Thing THIRTY-THREE

Thing Thirty-three was the interesting travel 2.0 concept. Fastfoodmaps was the mapping tool I checked out - My kind of map, but really strange to me that someone would take the time to have that much detail in a map such as this, with locations that have fast food that is touted to have, on most of the menu items, high fat content, extremely high amounts of sodium, and many calories. Makes the world a very interesting place...

I found there are a lot of people who want to share their travel adventures. It was fun to check out some of the sites. There were many that were helpful and some I've even used. The blog that I checked out was Lost Girls. This is a blog put together by three evidently rich women in their twenties who were traveling the world and keeping a journal. They even had their own intern who was following in their footsteps. Even though their travels were over, it was still interesting to read about their exploits.
TripAdvisor was the trip tool I have used in the past. It is a good site to help you get all of your plans lined up at one place. We took a trip out to the East coast and set up the whole trip complete with bookings on this. Vcarious was one of those sites where you find people very willing to share their knowledge, opinions, and information about travels they have made. I looked at exotic travel locations as well as the good ole local trip to Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills - the trip we're taking next month. I'm glad these big city people didn't give bad reviews - I could never get too much of that beautiful inspiring monument on the mountain.

Thing THIRTY-TWO

This thing was a mashup of a created-by-me map. This was definitely a stretch for me. I suppose I should have tried to do this with Firefox, but instead I worked on my son's MAC laptop while I watched game 4 of the Eastern Finals of the NBA. The little line to follow a road wasn't running consistently, but I got it together - I think. So since we were going to the Black Hills this summer, I thought I would make a map of the road tour from Keystone to Hill City, which runs past Mount Rushmore Monument - a very pretty trip. It really did have the trip mapped out - but it was having difficulty the day (entire 4 hours) that I was working with it, and I was ready to scream and start breaking things, so here it is, as good-as-it-gets:


View Mt. Rushmore Tour in a larger map

Thing THIRTY-ONE

Twitter becoming more useful was the theme of thing thirty-one. I have enjoyed a few things on twitter. I follow the Minnesota Twins and Minnesota Vikings - both prolific tweeters (?) I also enjoy this very upbeat and positive teacher at a school in Pennsylvania~Dr. Stephen Jones ~ always a Good Morning with an inspirational message and a Good night wish that it makes you feel the guy really knows you. I have also enjoyed Ellen DeGeneres and her tweets. I was following her when she had about 20 thousand, and now she has over one million. She is pretty prolific also. I joined the twitter directory under the name Empty-Nesters. I still don't understand mobile twittering, but then I think my life is too boring for anyone to care to read about. I put Tweetsnap on my blog, so maybe I will be more inclined to tweet more often, since the latest tweet is there now as well as the date I twittered - or is it tweeted - never could get that right...

Thing THIRTY

This thing is using RSS feed Readers for more productivity. Since I have been using my RSS feeds on a limited basis - mostly because TIME is at a premium, I decided to check out a little more refresher info on RSS. I found an Oprah Winfrey description: The technical acronym for RSS is "Really Simple Syndication", an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. Now, to geeks and techies that means something special, but to everyday folks like you and me, what comes to mind is, "Uh, I don’t get it?"
So, to make RSS much easier to understand, in Oprah speak, RSS stands for: I’m "Ready for Some Stories". It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place. How cool is that? Now, that I like - to think of it as gathering stories. I will continue to find uses (and Time) for my RSS feeds and Delicious,but I will think of them differently from here on out.

Thing TWENTY-NINE

Adding some more of the fabulous GOOGLE tools was thing Twenty-nine! I have had a Gmail account for a while now, and really recommend it for its comprehensiveness and ease of use as far as email accounts go. I really liked adding Google Alerts to my list of Gmail messages, and think it will be fun to keep up on the alert I chose: more things on a stick. I liked the little picture of the puppy, but it's not exactly a good thing when you get Wee Mail

I have set up a Google Calendar application, and think it will come in handy for our staff. I set up my May term hours and Summer hours, and will have each of the summer staff do the same. We can share the calendar, each add her own times, and always have access to it, when you don't remember where you put that schedule.

