Technology

What's Hot in RSS & Social Software: IL2008

/ dwakimoto / 2 Comments

What’s Hot in RSS & Social Software
by: Steven Cohen

tinyurl.com/ILwhatshot

Readers:
Not much new for readers
Being advanced, added some things, but no new readers

Feedly:
add-on to Google Reader
added stuff on, different format to feeds
can tweet right from the reader

Firefox reader: just didn’t work out

Google Reader and Bloglines are the two big readers

Google Reader is becoming the more popular reader now
Notes feature–can share feed with others and a note who subscribes to your shared items
Email feature too
Trends feature: fun statistics, can see how much reading done on the mobile, “most obscure”=what you subscribe to and no one else does
Search your reader items–pretty cool, like searching your own little newspaper
Can also read off-line through Google Gears

Cool stuff now: Lifestreaming
Bringing it all together
Tumblr
can RSS the feed from Tublr, allows you to use any URL you own in addition to using a tumblr domain

friendfeed
made by same person who did Gmail (rock on!)
another lifestream application

RSS Tools
Feed Sidebar (Firefox extension: reader on the left side of your browser)
Libworm (database of library oriented feeds, blogs–so cool! can get the feed of your search)
Techmeme
YouTube (can RSS to feeds from YouTube; good to see how libraries are marketing themselves)
Twitter Search (can RSS the feed too–IL2008 is on the top of twitter search right now)
OpenCongress (track any federal legislation, congressmen, etc. through RSS)
JustiaDockets (can see federal filings, anytime a company is sued get through RSS–push it out to your clients)
Ebay (use a third party site to get RSS feed)
delicious (subscribe to tags, other users) follow tag “tools”
Google Blogs Search (can run your blog URL through it)

No RSS? Get a feed from a page
Page 2 RSS (use to get an RSS from any page–really any static page–rock on, only updates once a day)
Update Scanner (Firefox extension, allows you to keep up to date with any page, will scan for updates (you set the scanning settings) highlights new stuff–cool!)

Use RSS to let people in organization know that you are around

Staying Current
WWWhatsnew (keep up, but in Spanish–can get it translated)
Database RSS feeds for your search (I love these)

Know who your FLOs are (Friends of the Library): they are the best marketing for your library

Screengrab (Firefox extension–screencap only part of the screen that you want)

Missing Auctions (now at Invisible-Auctions.com–looks for all the misspellings of a word on ebay)

Note: This was a totally fun session. Great presenter and very funny! People videoing it and twittering it live!

Take Home Message:
RSS can be used for more than you think! Check out some of these cool tools that you can use in your work and for fun!

Making Movies: IL2008

/ dwakimoto

Making Movies: Cameras, Lights, Action

by: Sean Robinson and Kaye Gregg

Anime studio 5: software to use

American public on average watch 28 hours of TV a week

Tools of the Trade:
Camera
Tripod
Microphone
Lights
Computer Software

Lowest entry point:
using camera on the video setting and large SD memory card (cool!)

Upping Production Value
Sony pd 170 $1600 (many manual settings)
They use Mac for editing (I don’t use Macs, PCs work too)
Final Cut Express ($155)
Anime 5 ($44)
Sound editing: Audacity (works well–love it, I use it for podcasting)
Fast track M-Audio ($100)
Make your own soundtrack

Lighting kits: scoop lights from Home Depot, etc.

Don’t make bad videos:
Make a video that is both informative and entertaining

Challenge: move idea to reality!

