Keeping Up

I plan to keep up with the "web 2.0" tools, because I have to. The world changes very fast, and new forms of communication come and go, but in order to stay connected in my chosen field of study I should stay on top of what it now. I perceive librarians as often being on the forefront of new forms of communication, hacking out missives in what ever new form comes along. And this is a good thing. These tools are just that, tools. They do not shape what we do, we shape what we do with them. I've found some of these tools to be very useful. I keep up with facets of the world through an RSS reader, I communicate via SMS, e-mail, and IM everyday. And doing 23 things has given me a reason to try some tools that I never felt I had a need for, like a blog or LibraryThing. It renewed my use of del.icio.us.
One tool that I find useful is Yahoo Pipes. This an aggregator and feed builder. It's good for mashing up content from all around the web. It's got an incredibility steep learning curve, and I'm not very handy with it yet, but the things that you can do with it are amazing. Things like this pipe, that creates an RSS feed out of a mashup of search engine results. It's a tool with a lot of uses.