Thing 8 - Communication

Not being a Neflin member, this is even more nebulous! I used to use IM's on a regular basis as a member of AOL. So I just tried to figure out how to use it on Windows Live since I use hotmail--and I think I sent invitations to all 193 people on my email list! Now I'm just a pain in the butt! On AOL a person didn't have to sign up to see the service (at least that's not my memory of it). And now there are so many different IM servcies it isn't clear which one you would perfer or why and it would seem you'd have to keep up with several since your friends are probably on many different sites.

I definitely see the value of all the discussions about IMs. They would be worthwhile in certain cases--work groups, even family members when they are online to communicate in real time. But they also can just lead to idle chatter among people.

This seems to be a world of redundancy--and also you could wind up spending more time sitting in front of a computer than talking with people in person (how many times do you see someone ignoring the person they are with in a restaurant and instead chat with someone on the phone or text away!). Also, in the texting world you not only pay for text messages you send but there's also a charge to the receiver--who may not be able to afford all those text messages! Our school "security notification system" seemed to use that system to send text messages from third parties, thereby having the receivers incur charges and advertisements they were not interested in. So there's alot of potential misuse of all these services!

Thing 7

Online Image Generator. I went to www.imagegenerator.org, downloaded one of my pics and inserted an image. Now we are holding flowers.

Thing 6

My creation
Originally uploaded by flamerritt4548

I did this as Thing 6 from Flickr big Huge Labs. It was quite easy--opens the door to alot of possibilities! Just following the bouncing ball and fill in the blanks. It will be fun to play with when there is more time!

StCroix 023

StCroix 023
Originally uploaded by flamerritt4548

Ok--this worked--but only by doing it starting at Flickr; not by doing it from my blog. I guess every picture site will work differently and the key is when you choose one then figure out how it works! The easiest seems to be directly from my computer!

I've tried using the Blogger picture icon to post pictures using the URL box from Flickr and Picassa and it just isn't working. I've checked my own sites; and definitely the flickr is a public site, so that shouldn't be the problem. I give up on this one!

So I got it to work by originating the blog post through Flickr and by adding to my blog from my own computer files; but never through my blog site from a URL.

Last try!!!

I uploaded an image into flickr--lets see if I can upload it here:

Thing 5

Hopefully there will be an image here which I have uploaded from Flickr of a contra dance I was at in Barberville in April 2008; hmmm after repeated attempts it didn't work! I'll try to upload an image from the computer. Ok this one worked. It's a picture I took of one of my favorite restaurants in Crescent Beach Florida with Randy at the picnic table!

Thing 4

I created my reader page and have several news feeds and one blog to follow. I've logged on several times to follow the news feeds. There are some favorite sites I hoped to get feeds from only to find they don't have a feed. So although I find RSS useful it is still somewhat limited in that I can't read all my favorite sites in one place.

In the future I hope this will help me in my job by finding RSS feeds on education/advising and Florida schools.

Alot of information is presented in the Resources secion of each thing which are very useful and although there's not enough time now to explore all of the, I hope to go back in the future to learn more.