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.