To Infinity!

This was a fun and educational experience! Learned a lot and feel a bit more savvy around the Web.

Gaming

Gaming is definitely the entertainment wave of the future. I've been directing kids to Funbrain and other kid gaming sites for a long time. Funbrain in particular seems to be popular with both kids and parents, as the games are pretty entertaining and kind of educational too!

Google Earth

Wow! Loved the sensation of sailing over Seattle! Noticed that I won't be able to use it to spy on my neighbors...doesn't get quite close enough, and it appears it's not up-to-the-minute. The car I drove here to the library today is parked outside my house according to Google Earth!

Avatars

Tempting to go on a small rant here, but I'll try to moderate my overall reaction to this particular Internet phenom. My initial thought was "Second Life"? I barely have time for a first one! And my second thought, with regards to the avatars, where the heck are the hard-earned wrinkles? The extra poundage that comes with a life of "eat, drink and be merry!"? Oddly enough, a friend invited me to join 2nd Life just this week, but guess it's not my cup of tea...

On-line Apps

Pretty neat stuff...MS word processing products drive me absolutely nuts. Both Zoho and Google, on the other hand, seemed pretty easy to use and self-explanatory. I'm definitely going to introduce my 16 year old to Zoho's online organizer!

Search Engines

I tried searching for my dog's breed on Mamma and Dogpile. Mamma's results looked pretty Google-ish, which remains my gold standard for search engines, but I really disliked Dogpile. The results list was filled with "sponsored" sites, ie efforts to sell you something. It was interesting to learn that not all webpages are covered by Google, et al, necessitating the use of more than one search engine to be thorough. Good thing to know!

Podcasting

I have never used podcasting, largely because I'm much more of a visual learner. I find it hard to focus on non-music audiocasts (with the exception of one very long road trip, when listening to about three hundred hours of LOTR on CD kept the whole car sane!). But I did see some interesting stuff being done at other libraries. I especially liked Boulder Public Library's showcasing of teen-produced podcasts...seems that might be something that could draw in a wide variety of kids. Podcasts on rap? Gaming? Comics? Could be lots of fun!