Thursday, December 6, 2007

Revolution OS: Notes from the Revolution

Overall I found the production an informative account of the development of the "free"/open software movement. It was marred by the sometimes strident tone adopted by Susan Egan, who did the voice-over. Beside the technical purpose of the piece, perhaps, but this observation troubled me: Ms. Egan's voice was the only female voice I heard throughout; every other speaker or interviewee was a white male. If this indeed reflects the actual composition of the high tech development world, it could use some diversity. If this does not present an accurate picture, then Revolution OS is flawed in its conception.
I believe Eric Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which is cited several times, would add to my understanding of the subject...and allow for my low-tech preference for printed words on a page I can turn at will!

Friday, October 5, 2007

A Few Notes

These may not be the final notes from the belfry, since I would like to complete Thing 24 when I have a sufficient block of time away from work. For now, my goal is to let the many Things I explored in Learning 2.0 sink in, revisit those I found most useful or fun or applicable to my job, and keep my mind open to new technologies as they appear on the horizon.
Overall I liked the self-paced aspect of the course, which was clearly set forth and divided into manageable bites, and would take part in such a course again if it were offered. I benefited from the support of my supervisor who gave me the time to complete this work in a timely manner and from the understanding of my co-workers, some of whom had already finished when I joined in and others who are still pursuing that goal. Having the right hardware and software to support this program is crucial, too, so thanks also to our tech support staff! One suggestion I would make to each library system conducting the course is to offer a few (non-mandatory) opportunities for group interaction off line during which people could discuss their findings about, say, audiobook searches or online productivity tools and swap tips. Blogging and e-mail are all well and good, but for the non-technical the chance to gather in a room and around a computer to clear up confusion has its points.
It has been said that the past is a foreign country. Even the very recent past becomes foreign when viewed from a technological standpoint, and keeping up to date could easily become a full time occupation. Harder still is to evaluate the many changes when they come so quickly. The fact that we are changing and being changed in significant ways by the technology we design and use was deeply impressed upon me at every stage of this journey. Our responsibility to understand what we are doing, why we're doing it ("because we can" is not sufficient reason), and what effects we may produce upon society at large is inescapable.

Video Games

All right, YouTube isn't a video game in the usual sense of the term, but it's a fun, democratic site. I enjoyed seeing what was popular at the moment and I can understand how viewers could get hooked, especially if they have a topic of interest shared by many other viewers and contributors.
It's good to know there's a place to share creative effort. The problem with most videos is their shelf life, which admittedly isn't supposed to be long. Once you've seen the cute kittens playing or taken in the views plus commentary from someone's vacation in Hawaii, the novelty wears off unless the video has been created in a very clever way. Since most of us don't shoot these things for a living--and wouldn't make enough to survive if we tried--the results on YouTube often are no better and no worse than home movies with better production values.
Remember, though, I said "most" videos. There are exceptions, usually productions done by pros and contributed by viewers who appreciate the skill involved. Accordingly, the YouTube video that won my personal "Play it again, Sam" award was the Audi R8 T.V. commercial. People who make commercials expect many people to see their efforts more than once and work hard to create something that will hook the audience and stand up to multiple viewings. They keep it short and sweet and use a variety of camera angles to get powerful shots. The audio component is finely balanced, the voiceovers mesh with the music and background sounds and visual effects, the viewer is carried along and everything runs like--well, like a finely tuned engine. Rather like an Audi at speed.
Though libraries aren't in the business of selling cars, they could improve their websites by incorporating more color and movement, maybe even sound. The trick would be to balance these components to achieve a site attractive to users but not confusing or difficult to navigate. Like big commercial advertisers, we have information to impart and services to offer. But our information and services differ from theirs, and our budgets aren't even comparable.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Casting About

Podcast.net provided some interesting material during non-peak hours. I especially enjoyed the world music offerings that included interviews with the featured artists. Finding really good library-related sites on Podcast was a bit trickier. The best tag was "book", with "libraries" and "library science" yielding many fewer hits; even "book reviews" was disappointing. For comparison, I explored Yahoo! Podcasts (with some reluctance, since the company is closing down this service on October 31 due to Yahoo's financial slump) and appreciated the familiar topic/author/other keyword search function.
Websites related to books and culture often provide podcasts, of course, and a search on C-Span's Book TV reassured me that there's a lot out there for the literate. Finding sites that don't make you download software before playing is a big plus. Libraries which offer this kind of easy access podcast will score points with the non-technical...though I'm not convinced that podcasting a storytime without some sort of visual component will hold any child's or parent's attention for long.
Just for fun, I added the popular MuggleNet podcast to my RSS feeds and will dip into it from time to time to keep up with the news from Hogwarts.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

And the Award Goes To...

