Sometimes I feel like my communications sound like Jack Handy (for those of you who do not remember - Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy was a Saturday Night Live skit).
I've really enjoyed participating in Learning Challenge 2.0. While I was behind for a portion of the challenge, I learned that you can make time to learn something(s) new. Essentially, I see the challenge as both fun and functional. The fun element is present in that there is an element of play and exploration. The functional element is present in that these are tools and skills we can use to not only connect with our users, but also increase the functionality of our existing tools and services to meet the user's information seeking behaviors.
When I came into this challenge I thought I knew a thing or two about web 2.0. What I really came to find out was that there is so much out there that I didn't have a clue about. I guess I had become stagnant with some of the neat 2.0 tools like last.fm and myspace, but the thing with web 2.0 is that you cannot remain stagnant. It is always changing and to keep up with this continual evolution, you have to be a lifelong learner and not let stagnation get the best of you :)
I really enjoyed the online image generator, rollyo, playing with a wiki, the online productivity tools and of course - librarything.
This has been a wonderful experience and if something similar was offered in the future I would definitely participate.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Ah - facebook. There are a couple of reasons why I like facebook. There is the networking potential with other library colleagues. Also from the people connection standpoint, this site has been great with finding friends from high school who I have not seen in ages. While I've been able to locate more people from my past and present on myspace, there is a gap in that some people sign up for either one social networking site versus another. Facebook has a wide range of applications that are really easy to add versus myspace which tends to be a little bit more difficult to add applications. In addition to the networking benefit of facebook in a workplace setting there is also the opportunity to find out more about your co-workers which is especially beneficial in a large library/company. People place pictures and descriptions of themselves on facebook and it allows you to peer into their personal world which is sometimes difficult in a real life work setting. Also, reading comments from other people about the individual also adds insight and often laughter.
As for a library being on facebook, it is definitely a way to make oneself visible to a demographic and that is generally college students. For an academic library especially, there holds potential in facebook. The question is with this visibility, what can a library post or display that would interest facebook/library users and keep them coming back? There are event feeds for NSU and perhaps this is one way we could utilize this visibility. Honestly though, if I see things that are not related to my friends, I often ignore them. This is just me and other people's information scanning habits are different, but one must wonder how can a library best market itself in this medium? This is my question to now ponder.
As for a library being on facebook, it is definitely a way to make oneself visible to a demographic and that is generally college students. For an academic library especially, there holds potential in facebook. The question is with this visibility, what can a library post or display that would interest facebook/library users and keep them coming back? There are event feeds for NSU and perhaps this is one way we could utilize this visibility. Honestly though, if I see things that are not related to my friends, I often ignore them. This is just me and other people's information scanning habits are different, but one must wonder how can a library best market itself in this medium? This is my question to now ponder.
Podcasts
I used Yahoo Podcasts and Podcastalley.com to locate a podcast. What I really disliked about the Yahoo Podcast site was that it kept defaulting to Online Music stores and you had to click another tab to get into the podcasts. I liked Podcastalley a bit better as you could pick a genre and then browse from there. I was able to locate "Grammar Girls Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing" which I had actually listened to awhile back on my ipod (podcast downloaded via iTunes). Really a great little podcast to brush on on grammar and it is funny too. This time I added the poscast to my bloglines account. Upon seeing the page with the XML script, I copied the address from the address bar and then pasted it into bloglines and selected search for feeds. It takes a few steps and i use to be completely baffled with the whole XML script page, but everything is much better now and i feel more comfortable with the technology. BTW the link is http://www.qdnow.com/grammar.xml
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
You Tube
This is one of my all time favorite youtube videos. I like YouTube. Sometimes finding interesting stuff in the featured browse is difficult and sometimes you run across some real cool stuff. The above video is fantastic and my favorite version of the "______ took a photo of themselves for ____ days" craze last year. It is long, but worth the watch. Libraries could use YouTube to put up tutorials or have an introductory video to the library.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
2.0 Award winners
Meebo.com
We all know that chatting is very popular and that people often have 2 or more chatting accounts. Meebo is a web-based version for chat accounts that will allow you to login into either one or all your accounts at one time. I remember the days of trillan and perhaps trillan is still around, but I just remember that AOL did not like to play with trillan and would always end up messing things up. Also, I remember that trillan was considered a no no by the companies who at that time had chat programs. Now it looks like it is quite supported. Meebo is very easy to use and is an alternative for those at the reference computers who insist on chatting. Since it is web-based nothing has to be downloaded and they can proceed. I've actually seen a meebo widget on a library web-page for library chat and this way you don't have to have an aol and yahoo account - one meebo account will suffice and you can chat with anyone and not be restriced by their chat service of origin.
