Ah YouTube. Such an entertaining time-waster! I've received many links through email to various videos over the years. Here's one that was recently sent to me that I enjoyed. And it has the added bonus of a song that gets stuck in your head for hours on end! Enjoy.

YouTube isn't an entire waste of time though. I've had professors show videos in class on this topic or that or even "how to" videos on book making. I've looked up some on my own. For example, here's one on how to tie a bowline knot. Very useful, very strong knot if you're interested.

For the podcast section of this assignment I wanted to try the link for Yahoo Podcasts but the link from the "23 Things" site was broken. So I clicked on PodcastAlley and searched for one of my favorite radio broadcasts, The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC. It was first on the list of returned results. I'm one of very few people left, I think, who doesn't have an IPod or the like. I still have a Walkman that is a radio tuner and plays tapes. Tapes! I also have a Discman so I'm not completely behind the times. And my cell phone which I have successfully transferred some music from my computer onto so, OK, I'm feeling a little better about myself. The point is, I haven't gotten into the podcast trend yet. When I miss a topic on one of the programs I follow I go to the website and stream it over my laptop. I can definitely see the attraction of having them right there in the palm of my hand though. Maybe when this cell phone conks out I'll upgrade.

As suggested by the Learning 2.0 site, I searched PodcastAlley for library related entries and was surprised by how many turned up. There was one in particular, LibVibe, which is a brief, headline news oriented podcast on the world of libraries that I'm going to add to my Yahoo homepage.

The third, and final topic for this blog will cover audiobooks. When I got my current cell phone I was really excited about going to my library's site and downloading tons of audiobooks. However, it was not to be. My phone only plays .wav files, not MP3s so I had to go through a convoluted procedure of downloading a converter, playing the book through in hour long chunks to convert it and then transfering it to my phone. I went through this whole process all of...once before I decided it was way too much trouble. Maybe when I get that upgrade...

So to check out some audiobooks for this project I went to my library's site (after discovering that the link from the 23 things web site was unavailable) and found out that their contract with former partner, NetLibrary, had ended. Now it was up to OverDrive to provide audiobooks to all those commuters from Bergen County, NJ. They still had quite a selection, some of which I would definitely like to listen to. But, again, for now I'll have to stick to checking them out on CD. Maybe when I get that upgrade...