I have to be honest - I investigated Google Docs because I've used it extensively already and am trying to finish by Oct. 2! I promise to go back at a later date and examine ZohoWriter!
Google Docs is tops in my book. Why? - you don't have to have Word or Excel or PowerPoint on your computer in order to share the documents! This allows you to work anywhere you have a computer that has Net access. On my main computer at home I eschew Brother Bill's Office suite, instead using OpenOffice for my office productivity needs. It's powerful, open source, plays well with Microsoft, and is completely free. This leads to some conflicts when I have to bring work home, as was true in the spring when I had to work on preparing data from some lengthy spreadsheets for a major project in a short amount of time. Google Docs to the rescue! I was able to load my docs, make the necessary new docs from them, and save the new docs back to Google. I could also email the documents to all the people who needed them, both for comments and for final review. This is one of my Top 5 web-based tools!
9/29/2007
Thing 17 - Learning 2.0 Sandbox Wiki
I have to say this was one of the more frustrating discovery assignments. Not because of the assignment itself, but because of the balkiness of the Sandbox and Favorites, run on PBWiki. It locked up my browser twice, gave numerous error messages about cookies (they're enabled for these sites). Additionally, the directions on how to use them were about as clear as mud. Also, when listing my favorites, the editor doesn't keep your selected font choice and size from line to line, even when you simply press Return to skip a line, so for each one I had to re-select the font and size before typing.
Rant over! ;-)
Otherwise, a nice way to share and share some more (common theme emerging in Web 2.0). I remember that for the MLA conference in Ocean City this past May, they posted most of the handouts from the sessions to the conference wiki, which was very handy, as well as recording podcasts that were posted, too.
Rant over! ;-)
Otherwise, a nice way to share and share some more (common theme emerging in Web 2.0). I remember that for the MLA conference in Ocean City this past May, they posted most of the handouts from the sessions to the conference wiki, which was very handy, as well as recording podcasts that were posted, too.
Thing 16 - Wikis
Wikis are the ultimate collaborative tool for things other than Mocrosoft Office products (Word, Excel, etc.). They are completely egalitarian, open, and invite engaged particapation from collaborators. I liked the idea of book group/book list wikis, as in the Princeton model. I also think that for things like branch or systemwide workplans, wikis can be a viable option for generating discussion, authoring policies, visions, etc. Care does need to be exercised when opening wikis to external customers of the library, I think, in the same way Wikipedia exercised due vigilance on its site. I'd wager that any library running teen programs would love to make use of wikis in conjunction with Flickr, MySpace, and other blogging opportunities.
If you want a laugh, one wiki I visited had a link to a hilarious definition of a "librarian", authored (I think) by Stephen Colbert (of the Colbert Report). You can find it at the Uncyclopedia, at http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Librarian.
If you want a laugh, one wiki I visited had a link to a hilarious definition of a "librarian", authored (I think) by Stephen Colbert (of the Colbert Report). You can find it at the Uncyclopedia, at http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Librarian.
Thing 15 - Web 2.0, Library 2.0
I read 3 of the articles, but Rick Anderson's article, "Away from the 'icebergs' ", generated the greatest interest for me and evoked a lot of positive head nodding. I have long been a proponent of doing away with "just in case" collection models, even while the Web was just starting its ascendance to its current position. Such a model seemed wasteful of resources, both human and monetary, then, and even moreso now.
Pursuant to that, I think it is necessary for public libraries in particular to really get on the ball and pay attention to upgrading the technology skills of its librarians. As we all know, ours is an aging profession, and it is not always confortable to learn such daunting new tricks 20+ years into your career. However, without learning these tricks, we both miss the opportunity to gain relevance with a whole new set of users while also pushing our profession towards the (perceived) brink of obsolescence by those same users. If we don't "give 'em what they want", they'll go elsewhere - someone else will gladly build and offer the resources they want, to the cheers of a ready market.
I believe as Patrick Jones once said, that we, as librarians, haven't had a chance to properly mourn the passing of what used to be our profession as we knew and practiced it for so many years. Maybe because the demise was so rapid - literally in a decade - we didn't have any time to mourn, only keep plugging away with greater amounts of work. Whatever, the society we live in now holds the cards and can dictate to us what is wanted; that's the new paradigm, as we as librarians have to embrace the flow and learn how to paddle effectively. maybe that's why Rick has an oar with him in the article.
