Queens Library's Learning 2.0 Is Awesome

I am happy and grateful that Queens Library, as one of the biggest library systems in the US is so determined to bring Emerging Technologies close to the staff. I roughly spend about 1-2 hours per day trying to keep up with everything new in the field of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. For me the trip is worth the try.

My favorite discovery on Queens Library Learning 2.0 was creating a customized search engine with Rollyo and cataloging books with Library Thing.

The amount of information presented was balanced, and well organized. The instructions for each technology were the right length, clear and understandable.

Are these the only 23 1/2 things that we have to learn?

No

I hope that Queens Library's Learning 2.0 is the beginning of a an interesting journey for many staff members. I also want too thank Karen Keys for her outstanding job in preparing the 2.0 study guide.

There is room for some minor improvements and I hope to be able to be part of the team who will create the next Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 discovery program in Queens Library.

I Am Signing For Mobipocket Reader ASAP

Believe it or not I am still using an old phone but I plan to change it in the first few months of 2008. The minute I do that ( BlackBerry 8700g is the free phone that I will be getting) I will sign for Mobipocket Reader to read books while commuting and synchronize calendar and email.

It is amazing how easy the OverDrive Digital Media Guided Tour is. I am curious to find out what Learning Management System is used for the creation of the guide, because I like its efficiency, layout and ease of use.

The variety of fiction and non fiction ebooks, evideos and emusic available for downloads is extraordinary.

Not All Podcasts Are Maintained Regularly

Not All Podcasts Are Maintained Regularly

For item #21 from our Queens Library Learning 2.0 I decided to explore Podcast.net and the category Computers & Internet. I browsed some of the podcasts and discovered that not all of them are maintained regularly.

The podcast that I subscribed to is called Creative Photoshop with John Reuter. If you use Bloglines, or you have My Yahoo or Google account subscription from Podcast.net is semiautomatic ( one click deal).

When I added the podcast to my Newsgator RSS reader I discovered that only 2 other Newsgator customers have subscriptions to John Reuter Internet radio broadcasts.

Kansas " Dust In The Wind"

If you haven't heard " Dust in The Wind" from Kansas, now its the time to listen to it. This is my favorite song and my favorite band.

Create Easy Online Forms With Wufoo

Anybody who tried to create web forms, knows that this is not an easy task even for experienced web developers. Well, know there is a site Wufoo, which promises to make the the development of online forms a breeze, even if you don’t know a single line of HTML code .

From the Top 10 Reasons to Use Wufoo: " Wufoo enables anyone from students to secretaries to office managers the ability to publish an online form within minutes. Your forms, on your terms. Programming experience not needed."

Wufoo also allows you to build, design, and collect data, create reports and use password protection for sensitive data. Eeasy copy and paste code options for integrating your form into a website are available. For experienced users "full CSS and XHTML markup is also included."

Google Presentations & Shared Stuff

In Google Docs I decided to try Google Presentations. In no time I was able to create a simple presentation using one of the Themes ( templates). The other feature in Google Presentations that I like is that I am able to determine who can have full access to my presentation ( collaborator) and who can only be a viewer.

However, it seems to me that it is not a complete application if it is not supporting customization of slides, basic animations, transitions and sounds. Maybe plans to add those by Google are on the way.

Another interesting application that Google started in September of this year is Shared Stuff.

This program resides on your browser and allows you to share links with friends and co-workers. To activate Shared Stuff, you need to drag the icon to your browser, have a Google account and create your own profile page to store your shared links.

Your personal profile page is open to the public and you can link your photo and home page or blog to it.



When you click the Google Email/Share icon, you can choose between posting the page to your profiled page, emailing it to your contacts or bookmarking it with del.icio.us, furl.
digg, and facebook.

Signed Up For Facebook Finally

I don't have time for social networking but if everyone is there, I better be there too. Signing up was easy and finding friends and colleagues easier. From now on I will have to learn how to poke friends, send them drinks and what not.

Here is a link to my profile:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1011978060

Maintaining the profile and contacts is time consuming for me but I will try to allocate 10 - 15 minutes a day for that.

Will Wikipedia End Britannica?

Here is an interesting post I found a year and a half ago via Phil Bradley's weblog about an email conversation published in Wall Street Journal between the founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales and Dale Hoiberg - editor-in-chief of Britannica Encyclopedia.

I don’t quite agree with Mr. Hoiberg statements in the last passage, but you can read it for yourself and make your opinion.

The article in WSJ also features a poll. Not surprisingly the results are in favor of Wikipedia. 1942 votes (57%) of the readers think that Wikipedia is going to end the traditional encyclopedia.

Maybe the executives at Brittanica need to examine closer the opinion of the users, who after all are the ones who will decide the fate of any information product.

For full text access click here.

Try PB Wiki

I have created a wiki for a group project ( I used PBWiki) and can tell you from my own experience how easy it is to set up a wiki page. In no time everyone in our project learned how to use the wiki site, make posts and link documents. Some users were better than others and were even able to customize the wiki and used all the advanced features.

The most widely used wiki software programs are MediaWiki (www.mediawiki.org), TWiki. (http://twiki.org) and PB Wiki (http://pbwiki.com ).

