...and other information to keep staff in the Technology Loop

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Times they are a changing

Earlier this week I went to CPCC to purchase some books for a Spanish class. I went to the service desk to get my books and then asked the young woman working there if they sold "flash cards."

She answered, "of course," and walked me over to the computer area and showed me my choice of USB storage devices. I almost laughed out loud. This was the first time it dawned on me that the new generation of young adults have a totally different vocabulary than we do as they have been raised with technology since birth!

It made me wonder what other terminology will change over the coming decades?

Friday, May 19, 2006

Blogs

The Shifted Librarian had a funny post on her blog about blogs and news aggregators:
Have you seen the quip on t-shirts and book bags, too many books, too little time? Well a 2006 version of that is too many blogs, too little time!

Can you relate?

I have well over 100 blogs that I subscribe to. I admit I don't read them all every day or even every week. But blogs are becoming an important way to keep in touch and to get information faster. I no longer go to charlotte.com to get my news. I get notified by a news aggregator or an RSS reader when breaking news happens.

I was disappointed last week when my favorite RSS tool NetVibes went down, lost my account, found my account, but lost all my subscriptions. NetVibes had been the perfect reader for me. It allowed me to have a multi-tabbed page with feeds for blogs, news, email, and hyperlinks to Web sites. Since the loss of all my data I have been a little frazzled. It would have been so easy to back the information up. But of course, like most people, I didn't.

I've switched back to BlogLines for now and am experimenting with BlogBridge, so I thought I would pose this question to other library staff...What RSS reader are you using and what are its best features?