Find the answers to these questions by installing a site meter on your blog from sitemeter.com This little button monitors the traffic on your blog. Give it a try and spy on your readers. I was surprised to learn that I have visitors almost every day!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Is Anyone Out There?
We librarians have been blogging away about our Web 2.0 experiences. But we may ask ourselves, what is the point besides CEUs? Is anyone actually reading our blogs? And if so, who are they and where do they come from?
On the Fourth of July I decided to "get a facebook." I'd heard scary things about the lack of privacy on Facebook, but wanted to try it for myself. I entered all the information required to create an account and then felt a chill of horror when I saw my full name, birth date, location and email address pop up on the screen. What have I done? I'd spent so much effort being anonymous during the Explorations that seeing identifying information posted was a shock. When I was done freaking out, I realized that the whole point of Facebook is to network with real people as a real person. After all, my husband has a facebook and it hasn't sent any crazed stalkers after him. So I calmed down and ran downstairs to ask my husband to be my friend.
For a while I had no friends other than my husband. He informed me that having no friends was pathetic. My brother, to my astonishment, is on Facebook, and at our Fourth of July party he agreed to be my friend. Apparently he rarely checks his facebook, however, because he still has not confirmed me as a friend. (I guess it is the thought that counts.) In the following days, some of my husband's friends became my friends, and I've acquired quite a few library friends. In fact, the easiest way to get friends is to glom on to the friends of others. By using this strategy, I am catching up with my husband on my number of friends!
I played around with the search feature and actually found a real life friend with whom I'd lost contact about 4 years ago. And a friend from high school recently found me. So far, I haven't emailed my re-discovered friends, and they haven't emailed me. It makes me wonder: if we are "friends" on Facebook, are we really still friends? Should we make more of an effort? Is it too easy to coast along in Facebook?
For a while I had no friends other than my husband. He informed me that having no friends was pathetic. My brother, to my astonishment, is on Facebook, and at our Fourth of July party he agreed to be my friend. Apparently he rarely checks his facebook, however, because he still has not confirmed me as a friend. (I guess it is the thought that counts.) In the following days, some of my husband's friends became my friends, and I've acquired quite a few library friends. In fact, the easiest way to get friends is to glom on to the friends of others. By using this strategy, I am catching up with my husband on my number of friends!
I played around with the search feature and actually found a real life friend with whom I'd lost contact about 4 years ago. And a friend from high school recently found me. So far, I haven't emailed my re-discovered friends, and they haven't emailed me. It makes me wonder: if we are "friends" on Facebook, are we really still friends? Should we make more of an effort? Is it too easy to coast along in Facebook?
Tonight my husband gave me a lesson on adding applications to my facebook. How people got the little games and quizzes on their pages was a mystery to me. My husband calls Facebook a giant time waster. He prefers the immediacy of Twitter, and I must say I agree with him. Still, I might add a few photos and become a fan of some favorite authors. I've written on some walls and some friends wrote on mine. One even sent me a space alien greeting. Is this all really cool or really dumb? Not sure. . . .
Anyway, time to check my facebook. Who wrote on my wall today? Do I have new friends? I hate to admit it, but Facebook might be a just a tiny bit fun. Sorry I can't share my Facebook with you--must remain anonymous.
Anyway, time to check my facebook. Who wrote on my wall today? Do I have new friends? I hate to admit it, but Facebook might be a just a tiny bit fun. Sorry I can't share my Facebook with you--must remain anonymous.
Friday, July 4, 2008
More Cuddling
I'm learning a few things about videos. For one thing, not everyone can stand to watch more than 30 seconds of cats grooming each other. So videos are better kept short. This next video is short, I promise you. And see how I employed a fancy zooming technique at the beginning and end of the clip? Maybe I should get a real video camera. But then I'd need to find something to film besides my cats as cute as they are. . .
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Social Networking Sites: the Last Exploration
As I write this post I'm listening to music through Pandora. I now have one station based on Madeleine Peyroux and one on the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. Hard to concentrate with the Dirty Dozen playing, however. I was interested to learn that Pandora is considered a social networking site. After I signed up, I interrupted my manager's paperwork to log him on to Pandora too. He listens to music all the time in his office. If you can believe it, he actually smiled. A win for Web 2.0!
I liked the sample Myspace page designed to attract teens to library services. We could certainly use something like that in our system, especially if we will be emphasizing services for teens. The only problem was the music on their page overroad my Pandora music and for a few minutes I thought Pandora had gone wacko. I need to go into Facebook and see if I can find my husband's Facebook page. I don't think I'm interested in having my own page, but that could change, since I didn't really think I was interested in blogging and now I have this enormous blog. As I said in an earlier post, I just want all my stuff in one place so I can use it and share it easily.
I liked the sample Myspace page designed to attract teens to library services. We could certainly use something like that in our system, especially if we will be emphasizing services for teens. The only problem was the music on their page overroad my Pandora music and for a few minutes I thought Pandora had gone wacko. I need to go into Facebook and see if I can find my husband's Facebook page. I don't think I'm interested in having my own page, but that could change, since I didn't really think I was interested in blogging and now I have this enormous blog. As I said in an earlier post, I just want all my stuff in one place so I can use it and share it easily.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
The Last Exploration Second to Last
I jumped ahead to the last exploration just because it looked interesting. I still actually have one more exploration to go. But I was curious, and this is not like reading the last page of a book and spoiling the ending since really, exploring the web is a continuing endeavor.