I also stumbled across a recent post by Helene Blowers, the woman who got this Library 23 Things idea started (came across the LibraryBytes blog) that is germain to this discussion. The link to the brief post is below if you'd care to read it.
Thing 14 - Technorati
Technorati has changed a bit since the original instructions for Thing 14 were posted, so it took a while longer to figure out where to go to be able to search "learning 2.0" as a keyword search, tag search, and blog directory search (now you need to go into advanced searc instead of using a pulldown menu from the front page - a step backwards in my view). It makes sense that a tag search would generate tons more hits that searching blog directories or names. Using the tag option, I got over 26,000 hits, versus around 670 for both the blog directory and name searches. Tags are very useful, and allow you to find a plethora of new blogs covering your interests. Agqain, way too much information out there as we close in on 100 million blogs!
I did "claim" my two blogs, and I put a Technorati button on both sites if you want to "favorite" either. They are tagged appropriately for each subject. Mistakenly, I didn't put in a tag labeled "mdlearn2", so I'll have to go back and fix that.
I did "claim" my two blogs, and I put a Technorati button on both sites if you want to "favorite" either. They are tagged appropriately for each subject. Mistakenly, I didn't put in a tag labeled "mdlearn2", so I'll have to go back and fix that.
9/28/2007
Thing 13 - Del.icio.us
As the 12 minute video was pulled from the Net before I got to this point, I watched another suggested one (the tinyurl one). Del.icio.us reminds me of a cross between Google relevance indexing and citation abstract indexing, Web style, with a dash of communal control over the shaping of the data set. In plain English, things relevant to a person can be found, added, sculpted for a specific or new purpose, then shared back to the community at large, where further evolution can occur. Spiffy! And it's easy to use and lets you take your bookmarks anywhere you can log onto the Net.
I ran some searches on things mundane and obscure, and I notice that for the obscure items, often very small communities exist, which narrows the usefulness of del.icio.us searching. For example, I searched for sites about a very recent software upgrade to a new piece of Adobe software for image editing (Lightroom v.1.2), which has been out for almost a month. There were very few sites, less than 20, addressing the software, and they were largely from Adobe. This meant that the site that had the greatest number of comments (over 200) was helpful, but many of the other sites had fewer than 10 comments, making it hard to get a sense of the community using the sites. By expanding the search to the previous version (1.1), several hundred sites were found with lots of comments that were useful. I think the potential in del.icio.us lies in its networking and social structure, especially in things less esoteric than my test pursuits.
I ran some searches on things mundane and obscure, and I notice that for the obscure items, often very small communities exist, which narrows the usefulness of del.icio.us searching. For example, I searched for sites about a very recent software upgrade to a new piece of Adobe software for image editing (Lightroom v.1.2), which has been out for almost a month. There were very few sites, less than 20, addressing the software, and they were largely from Adobe. This meant that the site that had the greatest number of comments (over 200) was helpful, but many of the other sites had fewer than 10 comments, making it hard to get a sense of the community using the sites. By expanding the search to the previous version (1.1), several hundred sites were found with lots of comments that were useful. I think the potential in del.icio.us lies in its networking and social structure, especially in things less esoteric than my test pursuits.
9/27/2007
Thing 12 - Rollyo
Rollyo - Almost sounds like it should be a children's book (Roly Poly Rollyo), but a very different and useful tool. I created a Rollyo searchbar for digital photography (imagine that!). I added it above the time-wasting Sudoku puzzle generator on the top right, so that it's easier to access when entering my blog. If you haven't figured it out yet, that section of the blog is dedicated to wasting time in a variety of ways.
For looking for sites about any niche interest, Rollyo is a good way to go. It can be quite the time saver when a topic comes up, even in a reference situation on the desk. I can see myself using it for spur-of-the-moment topics that I need to get some sites for. Again, depending on your proclivity for getting intrigued by things great and small, this can be either a time saver or time eater.
For looking for sites about any niche interest, Rollyo is a good way to go. It can be quite the time saver when a topic comes up, even in a reference situation on the desk. I can see myself using it for spur-of-the-moment topics that I need to get some sites for. Again, depending on your proclivity for getting intrigued by things great and small, this can be either a time saver or time eater.
