jamie's blog for the library

Account compromised - don't click that link!

2009-08-29T10:35:00.001-04:00

My Gmail account was hacked, and I apologize for any and all spam you might have received from me. Please don't click any links I've sent you recently. Thanks.

hello~

2009-08-28T05:18:00.001-04:00

<DIV>Hello,<BR>One of my friends bought an iphone from a
website:  <A
href="http://www.trade-lc.com">www.trade-lc.com</A><BR>He has got the
phone, its quality is very good. And the website is promoting their
products these days, so they have very good price and big discount
now. This website also sells tv,motor,laptop and so on. The promotion
will keep 30 days . if you need, please have a look at the website. I
am sure you will get much surprise. <BR>Never forget to share good
things with us!<BR>Greetings! </DIV>

Discovery Channel: I Love the World

2008-04-21T16:10:00.002-04:00

I LOVE THIS VIDEO!

My favorite Bookr (so far)

2008-04-02T16:37:00.001-04:00

This could explain so much ...

2008-03-17T14:13:00.001-04:00

Lawrence Welk Meets Velvet Underground

2008-03-17T14:10:00.001-04:00

This is absolutely surreal.I'm tempted to think someone overdubbed the music, but ...

Trying something new ...

2007-12-03T10:01:00.000-05:00

Trial post directly from Picasa, not from Picasa Web Albums

Flip book of Flickr

2007-11-14T11:53:00.001-05:00

Very cool new thing to do with Flickr - It's super-easy to create a nifty flip book! You don't even have to use your own pictures ...

Library21

All My Life

2007-11-09T11:43:00.001-05:00

If for some reason you haven't already seen this amazing clip from YouTube, watch it now. You've always secretly wanted this to happen in real life, haven't you?

Embedded Video

Blogged with Flock

Fun with Ravelry

2007-11-02T16:20:00.001-04:00

Comparing Twitter, Jaiku, et al

2007-09-11T15:11:00.000-04:00

Read/Write Web compares the biggest players in the microblogging world.

I would not have categorized Tumblr as a microblog. Hmm. I think of it as being more similar to the RSS feed items I share using Google Reader.

Library21

Thing 35: Microblogging, or What Can You Do With 140 Characters?

2007-09-10T14:50:00.000-04:00

Wow! I still haven't done a blog entry for Thing 35, Microblogging - meaning Twitter and Jaiku and Pownce, pretty much. So this'll be that entry, then, okay?

My initial reaction to microblogging, many moons ago, was a huge "huh? why?" sort of thing. Of what possible use could a blog entry of only 140 characters be? And who on Earth cares if you are wondering what to have for lunch?

But you know, it didn't take long before I saw some really good examples of how to use Twitter and the ilk. For example, there's Barack Obama (which would be better if someone in his campaign would figure out how to update from their cell phone so the feed could be absolutely current), the New York Times (which has feeds for each section too, like Books and Science) and BBCOne, which uses Twitter to notify viewers (or potential viewers) what's on telly. Stateside, The Dr. Phil Show has used Twitter to promote its new season.

I still can't see much reason to use Twitter for personal messages - if I'm arranging to meet someone, I'd use a direct text message or even, you know, an actual telephone call - but for promotion and for things you need to know right now, it's great! For breaking news, weather alerts, and other important stuff, I can't think of anything better. It could also make a fun distraction, maybe as a trivia game: The question is posted, then a few hours later you get the answer?

You may have noticed that all the "good examples" I posted above are from Twitter. Although I have accounts at both Jaiku and Pownce as well, it's harder to find good content on those services. Pownce operates more like an instant message service that lets you send messages to several people at once, IMHO. If there's a way to search or browse entries, I've yet to find it. Jaiku has some interesting participants (and some nice little icons you can add to a post), but I tend to find those when someone recommends them to me. (FakeSteveJobs was marginally interesting at first.) Only Twitter has an easy-to-find way to browse (and, finally, search) postings, which at Twitter are called Tweets. (Wait, I take that back. Here's the same thing on Jaiku. Sorry!)

I'd like to see a listing, somewhere, of the most-subscribed-to posters on all three services, out of curiosity and to make sure I'm not missing something.

Microblogging for libraries? I've got a list of ways we could use these tools:

Today's programs and events
Latest new book arrivals
"Got you interested" things, like that trivia contest or some of the great first lines of literature?
A contest for the best 140-character poem?
Answers to the 10 most-asked reference questions/reference question of the day

We need to be careful, though, not to microblog without reason. "Just to put something out there" isn't going to cut it. Our postings should be information that followers genuinely want, need or will at least find handy. We might want to take a page from the NYTimes handbook and have many microblogs - one for each branch, say, and even then not lump toddler story times in with news about the latest bestsellers. Create too many Tweets, and no one will be able to hear the bird song because they'll tune it out like background noise.

P.S. - BTW, I'm contributing to the background noise already. Of course I am.

follow me on Twitter

And, well, there's a Pownce one too, but I can't find a Pownce widget.

I'm thinking about starting a Twitter feed - or maybe Jaiku? or both? - that's a Web 2.0 Site of the Day. What'd you think? The biggest problem is that I'd want to post it under a different Tweeter-poster name, which would mean logging out and logging back in, which means more passwords to remember.

Stuck on Thing 36: Photoediting

2007-09-10T11:47:00.000-04:00

So, I refuse to think of myself as having fallen behind on the Explore ... Discover ... Play activities. Really, it's more like I've gotten stuck on Thing 36, Dressing up your Photos, and I'm having so much fun I kinda don't want to start another activity.

As usual, I did way too much. I wound up looking at a whole bunch of online photo editors. I wound up with two favorites, and a third I've used the most often! For comparison of the pictures linked below, the original image is here, and the Picasaed image is here.

Fauxto
Fauxto looked great; I really liked the nice set of drawing tools and the drop shadow effect. However, I was perplexed when I tried to upload a picture - I could only find a way to import an image from the internet. I was also disappointed that crop lines drawn with the marquee could not be adjusted once drawn, meaning I had to get them right the first time. That might be fine for some of you, but my hand isn't that steady. (I found this problem at several other sites as well.)
Worst of all, though, I crashed Fauxto before I was able to get my picture finished.
Sample here.

Fotoflexer
I found Fotoflexer late in the game, after I thought I was finished playing around for Thing 36, but for actual photo editing, this is hands down my favorite. Fotoflexer makes it easy to change colors in an image, or even knock out the background. Everything works pretty much the way it's supposed to, and there are some cool tools that let you artistically distort your image.
The only annoyance with Fotoflexer, and believe me it's minor, is that I continually have to log in; the site can't seem to hold on to my information. But it works with Flickr, Picasa, MySpace, Facebook and probably other sites, and the Fotoflexer photo album is easy to navigate and download from. In fact, you can download an entire album at once, a very nice feature.I just can't emphasize enough how pleased I was with Fotoflexer. The editing process was very smooth, and stuff just worked here!
Sample here.

Phixr
Phixr had a few nice features - it automatically zooms out on an image so you can see the whole thing at once, offers a thumbnail preview before it completes any action, and has a handy option to save a cropped picture as a second version of the file so that the original remains intact.
But I kept losing my image while I was trying to work on it, so I gave up.
No sample. I can't even manage to login anymore.

Picnik
Picnik is one of the first online image editors I used, months ago. I was kinda early on this one, and the site has come a long way since, and I really like it! I thought the Auto-Fix option was exceptional, and I really enjoyed the special effects like Doodle and Lomo-ish. Picnik integrates seamlessly with Flickr, Picasa and Facebook, and generally works well, not to mention the slick interface and nice photo album displays. And the "Create" options are terrific, although I dread the thought of the day Picnik goes big-time and the "plus" features like Doodle and Lomo-ish are only available for paid members. Saving to almost any photo site or your own computer is super-simple, too, and you can do it right from your photo album. And the print option is really nice!
The absolute best feature of Picnik, and what made it the "killer app", is the way it integrates with Firefox. Install one little extension, and a right-click on any picture on the internet sends that image into Picnik, waiting to be edited and added to your photo album. Oh, the convenience! Even if I had a marked preference for another online photo editor, I'd use Picnik most often simply because of the convenience.
And that, my friends, is what web applications are supposed to be.
Sample here.

Pikifx
Pikifx was a surprise discovery. The actual image editing here is okay ... nothing to write home about, but not bad either. But if you want to add a cool border to your image, or a frame, or a really unique "artsy" effect, Pikifx is the place. (Look under "Borders," not "Effects," BTW.) Pikifx also loads faster than the other image editing sites, because it starts out showing you a very low quality image - you can force it to display a better one, but that takes longer. Pikifx also lets you see thumbnails of how your image will look before you apply each change, and makes it easy to remove effects you've already added.
Sample here. (And sprinkled throughout this blog entry. Yes, all three of them are from Pikifx.)

Pixer
Pixer looked nice. Unfortunately, it kept losing my picture. In fact, I didn't even have time to mess with it before the picture went away, if it ever loaded.
Sample here.

Snipshot
Snipshot is a very basic photo editor, but as such it works really well. I was impressed with how well the crop function works, and was very happy to feed the pixel size of an image displayed in the "adjust" options, because patrons often need image with very precise pixel dimensions for web posting. Other than that, Snipshot wasn't very exciting. A good, basic workhorse.
Sample here.

Wiredness
Wiredness is a new site for me, and maybe that's why I couldn't make it do the basics. I couldn't find a way to zoom out on a picture, so I had to crop it if I wanted to fit the entire thing on the screen. Trying to insert text tended the crash the site, and I was frustrated by the lack of a color picker. However, I loved the "rounded" effect under "Photos," especially when combined with some of the artistic options under "Effects."
Sample here and here.

XMG Image
XMG Image was more frustrating than anything else. I couldn't find an option to sharpen my image, or to undo any of my actions. I also couldn't find any way to zoom.
Sample here.

What online image editor will I use? If major editing is required, Fotoflexer. If the edits are simple, or once I'm done with Fotoflexer - in other words, most of the time - Picnik, because of the right-click convenience factor and the fun effects, until I have to pay for them. Then I just might take my image over to Pikifx to play with "framing" it.

