Google Reader and RSS feeds

Awesome! Glad to be learning about these features, and was surprised (and bummed) to discover that the Chicago Botanic Garden does not have a feed...there's got to be a master gardener there who could provide helpful tips to us amateurs during the summer months!

Reflection on Technology

I do love email. It is an amazingly efficient way to communicate with people quickly and effectively. It makes it so easy to plan a dinner with friends, set up an appointment with your plumber or electrician, plan a vacation, or keep in touch with relatives overseas.

The one drawback is that it does not convey tone of voice, so that inflection, humor, sarcasm, excitement, anger, etc. can get lost in the text. While emoticons convey some of this for the sender and recipient, I foresee a time when different fonts might be used within the email message (with a click on a sidebar of pre-set emotion/font options which eventually become universal, instead of the dropdown and scroll method) to help convey emotions more easily. This might contribute a little bit toward world peace and understanding! :-)

Blog-finity?

While I value the idea of being familiar with how blogs are created for this assignment, I do feel that the online world is being crippled by the musings and blatherings of a seemingly infinite number of self-important and self-absorbed people with too much time on their hands. I wonder how much longer so many will remain afflicted with dear-diary-itis... That said, there are a few bloggers who are literate, creative, funny, and informative. This isn't all that surprising--for the few stand-outs among the thousands mirror precisely what I've found to be true for printed books. Among the thousands of books published every year, there are a few that are outstanding, but many more that reflect an average or below-average level of talent.