9/26/2007
Thing 11 - LibraryThing
What a wonderful service, and free for the first 200 titles! I've actually been a member of LibraryThing for almost 2 years now, but have never gotten around to adding all my books into it. And I really should, because I've got a lot of books and I love that this site will catalogue them all for me and do 99% of the work! I keep telling myself, where else could I possibly take a list of all my book titles (several thousand at this point) and get them all catalogued for $25, the cost of a lifetime membership?
It's a tremendous way to discover new titles of interest, read reviews by others of books in your collection. I particularly like the fact that you can get suggestions for new titles based on feedback from other LibraryThing users (as long as you have a title that is owned by 75 or more members). This could be a great aid to book discussion groups as well as individually. I laugh decidedly harder when using the UnSuggester, which will give you a list of books (following the same criteria as above, 75 or more owing members) that you will hate based on the book you input. For instance, if you liked Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the UnSuggester suggests you will definitely not like Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic! This site is also really great for discovering like (or otherwise)-minded souls to discuss books with. A former trainer of mine in a seminar uses LibraryThing to catalogue her and her husband's rare and used book collection, which will become her retirement business.
You can visit my little list of titles at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/prakashsteve.
P.S. Yes, I added the Thingology and LibraryThing blogs to my blogroll. I'm hopeless!
It's a tremendous way to discover new titles of interest, read reviews by others of books in your collection. I particularly like the fact that you can get suggestions for new titles based on feedback from other LibraryThing users (as long as you have a title that is owned by 75 or more members). This could be a great aid to book discussion groups as well as individually. I laugh decidedly harder when using the UnSuggester, which will give you a list of books (following the same criteria as above, 75 or more owing members) that you will hate based on the book you input. For instance, if you liked Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the UnSuggester suggests you will definitely not like Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic! This site is also really great for discovering like (or otherwise)-minded souls to discuss books with. A former trainer of mine in a seminar uses LibraryThing to catalogue her and her husband's rare and used book collection, which will become her retirement business.
You can visit my little list of titles at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/prakashsteve.
P.S. Yes, I added the Thingology and LibraryThing blogs to my blogroll. I'm hopeless!
Thing 10 - Online Image generators
Meez has a lot of options for image generation. You can pick everything from skin colr and hair styles through accessories and clothing and nail color. You also get to pick animations for your avatar and backgrounds to put them in. You can create a whole series of avatars under your log-in name. And when you get tired of your outfit, you can take clothes off, put them in your "closet", and get new threads. So my avatar won't freeze when it gets to be chilly, maybe I'll look for some appropriate footwear.
The Generator Blog is a dandy resource for an extensive list of all kinds of generators, both image and otherwise (for instance, you can find a German name generator on this site). I liked it so much I added it to my blogroll! I'm really digging a deeper hole for myself.
Thing 9 - MERLIN, Avatars, Feedster, Technorati, and the Whole Kitchen Sink
Meet my new avatar, courtesy of Meez. His name is Prakashsteve. Oddly enough, he, too, likes photography! I found the link to Meez through the MERLIN site, sort of. Truth be told, I find MERLIN hard to navigate, too busy and crowded with stuff. For instance, if it hadn't been for the link on the 23 Things page, I would have never found the Gaming & Avatars section of the MERLIN website. I think there is a ton of useful information on MERLIN, I just wish it was more user-friendly in its layout.I found Feedster to be really effective at finding all kinds of feeds that interest me. I added a couple to my blogroll, so, as I said in the previous post, there's too much of interest for me to even try to look at it all. I like the fact that it's easy to search for podcasts, which I view regularly to keep up to speed with some of the exotic Photoshop how-tos. Technorati is also pretty good at finding the information you might want, but I'm a tad fonder of Feedster at this point.
As for the standard feed icons, I've noticed them on my Firefox and IE7 browsers. Maybe now I know what to do with them!
Thing 8 - RSS feeds, Bloglines
Who ever said Really Simple Syndication is really simple? Great and efficient technology, but it can lead to an excess of information to try and keep up with. I set up 11 feeds to start with, and one of them, Engadget, posts about 30-40 new items daily! Sometimes by the time I finish reading the latest feeds, presto, a new one has shown up.