Thing 34 again

2007-08-22T16:51:00.000-04:00

Hmm. There were parts of Nutridiary that I really liked, and parts of FitDay that I really liked. I wish I could do some kind of mash-up of the two.

I hated entering new food items into Nutridiary, but once the items were entered and added to my food for the day, I liked the way the page was laid out. I also liked that Nutridiary would track my daily serving of water and veggies, and recorded the time I ate each of my meals. However, I hated that I couldn't access all of the features without a paid account.

I found it much easier to add a new food item in FitDay, although it was still rather tedious. I was able to access all the web-based FitDay features. Although the PC version was advertised on nearly every page, the ads were unobtrusive. I thought some of the nutritional info was better arranged in Nutridiary, though, and FitDay did not have an easy way to keep track of your water intake.

I was disappointed in the goal-setting functions of both sites, although FitDay did have a slight edge. Fitness experts will tell you never to set a goal like "lose 20 pounds by Christmas." A better goal, they say, is "Run a 5k in February" or something activity based; focusing on weight is counterproductive, because as you exercise more you will build muscle mass, which weighs more than fat tissue. In the early days of your fitness program, your weight may actually increase while the amount of fat in your body decreases! If weight loss - which is really fat loss, to be more precise - is indeed your primary goal, experts suggest that you measure it in terms of clothing size or even arm/leg/neck measurements.

However, Nutridiary only allows the user to set goals for weight loss, in pounds. FitDay has a slight advantage here, because it allows you to set goals for improving your nutritional intake. Neither website lets the user set goals for activities or strength. Although they both allow you to enter fitness activities, neither gives them as much emphasis as I would like.

My final verdict on these sites? I might use FitDay at least a few more times, although I'm not sure about that. I'd like to at least have an entire day's nutrition and fitness data to put in so I can get an accurate view of how the site analyzes the information. As for the community aspects of these sites, I'm not sure how productive it is to sit at your computer and talk about your weight loss/fitness goals - wouldn't it be more productive to get up and exercise for that half hour instead? Maybe you could pick up a few really good healthy recipes, though, or ask a question about something that's been bugging you, like how to do a proper abdominal crunch.

Overall, if increased fitness is your goal, I think you'd be better off committing to working with a personal trainer even if it's just once a week. Once the trainer is in place, you might find Nutridiary or FitDay a terrific supplement to your exercise program.

Library21

Thing 34: Nutrition info

2007-08-22T15:22:00.000-04:00

I can't believe I'm up to Thing 34! Seriously, I thought I was much further behind than that. (Yes, I've still got to do the Scrapblog entry, but we haven't had the bandwidth available for me to mess around with it.)

Okay, so Thing 34 is online nutrition info. Before I've even looked at Nutridiary or FitDay, I feel like neither of these are sites I would use very often. I tried out a similar site, FitnessJournal, and blogged about it for Library 2.0, but I didn't use it enough to renew my subscription when it came due. I think it came down to this: I'm just not very good about going to a specific site just to enter diet and workout information. If it were an option in Plaxo, I'd probably do it since I'm already at that site every day. In fact, though, I'm not even good about recording diet and workout information on paper anymore - I was religious about doing it when I first started working out with a trainer, but with no trainer to check up on me and make sure I wrote stuff down, I stopped.

So, that said, I'm going to check out Nutridiary and FitDay now.

Library21

Thing 29 was Scrapblog!

2007-07-31T10:42:00.001-04:00

which I've only played with about a million times now. I'm not sure why I love Scrapblogging so much, but I wish I could somehow make it my full-time job. I really enjoyed discovering new things that the platform could do and new ways to display my pictures/design my pages.

However, the primary Scrapblog I put together was for my grandfather's 90th birthday party in mid-June, and it got so large and unwieldy that it eventually broke. I think I will take the opportunity of doing the write-up here to go back and fix that, since I'm supposed to be putting it on DVDs and sharing it with assorted family members.

While I'm at it, maybe I'll embed my other Scrapblogs here too.

Thing 29! I still have to do Thing 29!

2007-07-30T13:50:00.000-04:00

Now what was Thing 29 again?

Xdrive Slide Show

2007-07-30T13:17:00.000-04:00

Created a slide show to cheer me up 'cause it's Monday, but apparently it isn't embeddable, so here's a link instead.

Dear Xdrive, make it embeddable! Thank you, the end.

Thing 32: Online file storage

2007-07-30T11:30:00.001-04:00

Last summer, I needed to send someone a really large PDF. Too large for email, actually. Too large for just about anything. I thought about sending it through the regular mail on a CD, but I needed it there sooner than international mail could deliver it.

After much searching, I found several virtual drive sites. Most of them were difficult to use, or required paying a fee, or both. I eventually used Box.net, which was one of the few free options, but I was never fully satisfied with that as a solution. It was difficult to upload the file, and even more difficult for my friend to download it.

I'm glad Julia decided to address virtual drives, because not even a full 12 months later, the situation is very different. Box.net is a lot easier to use than it once was, but there are several other virtual drive websites to consider as well.

Box.net and Omnidrive each offer you 1 gig of file storage; Omnidrive has partnered with Zoho (which seems to be debuting new stuff every day) and Snipshot to make it easy for you to edit your documents or photos online. Box.net has a really handy widget you can add to a blog or website (or anywhere else you can use widgets) to make it easy for someone else to grab a file. I really like that widget!

The third contender, for me anyway, is an underdog because it's too popular - in other words, it's from AOL and the Internet snob in me thought I'd hate it. Actually, I love it. Xdrive offers 5 gig of storage, and works with the AOL log-in I already have. (See, I'm not that much of an Internet snob - I already had an AOL account. It's a perfect learning environment, and they are trying hard to be relevant again.) As a nice bonus, Xdrive lets you arrange your photos into easily-shared slideshows, and you can listen to any uploaded music files using a built-in player. They claim to offer the ability to fax an uploaded document as well, but I was never able to successfully send a fax this way.

All of the virtual drive services I looked at offer a download component that installs on your computer and makes it even easier to save files at their site. I didn't install any of these, although thinking about I think I downloaded the files to install the Xdrive add-ons.

So, it came down to a choice between Box.net and their cool widget, Omnidrive and their ease of editing and Xdrive and their 5g of storage. Xdrive won, simply because I detest worrying about file space.

Thing 31: Plaxo

2007-07-30T10:52:00.000-04:00

You know, we've done an array of things in wildly varying categories as part of Learning 2.0 and Learning 2.1. Plaxo is my favorite, hands down.

I've played around with online to-do lists before, and even signed for a paid account at Backpack, but none of them has been nearly as useful to me as Plaxo. After less than one month, I rely on seeing all my calendar entries (even the supplementary calendars from my Google Calendar) on one screen now - in fact, I enabled Internet browsing on my cell phone last week so I can get to Plaxo there to schedule appointments, check shopping lists, etc. And on Friday, when I had three appointments to get to and a lot of errands to run in between, I used Plaxo on my mobile phone all day. (I'm late blogging about activity #31, but I did the rest of assignment some time ago. Before it was posted, actually, since Julia sits right beside me and gave me a bit of a heads up.)

There are still a few things in Backpack that I wish were part of Plaxo - the task/to-do section in Plaxo could do with some enhancement (I can't figure out how to edit a task once it's been added, for example), and I love the way Backpack lets me set up an individual page for anything I need to make lists or notes about, and save files and pictures on that same page. In other words, I'm still using my paid Backpack account, but not as much as I did, and I have completely abandoned the Backpack calendar function.

I just really wish the two could be more integrated, somehow. If I could access my Backpack pages from within Plaxo, maybe, or even if just the to-do list from one carried over to the other ... I might be able to do that somehow using RSS feeds, but I'd rather have a slightly more elegant solution.

But beggars can't be choosers, and I love Plaxo! Thanks for introducing me to it, Julia.

Thing 33: Out of order, but oh well

2007-07-26T16:27:00.000-04:00

So, Online Art.

I played a bit. I'll post some videos at Ning.

Here's a picture, actually. Some String Art.

I'm having all kinds of blogger trouble today - Now I've got my string art pic out of proportion and can't get it back. Oh well, guess I'll just die over it or something else equally tragic. ;-)

BTW, my favorite online art site is JacksonPollock.org. Draw with your mouse; the color changes when you click. The color schemes are adapted from Pollock paintings.

So I'm going to upload a Pollock piece as well.

Why is it that every time I add pictures I wind up with extra spaces between my paragraphs?

And as a slide show - much better this way!

2007-07-20T17:45:00.003-04:00

Harry Potter, from Photobucket. Yes, I'm a bit obsessed today.

2007-07-20T16:50:00.001-04:00

Photobucket Album

Thing 27: Photobucket

2007-07-20T12:03:00.000-04:00

Posting a Photobucket album ... Well, see my next post for that. It's Harry Potter day, people! And the books are in the building!

Library21

Thing 26: Widgets

2007-07-20T11:25:00.000-04:00

One of my Discovery Exercises, so I won't say much about it, but I will pop in some widgets!

I'm jaie22!

This is the 3D me.
Make your own,
and we both get Coinz!

Thing 28: Magazine Covers

2007-07-19T15:09:00.000-04:00

Well, I think I stopped updating here along about Thing 26, Widgets. That's 'cause I was the guest discoverer on Explore ... Discover ... Play for the month of June, and didn't blog here about my own discoveries.

There was one June discovery, however, that wasn't mine, and that was Helene's wonderful Thing 28, magazine cover generators. What fun!

I can never find pictures of myself that look right for these things, so I played around with using Meez avatars to create some covers, and I was really pleased with how they turned out. They look quite natural, especially "on the cover of the Rolling Stone" which often uses illustrations.

As you can see, I got a little carried away with my "Ain't-your-granny's-blue-hair" librarian.

As frivolous as it seems, I could see tons of ways these magazine covers could be very useful. For one thing, patrons would love 'em! What a neat thing to do with the pictures from a scanning class! They'd also be good for creating promotional materials, although in that regard I'd be happier if I had a little more control over the text - as it is, you only control two lines, and I might not always want something about upcoming summer tours on my publicity piece.

Template woes

2007-07-18T11:28:00.000-04:00

Back to the boring old template again, since Blogger is giving me some kind of message about the photo at the top taking up too much bandwidth. It was a template I found elsewhere, and I loved it but don't know what I can do about reducing the file size ... Especially today, when I just don't have time to figure it out.

