Reflecting on Tech Games, thus far

This is icon for social networking website. This is part of Open Icon Library’s webpage icon package. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I can’t claim I am learing a lot, but it is good to get a refresher on some things. As stated before, the Tech Games is about half social networking, half county technological resources. As I have blogs, twitter and Facebook accounts, and have tried almost every RSS reader, these activities have been little more than reviewing. The two wrinkles being: 1) most social networks are blocked on county computers, and 2) county computers are equipped with IE 8, which was released in 2009, ancient history in Internet time, and can’t render some of these websites correctly. But one makes do. NewsBlur has been an interesting learning experience. I am a Google fan and I use most of their products, including Google Reader for RSS. NewsBlur was able to pull my feeds from Reader without much hassle. I can’t say that I am impressed. Reader is still a better reader than NewsBlur on the interface side and the fact that NewsBlur only allows you to have 64  feeds (Reader has no limits) is a big turn off. After trying NewsBlur for a couple weeks, I can’t say that I will switch but it has its place.

Where I am learning is with the county’s technological resources. Learning to scan, email, and fax on county equipment is important. Taking the time to learn these things now will save me from figuring them out when I am in a rush to get something done.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see the Channel 16 library video. It was well produced and informative. I was a little disappointed to see that it was the only video from the library and wondered if a regularly updated video highlighting new library resources and services would be beneficial to users.

Tech Games has five weeks left.