I was pleased that I recognized many of the sites from the 2008 Web 2.0 Awards. I guess I really have been learning something! I was the most intrigued by the Start Pages section and intend to play around with making my own start page at Netvibes. Now that I'm signed up for so many 2.0 sites and services, I spend all day opening and closing windows and logging in and out of sites. I'd like my stuff all in one place! I'd also like to log in just one time and be good everywhere. There is an internet movement called OpenID whose goal is to give people a "single digital identity across the internet." Many web services are starting to give users the option of logging on with an OpenID login. I've noticed the OpenID box when I post comments to Blogger. Maybe I'll have to join OpenID myself.
In the early 1990s I contributed some web pages to an Archives website. Back then, I had to learn HTML and enter the little formating codes by hand. I'd save the page, open it in Netscape, and find out that I had mis-coded something. So then I'd search through the document to find where I forgot to close the < > thingies, or where I forgot to put in the P for paragraph.
The web is so much easier now. And much more fun.
I was pleased that I recognized many of the sites from the 2008 Web 2.0 Awards. I guess I really have been learning something! I was the most intrigued by the Start Pages section and intend to play around with making my own start page at Netvibes. Now that I'm signed up for so many 2.0 sites and services, I spend all day opening and closing windows and logging in and out of sites. I'd like my stuff all in one place! I'd also like to log in just one time and be good everywhere. There is an internet movement called OpenID whose goal is to give people a "single digital identity across the internet." Many web services are starting to give users the option of logging on with an OpenID login. I've noticed the OpenID box when I post comments to Blogger. Maybe I'll have to join OpenID myself.
In the early 1990s I contributed some web pages to an Archives website. Back then, I had to learn HTML and enter the little formating codes by hand. I'd save the page, open it in Netscape, and find out that I had mis-coded something. So then I'd search through the document to find where I forgot to close the < > thingies, or where I forgot to put in the P for paragraph.
The web is so much easier now. And much more fun.
Companies & Twitter/Libraries & Tweeters
A funny thing happened to my husband last night. He posted the following message to Twitter:
Several hours later he got a tweet from a Comcast customer service representative. The tweet apologized for the problem and gave contact information for resolving the situation. Comcast is apparently monitoring Twitter and trying to head off negative tweets about their company! Who knew?
They might be using a service such as Summize. Summize is fun to play around with. Put in a keyword and it pulls tweets out of the Twitter stream. If you put in the word "library" you will discover that many Twitter users are about to go to the library, at the library, or just returning from the library. A few of them have issues with fines or snacking in the library. Good to know Twitterers are heavy library users!
Several hours later he got a tweet from a Comcast customer service representative. The tweet apologized for the problem and gave contact information for resolving the situation. Comcast is apparently monitoring Twitter and trying to head off negative tweets about their company! Who knew?
They might be using a service such as Summize. Summize is fun to play around with. Put in a keyword and it pulls tweets out of the Twitter stream. If you put in the word "library" you will discover that many Twitter users are about to go to the library, at the library, or just returning from the library. A few of them have issues with fines or snacking in the library. Good to know Twitterers are heavy library users!
Social Bookmarking Sites & Folksonomies
Last night I explored Social Bookmarking Sites & Folksonomies. I played around with del.icio.us and linked my new del.icio.us account to my blog. I'm not sure how much I will use del.icio.us. It would be convenint to always have my links handy, and I think it is a great idea to have a branch del.icio.us account to use for homework assignments and links that are not on Recommended Sites. I spent years in my branch trying to ensure that each workstation at the Information desk had the same list of bookmarks. I finally gave up. Del.icio.us would be a solution to that problem. Unfortunately, the del.icio.us buttons don't work in the library so you have to cut and paste all your links.
Although I'm not really interested in seeing everyone else's links on del.icio.us, I thought that the psychology behind tagging is fascinating: order from randomness. Like the internet is coming to life. Maybe we will find life on the internet before the Phoenix Lander finds microbes on Mars. Scary!
Personally, I'm discovering that it is hard to be consistent in my tags. I'll use a singular word one day and a plural the the next, and the day after, an abbreviation. Then I have to go back and fix them all. Maybe that is just librarian pickiness. Should I worry about using "Young Adult," "YA," "Teen," and "Teens" when I mean the same thing for all of them? I need my own personal authority file! That is why we will never ditch the Library of Congress subject headings.
Although I'm not really interested in seeing everyone else's links on del.icio.us, I thought that the psychology behind tagging is fascinating: order from randomness. Like the internet is coming to life. Maybe we will find life on the internet before the Phoenix Lander finds microbes on Mars. Scary!
Personally, I'm discovering that it is hard to be consistent in my tags. I'll use a singular word one day and a plural the the next, and the day after, an abbreviation. Then I have to go back and fix them all. Maybe that is just librarian pickiness. Should I worry about using "Young Adult," "YA," "Teen," and "Teens" when I mean the same thing for all of them? I need my own personal authority file! That is why we will never ditch the Library of Congress subject headings.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Our New Branch Wiki is Working!
Here is a screen shot from the FrontPage of our new branch Wiki. After the Quick Links you see above, I posted silly photos of the branch staff so that everyone who will be using the wiki has a photo on the FrontPage. It took me several days to get the Wiki up and running using pbwiki.com. At first I had a hard time conceptualizing the whole thing. I listened to two of the pbwiki tutorials, but they were not very helpful. Viewing other examples of wikis helped much more. And pbwiki has been emailing me helpful tips.
So now Bookpusher and CoreyandGriffie are writers, and Asimovstruths is a reader. Theoretically wikis are unkillable, but previous disasterous computing incidents involving Asimovstruths have left me nervous. I can always change him to a writer later.
I've asked the circulation staff to read Exploration #7 and watch the little video. Then I'll send them all invitations as well. Originally we thought this wiki would just be a programming plan wiki, but then we decided to make it useful to everyone in the branch.
Today Bookpusher made several edits (yay Bookpusher!) so our branch wiki is now officially up and functioning.
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