For Thing 19 I explored Craigslist, the 1st place winner in blogs and directories on the Web 2.0 list. I'd heard rave reviews for Craigs but had never looked at the site and was surprised at the wide variety of categories it contains. Everything you'd find in a newspaper's classified, personals, and employment sections combined is there. You can pick the geographic area you want to search; new city locations are added as interest is generated. The site can be informative, social, or both, with discussion forums running on many topics (I followed one of the strings under Gardening). The help page is comprehensive. Craigs is timely--a plus for anyone seeking tickets to a football game, for example. Posting an ad costs less than using Monster.com and similar sites, so Craigs is attractive financially as well. On the minus side, just like with print classifieds you usually have to call or e-mail to get the important details about postings; for instance, although a couple of entries I read under Childcare were informative--one potential nanny gave her entire resume--many in other categories were sparse indeed.
In a library setting, I can see Craigs fans visiting this site often. It could be especially helpful for people planning to relocate. Thinking of a young couple I know who recently moved west, I pulled up the San Diego listings and tried to get a feel for an unfamiliar city by searching Community, Housing, and Services.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Gutenberg & Co.

I enjoyed exploring Project Gutenberg, the first site I recall hearing about when the e-book revolution began rumbling into town. Project G. prides itself on using what it calls "free plain vanilla electronic text" in an effort to make as many texts as possible available to as many people as possible, regardless of fads and foibles in operating systems. I did find the site easy to use. Browsing was uncomplicated, and the advanced search option allowed me to zero in on specific texts, for example Cervantes' Don Quixote in the original Spanish. Copyright restrictions, if any, are clearly set out if you want to download a book. The service is free and you don't have to open an account. Pretty simple, and I can see how valuable this tool could be for students and researchers who want to access materials not owned by their local libraries or even kept under surveillance in the rare books room of an academic library. It's a great way to expand the collection at no charge and without wasting precious space on hardcover texts that are rarely consulted. It would also help the student who's failed to nab the last copy of a reading list classic; no library has an inexhaustible supply of any title.
While browsing, and quite by accident, I found a title I remember seeing in hardcover as a child visiting much older relatives who kept everything in print they'd ever acquired. Maida's Little Shop, a children's book about a frail little girl who regains her health by running her own store, was published around 1906. Who would have guessed it would be scanned and made available a century later on the Project Gutenberg site?

What's Up, Doc?

GoogleDocs could be quite a useful tool. Already the editing possibilities have me thinking about ways musical and other organizations I belong to might work collectively on contact lists, performance schedules, and other business that usually gets dumped onto one or two hardworking members who maintain documents and spreadsheets on the group's behalf. Less individual e-mail contact, fewer revisions--sounds good for all concerned.
To test GoogleDocs, I typed up a short transcription of an old (1940's) newspaper article I'd found in the family archives quietly curling around the edges and fading away. This was easy enough to create and file; next, I'll try sharing it electronically with relatives across the country. Sharing documents with distant co-workers in a similar way seems logical.

Written in the Sand

My little Seuss contribution to the Learning 2.0 Sandbox wiki has me wondering how Dr. Seuss would conceptualize the 23 Things. He did such a good job with the original 1 and 2, who zip through my mind every time I blog about our Things. I can imagine whole pages of creatures with neon hair flying, text-messaging as they go--they do seem to be the multi-tasking, or rather multi-playing, type!
I enjoyed browsing the lists of favorite things but wished that some writers had elaborated on why they made the choices they did. For example, trying to communicate the power of a song or a tune is hard, but just listing song titles and artists you like doesn't mean much to the reader unless he/she already has some knowledge of the music being discussed and has formed an opinion. You can't comment on what you don't know about, and much of the fun to be had in a wiki sandbox seems to be in the commentary.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Wiki World

I first came across the expression"wiki-wiki" in a book I read as a child concerning a family living in Hawaii. It never occurred to me to link this with the Internet wikis that are proliferating. They have some very useful library applications. I especially liked the idea of using a library's website for a community page wiki; it would become an online bulletin board that could be updated easily and often. The instructional wiki is one we're becoming familiar with, and Library 2.0 in 15 Minutes a Day from is a clearly organized example. The Booklovers Wiki of Princeton looked like fun, since we all like to talk about new books, don't we? Wikis seem to be able to stretch and expand to accommodate all kinds of information, opinions, and potential uses.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

2.0 and Counting Icebergs

I was especially interested in Rick Anderson's thoughts on avoiding icebergs in the sea of technology. He voices concerns about practical matters libraries everywhere are facing, such as which print materials should be ordered or reordered in view of the available online options that may replace them. I agree with his view that making library technology more user-friendly will be better for patrons--I also appreciate his use of this older term rather than the retail-based "customers" moniker--than trying to teach each person coming in the door or dialing in or signing on how to use the technology we already have. Technoanxiety exists at many levels, in many degrees, and just as the process of filing taxes can turn some intelligent adults into quivering masses of ectoplasm 'round about April 15th, so can the thought of mastering yet another technological twist. Libraries exist to serve all of the public, not just the technically proficient.
The interactive nature of Web 2.0 is both a great strength and a potential weakness. In an environment where everyone is contributing and few are editing, we have to do our own fact-checking and the question of how to judge our sources becomes crucial. What is factual, what is theoretical, what is opinion or urban legend, what is simply playful? Mr. Anderson's point that libraries no longer have a monopoly on information leads me to ponder how our youngest computer users can be taught ways to evaluate what they see and use online.