Thing 30: LOLCats

2007-06-23T16:36:00.001-04:00

i-can-has-cheezburger
Originally uploaded by scottelsdon

A test post from Photobucket

2007-06-18T16:14:00.001-04:00

So, where have I been?

2007-06-18T16:08:00.000-04:00

Just in case you're following along a little bit but not quite all the way, I forgot to mention here that I am the first guest blogger over at the Learning 2.1 blog for the month of June. So there won't be many posts from me here in June, and since I'm creating the discovery activities, I'm not going to blog about them here.

Julia takes over guest blogging in July. I've promised to help her with it, but I should be back to regular posting here anyway. See you then!

Guest blogger? Me?

2007-06-05T12:44:00.000-04:00

So, I'm the guest blogger for June for Learning 2.1 - and I'm not sure what my first activity is going to be! But look for something coming toward the end of the week.

One more thing about Letterpop

2007-06-02T17:11:00.000-04:00

before I move on to other interesting subjects ...

As much as I love Letterpop, printing needs serious improvement. Clicking the "print" link opens a new window for the browser to print from, but with the print dialog box already open. Closing the print dialog box closes the new print-formatted browser window, so you can't do any page setup or even preview your printout to see what you'll be getting. I just tried printing a newsletter I've been fooling around with, and instead of the two pages I expected, I got five pages printed landscape, with a good portion of my text lopped off.

A minor quibble, since I don't need to print anything from Letterpop very often, but a disappointment after such a good experience.

Oh, wait! Letterpop again!

2007-06-02T13:12:00.000-04:00

Oops, I totally forgot to include a link to my sample newsletter! If you look at it today, and then again next week, it may have changed, because I love to play with the templates.

Thing 25: Letterpop

2007-06-02T11:35:00.000-04:00

I must admit that I love Letterpop. (Almost as much as I love the new Scrapblog, but that's another story.) For creating newsletters, Letterpop is easier then Word or Publisher, and the templates look better too. Plus, Letterpop automates the process of sending your newsletter via email.

Really, using Letterpop is a breeze. (And no, I'm not actually obsessed with making videos for websites. This is one I made earlier for my 60 Sites in 60 Minutes class. I'm not all that happy with it - it needs some editing, and it may eventually get some. But I thought you might get something out of it.)

Account options
With a free Letterpop account, you can create 10 newsletters, mail them to 25 address ten times a year and have 25 pictures in your toolkit. You will have to put up with a few advertisements on the Letterpop site. (The free plan has been plenty for the library users I've introduced to Letterpop, BTW.)

The next Letterpop level, aimed at power users, is a little under $25 a year, and gets you 52 newsletters a year, mailed to up to 500 addresses. You'll get 100 pictures, too.

The most expensive account at Letterpop, created for corporate users, is a little under $180 a year, still quite inexpensive considering you get 365 newsletters, sent to 10,000 email addresses, and special "business" templates. Any organization needing more newsletters than that should really consider hiring a designer to create them and an email service to get them distributed!

Sale at Threadless

2007-05-30T17:34:00.000-04:00

Threadless, the indie-cool tee-shirt company that was mentioned in Learning 2.0, is having one of their periodic $10 sales. So if there was something at Threadless you've been craving ...

Zamzar: We have found the problem, and it is us

2007-05-30T09:27:00.000-04:00

So, Zamzar is working great this morning. The difference? I had the bright idea of using a different email address to receive notification that my conversions are ready for download.

So the lesson is: If you're having trouble, don't use your PLCMC email address at Zamzar. Try Hotmail, or Yahoo!, or Gmail, or whatever else you've got.

Because the service itself works well, and works quickly. Wait, I'll show you.

I also converted several YouTube videos with good results, although they could be a bit balky at times. And I converted a PDF into a Word document, which worked quite well.

I did notice that quite often, Zamzar doesn't look like it's finished uploading a document or a video, when actually it has. If you have an upload that seems "stuck" at 24% (or any other percent, for that matter), check the email address you supplied anyway. Most of the items I've had this "trouble" with have in fact been in my Gmail box waiting on me. (I suspect it's some kind of bandwidth issue on the library's end.)

I can imagine many, many uses for Zamzar, but the most intriguing is converting from PDF into an editable document. We see many, many patrons who want to edit a PDF but, of course, can't do so.

Zamzar will also be useful the first time a patron brings in a file they created in Word 2007, which of course we have no way to convert to a document they can use on our computers. (You can use Zamzar to convert the Word 2007 docx format to a plain old doc.)

And for personal use, Zamzar is absolutely the easiest way I've seen to download a YouTube video! And I can watch it on my iPod! That totally rocks.

I have a bad feeling ...

2007-05-29T15:00:00.000-04:00

that the reason I can't upload a file to Zamzar for conversion is bandwidth. Virtual Village is full of patrons watching videos at YouTube, playing games at Yahoo! Games and messing around on MySpace pages. Not that there's anything wrong with that, except that it means I can't connect to the Internet with enough speed to get anything at all accomplished. Other than Zamzar, I need to be trolling new sites for my 60 Sites in 60 Minutes class and grabbing screencasts from the ones I decide to feature.

It's this hot outside on a Tuesday afternoon, and it's not even June yet? It's going to be a long, hot, dry summer, with no bandwidth to speak of. I may go insane before the end of July, and it's hottest here in August.

Zamzar update

2007-05-29T14:50:00.001-04:00

Just as a quick update to last Friday's Zamzar post - I still haven't gotten any emails from Zamzar saying my file conversions are ready! So I'm going to try again ...

Thing 24: Zip, zam, zot

2007-05-25T14:17:00.000-04:00

The name of the website in the first exercise for Learning 2.1, Zamzar, reminds me a a tennis-ball-on-a-pole came my sister and I had when we were kids, called Zim Zam or something. My sister used to make really horrifically lame jokes about zim zam zot all the time.

Hopefully, the Zamzar service won't be as lame as those jokes.

The first thing I tried to do at Zamzar -- convert a YouTube video of the inside of a hard drive as it works to an mpg so I could include it in the PowerPoint presentation for computer basics. It took me several attempts to realize that to convert something from a URL, I had to click the URL link about the "Browse" box at http://zamzar.com. Clicking that link takes you to http://zamzar.com/url, and the "Browse" button now says "Add URL." I tried converting a YouTube video to a couple of different formats; the only one that I was able to get to even complete the conversion process was mp4.

I also uploaded a Word document for conversion to a PDF; we'll see how that worked.

Right now, I'm waiting for Zamzar to email me with a link to either one of my conversion projects. I'll let you know how they turned out!

Wow!

2007-05-17T09:54:00.001-04:00

Old Hardwick Hall

richardr posted a photo:

technorati tags:flickr, photos

Blogged with Flock

Ah-ha! New scrablog!

2007-05-12T17:33:00.000-04:00

The new version of Scrapblog is even more fun than I thought! The stickers and backgrounds, for example, are much easier to use but they are also a lot more fun to look at. The themes are pretty great too. And coming soon - the ability to put a Scrapblog on DVD as a gift, and to get a nicely printed and bound version.

This Scrapblog is one I'm creating for my grandfather's 90th birthday party this June. I had planned to use PowerPoint to make it, but I actually think Scrapblog is easier and more fun. (Especially if I can get the presentation on a DVD. There won't be any Internet access at the party.) Although I must admit this one Scrapblog has taken the better part of a day. (But then I'm at work on the service desk, so I've done it in the minutes I've been able to snatch between users needing help.)

Scrapblog's embed/post to blog function doesn't seem to be working right now, or at least it isn't working well. I'll try again tomorrow, but right now it is time to go hoooooome!

Wait, let's try it right now:

Scrapblog, again

2007-05-12T12:24:00.000-04:00

Scrapblog recently released a new version of themselves. It's a whole lot easier to use (as long as you have the latest version of Flash), there's great new art and themes -- an overall improvement that makes this service worth considering again.

I'm in the process of creating a new Scrapblog, and I'll embed it here as soon as I can. So far, I'm really having fun!

There's gotta be a better way!

2007-05-09T11:10:00.000-04:00

By God, I write too many words sometimes. There's gotta be a way to do "extended posts" in this new version of Blogger, so that you see the first paragraph or so and then have a "read more" link to click for the rest. I could do it in the old version, but I don't know about this one.

So, off to track that down.

Wow, It's been a long time.

2007-05-09T09:35:00.000-04:00

Hmm. So. It looks an awful lot like I've fallen down on the job and not kept up with my Learning 2.0 adventure.

But I have, really I have!

I just haven't blogged about it.

If I'm not careful, this is going to be one of those horrid catch-up posts where I wind up listing a lot of links. So I'll just list a few of my favorite new discoveries, and catch up with a few more next time.

Recent Web 2.0 goodies

Backpack has taken its rightful place as the ruler of my world. Okay, not quite, but it's incredibly useful. Backpack lets you create pages for just about anything; each page can contain lists, notes and links. For a small charge ($5 a month, paid monthly) you can also add pictures, files and whiteboards. Regardless, you can share your page with anyone you want to see it, which makes it great for collecting notes for a joint project. I'm essentially using it as a notebook; after every meeting or brainstorming session, I transfer my notes to Backpack. I've also got pages for shopping lists, knitting projects, stuff I need to blog about, etc. I've tried websites like this before, but for some reason I can't quite put my finger on, Backpack really works for me.
Weatherbonk, which is a lovely mash-up of weather data with Google maps and traffic cameras, even helps you plan a trip by car based on what the weather is forecast to be along your route.
Twitter is meant to let friends know what you are doing at exactly this moment. Most of what's there is one-line posts like "Check out this neat site," but political candidates are putting it to really good use. See the John Edwards Twitter, for example, to see how this "vanity" site can actually be quite useful.
I've become a follower of The Consumerist, a shopping advocacy blog. Before you go shopping, check here! You'll learn about bad products, bad customer service, how a certain cell phone company really can't do math ...
Finally, I really like using the Flock browser. Flock is based on Firefox, but has been created specifically for web 2.0 tasks. Flock makes it easy to blog, use Flickr and other photo services, and read RSS feeds. It is a program that must be installed on your computer, but if you have the drive space for it, it's worth it! (Actually, there's a lot more to Flock, but I'll get deeper into the topic later.)

