The task for this week is to explore stumbleupon.com. So, I created an account, and selected a few different interests: music, painting, humour, cooking, and writing. The first page that came up was a list of "breakfast hacks"- which all look insanely delicious: crock pot french toast, hash browns in a waffle iron, and egg muffins. Granted, I am just a breakfast person in general. I would be happy eating any of those recipes, all day long. You give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the links that are generated, and by doing so are shown links that are more specific to your interests.
Here is another article that struck my interest: 30 Books I'm glad I read before age 30. This just gave me a few more books to add to my reading list. This website seems like a really fun tool. Just by popping in your interests and giving a thumbs up or down to the generated materials, you can find some really great links. This is a link to the artwork of Rashad Alakbarov, who creates works of art using shadow and light. I never would have found this otherwise.
On the whole, I've really enjoyed the 23 things project. While a lot of the applications I already had experience with, I made use of some great websites and learned many new things. Stumbleupon.com seems like a useful tool, especially if you are in search of new ideas or interesting articles. Scoop.it was also interesting to learn about. I had never heard of scoop.it before, and I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to use. It was nice to try something different each week, and even though I was already familiar with some of the applications, it was still fun to think of different ways to use them. You could use wordle to create your own home decor, and you could use pinterest to find new crafts for programs. All in all, it was a fun experience. It also stimulated a lot of discussion amongst our library staff about the different applications, and what their use value could be. I think that it was a worthwhile venture, and everyone definitely learned something new.
