Thing 30: In conclusion....

Well, I was surprised that the founder of newsflashr.com left a comment on my post about instantbull.com! (The two are sort of sister sites).

I appreciate the need to somehow track that everyone is doing the work, but I sometimes found trying to figure out what to blog about difficult. It would be nice if a way could be found for us to learn such thing without the additional, time-consuming layer of having to blog about it.

While I have used and will be using a lot of this stuff personally, when it comes to the library, it's hard to say what of it can be used--or will be allowed to be used.

I would definitely be interested in more experiences like this. No telling where it could lead....

Thing 29: A la recherche de 2.0

I had a hard time in the beginning because a lot of that stuff I'd been doing for quite a while and so, not only was it an abstract exercise, but one I had to blog about. It got a little more interesting around Thing 14.

Del.icio.us was, of the things that were relatively new to me, the one that I will be using most. I had actually added it as a Firefox add-on quite a while ago. When I added it to my Firefox toolbar this time, I discovered why I had probably removed it before: it really slows things down. So now I just use it as another favorite itself. It seems to work better with Explorer.

I don't do the tagging thing all that much. Maybe I'm being antisocial, but I will leave that for those enthusiastic others who seem to have way more time than I.

Among the other Things, I really did like instantbull.com. I look forward to using some of these newer sites and tools at home.

Ah, lifelong learning goals. I remember those! I said I tended not to begin with the end in mind, but I did view problems as challenges that could lead to solutions.

Perhaps, if the end I had in mind had been to get an MP3 player, I would have found some way to finish all this sooner. But I don't like to wear ear buds....

Thing 28: Rollyo vs. Google Custom Search

Well, first of all, there is something seriously wrong with that "Rare Book Library Search" given as an example. It doesn't seem to have heard of Faulkner or Stonewall Jackson, and only managed two hits for Shakespeare. What's up with that? I made my own search,

Select Search Engine...Rare book finderSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

which you can also see in the upper left hand corner of this blog. I might want to leave Amazon out....

I don't know, I haven't spent a whole lot of time exploring Rollyo--there are no doubt better searches to be found. And the ability to add a little widget is nice. I haven't noticed whether you can do that with Google Custom Search or not. There is a danger in limiting searches to a select number of sites: you may be excluding something that could be very helpful.

My Google version is at Rare Book Finder.

If I search "stonewall jackson's daughter" (I didn't actually use quotes, though I suspect that doesn't matter anyway) with Rollyo, I get 160 hits. If I do so with Google, I get only ten--but they are smart hits, closely related to my search, whereas the Rollyo search was all over the place. This, despite the fact that I used the same search engines in both. Wonder why?

One guy who is doing a similar 2.0 training elsewhere commented that a library could use Google Custom Search and avoid the ads that come with Rollyo.

Thing 27: LibraryThing

While creating an online "library" of books is fun enough, I don't think I would have found this site as appealing as it now seems if I had not participated in an online session about LibraryThing with its creator, Tim Spalding.

It definitely has its uses in finding and evaluating books. The social networking aspects also seem like fun, but whether I'll have the time for that, I can't say....

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



Tim Spalding, founder of LibraryThing. (w:LibraryThing)
Source

Image from Wikipedia Commons

iCommons article

picture courtesy of LibraryThing
Permission
(Reusing this image)

Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

Thing 26: Online Image Generators

I wasn't all that enthused about most of the ideas I saw on The Generator Blog, but I did like:



David 大维 - pronounciation (PinYin) : dà wéi

Thing 25: Podcasts and Videos

The line between podcasts and videos is blurry. For instance, I have a MySpace friend who, fairly regularly, does video blogs and posts them to YouTube. He then posts the YouTube videos on his MySpace blogs or bulletins. This technically may not be a podcast, but in effect it is.

The biggest problem with podcasts is finding the time for the ones you subscribe to. The podcast I listen to most is a radio show. I paid for six months worth of it, four hours a day. I didn't renew my subscription--I probably have five and a half months left!

I have several other podcasts sitting my iTunes.... BTW, since iTunes runs on Windows as well as Mac, I would definitely recommend it for podcasts, etc.

AS

Thing 24: Search tools for locating podcasts

I used podcast.net to search for podcasts.....

The Talking with Talis podcast, "Fiona Bradley Talks with Talis about the Semantic Web and Libraries" was a mildly interesting one about a much more interesting subject, which I had only vaguely heard of.

"The semantic web," IUBW (if you believe Wikipedia) "is a vision of information that is understandable by computers, so that they can perform more of the tedious work involved in finding, sharing and combining information on the web."

The podcast led to some rewarding surfing, such as Bret Taylor's blog, We Need a Wikipedia for Data (April 9, 2008)

Taylor's blog led me to the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network. In order to sign in for that, it had me join myOpenID.com, again which, IUBW, "is a shared identity service, which allows internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site."

Thing 23: YouTube!

I love YouTube! I was writing a blog in which I referenced the poet John Ashbery. I went to YouTube to find one of his poems and came across this English guy (Charles Bryant), reading an Ashbery poem. Most of my readers liked the English guy more than the poem!



YouTube is very useful for finding versions of songs, as well as poems.

More than anything I've encountered on the web (given that I've never gotten into music filesharing), YouTube will have a major impact on the notion of copyright. Some companies, like Viacom, try to aggressively enforce their rights on YouTube, successfully removing, for instance, most Jon Stewart or Steven Colbert videos. Others, though, seem to view short clips more as animals.

While working on Thing 24, I stumbled upon the Second Life Library Project. I'm looking forward to learning more about that. I tried maybe a year ago to get into Second Life, but had some problems. Now one of my California MySpace friends who designs oomputer games has gotten into it, and he says he'll give me some help. Anyway, here's a video about the Second Life Library Project:

Thing 22: Retrievr--an intriguing Flickr mashup

I found Retrievr to be fun. With an easy to use (though hard to use effectively) tool, you draw an image in a little box, and then an assortment of images than are alleged to match what you drew pop up along side of it. If you could draw more precisely and if the photos were more closely matched, this would be very useful. As it is, it's more along the lines of messing with mandelbrot sets.

http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/

Thing 21: Tags

Tags work along the same lines as wikis in that you are relying on crowds as a source of information. As a resource, Flickr is subject to those same limitations. If you are looking at a photo of a butterfly, you can never be sure whether it's correctly identified. I would be even more wary of Flickr in this regard than of Wikipedia, since you are talking about people who are more into photos than writing or reading.

As far as using Flickr as a photohosting site goes, I'd rather use Photobucket and paste in the html.

I have nothing against online communities, but I find the idea of using photos as the basis for one a bit odd.

Thing 20: Exploring Flikr--Bayside Library Monday Morning

This is Bayside Library on a Monday morning some time ago, The photo was taken before we opened, and I was doing desk setup. It was a gloomy day outside, which made the light rather subdued. I liked the ambiance and the feeling of having the library mostly to myself.

I was never able to upload this using Blogger's photo uploader. Despite the fact that it says you can upload up to 8 MB, the help section says it has to be under 4 MB, and even after I cropped it down to 1 MB, it still didn't work. I finally had to do it through Flikr.



Bayside Library Monday Morning


Originally uploaded by lethewar