RSS feeds and other ways of keeping up

Trying not to think of "The Feed" from Tobin Anderson's wonderful eponymous YA novel. I've added a couple of the blogs I want to keep current with to my Google homepage: Capitol Choices and MCPL's illustrious Shhhout Out blog. That's enough. It's such a huge timesink to follow even the cream of the cream of blogs, news and opinion sites, even cartoonists I like...

Fear of technology or why are your lips moving?

I have an iPod Touch I haven't touched. What a wimp, you say; I say it, too. But, as a sign that my librarian heart has not entirely turned to stone, I noticed that it gave a small leap when I found that the iPod Touch is one of the supported listening devices for NetLibrary audiobooks and for Overdrive, as well. So, great. I won't be limited to listening to Beeswing all day long. Not that I would mind.

Wiki worlds

My first experience with posting to a Wiki was related to this handout I created for the YALSA preconference in Washington D.C. in 2007 ("The Sins of YA Literature"). I could never get it into the YALSA wiki and have since felt somewhat incompetent with wikis. My second experience was with the MCPL Intranet, which inexplicably uses the term "wiki" to mean a holding place for a bunch of forms, files or other items related to...well anything on the site. Fine. Most recently the Board of Capitol Choices used Google Docs to share strategic planning ideas and information. But I love the idea of working together on a narrative or shared body of information. I'm just not sure I've found the group who will make a wiki work. In the meantime, I've added the wikihow widget to my Google homepage.

Word clouds

Here's a way to convey information quickly and appealingly: make a word cloud. I've done this with the results from a couple of SurveyMonkey surveys I did for non-profit groups. It's cool how a word cloud focuses the attention on meta-messages. A way of looking at an idea from both sides now, if you will.
This word cloud was made in Wordle, using the text of Strategic Direction 5: