Thing 12

I was amazed by the number of project management tools out there. Since my job is more autonomous and really just about managing my own case workload and solving sudden crises, I don't have a lot of first-hand experience with big company projects. Still, I checked out 3 or 4 of the sites and did whatever tour they had available. It was hard to really compare them without testdriving each one--I think that is the only real way to figure out which one works for the type of projects you might have. I would be hard pressed to pay anything for these, but I suppose if projects were a big part of a company, it would make sense to pay for those that would really fill the company's need.

I spent 30 minutes on Thing 12.

Thing 11

I don't own a smartphone, but after reading about all the medical apps you can put on your iphone, I admit I want one. I've never been a big cellphone user, preferring to keep it solely for emergencies or quick "what type of bread did you want again" calls from the grocery store. I just never wanted to be that accessible to people. I don't get wanting to chat on the phone while shopping for groceries or driving my car, etc. (Okay, I know the car one puts me in a very small minority.) But now that there are lots of apps out there, I can appreciate the utility of a smartphone. Iphone seems to be the most popular choice among friends and coworkers, with only rare blackberries surfacing.

I had problems with the instructions for this Thing, since the assignment refers to blog posts but doesn't provide a link to them. It also says you can go to KevinMD and put "med apps" in the search box. But for the life of me, I couldn't find a search box on the site. (Librarians, did I somehow just miss it or does it not exist?) I did find what looks like the first assigned blog (iphone vs android) by doing a google search for this phrase with "kevin" at the end. Here it is: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/10/doctors-choose-google-android-iphone-medical-apps.html

I got to the second one the same way (gotta love google). Here it is: http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/09/iphones-blackberrys-doctors-medical-students.html

I spent about 30 minutes on Thing 11.

Thing 10

Well, this Thing has finally prompted me to do what I never thought I would--sign up for twitter. I'm not sure why I've been so against it, but I guess I suspect people's updates are too numerous and not very exciting or relevant (okay, boring). I'm happy with facebook, but will twitter add anything to the experience? On the other hand, since everyone seems to be doing it and I'm constantly hearing about it, I figured I'd better jump on the bandwagon and at least try it out. It was easy to set up an account. I picked one celebrity to follow and added the only person in my email address book who has an account (really? only one? isn't everyone doing this?). I also added Regions hospital, but couldn't find the Regions medical library. I'll try again later. I then went in and tried to add my photo, but couldn't get it to upload. I was able to add a bio and my location. I was surprised to get one follower almost instantly but was a little disappointed to see it was someone I didn't know who was "looking for that someone special". Ugh. Weird. No tweets from me yet, but I will try once I get a real follower. I'll also try to add some local businesses that I shop at to see if they tweet any coupons, etc.

I spent about 1 hour on this Thing, although it would be easy to spend much more by searching for people to add, learning all the terminology, apps, etc.

Thing 9

As a frequent facebook participant, I feel I'm pretty well versed in social media. Facebook is a way to reconnect with people I don't see often (like since high school) and feel more intuned with their lives. I think it has added to my life, especially since I live far away from where I grew up and have never been great at keeping in touch with people.

I never got a ning invitation, so I didn't do the ning project. I even emailed the librarians a month or so ago to get an invite, but it never came. (Librarians--not sure what happened. Are you still sending these invites, or was that just for last year?). But no matter, I ended up joining Sermo, which looks really interesting. I was happy to see my specialty represented (especially since it is a less common one), and looked at several of the questions posted and the responses. This looks like a great site to ask practice questions and see what others are doing. I also like you can post questions to other specialties and they can post to yours. I think I will log into it often to see what's new.

I spent 30 minutes on Thing 9.

Thing 8

I signed up for CiteULike. It was easy to do, I just did the basic signup (not the advanced option). I was disappointed that the first journal I tried to put in an abstract from was not on the accepted list. I didn't bother to do it manually. I then tried another journal which worked. Tagging was easy but I could see from the suggested tag list that I wasn't using anything quite like those, so I don't know how helpful this will be. One thing--the 8 things instructions say that when you create your account, you should click on the option to allow CiteULike to stay open even after closing your browser. I couldn't find this at first and when I tested it, it wouldn't work without signing back in. But as I logged back in, the option was there and was already clicked, so I expect it'll work from now on.
I also signed up for a RefWorks account. Looks more complicated to use, so I didn't do anything more with it at this point. It will likely take a lot more time to fully explore it. It would be helpful to take one of the classes the librarians say they will be doing in the future.
I'm not sure how much I will use reference sharing. I don't think it will have a big impact on my work life.
I spent about 45 minutes on thing 8.

Thing 7

I used Google Docs, mainly because I now have a google sign-in, reader, 2 wiki sites, and a calendar. Easiest to have everything in one spot. I added several files that I wanted access to from both home and work--much easier than emailing them to myself, which is what I've done in the past. This way, I know I'll always have the latest version and can access them from anywhere. The only problem I foresee is having to make sure that I make all corrections to the google doc, so I don't have 3 different versions floating around.

This was an easy assignment (but useful) and didn't take very long--maybe 30 minutes.

Thing 6

Although I knew about Wikipedia, of course, I had never thought about the possibility of creating my own wiki (and had never edited one). I decided to create a family wiki using a template on the google wiki site. I plan on using this to potentially post a family blog, announcements, photos, etc. I've been playing around with this for a few days and have learned to use some of google's other applications that can be added to the wiki template, such as google maps and calendar. I want to learn more about how the sharing works, especially with the different "levels" you can specify when you list who can have access. I just shared it with my husband and once ready, I'll share it with other extended family members too. I like that one site covers the whole family (as opposed to facebook) and doesn't require others to join (again, facebook).

I'm really interested in creating a wiki for work also, similar to a mini-intranet for our department. I've been thinking about this for awhile but thought I'd have to start a password protected website. Now I'm wondering if this would work instead. It would be a way of having contact info, a calendar of conferences/meetings, and maybe useful on-call info that people can access from home as well as at work. Although I'm not sure how much I can put on it without running out of space and having to pay extra.

To do the assignment, it took about 45 minutes, including reading and watching the suggested material as well as starting my own basic wiki (more with the extra time spent editing and adding to it).

Thing 5

I knew a fair amount about online video and podcasts, but officially completed this Thing anyway. Youtube is always a fun way to spend some time and I've listened to a quite a few podcasts from NPR before. I've never used Hulu, although I have streamed TV shows through network websites. Standard TV/cable is slowly on its way out, I think. Even now, I rarely watch live tv, but instead watch shows I've recorded on the DVR.

It took me a few minutes to figure out how to post a video onto my blog. I kept looking for a tab to enter the URL into, but finally just pasted the URL into the text area. Even though I was just seeing the long URL, when I clicked on "preview", the URL had disappeared and the video was in its place. I chose a popular music video with a Rube Goldberg theme, just because I think it is fun. Here it is:



I added the podcast for NPR's "Wait, wait, don't tell me" into my RSS feed. Also NEJM's podcast. I tried finding podcasts from journals more closely related to my medical specialty, but I haven't found any yet. I've heard about universities posting podcasts of lectures and I'd love to find some of those. I'd be interested in learning about various topics just for fun (art history, economics, anthropology, etc).

I spent about an hour on this thing, including checking out all of the podcast search websites (which I added to my delicious bookmarks). I also watched some of the video on the anthropology of youtube. Interesting!

Thing 4

I signed up for a Delicious account and added most of my personal computer's bookmarks. I plan on adding my work computer bookmarks also. Having had computers crash and die before (thus losing all of my previous bookmarks), I can see the advantage of having them located at a separate site accessible anywhere. It will also be helpful to have all of my bookmarks in one spot, rather than different ones on different computers, etc. I found the adding and tagging of bookmarks easy. I didn't add a few that I wasn't sure I wanted accessible by others (bank login pages, etc), although I know I can limit who can view them. Privacy worries me slightly, which is one advantage of computer specific bookmarks.
I'm interested in trying the social cataloging sites too, hoping this will help me keep track of what I'm reading and get ideas from others.
I spent about one hour on Thing 4.

Thing 3

I was really excited to learn about RSS, since it sounded like a great way to keep track of many websites in one place. I like the idea of having both personal and medical resources available in one location. I've already added my favorite news sites and some blogs that sounded interesting. I did some searches by entering hobbies into the Google reader add subscription box. Tomorrow I will try to add some medical journal RSS feeds. I'd like to use this to keep up with journals, hoping that by having easy, regular, and mind-free access to the table of contents will help motivate me to read more papers.
I spent about an hour and a half on this, mostly playing around and testing it out, but still feel like I need to play with it over the next few days to get a better hang of it. I found it easy to search for sites on the google reader page, but harder to just go to a website and click on the RSS icon and then figure out how to get it in to my RSS feed reader. Practice will help, I'm sure.
Webcinia looks interesting. I like being able to put in a desired medical specialty and then getting many (but not all) of the top journal TOCs. I need to spend more time looking at it too.

Thing 2

I'm doing these "Things" to attempt to catch up and hopefully stay current with the rapidly changing technology out there. I'm hoping to find ways to include it in both my private and work lives to make things easier and broaden my horizons, so to speak. I didn't know what Web 2.0 was, but now I realize that I interact with it everyday. I just never paid much attention to it or how things have changed over the years.
I spent about 1 hour on this Thing, including watching several youtube videos about Web 2.0, mashups, and others. I also did the pubmed search that was suggested and was surprised I didn't get more results.

Thing 1

My first blog! I missed the 8 Things last year but I'm going to try to do all 16 now.