YouTube

Perfect timing for this exercise. I am a YouTube subscriber already - one of my favourites is the Muppets librarian sketch. Another is the Mr Bookman scene from Seinfeld.

Last Saturday night I was in a hotel at Manchester Airport, watching a show on TV called Britain's Got Talent. A very frumpy woman came on and said her dream was to sing like Elaine Paige. Everyone was smirking at her until she started singing - what a fabulous voice. Her name is Susan Boyle and if you want to feel uplifted, watch her sing on YouTube. I hope she wins.

podcasts again

OK, now I have the hang of this. I didn't know about librivox - how fantastic!

Podcasts

Back from vacation and I'm trying to catch up on my final exercises. What a relief - podcasts! Now that I am going to a health club regularly I bought myself an iPod, so I am already using podcasts. So nice on planes to be able to plug in - particularly when the entertainment system isn't working. I've been downloading CBC music programmes - trouble is I am getting a bit tired of the commentaries as I already know them so well. Must remember to stop singing along to my mouldy oldies when I'm on the treadmill - but it's awfully hard not sing along to the Four Seasons or Dusty Springfield.

A friend told me to go to the BBC website which apparently has terrific podcasts.

Browser add-ons

I added cooliris. It looks great but I haven't as yet had time to play with it.

Social networking

At last I can have a breather and catch up! I have been using Facebook for a long time and already have several 'Facebook friends' from Ryerson library - some even before I came here. What I like best about Facebook is that I am now in regular contact with my extended family. Nieces and nephews who rarely sent the obligatory "Dear Auntie, thanks for the socks" letters after Christmas now write to me regularly, inviting me to join groups of interest to them (usually about their local soccer team or some TV show I don't even see here). It's fun and it really surprises my brothers who don't seem to know how I can know so much about what's happening in their kids' and grandkids' lives. I also love the photos they post. Recently it was thanks to Facebook that I found out my 38 year old niece is going to have a much longed for daughter to join her two sons.

What I like least about Facebook is when people post daft messages to your wall. Usually if I want to contact someone through Facebook I send them a message instead of displaying it for all to read. The only exception to this is when you get a bucketload of wall posts on a birthday - a very enjoyable occurrence.

Googling

Once I concentrated on the google assignment I quite enjoyed it. I'm astonished at how many applications there are. I've used google images and google maps many times (great before going to a restaurant or theatre or someone's house you don't know). But igoogle? Ties in with Sheldon's talk at The Empire Club on March 5.

google docs was peculiar. By sheer chance someone sent me a google doc last week - a personal doc which I think everyone got to see for a little while!

Obviously RULA 2.0 is affecting my life - I went out last week and bought an iPod! Trying to set it up and load it has been interesting and quite time-consuming. Interesting too that it was a Ryerson Marketing student who sold it to me at the Apple Store. That store really understands retail.

Library Thing yet again

OK, so if you really want to see what I put on LibraryThing this is it. A major ego trip, I suppose.