Thing 5: Image Generators

First, I attempted to do the fortune cookie, because my husband proposed using a fortune cookie. I thought it'd be pretty cool to make him one that says, "Will you marry me?" Unfortunately, Image Chef charges for use. Soooo, on to Plan B.

I made this cool bead art using an image of fractal I had lying around on my hard drive.



One of the things I don't like about trying all these sites is that you don't find out until you've created something that you want to keep that you can't keep it after all. Disappointing. However, there are tons of free stuff to play around with, too, so that pretty much makes up for it.

Thing 4: More Flickr

This was pretty fun! I played with several of the tools, including Big Huge Labs (but I didn't want to join), Flappr, Colr Pickr, Flickr Sudoku, Retrievr, and Spell with Flickr, which I used to make the image below. I had to mess with it to get it to wrap fairly nicely, but it turned out okay.




Color Pickr was pretty cool, but I think Retrievr has a way to go. It seemed as thought no matter what I drew, I kept getting the same pictures. Neat concept, though. I'll give it try again sometime.

Thing 3: Flickr

I logged in to Flickr with my Yahoo account. (Thanks 23 Things for the heads up on that, or I would have set up a new account.) I uploaded to photographs and gave them headings. I didn't tag them, because I haven't yet developed my tagging muscles, and frankly don't really "get" them. Perhaps this course will change that!

My photos are of me with former (and future, apparently) Texas gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman. A co-worker, one of his childhood friends, introduced it. It was pretty fun!

The other is five generations--my grandmother, mother, me, my daughter, and my granddaughter. That was the only time all five of us have been together.

My photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29043303@N07/

Thing 2: Learning about Learning 2.0

I watched the Stephen Abram and the Shifted Librarian videos and read Tim O'Reilly's "What Is Web 2.0".

I'm glad I watched the Stephen Abram video because it gave a great overview and some tips about following the program. I'm a bit behind in the 23 Things project because I kept feeling as though I didn't have time to participate. But he's right, I DO have 15 minutes here and there. That's all I need.

I also watched the Shifted Librarian video, which was created by cultural anthropologist Michael Wesch. I had seen it several times before, but I always find it moving and inspiring. I love works that "play" with language.

Tim O'Reilly's article provided a lot to think about. I had previously been thinking of Web 2.0 as referring to sites, but, of course, it refers to applications as well--the notion that applications are moving from desktop to cyberspace, that development is moving from proprietary to open source.

I think that the idea of collective intelligence goes along with the idea of Web 2.0, because it connotes a shared space and communal creativity. What's most exciting about Web 2.0 is that people drive it--people contribute, people create, people communicate. What results is not only shared content, but shared content creation. And collective intelligence results in a product that is more than the sum of its parts.

Thing 1: Setting up your blog

I have set up my 23 Things blog. Here it is!