Devil is in the details
get idea, write and rewrite, scout location, secure location, know light sources, outside–shoot in morning or evening (light is better), be aware of ambient sounds, take shots with still camera, test your equipment

Finding talent: searching inside your organization, look for extroverts, give them a screen test

Be prepared! Write out script on large piece of paper and hold under the camera so they can read it

Score it!
Put music into your video, archive.org (public domain clips/video loops) or create your own if you are musical, expectation to have music with video
Layer sound: voice, soundtrack, special effects sound

Microphones: stationary mic, lapel mic, if moving around a lot you can use a boom mic, or put in sound after the filming in the editing process

Sound design: work seamlessly, you shouldn’t notice it, register subconsciously, create auditory clues

More tools:
comb, water to drink and makeup
A little makeup is good, too much is a crime
Costuming: clothing should be in harmony with the surroundings

Prep work should be done before the talent gets there: check lights, camera and audio

Lighting 101:
Overhead florescent lighting: horrible, makes people look angry and green
Try to control lighting
Back light: hits at the base of the neck, separates subject from background
Fill light: in from the side, filling out the shadows
Should use: Back light, fill light (soften the face), key light (makes sparkle in the eyes) (15 degrees from the camera, 45 degrees angle)

Editing
If it doesn’t advance the story, it needs to go (even if you love the shot)
Make the subjects look and sound as good as possible

How do you do the editing?
Plan for the edit
Make the person make a script from their idea
Storyboard your script (it will keep you on schedule)

Edit wisely:
Viewers are visually sophisticated and can spot a bad edit, rely on your instinct, smooth edits and give a pace to it. Always have an intro, middle and end/wrap-up

Time needed:
40 minutes of film shot= 2 minutes usable footage
1 minute of footage=4 hours of editing
Double how long you think it will take and round up to the next Friday

Making a video in the session–we actually filmed a video that will be used for IL2009 marketing! So cool

Take Home Message:
Making videos is hard work but rocks. Rock on librarians!

Twitter: IL2008

/ dwakimoto

Twitter & How the “Twittest” Use it for Keeping Up
by: Michael Sauers, Christa Burns, Cindi Trainor, and Jezmynne Westcott

Michael Sauers and Christa Burns
Microblogging
Short, fast, easy, mobile
140 characters or less
follow friends, be followed, like IM, but asynchronous, no status
Need friends to have fun and “get it”
Easy to sign-up and start

Terminology
Post=tweet
Verb= tweeting
Methods: via the web, via client (Twhirl), via bookmarklet, via email, via SMS, Blog-to-witter (twitterfeed)
URLs are shortened to tinyurl

Twhirl: on your desktop, works for Twitter and friendfeed
TwitThis: bookmarklet the URL
Twitterfeed: can run through your RSS feed and it will show up in Twitter

Twitter commands
@username: reply
d username message: private, direct message
nudge username: nudge person
l: location information
follow username
leave username
block username (can’t read your topic)
invite phonenumber
#hashtag (tag)

Direct Messages
Sent directly to you, private instead of public

Add friends: follow button under the person icon on twitter

Follow your friends:
read your friends’ tweets via your twitter homepage, can subscribe via RSS, receive tweets via SMS

Uses:
Conferences
Reference Questions
News
Emergency Services
Weather
Presidential Campaigns, etc.

search.twitter.com : can search twitter (tag for Internet Librarian is IL2008)

Problems
Twitterference–so many tweets that you can’t make a phone call
No back-up, content is gone
considered too distracting
If you don’t participate, you won’t get anything out of it

7 Tips to a Good Twitter Experience
Follow others
@comment others
link to your stuff
don’t take non-responses personally
be patient
avoid addiction
use your name

Cindi Trainor, and Jezmynne Westcott

Twitter can be a learning tool

Making Connections
Sharing your stuff
Putting it all together
Lather, Rinse, Repeat

Twitter Questions:
How do you make connections?
can add people to your favorites

Tweetdeck: see all your tweets and replies in different frames and TwitScoop (tag cloud) to see the buzz, could also use twhirl

FriendFeed is a social aggregator
Aggregate all your social media in one place, enables conversation
Real time data, live updates for you

Flock
Browser made specifically for social media applications
(cool idea, but I don’t like the default skin, I need to customize it)

Take Home Message:
Twitter is great for community and you need community to make it work. But beware because it can be addictive and a great time sink.

