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?

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!

Facebook

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?

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.

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. . .

Sharing the Love

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Wiki Ideas

Before I read the Exploration on Wikis, I didn't really think they a had any application to my job. Then Bookpusher, CoreyandGriffie, and I were talking, and we think it would be fun to do our Annual Programming Plan as a Wiki. Currently, we keep the programming plan on the common drive and the 3 programmers edit it and save the changes as needed. It might be much easier to do as a Wiki. And if someone makes a mistake, we can go back and see the original document.

For the library system overall, I think it would be fantastic to let the patrons contribute to our catalog by writing book reviews or comments. It would really help people select books and foster a sense of community. If patrons could follow the posts of individual reviewers, they could even find people who share their reading tastes and get suggestions from them.

I will let you know how our Wiki experiment goes. First we have to convince our manager that this is a good idea. He just made a face and says he hates Wikis because they contain incorrect information. I reminded him that we will be posting the information, not strangers. I think he thinks random strangers will be contributing to our plan. . . .

More to follow on this exciting experiment!

Zoho

Well, back to business. It is really easy to get diverted in this Web 2.0 stuff.

Last night I posted a document that I created using Zoho Writer. Of everything I have learned so far, I think Zoho has the most immediate relevance to library patrons. While we have Word on our computers, we don't have Excel or Powerpoint. Patrons will find Zoho very handy. I think even the skeptical librarians will agree it is a useful thing to know about. However, the patrons who don't bring a diskette or a flash drive are probably the ones that will have trouble using Zoho. So we will be doing lots of teaching.

I was reading an article in PC Magazine that referred to the internet as "the cloud." The article suggests that in the future we may get both our content and our software from the cloud. It is called "cloud computing." I guess Zoho is an example of this. I made my Zoho Writer document without ever uploading or downloading. Visualizing the internet as a cloud is a neat metaphor.

My husband routinely saves his work to Google Docs when he is going on a trip. That way, if there is a problem with his laptop, he can get his presentation again from the web. He is always ahead of me in Web 2.0!

Thank you for sharing Cookie Monster, Orangerful

Just got a tweet from Orangerful about this Cookie Monster clip. I love Cookie Monster. I do a cookie storytime that the kids always ask me to repeat. Two of the stories star Cookie Monster. We also sing "C is For Cookie" during Babies in Bloom. It is so good to see Cookie defending cookie eating. And thanks to Orangerful, I'm now a Hulu member!

C is for Cookie. That's Good Enough For Me

Zoho Practice

HCR

June 24, 2008

 

 

I'm now learning how to use Zoho as part of my Web 2.0 Exploration.  The Writer looks alot like Word.  I think it would be easy for anyone familar with MS Word to figure out.

 

Now I'm going to add a cool picture of an iguana:

 

 

 

 

 

Why I chose and iguana picture:

1. My sister had an Iguana when we were kids
2. His name was Allison
3. He liked to nap on the curtain rod
4. The dogs were terrified of him
5. The cat liked to sleep under his heat lamp
6. One day I found the cat sharing the windowsill with Allison, both sound asleep
7. Allison grew to be about 5 feet long, mostly tail.

	iguana	cat	dogs
Hours sleeping in the sun in the morning	All Morning	Most of the Morning	Part of the Morning
Hours sleeping in the sun in the afternoon	All Afternoon	Most of the Afternoon	Part of the Afternoon

 

 

Now lets see if I can publish this to my blog!

More Animoto and Our Branch Manager

Turns out that Animoto just really doesn't work with the library. You can't upload from the library computers, and you can't share a link by emailing it to library email accounts. Animoto will email links just fine to outside email accounts such as yahoo, gmail and comcast. Oh well. . . .

I've posted the Kickoff Animoto video to the library Programming Blog, if anyone would care to view it.

By the way, our reluctant branch manager started his anti-blog. Take a look at http://asimovstruths.blogspot.com

Animoto for Library Use

Well, it took most of a Saturday afternoon, but I made an Animoto video of our Kickoff pictures. I ended up paying to make a longer video. I am already imagining groups of my personal photos I'd like to animate.

However, you need lots of patience with Animoto since it is still a beta site. Things often don't work on the first try but inexplicably work on the 2nd or 3rd try or after you sign out and sign back in. Also some things are a bit slow. It took 2 days to publish Cat Faces to Youtube, for instance. But the Kickoff video worked overnight (it is marked private). For a while Animoto wouldn't let me download my video to my laptop, and then later it did.

However, Animoto updates you on the status of your projects with either on-screen messages or email. For instance, this morning I got an email saying the Cat Faces was now on Youtube. I'd actually forgotten about sending it. It is very easy to email links of you videos to friends. That part always seems to work consistently.

Overall, Animoto is very cool and worth the time and effort.

Cat Fight!

It has taken me several days of lurking about to catch my cats having their daily wrestle. Annabelle always attacks from the landing and Henrietta always defends from the hallway. Here they are:

It Worked, Sort Of

This morning I again tried to post my animoto video to my blog. First I tried to send it to Youtube, figuring that from there I could easily post it. But I got a Whoops! message from animoto. Next I tried their feature that lets you post directly to Blogger. This feature did not work yesterday in the library, but as you can see, it worked today from home. I also thought to download the video to my computer first, but you can't download unless you pay the 3 dollars.

I brought home some photos from our Kickoff to try in animoto. Filled my library issued flash drive and a colleague's flash drive. Obviously I'm going to have to get my own, large capacity flash drive if I'm going to do this stuff. 512 MB didn't cut it and 64 MB was just pitiful! And don't even try to use these drives for video!

I'm deleting the failed sidebar widget I added yesterday.

Animoto Trial

Take a look.

Animoto Test

This afternoon I made a video using Animoto.com. I wanted to use our Kickoff pictures, but Animoto can't access the library's servers. So I used cat pictures from my Flikr account (yes, more cats). A 30 second video is free, and anything longer costs 3 dollars, so I chose a 30 second video. Animoto animates your photos and lets you select music. Once the video is done, it emails a link and posts the video to your account. I am impressed with the video and very excited to show it to you.

But. . . .

I've been trying to post the finished video to my blog with no success. When I give Animoto my blogger email and password, it says I need my blog! And while it lets me make a widget, the widget, unfortunately, is pretty useless. As you can see, it only shows a quarter of the video image. I'm wondering if this will work better from home. There is an option to post it to Youtube, and from there I know I can post it to Blogger. Still, the system is pretty glitchy. If you stick with it the results are fun and might even be worth 3 dollars for a long video. I'll have to experiment a bit more.