what i talk about when i talk about social media

overdrive: awesome app that actually works on my old ipod makes it super easy to download stuff. it's a bit more complicated to download ebooks to my computer and then transfer them to my kobo. for some reason i can't get my kobo to detect my wifi. curious to see that patrick ness's a monster calls is available on overdrive, but with no illustrations. hopefully e-ink improves enough to make illustrated books and graphic novels readable on ereaders soon! ebooks are getting better all the time.

oneclickdigital: love that there's a preview button. after using that button i am pretty sure i'm not going to listen to elie wiesel's night as an audiobook (no offense, george guidall), but as i've mentioned i really can't handle listening to audio files of just talking. unless it's david sedaris. can we get some david sedaris?

podcasts.

i really like the idea of podcasts. they're a great thing for people who like to listen to people talking to them while they go about their daily routines, but i much prefer to read content than listen to it. i can't do anything while i'm listening to a podcast because it requires all of my attention, but my eyes get bored and start looking for something to distract me with. i can tune out sound when i read, but i can't tune out vision when i listen.

i've listened to quite a few podcasts but i almost always close them before getting to the end--even the fun ones my friends do that are all nonsense. and i love nonsense!

my old library did podcasts where kids read out their book reviews every week of the summer. it was pretty cute, but i'm not sure how many library users were that into library-made podcasts (beyond the kids' parents).

prezi wouldn't let me upload all the slides from the only ppt i could find on my computer from the days i had office. slideshare would, but i couldn't edit out the names of my peers, and since it was a draft it included really hideous clipart and original drawings. overall i thought prezi was better because you could edit slides and text, and you could hide celine dion all over the place and make it extremely hideous.

here is my hideous prezi: http://prezi.com/6tng7i_apsli/prezitation/?kw=view-6tng7i_apsli&rc=ref-33532415

I've had people get really angry after spending an hour typing out something on the public computers and then losing everything they were working on. They usually want to believe it's the library's fault that they didn't notice their computer session was ending, or that they have to press eight million OK buttons before their files will print.

The shelf I strive the hardest to fill is my books-i-love-more-than-people shelf. Of the 405 books I've rated on Goodreads, only 53 have made it onto that list (16 have made it onto shelf-of-disappointment).

LibraryThing is kind of like this. There's a lot going on, and it's all pretty awesome, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to get dizzy if I have to keep looking at it.

QR codes: hyperlinks in meatspace!!! here's mine, because glitchy gifs are da bomb.

Pinterest--or, as it is known in my household, Tumblr For the Bourgeoisie--does not have a Television option in their mandatory following start-up list. I feel like that epitomizes everything that I find wrong with it as an end-user. It seems like it's trying really hard to be the crafty Etsy to Tumblr's gritty Ebay.

— Stats Canada (@stats_canada) December 17, 2012

I started using Twitter as a news source for the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian presidential election, because I had a friend in Tehran and couldn't get any real information about what was happening on any of the more reputable news sources. But on a day-to-day basis (or a once-a-month basis), I don't really use it for serious stuff.

What I use Twitter for now: I read twitterfeeds on Google for hockey playoffs and election results. There are also a lot of celebrities who post pictures of themselves with baby animals, but sometimes they just post pictures of themselves looking really happy to receive creepy drawings of dead family members from their fans.

I follow libraries and librarians, but they are always linking to articles and the whole point of Twitter is that I want my interest piqued in 140 characters or less, so I tend to ignore their posts, except when they retweet fake Stats Can.