Defining & Measuring Social Media Success: IL2008

/ dwakimoto

by: Jeff Wisniewski, Web Services Librarian, University of Pittsburgh

Many libraries have presence in social media, but struggling with assessing if it is worth the effort, what is the ROI?

Game Plan/Outline of the Session:
Why be social?
Developing a social media plan
Assessing social media success

Why be Social (Bad Reasons)
Because Oprah said we should
cause everyone is doing it
cause kids think it’s cool

Better Reasons:
Innovative ways to connect with users we may never see face to face
To encourage, promote, innovate, learn and adapt
Markets our services–people like to read reviews from people like themselves
Improve Customer Service
Discover and deliver what users want
Your Google page rank is influenced by it
People are anxious to interact with you online 85% of Americans using social media think companies should have an active presence in social media

Study of Facebook from the UK
Indicates that students use Facebook to connect and talk about academics, could use in teaching and learning

Developing a social media plan
1. Listen: ask yourself–is there a conversation about your library right now? If so, what is being said?
2. Prepare: Define a strategy, define goals (what exactly do you want to accomplish?), pick a platform or two, right platform depends on your goals Social Media at Sun Microsystems: How to Pick a Platform
3. Engage: Start blogging, etc., remember that social media is reciprocal, upload images to flickr, building community on Twitter, etc. just start getting out there
4. Measure: Becoming active in social media is the easy part, assessment is harder.

Measuring:
Need to know your ROI in order to justify using social media
You are not measuring: friendship, happiness, karma, enlightenment, etc.
You do need: quantitative and qualitative metrics

What are you measuring?
The Trinity Approach (Vinash Kaushik http://kaushik.net)
Behavior:
Quantitative: number of blog posts (Boyd’s Conversation Index: take number of posts divided by comments and trackbacks; result should be less than 1), number of facebook friends, views/visits
Have a tangible goal so you can measure it: ex higher satisfaction, fewer desk calls, etc.
Experience:
Listen, Engage, Converse, take action (cyclical in nature), be authentic in interactions, don’t sound all markety
Metric: take comments and break them down into stars (positive), scars (negative), or neutral and can produce a chart and compare how you are doing
Five things to get started:
1. monitor general search engine results–focus on Google because Google does social media results
2. monitor social media search engine results (like Technorati, del.icio.us, Twitter)
3. create alerts (use Google alerts, figure out how people get to your library, choose comprehensive results setting)
4. analytics: Google and Clicky Web Analytics (getclicky.com)
5. Assess nature and sentiment of the activity (deep commenting vs. superficial, users staying vs. bouncing quickly, repeat commenters vs. drive bys)

Take Home Message:
Social media creates a great opportunity for the library to engage more fully with people, but you need to remember to assess and measure the impact of your engagement in social media.

Keynote by danah boyd: IL2008

/ dwakimoto

Keynote: Social Media & Networked Technologies: Research & Insights

by: danah boyd

Web2.0 is part of the hype but a lot of people don’t know what it is

Technology crowd: see it as a shift in technology and deployment “perpetual beta” users affect the cycle of technology creation, reshaping, user-generated content

Business crowd: web2.0 is about hope, came after the technology bubble burst, venture capitalist

Reshaped how everyday users interact with technology and what they use it for

Very topically driven, interest driven

Reshaping of what public spaces online look like, it is now about friends and your community, organized around being social= rise of social network sites

Social Network Sites Characteristics: 

Profile–create identity online, formally making your identity known in a particular context, expresses who you think you are to people in the community, you can recreate yourself online, “decorating” young people’s profile look like bedroom walls in chaos

Friends–have to publicly articulate who your friends are, it is awkward, the term friends mean different things to different people

Patterns of friending: 1. people connect with those close with (20-50 friends) 2. most have a couple hundred of friends 3. people who try to collect with as many people as possible (14year old boys, musicians, politicians) 

MySpace: makes you list best friends in order, so awkward and horrible, tricky to navigate, young people find tricks to deal with this, bands are the safest things to put in your top friends, have social rules

Comments/Wall–majority of content there is not that great–not much information exchanged, social grooming, public performance, keep relationships going 

Facebook: status updates, update what you are doing, peripheral awareness of what is going on, very similar to Twitter (microblogging)

 

Microblogging–use in many ways, use in businesses, etc. creates peripheral awareness in digital environment, 

Why are people spending so much time on these sites?

