All A-twitter (or not)

At first glance, Twitter seems like an endless stream of commercials. And I'm not going to get into the creepy "your followers" thing. One of the only (possibly) useful differences between this and regular blogging seems to be the length of a 'post'. I don't know about anyone else, but if I want to limit my blog post to 140 words, I'll do just that - I don't need to create yet another account somewhere to do my limiting for me. This slight complaint is connected to one of the problems I've been having with all the 2.0 programs I'm learning about. It seems that there are a million sites out there doing a few things that are truly different. RSS readers, Meebo, and microblogging don't appear to me to really offer anything *new*, just different and more complicated ways to do what I'm already doing. I can see how something like Twitter may be useful if someone doesn't want to have a blog, but otherwise it just appears to be yet another account to create for the sake of creating another account. In the end, while I proudly consider myself a geek, I'm a geek that doesn't get into the latest tech fad because it exists - I actually need to have it do something necessary for me.

Cruising with Youtube

For this activity, I chose to spend some time looking around Youtube. Here's the video that interested me most on my little jaunt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYaczoJMRhs

Yes, I'm a proud Whedonite. I remember attending one of the charity screenings of Serenity in Portland where they played this speech before the film, and the sense of being a part of something so important and so much bigger than myself was a wonderful feeling.

I liked parts of Youtube quite a bit. I could probably spend many unproductive hours looking at music videos made from songs and clips from various Whedon shows. Of those, I love a Firefly vid set to the song "I need a hero." Cool stuff indeed.

I can also actually envision this being a useful tool for libraries. I've already taken part in Sam's One Minute Critic series, and it was a lot of fun. I could also see libraries making videos of programs and activities to entice more people to attend. In addition, there could also be a series showing patrons how to use various library services or presenting them with the opportunities to make their own library-esque vids and have them shown on the library homepage.