Resources from July Tech Talk

Guest speaker Mike Miller couldn't make it, but we still covered a few things at the July Tech Talk meeting. Here's the brief overview:

1. Picnik - web-based photo editing program that connects to Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, etc. Picnik isn't as full-featured as Photoshop, but even the free version can do basic editing tasks well. It's a great example of the web as platform--full-featured software residing on the web rather than on individual computers.
2. Awesome Highlighter - A Firefox extension that lets you highlight information on web pages and add sticky notes to them, then share the marked-up pages with others. When you turn it on and start highlighting, it saves a copy of the marked-up page on the Awesome Highlighter site and gives you a URL for the saved page. You can send that URL to others, who can view that page without an Awesome Highlighter account. Awesome Highlighter could be useful for virtual reference, to call a user's attention to relevant information on a page. It could also be useful for research, allowing you to highlight and annotate pages for future reference. Two caveats: a) The marked-up pages didn't display properly in Internet Explorer 7, and b) third-party services like Awesome Highlighter that host your data can go away at any time. I recommend using the service for research short-term, rather than counting on your marked-up pages being available for months or years.
3. Firefox 3 - I've been using the latest release of Firefox since the day it became available for download. According to most reviewers, the biggest improvements are on the back end: it has better security and anti-phishing features, runs faster, and uses fewer system resources than its predecessors. It also uses databases to manage bookmarks and web history, making these more easily searchable. Note: some extensions do not yet work with Firefox 3.
   

January Tech Talk meeting

We discussed an interesting mix of resources at the January Tech Talk meeting on Wednesday. Here's a quick summary:

MedInfoNow's CatalogConnect: CatalogConnect is a new service from MedInfoNow (formerly Doody's), which allows us to link from the catalog to book information. The book information, compiled from Matthews Medical Books, Amazon, and MedInfoNow, includes publisher summaries, MedInfoNow reviews, and more. I'm working on implementing the links using WebBridge in the catalog's staging area. Once it's ready to go, we'll add it to the live catalog.

Web 2.0 sites for bookworms:

• LibraryThing: LibraryThing is designed primarily for cataloging personal book collections, though some people use it to manage reading lists too. You can add reviews and ratings, get recommendations, and read reviews from other users.
• GoodReads: Unlike LibraryThing, GoodReads is designed to manage your reading list. You can tag books as to-read, reading, or read, plus create custom tags if you wish. You can also add friends on the site, and you'll be notified when your friends add books to their shelves or post reviews.
  
• Books iRead: Books iRead is a Facebook application similar to GoodReads. You tag books as read, reading, or to-read and add ratings or reviews. You can see what your friends are reading, and the application includes a Never-Ending Book Quiz that consists of about 85% Harry Potter questions but is still addictive.

Wesabe: A web 2.0 site for financial management? Yep. Wesabe is a free, web-based personal finance tool that includes some of the basic functions of Quicken or Microsoft Money. More advanced features aren't available--yet. According to the FAQ, the developers are planning to implement advanced features, but they won't be free. It's easy to upload data to Wesabe, and the ability to tag transactions is useful.

Infodoodads: Infodoodads is a technology blog by 6 librarians, at least some of whom have Oregon connections. They post about interesting sites that demonstrate new technologies, providing a great source for discovering useful new resources.

Yahoo Pipes: Yahoo Pipes is a platform for creating your own mashups. Mix up RSS feeds, Flickr photos and more to create custom information resources.

Sometime during the discussion, someone asked if it is possible to export photos from Flickr. I dug around a bit, and I can't find a way to do it. There are lots of ways to get photos into Flickr, but as far as I can tell, you can only get them out manually.

Medical education sites in Second Life

The list of "Top educational locations in Second Life" from HealthCyberMap includes over 20 virtual learning centers. The compilers of the list have also written about their research on the educational value of 3D virtual worlds in the article "Second Life: an overview of the potential of 3-D virtual worlds in medical and health education" (Health Info Libr J., 2007 Dec;24(4):233-45).

Embed Flickr photos in blogs and web pages

We're covering Flickr in the Web 2.0 class this week, so I decided to create some documentation on how to embed Flickr photos in blog posts, web pages, and other web-based tools (like Sakai discussion posts). Since we're covering Flickr, I created this documentation in Flickr as a series of three screenshots with write-ups in the description fields. I thought I'd share them here too, in case others find them useful. Just click on each image to go to a larger version in Flickr.