Can't believe I forgot to mention ...

2006-12-21T09:52:00.000-05:00

the web 2.0 feature I've been working with most, Yahoo!'s new bookmarking system, which lets you organize bookmarks both in folders and by tags. I've been working on it for at least a month now - it should be very, very useful once I finish getting it set up.

I imported my bookmarks from Firefox and from Del.icio.us (which Yahoo! now owns); what's taking so much time is organizing the folders and making sure they all have good tags. The tags I'd been using in Del.icio.us were imported, but I decided I didn't like them and am changing most of them. (My Del.icio.us tags were all one word, using a . instead of a space between words. The Yahoo! system lets you use spaces, etc., and since the tags are searchable I decided to change them over to a more regular syntax. I'm also trying to make them more consistent.)

At any rate, I'm almost done assigning new folders and keywords, and then ... efficiency is mine!

PLCMCL2

It's been a while

2006-12-20T15:17:00.000-05:00

since I posted anything, so here's an update.

I've played around with Consumating a bit, but it lost its appeal fairly quickly. I just don't have time to wander around online looking for friends, and my RL (real life) friends aren't exactly the type to join these sites. I still visit Consumating occasionally, but it's fairly rare. (I'm BlueGreen there.)

I also decided to try out Fitness Journal, and quite like it, although I'm not very good about remembering to go enter my information every day. I really must get back in the habit of doing that!

Just today I decided to try creating a new Scrapblog. I'm not overly enthused about it, but here it is. Not all the stuff that is actually on the pages is showing up for some reason, so if it looks odd that's probably why ...

And I'm trying to figure out Second Life, which is a bit difficult to do since I'm pretty sure I can't install it on my home computer because I don't have enough memory left. No real opinions about it yet. It's interesting, but all I've got to go on so far are Wikipedia articles and a few videos SLers have made and posted online. I'm going to a demonstration of Teen Second Life at ImaginOn this afternoon, so maybe I'll have a better understanding afterwards.

Oh, and I've come across a few neat Web 2.0 things. I'll just list them here and come back and add more about them later.

Wordie (make lists of words you like, or don't like, or whatever) I'm Jaie.
Squirl (catalog your collections and show them off) I think I'm Jaie here too.

Posting a photo from Picasa

2006-11-08T11:06:00.000-05:00

Bloglines alternative

2006-10-12T12:20:00.000-04:00

No matter how many online newsreaders I try, I've always gone back to Bloglines. It's not that I'm really terribly fond of Bloglines, just that it works so well. (It's clunky though, both in the way it looks and in some of the features.)

Now I might have found one that works just as well, looks better and has some really nice features - the newly-updated Google Reader.

I tried Google Reader once before, but the updates released earlier this month have made a vast improvement. Google Reader imported my many, many feeds from Bloglines and even organized them into the folders I had set up at Bloglines. I can't recall any other reader that has done that, and it made a very favorable first impression.

The next big improvement is the way Google Reader treats individual items when a feed is open for reading. In Bloglines, once a feed is opened any item in that feed is considered "read" unless you specify otherwise, which means that if a feed has 100 entries and you only manage to read three of them, the other 97 are still marked as "read" and not retained for you to view later.

In Google Reader, however, items are not marked "read" until the feed is opened and you scroll past the item. If you see the first three but stop scrolling there, the other 97 are still marked "unread" and will be waiting for you the next time you sign in.

Google Reader is still a part of Google Labs, and new improvements are being made every day, but I'm really impressed.

PLCMCL2
RSS Newsreaders

Rated R for language - don't say you weren't warned!

2006-10-07T10:08:00.000-04:00

Spotted in a shop window around Carnaby Street...
Originally uploaded by Tom Coates.

Julia, this one's just for you!

2006-10-05T02:51:00.003-04:00

Fainting Goats - alt.news 26:46

Fainting goats, for those not familiar with them.

2006-10-05T02:51:00.000-04:00

The Man in this Relationship... Is(n't) Me!

He's the Man, from YouTube

More Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 goodness

2006-10-04T15:16:00.000-04:00

Great post from Stephen Abram at his Stephen's Lighthouse blog linking to a terrific article at Libraries and Librarians Rock about the traits of Librarian 2.0.

In another post, Stephen linked to a Solution Watch post about sites useful to students and teachers as they head back to school. Standouts from that list include emurse.com for resume creation and storage, and Backpack for all sorts of stuff, some of which I haven't figured out yet. MindHacks also created a list of essential sites for students.

PLCMCL2

The 43 Things

2006-10-02T17:44:00.000-04:00

Here's a list, more or less, of the 37 things Stephen Abram mentioned in his "43 Things I might want to do this year" article. (He didn't get to 43.) Some of them I've done as part of the 23 Things project, some I'm just so familiar with doing already that I won't do again. I'll mark those so I can see which ones I still need to do.

Take a digital picture with a camera and/or phone and download it to your PC. - Done in 23 Things
Register at Blogger and start a blog. Post every once in a while and add a photo. - Done in 23 Things
Register at Bloglines and aggregate your blog and RSS subscriptions into one reader. Check out what other blogs aligns with your interests. - Done in 23 Things
Look at Facebook and see the next generation of social networking.
Set up a Flickr account and post a few digital photos online. Tag and annotate them. - Done in 23 Things
Look at LibraryElf and see the potential for personal library tools.
Check out LibraryThing and catalogue a few books from your personal collection. - Done in 23 Things
Register at MSN Photo Album and build an album to share with friends, family or colleagues.
Check out MySpace and see how this service has become so huge globally.
Have some fun with the links on the Generator Blog. - Done in 23 Things
Download Firefox and compare it to Explorer and Opera.
Research bookmarklets and try a few.
Revisit Yahoo! and remind yourself why it is visited more than Google.
Learn about iFILM and viral video. - Done in 23 Things
Get a PubSub account and start searching the future.
Make a map of all the countries or states you've been to at Visited Countries.
Experiment with some sound and picture search engines like Podscope.
Try some new web search engines like www.exalead.com, Wink, Gravee, Clusty, Mooter, Kartoo, etc., or others you can find at Search Engine Watch's list.
Learn more about visual display tools like Grokker.
Check out Google Base and see what the fuss is about.
Register with NetFlix and rent a movie. Learn how to deal with streaming media. - Done on my own; I joined NetFlix 4 or 5 years ago.
Get a del.icio.us account and play with social bookmarking and tags. - Done in 23 Things
Play with Blinkx and learn about searching TV shows, video and podcasts. - Done in 23 Things
Try MovieFlix too. There are plenty of free movies to learn to do this with.
Set up a Google Picasa account. Post a picture and then edit it. - Done on my own.
Download an MP3 file to your PC, laptop or phone. Try iTunes, LimeWire, Kazaa, or eDonkey. Look for something that's not music too. - Done on my own, constantly in the case of iTunes. Also, eDonkey has been shut down.
Listen to a podcast. - Done in 23 Things
Find your home and your office on Google Maps.
Check out your local library's website. - Done on my own, many times.
Change your ring tone so you don't jump when everyone else's default ring goes off. - Done on my own. The ringer is set to The Rolling Stones singing "Here Comes Your 19th Nervous Breakdown." It's appropriate.
Visit the Google Labs site regularly.
Set up a personalized Google or My Yahoo! page. - Done on my own.
Play with JibJab.
Play with Wikipedia. Edit an entry, feel the network. - Done on my own.
Play with Copernic and extend your searching.
Play an online multiplayer game.
Take an e-learning course from Click University.

And, adding my own ...

Create a podcast.
Understand bit torrents.

Well, there will be more later.

23 Things - Done. Bring on more!

2006-10-02T14:29:00.000-04:00

Crossing the Finish Line, Shelby Club Race, Infineon Raceway
Originally uploaded by The Electrician.

With this post, all 23 things on the list are done. I have thoroughly enjoyed the Learning 2.0 experience and am almost sad to be finished. Even when "learning" about websites I was already familiar with, I discovered new ways to use them and new things about them.

My favorite site was probably Flickr, which I had explored before but not as much as I should have. It's so wonderfully simple to add a picture to a blog from Flickr! I'll return to Technorati more often, and I'm not finished with my experiment at Consumating.

I enjoyed tracking other staff members' progress through the 23 Things and reading their opinions of each task. I was asked several times to help coworkers finish their tasks, and was honestly surprised at how much help some of them needed. It was a good reminder of how much help Virtual Village computer users will need with these concepts, and of how difficult it is for some people to "play" with a technology they don't know much about. I think they tend to get frightened and hesitant, and don't give themselves permission to poke around and figure things out. With Web 2.0 being perpetually beta, comfort with uncertainity is more and more of a necessity and I hope people will be able to adapt.

I've done the 23 Things, but I'm not done learning. I'll continue to update this blog with my experiences at Consumating, and I'm going to do the remaining items mentioned in the original 43 Things I Might Want to Do This Year article.

So stay tuned!

PLCMCL2

Consumating update

2006-10-02T11:19:00.000-04:00

I've been playing around with Consumating for a few days; so far, I'm having lots of fun!

How Consumating is different from other dating sites:

Consumating SST Derek
Originally uploaded by JChristenbury.

No long profile to fill out; just answer questions posed to the entire membership (if you want to - no pressure). You can be sarcastic, goofy or serious, whatever works for you. You can also use pictures in your answers. Questions include "What skeletons live in your closet?" and "What's your favorite toy?"
Start a "conversation" - i.e., ask your own questions, get answers if everyone else thinks the question interesting enough.
Other members "tag" you, which lets you know more about what they think about you.
Your popularity is based more on answers to questions and conversations than how hot you look in a bikini. This is the point system the Wall Street Journal article talked about. You can get (or give) points from any other member, boy or girl, or even a visitor.
Frequent "real-life" parties to meet other members.

Consumating SST popularity
Originally uploaded by JChristenbury.

I'm having lots of fun answering the questions and reading other answers, but I'm not sure I see how Consumating works as a dating site. It's an enjoyable social networking site where you might find someone you're interested in, but I'm not sure how the matchmaking could happen. Maybe if there were more people signed up from the Charlotte area?

Since Consumating isn't all about matchmaking, I encourage everyone to sign up! It really is a lot of fun.

