Clusty was bought by Yippy

It looks like Clusty was bought by Yippy on May 14th, 2010. I wish I had known before posting it to the "Working the Web" page. There is no connection between the to two companies at all. I canot tell you how many times I have found information using Clusty for BMS faculty members:(

Yippy

My favorite clustering search engine, Clusty, is now Yippy. I have to find out what happened! I am trying some Yippy searches now. I'm a little concerned about Yippy's censorship policy (Anti-Conservative views or opinions and Politically-oriented propaganda or agendas):

Censorship
Yippy.com, its sub-domains and other web based products (such as but not limited to the Yippy Browser) may censor search results, web domains and IP addresses. That is, Yippy may remove from its output, in an ad-hoc manner, all but not limited to the following:
Politically-oriented propaganda or agendas
Pornographic Material
Gambling content
Sexual products or sites that sell same
Anti-Semitic views or opinions
Anti-Christian views or opinions
Anti-Conservative views or opinions
Anti-Sovereign USA views or opinions
Sites deemed inappropriate for children
YIPPY RESERVES THE RIGHT – that any site or domain that displays, does business with or derives revenue from any of the above may be blocked without notice by Yippy, Inc.

Open Directory Project vs Google

The ODP is completely maintained by human volunteers, usually academic librarians or scholars. You won't find nearly as much information with ODP as you do with google, but you'll find useful resources that Google does not retrieve, and the information is more reliable. Try searching Martin Luther King with both tools and you can easily see the benefits of each. I use ODP as a back-up to Google.

pixlr

I used pixlr to crop and size my blog photo. It's quite easy and fun to edit images and upload them. I am anxious to try the "teeth whitener" feature!

Oh look! Here is my wordle image!

Library Thing

The other night, I spent some time working with Library Thing. I have a friend who is a reading specialist, and she has asked me a few times if I will help her organize the collection of books that she shares with her graduate students. Well, cataloging is not my favorite part of librarianship, so I have been looking at solutions that Lisa can use on her own to organize her collection of about 3 or 4bookshelves. Library thing looks perfect for this. Lisa can tag each book with the reading level and whatever else she wants to use that makes sense to her and her students. She can even create a "call number" for each book that corresponds with the tags and organize the books with these on the shelf! Great. One problem solved!

Why can't I capture my wordle image?

Okay, I got it!

Jamstudio

When I was experimenting with Camstudio, my son, Sandy, told me about Jamstudio. With Jamstudio, you can use a recording tool to create voice or melody tracks, create chord and rhythm tracks free, and then easily overlay them. You can get a free trial with "full access" to Jamstudio or just go in and experiment with rhythm and chord progressions. This is quite fun!

Makebeliefscomix

I had fun creating comics with library research tips, summer reading information and reminders about food in the library. I might create a series of library research tips to post in the library stacks.

camstudio

This morning I am working with camstudio. I was able to record and play Scott playing a song, but am not sure how I did it. I'm going to work on this a little later because it could be useful for demontrating library research skills.

"I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least--and it is commonly more than that--sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields, absolutely free from all worldly engagements"

Henry David Thoreau

Beach Boys - Good Vibrations

Next

Next, I have to fix my photo and link to my Blizzard Blog. It is a good thing that I am reading about the middle aged brain! Be back later.

Library Thing

The other night, I spent some time working with Library Thing. I have a friend who is a reading specialist, and she has asked me a few times if I will help her organize the collection of books that she shares with her graduate students. Well, cataloging is not my favorite part of librarianship, so I have been looking at solutions that Lisa can use on her own to organize her collection of about 3 or 4bookshelves. Library thing looks perfect for this. Lisa can tag each book with the reading level and whatever else she wants to use that makes sense to her and her students. She can even create a "call number" for each book that corresponds with the tags and organize the books with these on the shelf! Great. One problem solved!

My new blog

This is my second techsplorations blog because I was having difficulty posting comments to my first. I kept accidentally going into my BMS Blizzard Blog http://bmsbookshelf.blogspot.com/(ha ha).
The first thing to do now is crop and size my photo.