... and the books are still not shelved

Although I am still rather skeptical about Twitter, I do follow some tweets, not just cpd23 but also BBC News, CILIP and some private accounts too. My own account, which was created last year, flew away somewhere into the air, probably because I have completely forgotten the password or as a punishment for not using it apart from three or four tweets when participating in the 23Things program. Those old tweets are still online but I do not have access to that account. This year, as a part of cpd23, I have created a new account (under a new name and new password) and used it to tweet twice to the world and two or three times as a response to the posts of my work colleague who is a very keen twitterer. When I posted those personal tweets (sitting in the the same room as my addressee) I realised suddenly that we could just talk! But my colleague said that it's 21st century and this is how we exchange views now. Sad. Hopefully not exactly true.
Despite all the skepticism, I do appreciate that Twitter might be a very useful tool for inter-people and inter-library communication, but...

Almost every serious tweet (not the one like "I am bored today" or "I ate to much for dinner" sort) contains at least one link which leads usually to another one, and another, and another, and so on. Sometimes this chain is so interesting that one can spent hour after hour, day after day or even night after night, going through the net. Also - how much time needs to be spent first to find all the interesting things which then can be shared via Twitter or Facebook?

And the books in the libraries are still not shelved!

That's my main worry - becoming addicted to Twitter and having no time for other things (apart from the 23). The number of tweets is growing at a scary speed - it's not exponential but extra-exponential, or worse, growth these days! One needs a very selective approach to avoid being buried under this information overload. But I must admit - the chemistry is there.

RSS - little time savers!

Not being very enthusiastic about Twitter, I do use RSS feeds a lot. I fell in love with this great gadget from the first site, i.e. from the Thing 2 in the 23Things programme last year. It's so easy to follow all the most important or interesting sites via RSS's. World news (not the News of the World), job vacancies, library news, blogs and many, many more. The RSS logos have their place not just in my iGoogle page but on the toolbar of each computer I use. This includes also the RSS feeding the information of recently catalogued books in the libraries where I work. This particular RSS is one of the not so old additions to the LibrarySearch online catalogue in Cambridge domain. It's a great tool which should be recommended to students so they can easily find out about their own library's new additions - not everybody visits a library every day, but almost everyone opens their internet more than once a day.

Pushnote or Pinnote?

I haven't heard about Pushnote until the Thing 4 in the cpd23 - the first revelation this season! I hoped that Pushnote would allow me to comment on all the sites where and when I would like to do so without registering separately on each and every one. This is really annoying - the registering (however understandable). Annoying, because before one goes through a registration process, one might forget one's brilliant idea of a comment. I read the instruction, went to the website, watched the video advertising this gadget. It did not seem to be what I expected. I might be wrong, perhaps I haven't read it all carefully enough or did not understand correctly what I read . Then I saw the small print next to the website title - Beta. I think I'll wait until it becomes an "Alpha".