Using for social purposes, sharing information, flirting, etc. Very critical for young people–free time to socialize like the digital mall, area to socialize because kids are not allowed outside with decreased mobility of young people, fear, overstructuring of kids’ lives, lack of mobility because no public transit, etc. makes digital social spaces important 

Must have presence on social network sites in order to exist 

Continuum of use–use all the time or post artifacts if you are able to meet with your friends often

 

Social Network Sites are digital social, public spaces properties:

1. Persistence–what you say sticks around, every ephemeral acts are now persistence, traces are now permanent 

2. Replicability–can copy and paste information, take from one context to another, don’t know the copy versus original, if it has been modified, young people bully each other through this

3. Scalability–average blog is read by 6 people, Internet has scalability issues–potential to reach millions but reality of reaching no one, attention-driven media

4. Searchability–you are not searchable when you are walking around physically, but online you become searchable often by those you don’t want, most deadly by teachers, bosses, etc. how do you become not searchable? change characteristics of profile

Invisible Audiences–audiences are invisible, an unknown online, you don’t have a sense of who is seeing it, you don’t know who will get there eventually, “imagined audience” 

Collapsed Contexts–we are used to distinct contexts defined by space, example weddings are very scripted events, online no walls–can be awkward

Public=Private–convergence, try to have control over space online, now about control, marking who can see things, public is completely out of control

What does this mean?

Radically change through information ecology

Same kind of structures in information technologies being created 

Examples: tagging in del.icio.us, everyone organizes information now in different ways 

Young people contribute to creation of knowledge ex. Wikipedia (most transparent creation of knowledge ever created), and questions of who has voice, authenticity, etc., but we are not teaching people about wikipedia and creation of knowledge, media literacy 

Breakdown of traditional authorship and ownership, ex. mashups, remixes, etc. (fan videos, fan fiction) need to harness this kind of passion 

Traditional ways of information organization and access can be modernized, happening in a broader sense 

This is an attention economy, what comes up is what gets the most attention not what is necessarily best, now we have to deal with it

Need to understand what is going on and how to use it

Lawrence Lessig talking about changes:

Social Norms

Market

Architecture of technologies

Law–conservative 

Intervention:

Net Neutrality–all bits are created equal, do you have the equal right to look at every page, how do you deal with this? need to figure out a way to protect net neutrality, need it for equal playing field

DRM–all about control of information, (defectivebydesign.org), if information is locked down you can’t consume, produce and play with content, this is about sharing and creating culture, DRM can kill off ability to engage with texts, need to balance original efforts of copyright with rights of consumer

Fair Use–need to figure it out in the media world, have publishers saying you can’t take more than 10 words, fair use is only a defense, form of terror online (note: check out chillingeffects)

Always positive and negatives 

Mobile is going to change everything, web2.0 will come into the mobile world, going to expand, cluster effects are key: can’t talk to each other if on different carriers, need to have same standard to get cluster effects, no standards in mobile space yet

(de)locatability–regardless of where you are in physical world you can bring your friends through the mobile world, also you can take what you are doing in the physical space into the online world ex. GPS uses in mobile phones 

Technology radically reshaping public as we know it, take properties in play and contend with them and how we want to shape information, technology and how people are interacting 

Take Home Message: 

Technology is here to stay, we must determine what we are going to do and how we are going to interact with everyone and educate them.