PLCMCL2
Consumating

Dvorak asks: "Does Web 2.0 = Dot-Com Bust 2.0?"

2006-09-29T16:45:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to post this for a while. PC Magazine's John Dvorak asks where the money for Web 2.0 is coming from, and how long it can be sustained. He also asks how YouTube ever expects to make money, a very good question.

YouTube
Web 2.0

New Elmo

2006-09-29T16:30:00.000-04:00

Check out Lori's blog for a YouTube clip of the new TMX Elmo. C'mon, you know you want one!

PLCMCL2
Elmo

PLCMC & NetLibrary

2006-09-29T15:46:00.000-04:00

I'm not much of an audio book listener. Somehow, I need to see the words on the page to really grasp what's being said.

For me to listen to an audiobook, it's going to have to be easy to purchase, easy to listen to, and portable. (I cancelled my Audible.com membership a few years ago because the files just weren't portable in any convenient way.)

To be completely honest, I probably won't listen to anything through PLCMC's partnership with NetLibrary because the files aren't compatible with my iPod. Not that other public libraries are doing any better; a quick search revealed that most are using either NetLibrary or OverDrive, both of which require Windows Media Audio DRM.

Nevertheless, I took a look at the offerings available to PLCMC patrons from NetLibrary. I found a surprisingly good "fiction & literature" collection, with lots of works by Southern authors like Lee Smith. Over one quarter of the 1,377 titles offered are classified as "mystery & suspense" - I wonder if there is data saying that mysteries are the most common type of audiobook purchased?

A few titles were miscategorized. For example, Salem's Lot by Steven King was in the health and medicine group, and Anne Perry's (fictional) Belgrave Square was categorized as non-fiction. Book descriptions were short or even missing; NetLibrary should think about allowing users to tag audiobooks, to provide more detail.

I did my exploration at a computer without speakers or headphones, so although I was able to download an audio book I was not able to listen to it. Downloading was easy, at least! There are a few NetLibrary titles that I might want to try downloading to my home computer so I can listen to them, including one of the recorded lectures.

PLCMCL2
Audiobooks
NetLibrary

Viral videos? Where's the doctor?

2006-09-29T10:50:00.000-04:00

Being somewhat familiar with YouTube, I decided to explore other user-created video sites on the Internet. I was surprised by how many I found.

[Note:] Sites with * require you to watch ads before your video plays.

Many choices for browsing
For browsing, I still prefer YouTube, but I also like Veoh and DailyMotion. Like almost all video sites, clips play directly on these webpages.

Yahoo! Video and Google Video make browsing easy, although clips from Yahoo! Video sometimes open in a seperate player window, usually either Windows Media Player or Real Player, instead of playing directly on the site. AOL Video offers paid selections as well as user-contributed clips (as does Google Video). I also liked Atom Films*, an old-school viral video site that I hadn't visited in years.

GoFish was typical except for the annoying America's Dream Date clips that start playing as soon as you get to the site. Metacafe and ifilm* were also rather typical. A lot (but not all) of what's on view at MySpace is almost pornographic and generally NSFW (not safe for work).

Not your average video sites
Revver is a little different than most; they say they are "the first viral video network that pays." Each video has an ad at the end of it; each time a viewer clicks the ad, the video poster gets paid. YouAreTV has interesting and different clips; they say they offer "the best independent films, shows, and videos online," and it's true that the videos weren't your typical offerings but tended to be more serious. DailyMotion offers more international clips (like these from France) than other sites.

Blinkx for searching
With so many video clip websites around, a search service like blinkx.tv is invaluable; blinkx searches even more video sites than I had already located. I ran my infamous fainting goats search, and blinkx found 25 videos from a wide variety of sources.

Favorite clips
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, told in Legos, from Veoh

Still Weathering the Storm, a Hurricane Katrina documentary by a group of kids, from YouAreTV

Bathtime in Clerkenwell (again) on Atom Films

Cats & Dogs, from Google Video


I don't think the dog is dead ...

Crying kid just won't stop, from AOL's UnCut Video

Hamster Dance, from MySpace videos

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Martin Scorsese's Sesame Streets, from ifilm (Warning: Rated R for language)

Britian's Dumbest Criminal, from Metacafe

Britians Dumbest Criminal - video powered by Metacafe

Diet Coke and Mentos fountain, from GoFish

Very funny parody of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful"

PLCMCL2
Video
YouTube

Profile at Consumating

2006-09-29T09:23:00.000-04:00

It's official. I've created my profile at Consumating. In interests of anonymity, the only pictures I've posted are of my feet. (I cringe when I think about the possibility of someone using the computers at Virtual Village recognizing me.) Thus begins a grand experiment in observing dating Web 2.0 style. Let's just see what makes this site so different, eh? Mind you I may not be ready to post a complete wrap-up of my experience before the PLCMC Learning 2.0 tasks are officially complete, but if you keep paying attention after it's over I'll let you know.

Oh yeah, there's a new Consumating badge in my sidebar. Go give me a thumbs up, please! I don't think you'll have to register or anything to do that. Feel free to add some tags to my profile as well, if you want.

PLCMCL2
Web 2.0
Consumating.com

Useful site I just found

2006-09-28T12:23:00.000-04:00

Just sort of stumbled across a really great website/service called similicio.us. similicio.us looks like a search engine, but instead of a keyword you type in a URL and get back a list of websites that are similar. For example, a search of podcast.com returned links to Podcast Alley, Podcast Pickle, PodShow, Odeo, Yahoo! Podcasts and PodNova among others.

PLCMCL2

Sounds dirty to me

2006-09-28T11:33:00.000-04:00

I decided to try Consumating.com, a web 2.0 social network/dating site, mostly because I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal about it Tuesday morning. Members rate each other by awarding points, and apparently the competition can be rather ferocious.

Click "Read more" for an intriguing quote from the article …

From "The Undateables," Wall Street Journal, Sept. 23, 2006, pg. 1:

"For Sarah Schoomer, it's meant focusing as much on trying to boost her ranking as on searching for a soulmate. … Ms. Schoomer thought she'd give Consumating.com a shot. … The site also seemed cooler than others, with its quirky ratings feature and offbeat questions that encourage sardonic responses. … But not long after her profile went up, the lines were silent. The site posts each member's popularity score, which changes based on positive comments from other users, and then ranks them accordingly. … [S]he took drastic action: a plea to the site's 20,000 members. … [T]hey doled [points] out to her liberally, and within days, she'd climbed to number 343. … After coming this far, Ms. Schoomer says she now worries that she could get so caught up in the popularity game that her true match could look right past her — or vice versa. "It does make me stop before posting something and wonder, 'Am I being authentic, or am I just saying something provocative?'"

So, as soon as I can figure out what name and "witty one-liner" to use on my profile, I'll sign up, explore and report back on Consumating.com.

PLCMCL2
Web 2.0
Consumating.com

Quick update to podcasts

2006-09-28T09:10:00.000-04:00

I got a chance to play around on my home computer for a few minutes this morning, and I've got to say that Yahoo! Podcasts integrates with iTunes beautifully. All I had to do was click the appropriate button on the My Subscriptions page at Yahoo!, then "open" the downloading file, and the podcasts were added to my iTunes podcast list to be synced to my iPod. Isn't it nice when something actually works the way it's supposed to?

PLCMCL2

Finding podcasts

2006-09-27T17:17:00.000-04:00

I have iTunes installed on my computer at home, and it's so easy to use that I rely on it to find and listen to podcasts. But I know not all podcasts are listed with iTunes, so for this exercise I decided to try some new happy hunting grounds.

I tried:

Interface-wise, I definitely prefer Yahoo! Podcasts, which includes ratings from other listeners and some easy to follow instructions for creating your own podcast. And they get bonus points for making it so easy to listen to a podcast with just one click. (Although I was hoping The Dolphin Pod would feature dolphins talking, kinda like whale songs.)

Then again, Podcast.net is just as easy, with the added benefit of letting you see right away when the last podcast was posted (if you browse the categories on the front page); no use listening to a news podcast that was created in January of 2005!

Podcast Alley is a bit harder; you can listen to a podcast but the link for that is hard to find. It's much easier to find the "subscribe" link. Since podcasts are free, you may as well subscribe and cancel later if you hate it, I suppose. I like to listen to a snippet first, though. I often know in 5 seconds if I'm going to hate it.

Podcast.com is the only service to feature a podcast player that's not a pop-up window, and has a broad listing of programs. The podcasts started playing very quickly, and continued to play as I browsed the listings some more. The podcast played smoothly as well, and wasn't interrupted by streaming problems.

Podcast.com is still in "alpha"; right now, there's one directory of podcasts. Soon, the site promises, users will be able to create and share their own directories, so you can find listeners with similar tastes and grab podcasts from their directories.

Even if a podcast site doesn't have a built-in player, it's easy to subscribe to a podcast feed in Bloglines. Do just as you would to add any other RSS feed in Bloglines: copy the link for the RSS feed, navigate to Bloglines, and click "My Feeds." Then click "Add," directly below the "s" in Feeds. Paste the url for the RSS feed in the appropriate box and click subscribe, then answer the questions on the following page.. To listen to a feed in Bloglines, scroll to the bottom of the post and click the arrow on the blue icon. Warning: Navigating away from this post will stop the podcast.

Yahoo! Podcasts led me to The Definitive London Podcast, which is new to me and which I am quite enjoying as I type. This one might need to be added to my iTunes list so I can get it on my iPod, actually!

PLCMCL2
Podcasts

More 2.0 sites - this is fun!

2006-09-27T16:06:00.000-04:00

As far as exploring new Web 2.0 sites, I glanced at a couple and decided to really explore one.

First, what I glanced at.

Arcaplay.com - How is this 2.0? Just because it allows players to tag games? Surely I'm missing something.
Fitness Journal - This looks great, but it's paid subscription based. I think I might visit again after I get paid on Friday!
NBBC - What a disappointment to realize this is a business-to-business undertaking and not somewhere I can watch videos of NBC television shows.
Last fm - Looks interesting, but since it requires installation I can't play with it at work.
I tried to play around with Cityfeeds, but the site just wouldn't open for me.
Coverpop is weird.

