Thing 13. online productivity....irony to me...

considering i'm feeling very underproductive about the 23 things lately. okay, diving in now.....all focused with a goal to finish 13 & 14 by tomorrow...

chapter one: webpages and widgets~ my dh at home has his own webpage as our start page, therefore, I'm not really seeing that I need one of my own. They were fun to play aroud with however. iGoogle was easy to use, as are most of the Google-Land products. But I felt that PageFlakes was just a bit more organized and more to my style of page layout. I really never have been much of a fan of Yahoo! Not for any really valid 'bad' reasons, just that I am a Gmail girl, I have almost always preferred Google products and Yahoo! (at least back in the day) was full of spam and advertising, neither of which are my cups of tea. So after playing around with this part of 13, if i was to have a web page of my own, I've found a few sites worth bookmarking for later..

the widget part of this thing took me *eons*. sad but true. the one recommended through the fine 23 Things folk wouldn't work. no idea what I was doing wrong, but it wouldn't count down. So I went with a good ol' Google search and found this site...ps i apologize for the spelling error in buongiorno. it's not super simple to edit at this point :( But now I know exactly how long until I jet off to Italy with my dh and his singing posse in June ~ And seeing as Lake Como in St Paul is about a mile from my house, I felt it worthy to post the other, bigger, grander Lake Como on my counter.....oh, and thanks, LibraryGuy, for helping me navigate that whole HTML thing. good to know for future posts....you're a stellar teacher...

chapter two of Thing 13: Calendars~ okay here's where i'm going to sound rather aged. I really really *really* like my paper calendar. (for work *and* play bookings/meetings/events) the one that i tote around with no problem. the one that is this whole planner thing that weighs a solid few pounds. the one that if i want to leave it at home and go away for four days, i can and i don't care that i can't access it from some remote location on my cell or on my laptop (both of which are at home as well i might add if i leave town; I mean for real....WHY do some folks just feel the absolute need to bring work with them on holiday?? if i'm trying to enjoy the quiet of a great little coffee shop in a small town, the last thing I need is some yahoo in his best Ralph Lauren vacation wear yakking away about how impt this meeting is he's missing while he's out of town >:-( The world is NOT all about you dude! You're polluting my solace!) whoops! sorry for the soap box moment....

Did i do this part of Thing 13? well, sort of. I did monkey around with Google Calendar, Scrybe, iCal (which is on my Macbook at home) and 30 Boxes. All four worked similarly. As with many other comparitive studies I've done for these Things. Google was grand. Scrybe was okay. iCal is something I would only access from home, and 30 Boxes had a nice clean layout that was appealing.

As with other Things, I really am tired of signing up for free accounts, that at this juncture, I'm just not going to use all that much. And as stated, I really am not wanting to give up the paper calendar yet, so while it was educational to play around with different calendar tools, I prefer my colored pens and big clunky wonderfully archaic sprial planner in front of me. I should admit at this point that 2 years ago I basically asked for a Palm organizer for Christmas from dh. Who was wonderfully nice and did get me one. the Palm rode around with me for about 6 months, I sort of used it now and again, but still pined for my paper calender. Remember Trapper Keepers? I think I just got really sucked in to having a planner all the time as a student. And that carried over somehow to my grown up years. So do I think the calendar tools would be handy in the library field of work? yes, if all staff had access to the same one. yes, if you really don't like paper calendars. will i use one anytime soon? doubtful.

Next, this whole notion of to-do lists, including Backpack. Again, post-it notes were invented here in St Paul at 3M years ago and for good reason. They work. They don't need plugging in. I don't need to be logged on to anything, and my inexperience with having something like and iPhone or a Blackberry or any other techno-toy to keep track of my life on that lights up and sings and does all other amazing things is showing more and more as I type up this Thing. I *did* try Backpack for a little while, and it seems like a really quality product. Yet another thing to tuck into some small crevice of my brain in case I want to ever go back to it to try out for more than a little while. I will admit I use the Post-Its on our Mac often (a built in software option that yes, is handy).

So off into the wild blue yonder I go with my paper calendar, that doesn't need plugging in or turning on, my colored fine point Sharpies and my post it notes full of things I need to do in the coming days ~ jd