2.0 Learning & 1.8 Users: Bridging the Gap: IL2008

/ dwakimoto

2.0 Learning and 1.8 Users

by Rudy Leon, and Colleen Harris

Google generation aka Digital Generation

Myths about the Google Generation:
Skilled online searchers
Ease with new gadgets
Always connected
Effective multi-taskers
Require constant stimulation
Must be entertained
Learn by doing

Mythbusting
The do use the stuff, but not generating content, don’t understand the backend of the technology
Don’t have a mental map of the technology, little transferable skills, ramifications for new services, they don’t fit into student’s understandings of what they already know
We need to build the map that allows the students to transfer skills
We can’t build services and resources built on the myths

Digital Divide
Still very real
only about 62% of US homes have a computer in the home
99% of US schools have computers and Internet, but it varies widely in hardware and access
Differential training and use of the technology, very different skill sets

Fault lines:
Number 1 line is still race: 65% white, 45% African American, 30% Latino households have computers
Also fault line via class

Persistent effects:
Students get their information and do groupwork online, students do not get training in universities and therefore self-select out of certain majors that use a lot of technology, creates a divide in education

Challenges:
Students put a lot of weight on what their faculty say

Challenges: Faculty
What Faculty Know or Don’t: learn how to do research from their instructors through Ph.d, have informal networks
Expect students to figure it out on their own, but students need context and help
Equipment: need to think of technology as part of a skill set
Faculty not highly trained in teaching: learn to teach through sitting through classes, how can we help professors with their teaching?

Think of technology as Education Technology and do training to show how to use technology to make the teaching better. How do you integrate technology into teaching? Have library step in and help with the training.

Getting faculty on Board:
Owning our own expertise–help faculty use the content effectively, because hey, librarians rock! We need to own our librarianship.
Competitive processes for course development–give faculty stipends and workshops
Make connections–get out there and network and make connections, “let’s have coffee,” need to have relationships in order to then get people to use the library
Classroom instruction–have faculty attend the session with their students, the faculty will learn stuff too
Leveraging reaccreditation process–include technology outcomes as part of this process

Campus IT
Scarce resources–go if something is not working
IT can’t implement everything–librarians have to do it
Lots of open source software–free, but requires a lot of time to implement and maintain, so consider what you do
What is the model for teaching and training–librarians are great and are a link among students, faculty and technology

Learning Spaces
Library is a safe learning space–students can fail without consequence of grades
How to strategies for engaging students/faculty
Workshops–great to have face to face contact
Making equipment available–can check out laptops, cameras, etc. from the library
Actionable assignments–use technology in an assignment, eg. make a documentary, photojournalism, etc.
Partnerships–again, network!

Moving Forward–Learning Spaces
Libraries are a unique spaces on campus, safe learning spaces
Technology is fun and libraries are for learning, technology should help or enable learning
Critical thinking and metal maps–learning should be fun and technology should support learning

Building the Bridge
Build the workshops that help build skills
Gadgets support learning
We are the adults and students need to have a voice, but what they want is not always what they need, we don’t need to entertain the students 24/7
Have space and structure to play
Be skeptical about what the media says about the Digital Generation

Great presentation, love the LOL cats photos, wonderful energy!

Take Home Message: It’s all about community. Technology supports learning and is the means to the end, which is having faculty and students understand how technology helps.

Keynote: Search Engine Land: What's Happening Out There?: IL2008

/ dwakimoto

Keynote: Search Engine Land: What’s Happening Out There?
by Danny Sullivan
Editor-in-Chief of Search Engine Land, former journalist for LA Times

Themes:
There ain’t no Google Killer: Google is going to remain dominant search engine for at least 5 years. Very difficult for anyone to challenge them.

Cuil.com said would have largest index of the web earlier this year in order to get media coverage. But bigger isn’t always better in search engine land. Internet lifetime= 5 years. But it came out and it was horrible. Not the challenger that would knock Google off its perch. Relevancy was horrible especially compared to Google. You didn’t get stuff you expected–could tell there was no relevancy to search results.