Newsreaders are excellent aggregators of information. The one thing they can never do is give you the time to take advantage of all the information that you can set them up to feed you. Granted, some feeds are probably temporary, done for a specific task or project, then no longer useful. Maybe it's just my problem of being intrigued by so many topics that are so easily gathered by RSS that gives me pause about using it. Simply put, it's too easy to get sucked into subscribing to a hundred different feeds of interest.
If you'd like to check my blogroll (before it gets too large), go to: www.bloglines.com/public/prakashsteve. It's a mix of library news, tech news, and photography news.
Newsreaders are excellent aggregators of information. The one thing they can never do is give you the time to take advantage of all the information that you can set them up to feed you. Granted, some feeds are probably temporary, done for a specific task or project, then no longer useful. Maybe it's just my problem of being intrigued by so many topics that are so easily gathered by RSS that gives me pause about using it. Simply put, it's too easy to get sucked into subscribing to a hundred different feeds of interest.
If you'd like to check my blogroll (before it gets too large), go to: www.bloglines.com/public/prakashsteve. It's a mix of library news, tech news, and photography news.
9/21/2007
Thing 6 - Mashups & Trading Cards
Definitely a fun exercise! I found myself wondering: who has the time to work on all these wonderful creations? I guess young people have both time and expertise for such things. It's an interesting way of expressing yourself while sharing the wealth, as it were.
Mappr wasn't working the day I tried it, but it's a neat idea to display information geographically. I bet it helps spark relationships across the world based on, at times, your whims that day. The Color Pickr was astonishingly cool. As an avid photographer, I was impressed that it allowed you to not only choose photos by color but also by luminosity (the relative brightness and intensity of a color) when using the slider.
I did manage to whip up a trading card from one of my quirky rock photos. I could see using this for lots of other applications.
Here's the original photo the from which the trading card was made.
On to Thing 8!
9/19/2007
Things 5 & 7- Flickr Burning Man 2007, Tech Talk
I saw this cool retro wooden telescope while checking out pix on Flickr. I've always enjoyed seeing what people come up with out in the desert during this celebration, and I've always been an avid starwatcher, so this caught my eye.
It reminded me of something I saw recently on a tech site called Tom's Hardware Guide (THG), where they had a competition for building the most outrageous custom computer modification (called "modding"). There were some really cool ones made with wooden cases. I think it would be just perfect as an adjunct to this scope!
Here are a couple of examples:
The Sangaku Japanese Style Wooden PC Case Mod by Nicholas Falzone, featured as the finest Wooden PC Case Mod Ever.
The website these photos came from, http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/62/1/, said of this rig: The most spectacular example of a complete wooden desktop setup we've come across was created by Russian master carpenters in Moscow. The case, monitor, mouse, and keyboard were all hand crafted. And they'll do one for you too but “To be honest we do not have the cheapest masters in Moscow,” so be ready for the a fairly high estimate.I bet!!! I love the look of these, they remind me of TVs in the "old days".
9/18/2007
Things 1-4...Better Late Than Never!
Finally getting started. I've always enjoyed the idea of blogging, but didn't begin until this past May. Then Maryland 23 Things popped up, giving me another chance to learn and play with this format. When I read the pointers, the easiest for me is 7 1/2: Play! Be Curious! Read! I do this naturally. Probably hardest for me is beginning with the end in mind, because my nature is to jump from one idea to the next as it interests me, rather like the style of the Net, with hyperlinks to go to and fro.
I selected a design for this blog, registered it, put on a couple of items, including the time-wasting Sudoku with 5 levels of difficulty, and then stopped to take care of some health issues. So now's the time to catch up! Beware the big eyeball, which is actually a photograph of a section of a rock - it's been known to act like Mad Eye Moody's every now and then, and Halloween is fast approaching!
I selected a design for this blog, registered it, put on a couple of items, including the time-wasting Sudoku with 5 levels of difficulty, and then stopped to take care of some health issues. So now's the time to catch up! Beware the big eyeball, which is actually a photograph of a section of a rock - it's been known to act like Mad Eye Moody's every now and then, and Halloween is fast approaching!
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