Tecnorati Revamps Interface

Tecnorati recently decided to revamp their interface. The new re-design focuses on blogs and mainstream media. Blogosphere news are located on the left side of the screen and mainstream media, is on the right.




Tecnorati selects the best blogs with a program called Technorati Percolator, which ranks the authority of the source for the blog post, the authority of the referring blogs and the density of recent links from other blogs.

The primary goal of Percolator is to "highlight the significant things grabbing the blogosphere's attention regardless of the blogger's "A-list" or "Z-list" status", explains Ian Kallen from Tecnorati.

If you are tracking 112.8 million blogs, it only makes sense to find an algorithm to point to the best ones to your readers.

For more info go to the Read/Write Web blog

Web 2.0: Information Explosion

This video was created by Michael Welsch from Kansas State University and is one of my favorite visual descriptions of what is happening with Library 2.0 and Web 2.0. In the past we may have created libraries according to what the thick library text books have said, but in the future libraries will be created exclusively around the needs of the user.

Shop Online On My Customized Search Engine

Shop Online On My Customized Search Engine

Customized search engines are a lot of fun. I just created my own search engine for shopping with Rollyo. Here is the link.

http://rollyo.com/stan23/shop_online/

Personalized search engines will become more and more popular and they are very useful for research. I bet, sooner or later we will see a site that will try to organize custom search engines to make the information more accessible for users.

Other search engines with personalized search features are Google Coop , Opsdo, A9, Yahoo Search Builder and Eurekster.com

The Librarian's E-Library is an example of a customized search engine created via Google Co-Op, which searches over 125 key library professional development web sites. I searched for digital libraries and found a lot of interesting information. You can also register with Google and volunteer to contribute to this resource.

LibraryThing Rocks

I never had a chance to try Library Thing and I am really surprised how easy it is to catalog books. Maybe that is the reason why Library Thing is so popular. The other feature that was a new to me is the fact that Library Thing allows you to grab and catalog your books from 185 sources around the world, including national libraries, universities and institutions.

Here is a link to my cataloged books:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/LibraryThingStan23

Newsgator Is My Favorite RSS Reader

I chose Newsgator as an RSS reader, because it works within the browser and is available anywhere in the world, with an Internet connection. There is no software to download.

The other reason, why I prefer it over Bloglines and Google Reader is because of the simple and clear interface ( I still continue using the old classic interface, instead of the new beta version). If you have time, give it a try.

We also use Newsgator for our " Introduction to Emerging Technologies" class at the Cyber Center and so far customers were able to learn how to find, subscribe and delete RSS feeds for blogs and websites with ease. Below is a link to Newsgator's free account offer.

https://www.newsgator.com/ngs/order1.aspx

Google Is Knolling And Translating In Real Time

In the past few weeks Google started a lot of new features that I need to mention them briefly.

First I found out that Google is using human evaluators to improve search results. According to an article in Technology Review the evaluators review the quality of search results for specific queries.

More details about this interesting topic are available from Pandia Search Engine News.

A new service called Knol is also being tested at Google Labs. Knol ( which comes from knowledge) is simply a web page, where users are invited to write on a specific topic. " Our goal is to encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it." Google will not edit the articles and there may be more than one article on any given subject. Details for the project are available from Per and Susanne Koch's lovely Pandia Search Engine News blog.

And to top everything, just before Christmas Google announced that they have released new translations bots that will allow users to translate different languages while chatting in real time.

This new service, which works with Google Talk has tremendous applications in real life and libraries can take advantage too, by helping multilingual customers with their questions. For more info and how to download bots go to Ars Technica and Google Talkabout blogs.

Image Generators Are Fun

Image Generators are a lot of fun and I love playing with them. Above I have attached an image of an old catalog card, created with an image generator. If you want to create yours, click here.

The only limit with image generators is your imagination. Here is a link to the Librarian in Black blog if you want to have more fun with image generators.

Flickr To Add Photo Editing Program Picnik

I always enjoy looking at Flickr. In my opinion Flickr was one of the first sites that really made Web 2.o mainstream. Before Flickr, searching for pictures was a a lot more difficult and boring. The "tag" concept really revolutionized the process. I love the map feature that allows me to see where on a map, the pictures were taken.

Flickr plans to add photo editing program Picnik that allows users to crop, resize, and rotate pictures in real-time and select from basket of shapes and special effects. All the photo editing in Flickr will be done within the browser with no downloads required and nothing to install.

I think that this is a long overdue feature that Flickr should have from the very beginning but even now I am sure that a lot of their customers will take advantage of it and use it. Libraries with Flickr accounts could also benefit from an easy to learn photo editing program, instead of paying big bucks to learn Photoshop or Fireworks.

Blogger Is Very Intuitive

This is my first post for the 23 1/2 things. I find Blogger very intuitive and that is why I use it for the “Introduction to Emerging Technologies” class that I teach at Central. My most difficult habit is finding time to play with all the new Web 2.0 applications.

It is wonderful that Queens Library will give me time to do so. I have a lot to catch up, but I am determined to complete everything on time.