Some updates

Bloglines has a new beta interface, which I think is much nicer than the old hideous interface. And it doesn't mark all the posts as read as soon as you click on the feed to read it! Maybe they got the hint that that was a bad idea from my blog! :-) Not all the old features, like the email subscriptions and tell a friend, are in there yet, but it's much simpler to use. More like Google Reader. Which is, for now, my favorite.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg has continued their program of web 2.0 learning tools. I've subscribed to their blog feed for the program, and I think I'll try out the tools they mention, if I haven't already. Such as Thing 24: Zamzar. Free online file conversion, with a link to the result emailed to you. That's brilliant. Maybe we can finally have a good solution to the battle between Microsoft Word and Microsoft Works. I have to admit, I need and use Word so exclusively that I've never used Works, but it's a battle to try to open Works files here in the library so that patrons can work on the files they've brought in, which then dooms them to working in the library on their new Word files. Of course, the solution to that is probably Google Docs or Zoho, but in a pinch Zamzar will probably be a good thing. Let's not forget that it will convert many kinds of files to PDF, which is a fairly universal format, so if you need a quick PDF, you don't need to shell out megabucks for Adobe Acrobat and you don't even have to install a program on your computer. And when I was converting tons of scanned TIFFs to JPEGs for the Flat Tops Blog, because TypePad won't accept TIFFs in its photo galleries, I could have used this service and had them all emailed to the blog. I do wish it would convert Publisher files, though--Publisher is really kind of a crappy program, but I use it all the time because the templates are okay and it came with Office--I run into problems all the time sending Publisher files to other people because they have different versions or don't have it at all.