Things 11_Tagging, Del.icio.us & Furl

Just recently, when I was sorting a number of websites trying to find the ones that matched my current information need I thought to myself "Gee, I really need to start tagging sites." With having recently picked up an RSS Feeder addiction, I've been developing my love of tagging good posts with my feeds but that's so limited!

I absolutely see this as a tool for research, particularly for Web 2.0 and tech topics that are fluttering about on the blogosphere and other sites. And these are also great resources to share with other people (and techie librarians)!

However, at the same time there are draw backs. I'm still figuring out how to create memorable yet unique tags that will allow me to point others toward them and share what I'm finding interesting.

Of course, I also wish that these programs allowed for more interaction. My temporary solution is to have a wiki where people can interact with me about items I've tagged... but I just noticed that Furl does allow for comments, so that's a step in the right direction. This is definitely an area, where I'm going to continue to tinker because I see a lot of promise.

Thing_10 Wikis!

This particular thing couldn't have come at a better time in my personal life. My boyfriend and I are apartment hunting together, and I created a PB Wiki for us to coordinate our list of prospective apartments, which we both add to and access at times. We have a set list of information that we list about each location, including a link to the orignal online ad, if available, and then, we also list all of our follow-up by location. This allows us both to be calling and following up with landlords/apartment managers and maintain our common knolwedge. To complete the story, we are also using a shared Google Calendar with maps to the apartments embedded as links so that we can access and print from anywhere.

On to a library perspective toward Wikis - I see this as a fantastic place for librarians and staff to collaborate in an easy to use space. I love that St. Joseph has created a simple guide to their library and commonly searched topics; this is a fantastic example of using new technology to allow increased flexibility without requiring HTML or other web programming.

I'm definitely going to continue exploring the Wiki concept. I have plans to use them in other areas of my personal life for coordination (because I love organizing).

Thing_9

Requested permission to edit both the Google & Zoho documents but haven't received a response yet. I'm going to skip on to the next item for now.

Thing 8_Share Your Creation 2

On to Vuvox! I am really enamored with this site and the possibilities it offers. I was first exposed to it during a presentation by the New Media Consortium on the 2008 Horizon Report. They used the Vuvox collage to create their mixed-media presentation, which caused me to have two immediate reactions. I did not like it for a traditional presentations, having the edges visible as is somewhat inevitable, seemed distracting. BUT at the same time, I saw amazing artistic opportunities. I first tried the publically available settings which were cool but disappointing in their cookie-cutter nature, but I applied to try out Collage, which is currently in private beta testing.

Below is my first attempt with Collage, which has all of the customizations that I'd hoped for:

Thing 8_Share Your Creation

With a deep sigh, I must admit to being somewhat addicted to the slide-designing capabilities found in MS PowerPoint. Faced with the opportunity to try a variety of programs, I chose the one with the greatest features - Zoho. I can absolutely see a library using this, especially if they (or their audience) did not have access to PowerPoint. The features were pretty decent, with a good layout and relatively MS-like options. Additionally, the Zoho folks are working toward adding cool features like slide transitions and more clip art.

Below is my satirical play on a presentation. I've made some references to aboriginal people and in particular the Sami, which I studied during my ungrad college education. All joking aside, I have a deep respect for these cultures, their oral traditions and their rights both internationally and within their home countries.



Edit: After initially posting my presentation, I decided to add a few slides and yes, it automatically updated in my blog too. This could be very, very handy for presentations that are dynamic with technology. It's also possible to share the presentation with others for collaboration - another cool feature.

Thinkering Space...

The Shifted Librarian posted on the Thinkering Space an amazing library & technology mashup conceived of by Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design and funded by the MacArthur Foundation.

When I see visions of the future like this one that have reached the protype stage, I become very excited for libraries and their opportunity to share this sort of technology with communities.

Not a Thing... But Web 2.0 Still

All right, thanks to Jon Zetah 23 Things Blog, I've been introduced to Voki, a quirky but cool avatar building wizard. Here's my final product:


Get a Voki now!

Thing 7_Web 2.0 Communication Tools

These are my forms of communication. My friends and even my boyfriend's parents use e-mail as their primary form of communcation. My parents make an occasional appearance on e-mail and they always reply when I send them e-mails.

Of course, my office uses e-mail and I have worked to make myself more productive. I maintain a zero inbox strategy! When I see people who don't or have given up on it, I wonder how they deal with the chaos in there. I also have turned off my notification flag for e-mail and have just reconfigured my send receive setting to every 10 minutes (instead of instantaneously).