PLCMCL2

Web 2.0 sites

2006-09-27T14:42:00.000-04:00

Looking at the SEOmoz list of Web 2.0 award nominees, I was struck by how many of the nominated sites I'm already familiar with. (Hello. I'm Jamie and I'm addicted to the Internet.) I guess I'm more familiar with Web 2.0 than I thought I was.

Where I've been:

PLCMCL2

Online word processors wrap-up

2006-09-27T13:44:00.000-04:00

So, I've tried Zoho Writer and Writely. I also tried an online word processor called ajaxWrite. You've seen the results, so all that's left are my final impressions.

ajaxWrite didn't do much for me. I wasn't able to upload any existing Word documents to it, although I tried multiple times. I was able to type up a document, but could not change the text color, add a picture, or post to a blog. Disappointing.

Zoho Writer featured my favorite interface, and was easiest to navigate thanks to the "My Documents" pane. Performance was better than ajaxWrite, but Zoho Writer still didn't do everything I wanted it to. Almost all of the options were there on the toolbar, but the buttons stopped working on each of my documents. So I wasn't actually able to insert a picture or a special character, or to change the color of the font. Zoho Writer was the only application to successfully upload my Word docs, and it retained most of the original formatting although the line spacing was off enough that a two-page document grew to three pages. Spell check worked well, although without an "add to dictionary" option a word like "Mecklenburg" had to be corrected multiple times (or ignored). Zoho Writer's right-click menu was helpful, featuring cup, copy, paste, select all, make link and alignment options.

Writely was the best of the three at producing a final document similar to the Microsoft Word "control" document. I was able to insert a picture, change text size, color and font face, and so on. Spell check worked as well as Zoho Writer's, with the welcome addition of being able to add a word to the dictionary. Special character insertion was easy. The right-click menu allowed me to cut, copy, paste, select all and insert. Navigation was a little clunky, but not so much as to be incapacitating. However, I was not able to convince Writely to upload any of my Word documents; I even tried emailing them as the site suggested, but was unsuccessful that way as well. However, text pasted into Writely from Word retained almost all formatting.

Drawbacks common to both Zoho Writer and Writely are few:

Because the documents created are actually HTML, it's hard to work with pictures and text doesn't always wrap around them well.
There's no "reveal codes" tool to help you figure out what you've done wrong, but you can navigate to the HTML code for the document for troubleshooting.
There's no way to zoom in or out on your document, and no way to see how it's going to look on the printed page, even using print preview. (Especially troublesome with pictures.)
Font faces and sizes are limited to standard HTML choices.
Margins can only be changed using the printer properties feature when printing from the web.

Despite all the negative things I've said about them, these online word processors are actually darn useful! I would encourage a library patron creating a resume to use them, for example, so he or she can easily access the file from any Internet-connected computer without having to keep up with a floppy disk or purchasing a USB drive. Anyone who can use Word should be able to use either Zoho Writer or Writely, and for creating a simple document they would work beautifully.

PLCMCL2
Web 2.0

What they looked like printed

2006-09-27T13:27:00.001-04:00

As promised, I scanned the printouts from each of the online word-processing sites I used, Zoho Writer and Writely, as well as the "control" print from Microsoft Word. Click "Read More" to see the scans.

First, the "control" sample printed from Microsoft Word

control from Word
Originally uploaded by JChristenbury.

From Zoho Writer

zoho test
Originally uploaded by JChristenbury.

From Writely

writerly test
Originally uploaded by JChristenbury.

PLCMCL2
Web2.0

Posting from Word

2006-09-27T12:55:00.002-04:00

Okay, I think the posting from Word didn't work because Blogger can't take Word files. I also tried to email the file as an attachment and received a message saying that was the problem anyway. So, this time I've just used copy & paste to get the Word version into the blog. Notice how the line spacing and sizing is still really off, and the picture still isn't showing up.

Click "Read more" to see the results.

Dear Emily,

Grab your swimsuit and sunglasses. We’ll be off to the beach in the next few days. Take enough clothes to stay a while. This will be a long vacation. We’ll be gone for several months. We’re booked on a cruise ship headed for the Greek Isles!

Don’t forget the suntan lotion!

Love,

Mom

PLCMCL2

Blogging from word processors

2006-09-27T12:02:00.000-04:00

Still trying to figure out what I like and don't like about these online word processing programs. One thing I thought I'd better try out was posting to this blog from them.

To make things easier, I posted the same thing - the exercise from our Word Basics class - from Zoho Writer, Writely and, for control, in Microsoft Word, and then post each result to this blog. The assignment is to type out the following "Dear Emily" note, make it Comic Sans, font size 16, blue, bold text. Then I added a picture at the end (or tried to in the case of Zoho Writer). Here's what I got when I used Zoho Writer and Writely to post directly to this blog; from Microsoft Word I used the built-in email feature to send it here, and I'm still waiting for it to arrive. (And I don't know why the picture from Writely isn't showing up here.)

From Zoho Writer
Dear Emily, Grab your swimsuit and sunglasses. We'll be off to the beach in the next few days. Take enough clothes to stay a while. This will be a long vacation. We'll be gone for several months. We're booked on a cruise ship headed for the Greek Isles! Don't forget the suntan lotion! Love, Mom

From Writely
Dear Emily,

Grab your swimsuit and sunglasses. We'll be off to the beach in the next few days. Take enough clothes to stay a while. This will be a long vacation. We'll be gone for several months. We're booked on a cruise ship headed for the Greek Isles!

Don't forget the suntan lotion!

Love,
Mom

I also printed this exercise out from each of the three applications; I plan to scan the print-outs and post them as well if I ever get the chance.

PLCMCL2

While I'm jumping ahead ...

2006-09-26T15:26:00.001-04:00

I might as well jump some more.

Thinking about podcasts this time. I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately; in fact, until this past weekend that was pretty much the only thing I'd listened to on my fabulous new iPod (thanks again for the gift, bb). There are some great podcasts out there! There are some terrible ones too. My advice is to go for the professional podcasts instead of the personal ones, which are often self-aggrandizing by their very nature.

So, without further ado, a list of some of my favorite podcasts:

Scientific American's 60 Second Science
Lonely Planet Travelcasts
NPR's Driveway Moments
NPR: Books
NPR: Shuffle (a daily podcast of the "best of" NPR)
On the Media
Scotsman.com Podcast

There are also some good podcasts from BBC, PBS and more from NPR.

P.S. There's a great list of popular podcasts at Yahoo! Podcasts.

PLCMCL2
Podcasts

Jumping ahead again - video on the Internet

2006-09-26T15:19:00.000-04:00

I'd better blog about this now before I forget. Looking at the assignment about online video reminded me of a video I often show in my Internet Basics classes.

When demonstrating how search works I like to search for an interesting topic that will spark some interest in anyone who has been drifting away. We often search for fainting goats, which has the added benefit of being one of those phrases that comes up with different top results on different search engines, so it works really well.

The students always want to know what a fainting goat is. This is the video I show them to answer that question.

PLCMCL2
Fainting Goats

Scrapblog

2006-09-26T15:09:00.000-04:00

I made this:

It took over an hour, it wasn't easy, and the second page still looks awful. Oh well. I'm sharing anyway.

PLCMCL2

Web-based applications

2006-09-26T12:59:00.000-04:00

I'm playing around with web-based applications; right now I'm testing out Writely and Zoho Writer. I've been messing around with Google Spreadsheets too.

It's too soon to have an opinion on any of these yet, although I will say I like the look of Writely quite a bit. Virtual is really busy and the Internet connection is getting pretty slow, so I'll add that web-based applications are great when you have a good connection but can drive you nuts when you don't.

PLCMCL2
Web 2.0

Neat new (Web 2.0) book site

2006-09-26T12:46:00.000-04:00

Well, I finished my beloved Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell this weekend, and have been at a total loss for what to read next. Nothing, but nothing, is going to be as good.

I got online to get some suggestions and came across the StoryCode website. At StoryCode, you "code" your books. Were they character or plot driven? Commonplace or exotic? Realistic or fantasy? Your books are given a number value for each variable; bover time, a good picture of what you like to read develops and books that fall within your results are recommended to you.

PLCMCL2
Web 2.0

Almost caught up! Adding a post to PBwiki

2006-09-22T17:32:00.000-04:00

Yay! I'm almost finished with this week's lessons, which is good 'cause the week is almost over. (It's 5:30 on Friday.)

I made a few posts at the PLCMC Learning wiki. I'd almost forgotten how easy it is to work with PBwiki. I really like PBwiki. (Although it's PmWiki I think will work best for my current project.)

PLCMCL2
wikis

My PBwiki (hpjc)

2006-09-22T15:56:00.000-04:00

I've also looked at PBwiki this week. A year or more ago I decided to try creating my own wiki, just for practice, and set it up at PBwiki. I created it just for myself because I'm not very good at remembering character's names and am always getting stumped when a "new" character who has actually been around before is introduced into the Harry Potter story. But I abandoned the project before I got even a twelfth of the way finished and haven't been back to the site in many months.

Oddly, the same week that PBwiki is one of the 23 Things assignment, I received an email from PBwiki letting me know about cool new features, like tags and an API (application program interface, which is more or less what lets you create mashups, and which is way more than less over my head). The PBwiki team is also created a nice gui front-end for creating and editing pages.

I'd forgotten how much fun I had playing with my wiki, and was surprised at how good it looks now that I haven't seen it in a while. I was essentially typing up some annotations for the Harry Potter books; I've already made the notes, I just need to enter and link them. Maybe it's time to start doing that again.

Although at the moment I'd rather create a new wiki doing the same thing for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

PLCMCL2
PBwiki

Wiki, Wiki everywhere but not a place to write

2006-09-22T14:03:00.000-04:00

I've spent most of the latter part of the week searching for a wiki that allows moderation of content before it is published. I've realized I can't find it because moderation is completely anti-wiki; the admin is meant to trust the user both to not need moderation and to moderate other users. A scary proposition, but one which seems to work for Wikipedia, despite media claims to the contrary (although deliberate vandalism is still a major concern).

Certainly Wikipedia's coverage of the July 7, 2005 London transport bombings was incredibly well-done and absolutely up-to-the-minute as events unfolded. (As is the nature of Wikipedia, the most remarkable aspects of that coverage were erased very soon after they were added. In fact, it's that constant updating that made the page so remarkable. For similar responses to current news, try Wikinews.)