Another award winner that I love and use with a great degree of frequency is last.fm. This site allows you to listen to music that you like! While I like the discovery of online radio stations, i can at times get fed up with the commercials or having to listen to music I detest while listen to stations that I generally like. On last.fm, you can choose a band and then listen to a station of similar artists. It makes recommendations and the best part is, if you don't like a song - you can skip it! Also, there are no commercials. If you sign up for one of their free accounts, the create a station for you based on your likes and dislikes. Like amazon suggesting books, but here -- you actually get to listen to the music in its entirety. To fine tune this you can express you like or dislike for songs as they play. I've actually discovered quite a few new artists - from strangely enough Sweden as of late. Its also a social network where you can share with your friends who also have accounts. I love it.
We all know that chatting is very popular and that people often have 2 or more chatting accounts. Meebo is a web-based version for chat accounts that will allow you to login into either one or all your accounts at one time. I remember the days of trillan and perhaps trillan is still around, but I just remember that AOL did not like to play with trillan and would always end up messing things up. Also, I remember that trillan was considered a no no by the companies who at that time had chat programs. Now it looks like it is quite supported. Meebo is very easy to use and is an alternative for those at the reference computers who insist on chatting. Since it is web-based nothing has to be downloaded and they can proceed. I've actually seen a meebo widget on a library web-page for library chat and this way you don't have to have an aol and yahoo account - one meebo account will suffice and you can chat with anyone and not be restriced by their chat service of origin.
Another award winner that I love and use with a great degree of frequency is last.fm. This site allows you to listen to music that you like! While I like the discovery of online radio stations, i can at times get fed up with the commercials or having to listen to music I detest while listen to stations that I generally like. On last.fm, you can choose a band and then listen to a station of similar artists. It makes recommendations and the best part is, if you don't like a song - you can skip it! Also, there are no commercials. If you sign up for one of their free accounts, the create a station for you based on your likes and dislikes. Like amazon suggesting books, but here -- you actually get to listen to the music in its entirety. To fine tune this you can express you like or dislike for songs as they play. I've actually discovered quite a few new artists - from strangely enough Sweden as of late. Its also a social network where you can share with your friends who also have accounts. I love it.
Zoho
Below is the text of my zoho writer experience. I had problems posting it to my blog and also exporting it into HTML. I will play with those at a later time, but here are my thoughts as recorded in ZOHO.
While signing up for my zoho writer account I remembered a blog post I had seen awhile back where the writer suggested that one could use the human input in the secret anti-spam code to confirm ocr text from scanned documents. In other words, instead of having to devote staff time in some digital projects to rechecking the ocr of a scanned document you could use the human interaction with these anti-spam to recheck it. The only problem with this and given it has been awhile since I read the article, but from what I understand, what one inputs in the anti-spam box is checked against some "answer," hence, if the ocr was incorrect one would not be allowed to proceed. Great concept and I'm sure there might eventually be some way around this like having some initial human correction and then simply using this approach to double checking the ocr (which is btw optical character recognition). You can use OCR on scanned documents of text which are at that point simply images and when you ocr the document you can pull the words out and then make the document image searchable as the words are now pulled out and indexed along with the image of the text. In the case of older script or handwritten documents, OCR does not generally work and does require that a human read and type out separately what is said.
As for zoho, I like it. I was not aware of it. While it may create too much confusion at the desk, it is an option for those that simply want to type up something and since we have no access to word or another word-processing product, this web-based product might be a work-around.
While signing up for my zoho writer account I remembered a blog post I had seen awhile back where the writer suggested that one could use the human input in the secret anti-spam code to confirm ocr text from scanned documents. In other words, instead of having to devote staff time in some digital projects to rechecking the ocr of a scanned document you could use the human interaction with these anti-spam to recheck it. The only problem with this and given it has been awhile since I read the article, but from what I understand, what one inputs in the anti-spam box is checked against some "answer," hence, if the ocr was incorrect one would not be allowed to proceed. Great concept and I'm sure there might eventually be some way around this like having some initial human correction and then simply using this approach to double checking the ocr (which is btw optical character recognition). You can use OCR on scanned documents of text which are at that point simply images and when you ocr the document you can pull the words out and then make the document image searchable as the words are now pulled out and indexed along with the image of the text. In the case of older script or handwritten documents, OCR does not generally work and does require that a human read and type out separately what is said.
As for zoho, I like it. I was not aware of it. While it may create too much confusion at the desk, it is an option for those that simply want to type up something and since we have no access to word or another word-processing product, this web-based product might be a work-around.
PBwiki
Very easy to use, once you know where things are. As with any new site or program, it takes a bit to get accustomed to what button is what and where to go, etc.
I did feel a bit nervous adding my blog link as it pulled the books link up to the line with it. So there is the potential that those who have no clue what they're doing can mess up format. It was really easy to fix though as it had an undo button similar to the one in word. When I posed my favorite movie, it was much more easy and i felt much more comfortable making changes.
I did feel a bit nervous adding my blog link as it pulled the books link up to the line with it. So there is the potential that those who have no clue what they're doing can mess up format. It was really easy to fix though as it had an undo button similar to the one in word. When I posed my favorite movie, it was much more easy and i felt much more comfortable making changes.
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