Not Be Using Twitter But Should – great article on using Twitter in libraries.  Read especially because of my upcoming Twitter presentation at WLA.

The Reader’s Hug.  Related article from Andrea Ross too.  Barbara Joosse’s take on reading aloud to children:

Like adults, many children cocoon themselves from a world that’s busy, confusing and sometimes scary. Even the conversation of a well-meaning adult is often received as so much blah blah blah. How, then, can we touch a child?

By its very nature, a picture book offers refreshing possibilities. Because it’s often read many times, a picture book can be absorbed slowly, at a child’s own pace. When it’s read just before bed, at the delicious interval between sleep and awake, a child’s book-companion can accompany her into her private dream world. Finally, when a picture book is read out loud, the reader and listener are often wrapped in a hug, the child’s ear just at your heart, with the book you share the seal of the hug.

Evidence of economy improving: Employees wages being restored to previous levels (Thanks Joe!)

Google Places = Google just linking to itself?  Interesting because I find that grouping of address, phone, directions and reviews for businesses very convenient.

What the Happiest and Most Successful Women Do Differently.  I love the Strive for Imbalance.

Protect Your Privacy on Facebook and Twitter.

October 1st edition of Kirkus Reviews online.  Without a subscription you don’t get the body of the review, but you can still see the starred reviews and get a sense from the first few lines.

Looking forward to The Pioneer Woman Cooks cookbook.  She has a super blog by the same name.  Yes, I am a food blog junkie.

Every so often, I need a little alarm to remind me of an upcoming meeting, or know that I am going to work on a project that I get immersed in and need to be reminded of the time.  I have looked and looked for a nice clock function that I could download and have on my desktop. 

Well, Clockeasy isn’t a download, making it one step better.  It’s a website.  They offer a clock, an alarm, countdown timer, or a stopwatch.  Both the clock and countdown can be customized for font, size, color and more and then the code can be inserted on a website.  The alarm and stopwatch are there to be used on their site. 

Simple, easy, and the perfect solution to an ongoing problem.  Time.

Blake as LISNews asked for thoughts on what is in your librarian’s toolbox for a presentation he is doing.  Here are my thoughts in his three categories:

Be More Productive:

RSS Feed Reader brings the news to me easily and quickly.

Time Management which doesn’t allow procrastination, so I can deal with items that always seem to pop up without panic.

Having fun at work, lets you get a whole lot more done!

Working harder, not longer hours.  (Very important to me as a mother.)

Visibility:

Presenting at state conferences, library systems, and libraries around the state.

Being willing to talk at meetings, publicly, etc.

Taking risks, trying new things, embracing change so that the things I have to say are of interest to others.

Blogging.

Connecting:

Serving on boards around the state, not only those focused on libraries.

Listening to others without having to have my own say.

Being supportive of others in their times of need. (Starting to sound like maudlin greeting card now…)

Lazyfeed won’t replace your Google Reader account, because it does something completely different.  Instead of signing up for specific RSS feeds, Lazyfeed lets you sign up for topics!  It then aggregates the content of different feeds and gives you results specifically on your topic.

After using it for a few hours, I already have twenty-or-so topics set up.  Some are riffs on the same subject just with tweaks for wording, others are items like libraries, advocacy, innovation, technology. The feeds update in real-time too, so if you head here you see the latest things.  You can do feeds for your library, for you community, for yourself.  It is the slickest thing!

At the top of the page, you will see trending topics that are currently hot.  Click and they are added to your list. 

When you click on a topic, you see results that have been added since the last time you visited, meaning you don’t mark items as read.  This is more of a newsriver concept, where you dip your toes in as you will and don’t have to keep up.  Click Save and that specific post is saved on your list so you can return to it. 

I highly recommend you try this.  I use it right along-side my Google Reader, finding new RSS feeds, new blogs, and fascinating articles I never would have discovered before.  The ease of use here is amazing. It rocks!

Check out this latest in the Did You Know series with lots of new stats that will blow your mind!  Now the question is how libraries can position themselves in this new social online world.

ScrapColoring is an online coloring program that even adults can enjoy.  Instead of just coloring in solids, you can select designs, set the foreground and background color, and fill in areas on the sheet.  It is much more like quilting with no sewing than coloring with no crayons. 

This is a great site to direct families to as well as adults learning to master the mouse.

Warning:  If you enjoy Tetris, do not read this.  It will take over all of your free time!  You have been warned!

TetrisFriends is an online site where you can play Tetris against others.  You can also play all on your own, besting your top score, but the head-to-head Tetris is the most fun.  Take on one other player or five others, increasing your rank and earning tokens.  You use the tokens to unlock different styles of blocks.

You can play without registering for free, but then you won’t get the fun of increasing your rank.  Keep an eye out for me, Tashrow, and see if you can beat me!

For libraries, this is a great online game to point younger children to.   There is no conversation, no need to give your age, and plenty of keyboard mashing fun.  Plus you get to choose a cute avatar.  I’m a dragon, my son is a shark.  Bonding 2.0.

Kudos to Walt Crawford for once again tackling the immense job of looking at library blogs through their data.  This follows Walt’s book on library blogs that came out in 2007. 

At that time, Walt and I had an email conversation about whether my blogs were personal or library blogs.  I agreed that they were a bit of a strange mix.  They are my personal opinions, posted on library websites, and they reach many more than my service population.  I also muddied the water further by bringing them with me when I switched libraries!  But I was happy to see them included in the 2007 study and now again in the update. 

Incredibly, out of the 252 original blogs, 87% are still going.  But when Walt looked at how often they were posting, it seems that only about half of the blogs that began before 2007 are still active, meaning they post once every other week on average. 

I was so happy to see my other blog, Kids Lit, as the second most active blog on the list for number of posts.  If you ever wonder why I don’t post here more often, just head over there and you can see why!    Kids Lit is also second in the number of comments received, which is especially nice because I fret about how few comments I get.

I am also very honored to be on Walt’s Pioneers list with both of my blogs.  He goes on to say such nice things about me that I was tearing up.  Blogging can be a lonely exercise, so it is nice to have positive feedback about one’s passion. 

Thank you Walt, for the time you put into this, the recognition you give library blogs, and the honor of being included.

I am always thrilled when a new TED Talk video or audio is released.  They prove to be entertaining, intriguing and always thought-provoking.

One of their latest releases was very inspiring to me as a library manager.  The speaker, Dan Pink, talks about motivation and employees, more specifically why incentives DO NOT WORK. 

Happy day!  My library and most libraries aren’t funded well enough to offer real incentives for employees.  So it is good news that they don’t end up encouraging better work from people. 

But libraries still have to motivate their employees.  Pink suggests that we need to give them three critical things:

Autonomy

Mastery

Purpose

In other words, we need to give them the ability to make decisions about their work and feel good doing it.  We need to give them space, time, and the knowledge that they can find their own way.  Time to play, invent, think deep thoughts, and be creative. 

I am looking at doing this in some systematic way with my staff.  Perhaps giving each person 10% of their time to do what they love with an expectation of something (who knows what) coming out of it eventually.  I am still working on the details.

So what do you think? Would that sort of freedom motivate you?  What would you do with it?  And how would it change your library?