Multimedia Madness

I worked through the ninth (and final) week of tools. A lot of cool stuff here. I'm as big a YouTube user as anybody, so it was neat to take a look at other web video providers I otherwise might have ingnored. Especially intriguing to me is VideoJug, which provides a selection of "how-to" videos on a variety of subjects. The videos are of good quality and the site is easily navigable. I much prefer it to YouTube's largely clunky and confusing search mechanism. Also, it should be noted that the one major application missing from this section is the free screen-capture product Jing, an extremely useful tool for making and sharing videos of your computer's desktop. It would be a natural fit here.
I've never been one much for podcasting as a user. On the rare occasions that I've listened to them, I got them through iTunes on my computer. Still, I appreciated learning about other podcast serices available, especially Podomatic, which provides one-stop shopping for creating, distributing, and finding podcasts. It's kind of a ham radio club for podcasters.
Finally, the NetLibrary was cool to try out as well. I had used this before mainly to find electronic text books, not audiobooks, but it's nice to know it can be used to get audio as well. Unfortunately, I couldn't try it out because I only have an iPod :(.
All in all, while all of these multimedia tools might be useful for us and our patrons, there is really only one ultimate reason to use the internet for audio and video. This.

2.0 Tool Overload!!! Danger Will Robinson!!!

The week 8 collection of online productivity tools was fun to go through at first, but soon started to fry my brain. Yes, there are a lot of great tools here.
There are things I already use like Cute PDF Writer and the Google suite of products, along with a whole bunch of tools new to me that can be used to make lists, mind maps, sticky notes, and more more MORE!!!! There are so many tools available to be productive that you'll end up falling behind in your productivity just trying them all out (I know I did :-) )
I think the one that impressed me the most was Zoho. The 23 Things page directs you to their project suite, which isn't free, but they also have a whole suite of free online productivity software (word processor, spreadsheet etc.) that is as useful as MS Office.
Overall, I thought the value of knowing about all these tools was not so much for my own personal use, but rather to be able to show and recommend these tools to patrons. They can be especially beneficial to people whose income precludes them from shelling out a few hundred bucks for Microsoft's software package. These tools are innovative, powerful, and best of all, cheap!

Wikified

Well, I went into the wiki portion of "23 Things" thinking I knew about as much as I needed to know about wikis. That certainly wasn't the case. In the wikis I have used (PBWiki being the main one), I just used regular HTML markup to create things like links, lists, headers etc. Using the Confluence software, the one used on the SLA's wikispaces, I learned a bit about wiki markup, which is very different. It follows the same principles as HTML, but has its own form and structure. I also learned a bit about Wikipedia's wiki markup in the process, something I ought to know better than I do. So anyway, I created a wiki page in SLA's sandbox, using the bits of wiki markup I learned. View it while you can-- it only stays up temporarily. While you're at it, please scroll down to the picture I uploaded and dream about the summer months...

Fun with Library Thingy and Rollyo!

I had signed up for a Library Thing account a while back, but it must have gotten deleted. So, I created a new one. I actually like this tool. It's fun to see what other people think about the things you read, as well as find out about things you haven't read yet. I use a similar tool on Facebook, which I only use because it's convenient, but I think I'll have to give Library Thing another chance.
A public library could do great things with this tool, I think. It could facilitate online book clubs and coordinate reading lists for groups of people interested in a particular literary or cultural theme.
Rollyo didn't excite me nearly as much, but I could see this as useful tool in any kind of library. For one, it would be a great tool for building trustworthy free web resources for patrons to use in a variety of topics. Librarians can guide patrons past poorly-constructed, dated, or useless web resources to the really good ones. Also, a special librarian in, say, a corporate setting could construct a tidy resource of web materials to share with a collaborative team, helping them keep their work consistent by using the same prescribed resources. A neat tool, all things considered.

Avatar Rant

I was very disappointed in the avatar-making tools for 23 Things. Avatars can be fun, and there are a number of good ones out there, such as theSimpsons or South Park ones. The ones recommended at 23 Things offered so few choices clothing- or body type-wise that, unless you're a skinny anime-loving teenybopper, there really isn't any way to make an avatar even close to what you look like. It's fun to do, and avatars can be useful in establishing your online "persona" (if you will) but I would implore the 23 Things folks to do a little better research on avatar creators. End rant.

Image Chef

Here I Am!

Hi Guys,

At last, I finally had a chance to get things set up and am posting my very first blog entry. Over the past few weeks I have been messing around with RSS feeds and Google reader. This week, I spent time exploring and reading several library related web 2.0 blogs. My goal next week is to try out a few of social networking/bookmarking sites like Twitter or Flickr.

See you tomorrow AM,
Zach

Delicious

So Delicious is amazing. I have been using it this afternoon. I purposely skipped it when we started the conquest of 23 Things. Now, I have to say, I see why it's such a popular 2.0.
Cheers,
See you tomorrow!

100% RSS-Fed Guy

Hey guys,
I've been using Google Reader for a while now, so I thought I'd try Bloglines. It's not bad, but it's a bit annoying. I couldn't get it to read one of my favorite blogs, and when subscribing to a feed they put you through a few extra hoops-- don't know why, I guess just to make sure you really really want to subscribe to the feed. I much prefer Google Reader. Have you all tried any? What do you prefer?

Today

I didn't get a chance to tell you before class started but I had to go give a presentation for another class.
On Wednesday and Thursday night, I had a chance to briefly try Twitter and am going to explore it a little more this weekend and will then report on it class next Friday.
How is everyone else doing?

My Flickr Account

Hildy
Originally uploaded by FatWhiteLump

Hi All, I set up a Flickr account and can now blog to our blog from it. Here's a picture of my deeply insane cat, Hildy. Isn't she precious? ; )

Interesting Question

At the end of the Week Three unit, there are some questions to ponder after learning about these tools. I though maybe we could talk about one of the questions, namely--

How do you plan to incorporate Web 2.0 tools and technologies into your products and services?

I think social bookmarking is a great way for reference librarians to share resources with patrons in an ongoing dialogue. It can be used to build a relationship with a patron going beyond the basic question-and-answer session. It's sometimes hard, in a reference situation, to get in all that you may want to share with a patron, and you certainly don't want to overwhelm them with all that you know. But social bookmarks can be shared over a period of time, allowing reference librarians to have something that lasts beyond the initial contact. That's how I imagine it, anyways-- what do you all think?

Weeks 2 and 3

Hey guys, I'm working my way through some of the week 2 and 3 stuff-- kinda rapidly, as I'm pretty familiar with blogging and tagging. Where are you guys at?

Our Blog

Welcome to our blog! Nothin' much to report yet...