Since I like Wikipedia, I was looking forward to seeing what libraries are doing with wikis, I really was. I expected to see full-blown catalog wiki sites with long lists of reader comments and tags on each book. I expected library user comments on various reference sources. I was less than impressed with what I saw.

Wikis are the star of the show when it comes to the read/write web. Read what's there, and if you disagree or think something needs to be added, write it up! Simple.

Library wikis seem to have forgotten the "write" part. For example, the OCLC has apparently decided to call the OpenWorldCat a "wiki" because they accept user-written reviews. (Which, of course, Amazon has done for years.) Similarly, the Princeton Public Library wiki has some great book reviews written by patrons, but ... That's it. No responses to the reviews, no comments, no tags. (The reviews are so well-done I hope they continue the project now that summer reading is over, BTW.)

I honestly can't see what makes the University of South Carolina Aiken library site a wiki except that it happens to be run off PmWiki software. The Bull Run library site adds some RSS feeds by being a wiki, but again I don't see any "write" elements except the ability to add favorite books to the library's LibraryThing list, "an experiment in opening up this wiki to external input (Seeing that Recommend a Book didn't result in many recommendations)." If there's another "write" component, I can't find it. The Beth Page Public Library Wiki seems to be just one static page, but calls itself a wiki.

According to the University of Calgary wiki, a wiki is characterized as "an open, collaborative website that allows anyone to add and edit pages." I suspect that while library staff see these websites as wikis, the public sees them as typical websites.

As I said, I was disappointed. I was hoping for something created by both a library and its users.

I know that for libraries the wikis I've mentioned are baby steps, that getting staff to use a wiki is hard enough, that most libraries aren't philosophically ready to surrender control of content to the users. (Some library organizations, like LISWiki, are brave enough to allow library-connected users to post to their pages and have gotten some terrific results.) Maybe a nice transitional step is to convert the PLCMC intranet to a wiki?

As we move towards real wikis, we should all read the Cluetrain Manifesto's 95 Theses at least once a week to remind us where we are trying to go and why. And if it's any consolation, private industry is struggling with wikis as well.

Interesting fact: Most of the library wikis are run off PB Wiki. Hmm. Wonder if they are using the paid version?

PLCMCL2
wikis

Banned Books Week, Sept. 23-30

2006-09-21T14:11:00.000-04:00

All about me, from Blogthings

2006-09-21T11:29:00.000-04:00

You Are a Life Blogger!

Your blog is the story of your life - a living diary.
If it happens, you blog it. And make it as entertaining as possible.

What Kind of Blogger Are You?

Your Career Type: Artistic

You are expressive, original, and independent.
Your talents lie in your artistic abilities: creative writing, drama, crafts, music, or art.

You would make an excellent:

Actor - Art Teacher - Book Editor
Clothes Designer - Comedian - Composer
Dancer - DJ - Graphic Designer
Illustrator - Musician - Sculptor

The worst career options for your are conventional careers, like bank teller or secretary.

What's Your Ideal Career?

Your Linguistic Profile:

45% General American English

35% Dixie

10% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

You Belong in San Diego

Laid back and friendly, you were meant to live most of your life on the beach.
You usually think everything is "all good"... except when the weather dips under 60F.
You stay classy - especially when you're in Tijuana!

Where Does Your Inner Californian Belong?

Your Theme Song is Back in Black by AC/DC

"Back in black, I hit the sack,
I've been too long, I'm glad to be back"

Things sometimes get really crazy for you, and sometimes you have to get away from all the chaos.
But each time you stage your comeback, it's even better than the last!

What's Your Theme Song?

You Belong in Amsterdam

A little old fashioned, a little modern - you're the best of both worlds. And so is Amsterdam.
Whether you want to be a squatter graffiti artist or a great novelist, Amsterdam has all that you want in Europe (in one small city).

What European City Do You Belong In?

Brainy Kid

In high school, you were acing AP classes or hanging out in the computer lab.

You may have been a bit of a geek back then, but now you're a total success!

Who Were You In High School?

In a Past Life...

You Were: A Charming Herbalist.

Where You Lived: Austria.

How You Died: Killed in Battle.

Who Were You In a Past Life?

You Are A Rowan Tree

You are full of charm and cheer. You light up a room.
And while you crave attention, you do it without ego.
You are an interesting mix of contradictions - and very unpredictable.
You are both dependent and independent, calm and restless.
You are passionate, emotional, gregarious, and (at times) unforgiving.

What's Your Celtic Horoscope?

I was a swan!

2006-09-21T11:24:00.000-04:00

You Were a Swan

You are a spiritual soul who sees into the future.
You are also good at interpreting dreams - those of yourself and others.

What Animal Were You In a Past Life?

Jessmage on Library 2.0

2006-09-21T11:09:00.000-04:00

I've been reading other people's Learning 2.0/23 Things blogs, and I've come across some really good stuff. Jessmage at "More from the World of Randomness" has some great things to say about Library 2.0 and how staff levels sometimes keep us from doing what our patrons really need.

PLCMCL2

Sitting in front of the computer ... for HOW long?

2006-09-21T10:54:00.000-04:00

Great post from Susan over at "Susan's Blog." She wonders if the Internet and blogging will replace face-to-face interaction, and how anyone finds time to read the thousands of great blogs and websites and still fit in books, newspapers and magazines.

I wonder too, Susan. There are hundreds of books I want to read but can't get around to, and over 200 RSS feeds in an old Bloglines account that I have just given up on. Somehow, sitting in a dark room reading from a computer screen makes me feel anti-social and reclusive, in a way that reading a book in front of the TV does not. (Which really doesn't make sense because I'm alone in both cases.)

I know people who sit in front of the computer all night; I can't see how they do it. I connected with someone I met online a few months ago and we've had a relationship for a while, all conducted through instant messaging. Chris thinks nothing of being online for 4 or 5 hours a night, and absolutely all day on weekends. Just thinking about doing that gives me a sick, queasy feeling. And I can't really explain why.

I don't know. I work in front of a computer 8 hours a day; I just don't want to sit in front of one all of my off-time too.

PLCMCL2

A few quick links

2006-09-20T12:13:00.000-04:00

The British Library gets interactive.

Read/Write Web analyzes and compares social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us, diigo and Ma.gnolia. Many comments, which are interesting in their own right.

Here's one library user (okay, an author) who doesn't approve of Library 2.0.

Library ghosties. Maybe that's why our computers get so slow sometimes - the ghosts are sapping all the electrical energy.

PLCMCL2

We used to have a wiki ...

2006-09-20T11:26:00.000-04:00

vviki
Originally uploaded by JChristenbury.

Wikis. We used to have a wiki. Her name was VViki. She was very helpful when we needed to get a phone number for the nearest Internet cafe or the URL of the local Employment Security Commission. But she's dead now. She lived on one of Rogan's computers and stuck around for a while after he left, but she's gone now. Her icon and shortcut live on on the desktop of our service desk computers!

[PLCMCL2]

Library 2.0 links

2006-09-20T10:49:00.000-04:00

While researching Library 2.0, I came across some really good blog posts about the subject that I couldn't work into my own write-up. They're still interesting, though, so here they are.

T. Scott doesn't have a problem with the idea of Library 2.0, he just really dislikes the name. He believes that what we're calling Library 2.0 is really just an extension of the librarian/community relationship already in place in good libraries.

Mr Krumpus at Library of Terror thinks Library 2.0 is mostly a marketing term and an attempt to woo "millenials" who will eventually grow up and change their ways. He poses some interesting questions about what a library is, and I agree with some of his answers.

Jessamyn at librarian.net, whom I discovered at Ask Metafilter and only later realized is a brilliant librarian, talks about how to share Library 2.0 ideas and adds, "Our patrons share their hopes and dreams and foibles and ambitions with us all the time, it may be time to give back, become more interactive and collaborative, make that door swing both ways. This is what Library 2.0 means to me."

If I find more, I'll post them too!

PLCMCL2
Library 2.0

Library 2.0 audio blog recap

2006-09-20T10:42:00.000-04:00

In case you don't want to listen to my lurvely audio posts, here's a recap.

Firstly, I want to make clear that I believe Library 2.0 is absolutely vital to the survival of libraries around the world. Libraries have always changed as society changed; to take the most basic of examples, we don't rent reel-to-reel movies anymore but we do have DVDs. In many ways, Library 2.0 is no different. A bigger step for some of us, yes, but still a step that today's culture (and tomorrow's, presumably) insists that we take.

The articles from OCLC were generally very good, and did a good job explaining what the vision for Library 2.0 really is. I do have one little semantic quibble and one major reservation about 2.0 as they presented it, though.

My quibble is one that Helene alluded to in her introduction to this exercise when she said, "Others within the profession have asserted that libraries have always been 2.0; collaborative, customer friendly and welcoming." If Web 2.0 means "the read-write web," where users post comments that then become part of the webpage's content, it follows that part of Library 2.0 is "the read-write library."

That, we've always been. A simple example: you recommend a book to someone. She comes back and tells you she hated it. You recommend the same book to someone else. He also hates it. You may recommend it a third time, but you'll likely include the warning that not everyone will like it and it isn't to everyone's taste. You have absorbed the feedback from the first two readers and used it as part of your presentation to the third reader. That's what librarians and library staff do: evaluate something (a book, a reference source, etc.), use it or recommend it, gather new information and opinions about it, revaluate it, and so on, continuously.

Our technology, however, could use a bit of catching up with what we humans do so well. A library catalog with tags? Great. Or how about "favorite users" who post lists of what they read so I can find someone with matching tastes? Or at least a book recommendation engine as good as the one at Amazon.com?

On to my more serious reservation. In the "Away from Icebergs" article, Rick Anderson says, We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning. ... But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons. One-button commands, such as Flickr’s “Blog This,” and easy-to-use programs like Google Page Creator, offer promising models for this kind of user-centric service.

