I'm baaack. . .

Well, I guess technically I was never gone. However, my beloved Sebring branch was closed for an extended period of time for some gorgeous remodeling, which caused me to be farmed out to exotic locales (a.k.a. Canfield) and had me hustling to do my part to get this place back into ship-shape. Add to that the new adventures of having a 6-year old starting kindergarten among other things, and I feel like I just haven't had a moment to spare in my quest for knowledge and an MP3 player.

Despite the lack of a blog entry, I have attempted to tackle Things 13, 14, and 15 in the interim. I think perhaps another reason for my negligence in these tasks is that I have tried and failed to generate some excitement about these tools. While I certainly can appreciate that del.icio.us and Technorati could be useful in some realms, I have thus far been unable to identify their usefulness in my life.

I consider myself reasonably web-savvy, but really most of my web-browsing needs can be met with the likes of Google. If there is a particular website that I use frequently, I can usually recall the web address from memory if I need to access it from somewhere other than my home computer. I do like the idea of being able to see where others go for their particular topics of interest, but beyond that, I'm sorry to say that del.icio.us leaves me flat. :/

As for Technorati, I must admit that I'm more likely to rely on my old friend, Google, if I'm in search of blogs. Because, as covered elsewhere, the Google/Blogger family is largest blogging site on the net. Of course, most of my blog reading is usually done for entertainment, not knowledge (I still use printed material -- i.e., books, newspapers, magazines -- for that purpose, and sadly, that makes me a minority), so I guess I don't require as large of an information pool as others.

Perhaps, though, I should consider changing my perspective on this. I'm an avid consumer of pop culture, so imagine my surprise when I couldn't identify 2 of the top five most popular searches/tags on Technorati today. Here's how those top 5 broke down

1. Britney Spears? Check. I mean, does anyone under the age of 90 *not* know her? Still a little disgusted that this was number one, though.
2. Vanessa Hudgens? I have two children, so it's perfectly acceptable for me to be well-versed on High School Musical and all things related thereto. Right? Right?
3. Ron Paul? Okay, I'm serious when I say I had to stop and think about whether RuPaul had gone back to his/her original gender. Turns out this guy isn't a transvestite, just a Texas Republican running for president. Huh.
4. YouTube? Possibly the biggest non-human entity to infect the pop-culture landscape since Britney Spears. Yeah, I get it.
5. Noelia? Oh, crap, is there a new email virus going around again? Nope, apparently she's just the next J-Lo, who may or may not have a sex tape floating around cyberspace. I'm very okay with being clueless on this one.

So there you have it. I did find a little more useful information when I searched for "learning 2.0" and "web 2.0" and of course several of those hits also included Britney Spears references. Scary.

I think I'm going to comment about the library 2.0 articles in a separate post, because this entry has gotten way too long, and I in no way want to be responsible for making any of my co-workers go cross-eyed.

One final gem, which I actually did find courtesy of Technorati, about a great idea to consolidate so much of this web 2.0 information into one accessible place, can be found here. I'm working on my page right now.