Digital divide, Web 2.0, and the real world

Here's a wonderfully written and thoughtful short essay from John Gehner, originally posted to the PUBLIB list, then republished on the website of the Hunger, Homelessness & Poverty Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table of ALA. It provides a nice counterpoise to much of the breathless reportage on Libraries 2.0.

Upload video to YouTube from your cell phone

At Tech Talk yesterday, we talked about uploading video to YouTube from video-enabled cell phones. It's possible! Allen found an announcement on C-Net from last May about it, and I searched the YouTube Help Center this morning and found instructions. So fire up those video phones and share your masterpieces with the world!

A Web 2.0 Experience

I had an interesting web 2.0 experience last week. I got a message on Flickr from a woman who wanted permission to use one of my photos in a software program she was creating for autistic children. I'm not sure how she found the photo, a picture of my son taken on vacation last summer, since it's tagged only with my son's name:



Apparently her software uses pictures to illustrate concepts like listening, to help autistic kids make the connection between words and their meanings. If you want to know more, you can visit her web site at http://www.hiyah.net/software.html.

Anyway, this experience got me thinking a bit about how web 2.0 technologies can bring people together in amazing new ways. How would this woman have found photos for her software before sites like Flickr became available? She would likely either have to purchase stock photos or take her own, either of which would increase the cost of producing her programs. And would I have ever gotten in touch with someone like her? Probably not. Web 2.0 sites like Flickr and YouTube bring people together based on the content they create, rather than stated interests, geographic proximity, etc. And we never know who will be interested in our content, or for what purpose. We just put it out there, tag it, and see what happens.

Chief Thingamabrarian

Chief Thingamabrarian is Tim Spalding, creator of LibraryThing. An article in the current issue of Library Journal features an interview with Spalding in which he talks about integrating LibraryThing into library catalogs, providing an inexpensive way for libraries to offer tagging, reviews, ratings, etc. I'll be interested to see how the new features work. With any luck, he'll give the traditional (and expensive) vendors a run for their money.

Infomania

A story from the Seattle PI reports on a 2-day workshop at Microsoft last week devoted to "infomania" -- "the loss of concentration caused by the constant electronic interruptions that plague many office workers." The article notes some possible technological solutions to the problem (my favorite: a snooze button for email) and also notes that many people overuse Reply to All and copy people who really don't need to receive the message. The article ends with a few tips for managing email and information overload. Worth a read if only to reassure us that we aren't alone in dealing with this problem.

Social Networking Awards

Mashable.com just posted their 2006 social networking awards. The post serves as a useful directory of social networks by category--general ones like MySpace and Facebook, plus social networks for video, photos, music, etc. I've only heard of about a fifth of the ones they mention; clearly I'm behind the times.

Friends and Identity on Social Networking Sites

I just finished reading a fascinating piece in First Monday called Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing Community Into Being on Social Network Sites, which analyzes the relationship between choosing online friends and constructing identity on social networking sites. If you’re interested in social networking, it’s worth a read. FYI, I wrote a detailed blog post about the article on my personal blog at http://crumj.blogspot.com/2006/12/friends-and-identity-on-social.html — definitely an optional read :-)

Meebo and Librarians

There's a nice post on the Meebo blog (meeblog » Blog Archive » librarian love) about librarians and Meebo. Apparently librarians are beginning to put the Meebo Me widget on library web pages to make it easy for patrons to open chat sessions. The comments on the post are also fascinating. A common theme is that Meebo allows people to circumvent filtering software, common in libraries and workplaces, that blocks access to chat programs.

If you want to see a Meebo widget, take a look at my staff page; I have one embedded in the top righthand corner.

Ripping DVDs may never be the same again | Perspectives | CNET News.com

Here's a column that summarizes an interesting copyright case, Paramount Pictures v. Load 'N Go Video:
Ripping DVDs may never be the same again | Perspectives | CNET News.com

This case potentially could be a landmark in digital copyright history.

The Google Divide - October 15, 2006 - Library Journal

Check out John Berry III's editorial in Library Journal about generational differences and resistance to change:
The Google Divide - October 15, 2006 - Library Journal

Maybe fodder for a TechTalk discussion sometime?