Thing 13 Empressr

This is an update- I had to delete my first 13 Empressr because it took forever!!! to load and almost froze our computer. I had loaded 4 videos of white water rafting:)
So this is the orginal posting from July 22:

Sorry, empressr was not impressive for this first try. I was all excited to upload and share my white water rafting videos, but it took 6 hours of frustration to get 5 short videos done. I think these programs are really geared to slides, not videos (maybe my stuff used too much 'space').
But I liked it for the ease of showing, and my husband was all excited by the sites for work.
My reflection: This stuff will make life easier and more fun. I love not having to use thumb drives or look at the family calendar that is only in the kitchen. Now no matter where I am, I have access to what I want to know or do.
This is way way cool and fun.

Thing 12 30 Boxes

I love exploring the web! But it really drains the time. Hopefully 30 boxes will lower my stress level. I added ALL of my family and friends birthdays' to the calendar and it posts to my Google homepage. So now I won't forget anyone. This is fun!!
I also looked at Remember the Milk! but I just have a jive old phone without a whole lot of texting, so that wasn't for me.
I went back to 30 boxes and added Dr. appointments, dinners, etc. Really love that it shows up every time I open my browser!!!!

Thing 11 Google Docs

Hooray, something I had been using but didn't really understand! Short history: our family has given up giving Christmas presents - and now gives the gift of our 'stories' to each other for Christmas. So Christmas morning may take 5 hours while we listen to each others stories. The first year everyone had to write their autobiography - the short version. Year two was a significant experience, year three all about siblings, etc. My sons have been sending me their stories via Google docs! when I went to my settings and clicked on Docs - there were all the stories!

Also there were the excel spreadsheets I had generated with my youngest son concerning food and expenses with their wedding reception.

Way cool!!

Didn't even know I was doing it!

Thing 10 Family Vacation Wiki

Things just have to be usefully in my life, so I created a wiki about where our extended family should vacation next year. I created the first entry, set it up as a data spreadsheet so we can scan down the page and see what everyone is interested in, and emailed it off. I chose the more private wiki that I have to 'invite' others to view and add to.

This was harder than I thought. I created the first entry, and then went back and couldn't find it. (ha) Then I had to hand enter the email addresses because I did this at school and my personal address book is not on the Internet or this computer.

I could use this in many ways at school; asking for input on what should be included in Open Houses, Scholarship Nights, Orientations to each grade at the beginning of school, etc. I think at least 4 other teachers would be able to add, but most of our teachers would not know what to do with a wiki.

Maybe another staff meeting presentation??????

Thing 9 Wiki Wiki

So i had a hard time sitting and reading all the wiki info - i kept linking to another page and better examples. After I got through the historical stuff IE wikipedia is the biggest and started in 2001, I thought a lot about my 'control' problem and how that really can't operate in wikiville. I then started reading Meredith Farkas. She IS great (and you had her indirectly linked at least 4 times). Her article on ALA Wiki had excellent tips (need structure, post so no one else feels they have to be 'first', and have a very specific purpose). I checked out the Ann Arbor Wiki 'Arborwiki' which was a lot like 'rocwiki'. I noticed some wiki's I tried to check out were gone!! "The Teacher's Lounge".
Then I got to the WikiMatrix.org and answered the questions and it came up with a list of 20 wiki's that matched my criteria:
Okay. You want a hosted offer with a page history using your own domain and which allows your own corporate branding.
The following 20 Wikis match your criteria:
BrainKeeper, BusinessWiki, CentralDesktop, ClearWiki, Confluence, EditMe, Intodit, Metadot Wiki, MindTouch, Netcipia, PBwiki, SamePage, SeedWiki, Socialtext, Wagn, (f) Wetpaint, (f) Wikia, Wikidot, Wikispaces (f) and Zoho Wiki (f)

Based on the results - I liked the features of Wetpaint!! Can't wait for Thing 10!!!!

Thing 8 Feeds and the news:)

So I had a good discussion with my son the web site programmer about the difference between Google Reader and my iGoogle homepage. I did add the google gadget that puts google reader on my iGoogle homepage. So now I have the best of both worlds:)
But ........ I am a very visual person, so I like the spread out format of my homepage vs the scrolling of the google reader. But what to do when I have more feeds then will show comfortably on my homepage? Well then, maybe I am trying to get too much of life from the internet and I need to "step away from the computer" and experience life in the here and now (sorry twitterers).

As I said in my last blog, I already have a bunch of feeds to my homepage, and I added a few more.
:) good night to 'see' a sunset!!!

Thing 7 RSS and news feeds

Well it took me a while to figure the Reader out, but then in adding to my subscriptions I found that the reader is just about the same as my iGoogle homepage - because I use the same RSS feeds to 'populate' my homepage. So I don't know that I will use the reader as all the new items already show up on my homepage. BBC news, our superintendent's blog, Jon Stewart's (Ok OK) local weather, Hulu blog, my horoscope, Twitter gadget, Google Technology, Gmail, the Onion, etc.

Is there some advantage to using the Reader instead of having everything feed to my homepage?

But I appreciated the simplicity of the plain English video:) Thanks!