I added some more things to my Google toolbar, which I've also had for a while, since I find all of the google tools to be SO Wonderful! I wish I would have had the Google health when my kids were little, so when the school nurse would ask to see a record, or if the clinic would need it, you could just print it and go.

Thing TWENTY-EIGHT

This is a fun thing, Thing TWENTY-EIGHT. I had an iGoogle page set up before that I was able to go into and revamp and renew. It has some pretty cool tools, things that you"can't live without". I put together some "stuff" that I find be very fun and useful applications. I picked iGoogle because I use a lot of Google utilities, like Gmail, Google books, and Images. I picked things like Google maps, Local Weather, Date and Time, Top news stories, Quotes of the day, YouTube and Facebook. Very cool to have all the tools in one place, with easy access.

Thing TWENTY-SEVEN

Thing Twenty-seven is a study in IM-ing. It has been a long journey to get to the end of all of the tutorials, Help screens, even YouTube videos into the world of Twitter. I set up the Twitter Account, made a pretty pink background, and will be putting my picture on it if I think anyone will really want to know "what I'm doing" (I gotta say it's gonna be VERY boring). When I first tuned into Twitter, I had the fine fortune to be able to "follow" TheEllenShowTwitter" I love the Ellen show, and I'm sure it's going to be fun. I like the theory and premise behind the fancy IM tool, but I am not sure that I will be able to find time to use it. I do have a facebook account in which I IM, or at least message-and-read-later with my kids, "friends" and acquaintances.I might be surprised how often I use it, however, since it's so easy to open and read - even from your phone.

Thing TWENTY-SIX

This thing was about NING. This is an interesting sharing and posting application. There were a couple of things I did with this one. I sent a comment on a discussion about whether this would be a useful tool if you use Facebook for your social networking. I agreed with the person who started the discussion, in that there might not be a useful purpose because you do the same things on Facebook, and have little time to utilize both applications. There are the same kinds of things like discussion, share pictures and videos, as well as post your profile.
The other application I added was a video of Saturday Night Live clips. I have always loved the Saturday Night Live comedy show. It's one of those silly things that make life interesting, and less serious. It's good to stay laughing at goofy stuff.

Thing TWENTY-FIVE Too

Thing TWENTY-FIVE

This thing took me a while to get through. I studied each link on this one, and found some new things as well as some of the things we used before. Widgets are definitely a fun part of blogging. I didn't know there was such a variety of things you could do to your posting.
I decided to put a "Brain Tuner" on my page, because of all of the games gadgets, I thought this one seemed to be the most "educational"-looking. I listened to the audio version of my blog title, but it sounded too mechanical or electronic. I looked at the videos and thought Spokentext to be the most all-around useful to students. The upload to your MP3 player of a whole book to listen to later, was something that if you were driving to school each day, might be the best way to study, especially if the text you needed to read was free full-text because of the Gutenberg Project - which I find fascinating.
I used a collection of HOCKEY pics in a Picture-trail presentation, and put a caption on a favorite family picture of mine, of three cousins - all little stud-muffins.
I added a wonderfully cool tool: the Meebo IM function - can't wait to get my kids to get on this one and chat.

Thing TWENTY-FOUR

I am Refreshed! It was just like I hadn't left. I am sorry to say I didn't get things posted during the "off-season", but hope to be able to work it in now. I shouldn't have too much trouble staying with the posting - even if it's at one or so in the morning. The new avatar (such as she is) is enjoying the beach already, and the new photo is still from winter. I will have to get that coordinated. I decided to go with a BLUE blogger template, since I didn't see any I liked better than the ones that we had to choose from off of the blogger site. I did go to the Image Chef, one of my favorite places, and picked up an image for fun.