Thing 25 -- Bloggers Toolkit

Wow, so many apps; so little time.

As a social sciences type, I had to try the Typealizer first. My blog came out as ESTP - a Doer. Don’t remember what my own profile was the last time I took that test, but it started with an I. It isn’t clear how the site arrives at its conclusions, but all the 23 Things blogs probably use a lot of active words because we are writing about things we are doing. The 23 Things project itself is “active and playful” and the people who would take it on must in some way be “happiest with action-filled work which craves their full attention and focus.” So maybe they are onto something here.

As a public law library, we would be interested in tools that would make our site more accessible. A gadget for converting blog text into speech would be useful to people with reading disabilities or just eyestrain from staring at a computer all day. I would envision our library’s blog and podcasts to have different purposes, with the blog having short entries and the podcasts being more in depth, so I doubt a gadget to convert the blog to podcasts would be that helpful. I added vozme to my blog. It was easy to use and the machine-generated voice was understandable and not at all unpleasant.

Again, as a social sciences type, I love statistics. I didn’t end up adding any of the widgets, however. Google Analytics looks like overkill, SiteMeter requires signing up with a third-party, and the others offered only maps. This little blog just won’t generate enough data to make any of these interesting. If we start a library blog, we can use the statistics program that comes with our Web site. So, on to surveys—another toy of the social sciences. Again, this will be more useful on a blog that a lot of people would read (unlike the one you are reading now.) For now, I used the Blogger poll gadget. OK everybody, you have until February 20 to answer the poll. Hello?

After looking at the Archive Calendar, I notice a reason to prefer Blogger gadgets—no compatibility problems.

To be honest, I am not that interested in blogs. While all these widgets may be interesting, they are not relevant to my job or my library’s Web site. After spending about four hours over two day, I have run out of interest and patience with this Thing. If and when we start a serious blog for the library, I will be back. For now, let’s move on.