Story World Border

I just took a quiz on accent at GoToQuiz.com. The results were sort of surprising since I lived most of my life in the Deep South.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The South
The Northeast
Philadelphia
The West
Boston
The Inland North
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

I believe one of my favorite things to look for on the Internet is music. I like listening to radio stations online like JackFM. The fact they have a website is great. You can keep up with contests and concerts in the area. However, I like more control over what songs are played. I have used Yahoo! Music to create my own radio station. Another site, Pandora is similar to it. You can add stations for different genres and edit the artists or groups included in each station. Unlike Yahoo! Music, there is no commercial breaks or plugs for the commercial-free membership option (not free).

I did download a song from http://music.download.com/. It was easy and the song can be played on my desktop or on my Mp3 players. I prefer to use my Mp3 player Itunes is pretty much useless since I don't own a iPod. Other sites like Amazon that offer downloads that will play on any Mp3 player are better because if you upgrade your player later, you could still play your music.

Labels: Amazon, Itunes, JackFM, music, Pandora, Yahoo Music

I'm now down from over 2600 emails in my inbox to 1700. That's not counting the ones in the folders (many of which I deleted completely). Ugh! This is worse than cleaning out my closets and file cabinets. I'm pretty good at deleting advertisements, spam and crazy urban legends. Speaking of Urban legends, I drive some of my relatives crazy when they send out those weepy "please help me I have five minutes to live and need your undiscarded toe nails" or something like that. I quickly send everyone the link to the legend on Snopes. Is that terrible?


I need to practice using YouSendIt to send to files to people. I haven't had trouble downloading files lately but you never know. It's something I might want share with my friends who like to send humongous files. Oh well, they will remain my friends.

Labels: email, snopes, urban legends, YouSendIt

I have been working on and off in April trying to clean up the inbox in Outlook and delete old files on my computer. I read the GTD (Getting Things Done) article. The article gave guidelines for managing tasks. The guidelines were similar to other articles I have read on organizing. The guidelines are not hard to do but time consuming. Also it is easy to get off track and start stockpiling things again.

As far as tools for organization,I already have a PDA but I looked at the online calendars anyway. Good thing I did. I had forgotten that I had a link to the YALSA Google calendar until I clicked on the link while I was logged in iGoogle. I think the Google calendar is a great way for a large organization to remind its members about events. "Remember the Milk" was interesting but I don't want log onto a computer to make a shopping list or any other to-do list. Good thing you can synchronize with Windows Mobile. I'll keep it in mind just in case it may be useful one day.

Labels: calendars, Google, GTD, SpringCleaning

One of my favorite iHCPL things was Flickr. Collecting and sharing photos on Flickr makes sharing with friends and family easy. My second favorite thing was the photo editing tools. I could see uses for them at work (promoting events to staff and customers) and at home ( funny personalized birthday cards).

One thing I would like to see is more examples of how people use web 2.0 applications for work. I know there are awards for web site "excellection". I think I'll search for a list of them so I can get some ideas from recognized bloggers and web divas.

Labels: Flickr, photo editing, web 2.0 application

Downloadable media is great for when you can't get to the library or you can't to read a book(like when you're driving). LibriVox appears easy to use. Unfortunately something was wrong with the archive and I could not search for any titles. Many of the titles LibriVox are classics or books published before 1923.

Wowio is a local Houston company that offers not only public domain downloable books but copyrighted books for no charge. There are even comics and graphic novels. How do they do it? Unfortunately, they use commercial sponsorships to compensate the authors. There are questions about your habits that are a part of the registration process. They used this information to send their users advertisements. If you don't want any promotional emails, you should make sure the statement about accepting them is not checked.

Using OverDrive is a little more involved than Wowio. You won't be asked any questions but you do have to download software. This is important especially if you are using a library computer that doesn't have the software loaded on it already. Most libraries do not allow the public to download anything onto the hard drive. OverDrive will also ask you to download a security update for Windows Media player. The plus side of this is that this allows OverDrive to offer you copyrighted material for free through the public library and without advertisements. I have only one compliant and it's not really a compliant. So many people like OverDrive, you will probably have to place a hold on popular or well-known titles for a chance to check them out.

Labels: advertisements, copyright, free ebooks, LibriVox, OverDrive, pubic domain, Wowio

There are podcasts for just about anything you can imagine. I found a podcast for fans of Snape on Itunes and a podcast for dog owners on ipodder. I have found that some podcast directories are easier to search than others. I think Itunes is the best way to find new podcasts. As far as downloading them to my MP3 player, I like ipodder. I don't have to log on to a website. There is a program on the MP3 player that has a list of the podcasts I have subscribed to. When I attached the MP3 player to a USB port, the program starts, searches for the latest podcasts and downloads them.

I also used Bloglines to subscribe to a podcast called Collection Comics Library. I added a blogroll from Bloglines to the sidebar. You can click on Collection Comics Library on the sidebar to hear the latest podcast.

My favorite podcast is X Minus One (http://xmone.libsyn.com/). X Minus One is a science fiction radio show that was produced in the fifties.

Labels: bloglines, ipodder, Itunes, podcast, radio