I'm not sure what kind of computer users Mr. Anderson is used to seeing in his Reno, Nev. library. But the ones we see in Virtual Village often don't understand what a webpage is, much less a blog, and one-click services do them no good until they learn how to click. The read-write web is beyond them, as they are just now learning about the web in general These users still need a great deal of training; many of them aren't ready for Library 1.0 yet, and will be utterly baffled by 2.0. As Michael Golrick says in his Thoughts from a Library Administrator blog, "So many of the technology solutions included in the discussions of Library 2.0 completely disenfranchise those who are on the wrong side of the Digital Divide."

And there's another group of computer users we see who, although they could learn to do things on their own, prefer not to. Some lack the confidence and want someone on staff to stand beside them as they work so they don't "break the computer" (which I tell them they probably couldn't do with a steel-toed boot.) They are the nervous ones, who will always need our help.

There are also the flat-out lazy ones who see no reason to do something if they can get someone else to do it for them. I don't like sounding so negative about them but I don't know how else to describe them.

These two groups are the ones who don't want to make their own computer reservations through EnvisionWare, who want us to walk to their computers with them and type in the card number (we don't, but they wish we did), who never even think of looking at our map to figure out where their assigned computers are. They are either not ready to be empowered, or do not want to be empowered (because empowerment carries with it some responsibility for your own actions?). Are we saying we don't want these passive computer users anymore?

I know, actually, that we're not overtly saying that. But I do worry that our staffing levels will be so changed by Library 2.0 expectations that we will not be able to provide the kind of service they need or desire. (A part of me says that's fine, especially in the case of the capable but unwilling, but another part squawks that Virtual Village sees a lot of these people every day and they are a part of our user base.)

I said I had a reservation about Library 2.0. On second thought, it's not really a reservation, just a caution that we can't forget the users who aren't 2.0 ready.

One more thing that's been on my mind about Library 2.0 is that it invalidates our traditional method of judging a library's success: circulation numbers and door count. If library users don't even have to come to our building to use our services because they are online, these measures are no longer valid. They no longer present a descriptive picture of how well we are serving the community.

Even the statistics that we gather quarterly about reference activity cease to have meaning if our goal is to have that information available to our users so that they don't have to ask us for help. I feel like we're being pulled in two directions: while we're working so hard to build Library 2.0, I still sense a lot of pressure to maintain or increase our door count and circ numbers.

PLCMCL2
Library 2.0

From the Web 2.0 Logo Creator

2006-09-20T09:27:00.000-04:00

Create your own at the Web 2.0 Logo Creator.
[PLCMCL2]

One more post for today

2006-09-19T22:00:00.000-04:00

Just when I was getting ready to fuss at Helene for posting comments at 9 p.m., I realized there was one more link I wanted to share. Not about Library 2.0 - wait, maybe it is about Library 2.0, and why it's becoming so necessary.

Why don't people read for pleasure? As a booklover it's hard for me to understand, but this article by Michael Silverblatt might just explain it.

PLCMCL2

Library 2.0 audio post - Part II

2006-09-19T20:24:00.000-04:00

[PLCMCL2][Library 2.0]

Library 2.0 audio post - part I

2006-09-19T20:18:00.000-04:00

[PLCMCL2][Library 2.0]

Library 2.0 Idea Generator

2006-09-18T12:47:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm supposed to be off work today and I've absolutely got to go to the grocery store soon, but this is too wonderful not to blog: The Library 2.0 Idea Generator. Very tongue-in-cheek, but fun!

PLCMCL2 Library 2.0

What is Web 2.0?

2006-09-18T11:57:00.000-04:00

In case you're having trouble getting a grip on what Web 2.0 really means, here's a website that collects the logos and a bit of information about every Web 2.0 site they could think of. (I've also seen Web 2.0 described as "the read-write web," if that helps.

PLCMCL2

Technorati, then

2006-09-16T15:44:00.000-04:00

Until today, I hadn't visited the Technorati website in ages. Last time I was there it was just a plain old search engine, only it searched blogs. Now it's much more, and I like it!

Plus, I went to claim my blog and found that someone had already linked to it! That's cool! (And thanks.)

Anyway, Technorati would have been very useful last night when I was looking to see if there was anyone online discussing the Goldrush game at AOL. (There are lots of people discussing it in the blogosphere, by the way. And you should play; it's a chance to win a bunch of money from the people who make Survivor. If you decide to play, I wanna be your buddy. I'm TessSpike@aol.com.)

So now I know, to get a handle on what's buzzing in the blogs, use Technorati.

PLCMCL2 on Technorati

Deli-style

2006-09-16T14:34:00.000-04:00

Del.icio.us, then. Well, let's see. I've been using del.icio.us since February of 2005, and already have 353 bookmarks there.

So, is it useful for research? Yes and no. Frankly, it depends on how internet-savvy the researcher is.

For me, it's a wonderful tool; all I have to do is click a tag I've added to one of my bookmarks, then click "all" on the next page, and now I've got a big long list of sites other people think are relevant to that topic. A quick glance at how many other people have bookmarked a site gives me some idea how useful it will be. (Early on, I found tons of knitting sites this way.) Or, I can just search for a tag using the del.icio.us search feature, and get a surprisingly long list of links about the Brontë famil y.

The kicker is that, as with everything else on the Internet, you will have to use discretion about which sources are credible and which not worth your time. "Trusted users" (i.e., your network) will help to combat this problem.

As much as I personally like Del.icio.us, I doubt I will recommend it to Virtual Village computer users very often. For one thing, they generally don't understand tags (which in their simpliest iteration are merely self-chosen keywords) or even bookmarks; I just don't think they'd understand what they were looking at on the site. They also aren't typically very good at recognizing untrustworthy websites.

By the way, if you like del.icio.us, check out the Absolutely Del.icio.us Tools Collection.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

2006-09-13T13:41:00.000-04:00

Snowy Minster
Originally uploaded by jimoftheday.

I'm finally reading Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and it is indeed as wonderful as everyone said it was. I'm so happy it's so long as that means I get to live in that world for a while!

One of the pivotal scenes takes place in Yorkminster on a snowy morning.

Mood Portrait by Ryan Terry

2006-09-13T11:08:00.000-04:00

Mood Portrait by Ryan Terry
Originally uploaded by JChristenbury.

I've been meaning to add this image for a few days, and finally got around to doing a screen capture for it this morning. (It's created in Flash, so a screen capture is the only way to grab it, although you can print it from Flash.)

This mood portrait was created using Ryan Terry's generator, which I actually mentioned a few days ago. The things Terry's generator comes up with are so pretty, I just wanted you to see one. Please, go try it out!

Metafilter through Rollyo

2006-09-13T10:49:00.000-04:00

Okay, I created the Rollyo search of Metafilter and its associated websites (Ask Metafilter and MetaTalk, primarily) and it seems to work really well. Which is all the more impressive because I can't actually get to any of the Metafilter sites this morning ...

Roll your own book review search

2006-09-13T10:21:00.000-04:00

I've been playing around with it for a few days and I think I'm finally seeing the point of Rollyo, a nice little service that lets you "roll your own" search engine. Well, what you're really "rolling" for yourself is the sites the search engine will search.

I put together a little tool for search trusted book review sites, and I've been rather pleased with the results. For example, here's a search for reviews of Thomas Pynchon's Vineland. The only thing that throws it off a bit is that I wanted to include the New York Times book reviews in my search, and by the looks of it Rollyo can't limit itself to just a portion of a site; it's apparently searching all of the NYTimes.

I'm not as excited as some of the journalists quoted on the Rollyo site who say things like "Rollyo owns me," but it's a nice service. I'm also intriqued with the possibility of using it to search sites with either nonexisting or bad built-in search facilities. One of my favorite websites, Metafilter, has a terrible search facility, so I might try Rollyo the next time I need to find something there.

Blogger Beta

2006-09-13T09:43:00.000-04:00

Hmm. Took a little time this morning to play around with the beta version of Blogger; I'm not ready to switch over yet but there are some nice features. See what I'm messing around with in the beta version here. (And I think, overall, I still prefer TypePad.)

jamie's blog for the library

Account compromised - don't click that link!

hello~

Discovery Channel: I Love the World

My favorite Bookr (so far)

This could explain so much ...

Lawrence Welk Meets Velvet Underground

Trying something new ...

Flip book of Flickr

All My Life

Fun with Ravelry

Comparing Twitter, Jaiku, et al

Thing 35: Microblogging, or What Can You Do With 140 Characters?

Twitter Updates

Stuck on Thing 36: Photoediting

Thing 34 again

Thing 34: Nutrition info

Thing 29 was Scrapblog!

Thing 29! I still have to do Thing 29!

Xdrive Slide Show

Thing 32: Online file storage

Thing 31: Plaxo

Thing 33: Out of order, but oh well

And as a slide show - much better this way!

Harry Potter, from Photobucket. Yes, I'm a bit obsessed today.

Thing 27: Photobucket

Thing 26: Widgets

I'm jaie22!

Thing 28: Magazine Covers

Template woes

Thing 30: LOLCats

A test post from Photobucket

So, where have I been?

Guest blogger? Me?

One more thing about Letterpop

Oh, wait! Letterpop again!

Thing 25: Letterpop

Sale at Threadless

Zamzar: We have found the problem, and it is us

I have a bad feeling ...

Zamzar update

Thing 24: Zip, zam, zot

Wow!

Ah-ha! New scrablog!

Scrapblog, again

There's gotta be a better way!

Wow, It's been a long time.

Can't believe I forgot to mention ...

It's been a while

Posting a photo from Picasa

Bloglines alternative

Rated R for language - don't say you weren't warned!

More Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 goodness

The 43 Things

23 Things - Done. Bring on more!

Consumating update

Dvorak asks: "Does Web 2.0 = Dot-Com Bust 2.0?"

New Elmo

PLCMC & NetLibrary

Viral videos? Where's the doctor?

Profile at Consumating

Useful site I just found

Sounds dirty to me

Quick update to podcasts

Finding podcasts

More 2.0 sites - this is fun!

Web 2.0 sites

Online word processors wrap-up

What they looked like printed

Posting from Word

Blogging from word processors

While I'm jumping ahead ...

Jumping ahead again - video on the Internet

Scrapblog

Web-based applications

Neat new (Web 2.0) book site

Almost caught up! Adding a post to PBwiki

My PBwiki (hpjc)

Wiki, Wiki everywhere but not a place to write

Banned Books Week, Sept. 23-30