My friends circle uses IM throughout their day. Most of us have our personal computers configured to open up our preferred chat device on start-up. I generally use Trillian, which is a chat client that allows for integration of MSN, AOL, Yahoo, ICQ & IRC. The paid version also includes Google Talk. I have been using Trillian for about 8 years.

SMS or cell phone texting is definitely not my favorite thing, but I do send and receive message. My most regular messages come from DJ friends who send out invitations to their shows on that forum, and even allow for us to respond if we'd like to be added to a guest list.

And, as a remote member of my department, I provide most of my training via WebEx, which is our company's chosen web conferencing software. I also train other members of my department on using WebEx... which I am realizing is a little ironic at this very moment.

So after some personal tech reverly - on to the important topic. How do I see this fitting into libraries? I am all for e-mail and chat reference services. I see those as ways that I would be far more likely to ask a reference question. Especially as a student who lives off campus, I do not tend to reside in the library and so when I have a question, it is usually when I am in my apartment.

I also believe that offering web conference training is a fantastic idea for all sorts of folks. As a college student, I would have appreciated being able to sign up for demos on using the latest database tools, special resources and topics. Recently, there was a post on iLibrarian titled 6 Free Web Conferencing Tools Librarians Will Love.

So overall, I would say that I am definitely a Web 2.0 communication advocate. However, Twitter is not my style. I find that most of the information my friends are generating there is cute and funny but not something I would want to have streaming into my life real-time.

Thing 6_Online Image Generators

Okay... the trading card feature on Big Huge Labs is lame, and I'm not just saying that to sound like a super-cool 14 year old. Here's why: lacks customization, lacks automatic cropping of text spaces, bad font (with no options) and cheesy layout.



I know one of the Carlton librarians and she raved about her trading card. I loved their trading cards and I can absolutely see how this would be a great technique for introducing librarians, their skills, specialties and contact information. I will be exploring the other image generators and experimenting with my own software and applications to create a slick trading card.

As you may have noticed, in my trading card I am standing beside a banner that proclaims "Justice League" with a smiling super hero. I work for a very whimiscal company, where departments choose "internal names" that are fun and inspiring and so the Legal Department is known as the Justice League! I suspect my VP would love to have a super hero trading card.

Thing 5_More Fun with Flickr!

Oh the delight of techie time wasters! Sites like Spell with Flickr are delightful time waters but do they have any other purpose? I believe that small apps & mash-ups allow for people to dip their toe into the water of creativity with technology, and by exposing people to these mini-applications, libraries help inspire new bloggers, computer programmers and web designers. They also create the amazing cross flow between technology and other disciplines.

Quirky, ala Spell with Flickr:



I putzed around with Big Huge Labs application, as well, but chose not to create yet another account. It was cute and fun, but not all that exciting to me. I'm sure children would enjoy sharing their photos as puzzles and benefit from the spatial skills required to assemble them.

As to sharing my Flickr account, thus far I've only chosen to mark a few images as public, mostly those which are part of my craft projects and landscape images. All of the other images are labeled friends and family only. I have concerns regarding anonimity and personal space on the web.

Thing 4_Flickr

Alas, my personal laptop is taking a spa vacation at the Best Buy service center, and I had a few crazy weeks between work and personal vacations, but I've returned and am excited to chatter about Flickr.

When I initially began exploring Flickr, Muriel (my laptop) was still here in Minneapolis, so I found and installed the bulk upload tool. Immediately, I upload my limit of 100mb photos for the month within 12 hours.

First, I love bulk upload tools - they allow for people to use the web as a convienent secondary storage device. If you're stuck uploading anything one item at a time, it's unlikely to be a time saver. I could see this being especially important for instutions that are looking to make a collection available to the public.

Next, the tags in Flickr are truly genius. After a few brief tag searches, I found this beautiful picture of the Como Botanical Garden:



The photographer Zak Metz, has a number of amazing images on his Flickr profile and thanks to a creative commons, I can share this image for the education purpose.

Also, I began tagging my own photos, which is really quite exciting for being able to personally share images with friends and family. Libraries could also make sure of this site for sharing visual collections, hosting photos for their website, posting photos and images regarding events.

I've also used Photobucket and tried out Picasa. My experience with Picasa was rather disconcerting. I downloaded the application to take advantage of the photo editing features and suddenly, the app was attempting to find and categorize every application on my work laptop. Unfortunately, I had thousands of images of physician credentialing documents and I could not find a way to STOP it, so I closed the program and uninstalled it immediately. So... I'm a little concerned about Picasa's overzealous nature, but I have several friends, including two semi-professional photographers, who use Google's program.