Other Google Killers?
Powerset: proved natural language isn’t a natural killer, proved not to be a great search engine, Microsoft acquired it for not much money. Interesting because reading pages and understanding the ideas, which is cool–more like how humans read a page (get aboutness of the page) but not great for searching

Microsoft: announced search engine in 1998, gone nowhere

Pax Googlecana
the benevolent dictatorship
60-70% of the share of searches in the US
80-90% of website owners get traffic from Google
Some countries Google has 90% share, but not in China, Russia, Japan

Google Killerettes
Not quite death by 1,000 cuts and more like let 1,000 flowers bloom
Other search engines, niche and vertical search engines might be more attention
Google doesn’t dominate in all areas

Example: Twitter
Microblogging, hyper real-time tool to see the buzz
http://search.twitter.com
can get news before major news networks (China earthquake, etc.)
Google doesn’t do this

Urbanspoon
iPhone application–knows where you are and finds you a random restaurant or can input limiters (like type of food, price, etc.)
Can use it online too: http://www.urbanspoon.com
Also, Chowhound http://www.chowhound.com
Fun tools, very customer-centric, for mobile devices

Eventful (iPhone event and also on web)
http://eventful.com
What’s going on, from music to events
Upcoming another tool that does the same kind of thing
Google doesn’t have event searching

Yelp
local reviews of all types
http://yelp.com
Note: I love this site, great reviews and definitely get your library in there!
Lots of people are using Yelp
Google is growing its map community that can also host reviews

Trulia/Zillow
both offer homes for sale, local real estate values, etc.
Great for everyone finding real estate information
Google doesn’t have this service, maybe acquire one of these?

Kayak, multisite search
http://kayak.com
Farecast is similar, Microsoft acquired it
Google doesn’t have this feature

Craiglist
http://craiglist.org
buy, sell related to local areas
Lots of poeple use this
Google Base is attempt to challenge Craiglist
And Craiglist is doing well even though looks so Web 1.0

Jobs: Indeed.com
People: Pipl.com, Spock.com
News: Digg.com
Video: Blinkx.com, VideoSurf.com (note: I love VideoSurf, I got in on beta and it is fabulous, so interesting and great interface)
Gas Prices: GasBuddy.com

Killerette Challenges
Hard to remember all the ones out there: hard to remember to go back to the applications/service instead of Google, hard to change habits

Bigger Challengers: Yahoo!
Innovation, mobile
BOSS: build your own search service
Search Monkey: search results, way for publishers to blend information of their own into their listings (enhanced listings)
Biggest problem: Yahoo! continues to face uncertainty, investors don’t have faith in Yahoo! and Uncertainty leads to brain drain

Microsoft
Bailed out of “non-consumer” search, act like they are the heir-apparent, focused on ads first for ad money, search is second. Google started as a search engine, then looked into ads. Microsoft has major branding problems, trying out SearchPerks latest in giveaway attempt to get people to search on Microsoft’s Live Search

Google Master Plan?
Some planning: Chrome, Google Checkout, Google Shopping
BUT: lots of Google’s progress comes naturally, through a “hive mind” mentality
http://searchengineland.com/the-google-hive-mind-14832.php for article on hive mind
Hard to predict what Google will do. Increase advertising on Google applications

Googlettes
Google video is now video metasearch, been that way for about a year
Universal search mixing continues: blend results from many vertical search engines
Google Trends: continues to grow, data about website traffic
Community editing on maps growing, has spam problems
Google Blog Search: get top stories too, blog search clustering

Big Trends for Google
Personalized results: reshaping results based on where you are, what you are searching for, where you’ve been on the web
Search Customization: tailoring results based on geographic location, previous query, web history, start ramping up this customization
Now telling you that it is happening, explicit when changing query for you

Conclusion:
Google will continue to dominate, but mobile searching offers new opportunities

Take Home Message: Google is here to stay but is not the best service/application for everything. Branch out and try some of the Google Killerettes. Have fun.

