Thing #20

I think I'm in an organizational mood this week. I chose Backpack to explore.

I was impressed with its simplicity. It looks like it's designed to work like a spiral-bound notebook, only more organized. You can add pictures, links, documents, and check-off lists to a single page. There's a fantastic looking calendar there as well, but you have to be a paying member to utilize it.

Backpack is a great example of a 2.0 tool that probably wouldn't work well for us. The calendar is shareable. But so are our Outlook calendars. The pages are sharable, but we have our wiki and our server. But for personal use, or for work projects one wouldn't need to share with others, this would be a great way to keep organized. And it's something we can recommend to our patrons who want to keep track of their reading but don't like the social aspects of LibraryThing.

I was pretty psyched to see Pandora on there! Again, this is probably not a very good example of library-related 2.0 tools, but it's one that I've used for a couple years after our legendary Sam strong armed me into trying it. (I'm gonna get an F on this assignment!) It's like readers' advisory for music. You type in your favorite song. Or your favorite artist. And Pandora will create a playlist for you based on hundreds of different musical attributes. You listen as you work or play on your computer. If you like a song, give it a thumbs up. If you don't, thumbs down, and Pandora uses that input to further tailor your playlist. I have found so many great bands and performers this way - and it's so much more refreshing than traditional radio! No ads, minimal repeats, no managers or publicists in station pockets, no annoying DJs (unless you're annoyed with yourself.) Most definitely recommended.