Instant Audio & Video: IL2008

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Instant Audio & Video: Tools Igniting the Digital World

Connie Crosby

Barrier has dropped for creating audio and video on the web

“there is no better time to create a community of friends who can come together and execute on your brilliant idea” co-founder of 12seconds.tv (oct 2008)

Lots of these technologies are available on the web, open source

Not a lot of libraries are using these technologies yet

Need to build communities with these tools, be part of a group

Audio creates intimacy, creates connection–voice in your head through the headphones

Video connects to humanity, seeing a face is powerful

Important part of the technology is how you will talk to your community and engage to your community

Who are you going to engage with these tools?

Talkshoe www.talkshoe.com create, manage and host your own audio, like radio talkshow, several people call in at once, can record for downloading and pod casting, free recording, storage and bandwidth hosting, creating a show is easy, all you need is a computer and headphones with mic, give you widgets and badges to add to your blog (very cool) and other platforms

Ideally, you want to host stuff yourself, you will own the content

However, these tools allow you to do this stuff for free, low cost to entry and a way around dealing with IT

Uncontrolled Vocabulary–show on Talkshoe on library industry (http://uncontrolled vocabulary.com)

Utterli (www.utterli.com) a little Twitter-like, can use text, photos, video and audio, can call in from your cellphone, formerly known as Utterz, cross-post to many other platforms
Ex. Andycaster

Seesmic (www.seesmic.com) almost exclusive video, video conversation as of September 30,000 users, talking back and forth through video, has ability to see all video discussion in the stream
12seconds: Twitter for video, be succinct, watch on web or via mobile, only get 12 seconds to tell your story

ooVoo (www.loovoo.com) made for business video conferencing, up to 6 people on the screen at once, high resolution, records video chats, proprietary software, now has paid levels with more features

Tokbox (www.toxbox.com): opensource, web-based, large numbers of video chatting, confusion because so many people are talking at once, 6 is a nice number, 18 is too many

Ustream (ustream.tv): live interactive broadcasting, stream from events, chat, recorded for viewing later, camera and Internet access needed

Qik (qik.com): mobile live video, broadcast events, spontaneous, check for supported phones, chaotic

Phreadz (phreadz.com): in alpha right now, social multimedia conversation network, video audio and photo blogging, create via desktop or mobile, keep your eye out for this

These are tools for building community, information communication, unscripted, let your clients/patrons participate (getting students involved)

Creating content=engagement

We can support each other through these communities

Take home message: Build communities, get comfortable with using audio and video, and figure out how people are using these tools.

www.crosbygroup.ca/blog (she will be posting the slides–great slides and presentation)

Cool Tools for Library Webmasters: IL2008

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Cool Tools for Library Webmasters

Frank Cervone and Darlene Fichter

Tools for everyone: free tools

VisCheck: simulation of human vision, shows what things look like to someone who is color blind, online services and downloadable version (very similar to Vizu)

Links to presentation up on ITI website, on slideshare.net too

Thumbalizer: takes an image and makes a thumbnail for you

ImageFlow: can imbed in website, very like Cooliris, same look, but one stream and not a moving wall of images

DeGraeve.com: color palette generator, takes an image and suggests colors to use for design

Widgenie: creates widgets, connect to data, charts created, creates online charts

Call graph: records skype calls

Freemind: mind-mapping software, export in a number of formats

Firefox tools:
SafeCache– defends cache-based techniques, protects your privacy, safe browsing
SafeHistory– protects your browsing history, can’t have different sites looking at each other’s data
FoxMarks–automatically synchronizes bookmarks, access my.foxmarks.com (use this if you still insist on using Firefox’s bookmark function instead of just bookmarking everything to del.icio.us)
FEBE– Firefox Environment Backup Extension, backups your Firefox extension, synchs your office and home browsers, may specify user defined items, can backup other parts of your browser and browser history

LinkBunch: put multiple links into one small link, good for Twitter, Firefox extension creates a bunch from your open tabs

DocSyncer (don’t need if Google docs) automatically finds and syncs your documents to Google Docs, automatically backup everything

TrueCrypt– can encrypt your flash drive, part of your hard drive

File Hamster: real-time backup and archiving of your files while you work, monitors files or directories

Synchback Freeware: backup all files, good for server-level, open source product

FreeUndelete: puts directory entry back in so you can recover the file you deleted

Usability:
Browsershots: creates screenshots in different browsers, sends requests to machine running that browser, online tool, lots of browser platforms

Feng GUI: automatic alternative to eye-tracking, creates heat maps based on an algorithm that predicts what a real human would be most likely to look at
www.feng-gui.com

FavIcon from Pics: icon for the URL box, creates it from your logo, picture, etc.

SuggestionBox: link to your site, manage your suggestions

DamnIT: JavaScript, put on your webpage, captures errors and sends you an email about what happened

.htaccess password generator: cut and paste code

Cropper in C#: crops images, screenshots and captures screenshots

Steal from the best:
For best web design: web design, free layouts, open source web design, open web design, themesbase (all free sources of layouts, CSS, templates)

ZUG: missing page fun/404 error page, create funny error pages

Take Home Message: Tons of great open source stuff that you can use in the library and for your own personal use.

Search Widgets adn Gadgets for Libraries: IL 2008

/ dwakimoto

Search Widgets and Gadgets for Libraries

Jason Clark and Tim Donahue

Wiki.sla.org= able to do 23 things learn web 2.0 technologies in 15 minutes a day

Networked research environment and search-push technologies

New technologies, widget, gadget, and Flash animated finding tools

Where are Users are: personal-learning environment (PLE), users in all types of areas on the web, work in flickr, facebook, blogs

How to do research through: iGoogle, and other portals

Want users to use our resources, stuff moves quickly, technology moves quickly

What do we do/play?
“broadcast our signals” more widely, need to work in distributed environments

OpenSearch browser plugins–widgets
Google Gadgets–JavaScript applications, can link into library resources/catalog
Hook people and bring back to library resources

Montana State University: has page that has widget page to promote them to users

Examples:
Widget to enter library catalog through the browser, very cool application, don’t have to come into the library catalog, can do it for databases too, very easy to set up, very small XML file to create this widget

Google Gadgets: can build, quick search functionality, allow people to search in their own environment, users can drop this gadget into iGoogle page, Google has text editors (Google Gadget Editor) and can copy and paste code so not difficult to do, gives you the embed code after you make the gadget

Google Gadgets: there is the ability to have tabbed widgets–how cool is that?

All is done to allow users access to library resources through the environment they are comfortable with

Multiple Endpoints:
Facebook, MySpace, web portals, etc.
Can have library widgets that work in many different environments

What’s  next?
Promotion of the widgets and gadgets through education, videos, marketing
Figure out more opportunities–go where the users are instead of forcing one size fits all way of searching the library

Interplay between physical and digital resources/services in libraries

Apply new technology to books

Flash–animate the web! J
Example: library map, animate a map, mouse over the stacks to see what subjects/call number ranges in the stacks

Simplicity is key in visual design

Flash works through frames: drawing, animating through time and space, way to get around doing coding (ex. Took about 200 hours to create the example map)

Trying to integrate the map into the catalog, nice idea ex. Search catalog, find record, click link to see where it is in the library through the map

Flash is scalable so it is possible to work it into a widget, you don’t use resolution and can maximize widget/gadget to see larger version of the map

Arizona State University and Montana State University moving towards Google Application platform, have students use iGoogle pages as home portal and access resources through there

Take home message:
Widgets and Gadgets have the ability to bring the library to the users’ environment and push people to the library’s online resources/services, great ideas!