Technorati

I never realized the blogosphere was so large or that it was growing so fast. And no, the explosion isn't entirely due to all of us engaged in 23 Things! "Learning 2.0" appeared in over 4000 blog posts when I searched this morning, but just under 300 blogs came up using this search term in Technorati's blog directory. Wonder what the totals will be a week from today?
I did find some surprises when comparing top favorited blogs to top blogs to top searches. The top ten faves were largely concerned with technology, but top searches also included the topics of diet and weight, proving that some human concerns never change. There was also a healthy dose of social networking and a not-so-healthy dose of pop culture (Britney Spears? C'mon, we can do better than that...) in evidence among the top searches, as well as interest in international news (the protests in Myanmar). The No. 1 favorited blog, BoingBoing.net, must be an enormous hit. Best Group Blog Award winner at the 2006 Bloggies? Can you imagine the ceremony? Maybe there's a Meez statuette out there akin to the golden Oscar.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Tag-- You're It!

I was surprised to see the variety of libraries which use del.icio.us. The ability to bookmark with such a tool could be very handy, since one of the main problems in research is remembering where you saw something you need to reference or review later. But tagging can also put you in touch with other computer users' bookmarks and provide a path to sites you might not have found otherwise. Noodling around in the tags brought me to FindSounds.com, which has a amazing library of sounds to call up online-- pretty useful if you're planning a program on birds (with various twitters and tweets), throwing a Halloween party (creaking door, evil laugh), or looking into the music of Australia (just what does a didgeridoo sound like?). Another search on the sounds tag brought me to audio files of famous speeches on the Free Information Society's website, www.freeinfosociety.com--potentially a good resource for students of 20th and 21st century politics.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Rollin' Along

I can see why Rollyo has become a recommended tool. Putting all your subject-related search engines in one place saves time and keystrokes, and I plan on using and adding to the music search roll I created (on www.rollyo.com, "explore" the category Folk music by bloodhound) after this course is completed. The rare books search roll we were invited to look at turned up some interesting results, but as in a brick-and-mortar store I discovered you still have to dig for what you want and modify your searches. Typing in just the names of several 19th century American authors one by one (Hawthorn, Longfellow, Thoreau) yielded nothing immediately. In a different search, the terms "first edition" brought up quite a lot of hits and paging through those directed me toward information on an early work by the Scandinavian author Ibsen. The usual pitfalls of making a search too general come into play as well: searching for "biography" or "algebra" using the PLCMC search roll yielded too much or the wrong kind of information. So Rollyo isn't perfect, but it's worth testing to see if it works for you.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Imagery

If it's true that we've become an increasingly image-driven society, then it's no surprise how many images can be conjured, er, generated online. Finding the right one to personalize your blog or voice your opinion or just get a laugh takes time, but it's fun to browse through the many options.
I most enjoyed Generator Blog (which pointed me toward the source for Dumbledore, imageGenerator.net)--and played with Meez without producing an avatar that was really "me" (such a closet to choose from, though!). Meez is like a grownups' version of paper dolls; whether you're creating a persona or something that more or less resembles what you look like, it can be very absorbing play.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Library Blogs

As informational and useful as the better known library blogs can be, some of them look as attractive as a microsized doughnut, unglazed, without sprinkles. A little visual appeal would go far in spreading the word that technology can be fun. Doing a quick survey based on content alone, I found MERLIN especially useful for its links to learning resources and technology-in-a-nutshell explanations, as well as for its easy reference list of library blogs to explore. Of the latter, Library Crunch was most interesting to me because of the broad range of topics it covered.

Feeding Time

This evening I set up my Bloglines newsreader account. Most of my initial subscription choices come from Bloglines' top 50 list, but I'm also trying out Britannica Blog (blogs.britannica.com) which I read about recently--in a print journal--and I'll no doubt learn of others which will sound tempting. I'm looking forward to getting news from the art world (Arts Journal was fun to browse), and keeping book reviews close to hand will be useful. I suspect I'll read more BBC World News online than I've managed to view on T.V.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Still Flickring

The term "mashups" reminds me of some horrible accident on the road or in the kitchen, but the concept is interesting. It's a logical outgrowth of web users' experimentation with permutations and combinations of sites. One mashup that caught my attention is depictr, which takes poems or song lyrics and pulls images from Flickr related to them to create a picture. You could, for example, get a visualization of the song that's been going through your head all day (well, maybe not THAT one--pick another song that hasn't been driving you crazy). See http://www.mcharper.com/lab/proxy/flickry.htm to get the idea.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Flikr Nature

My first look at Flickr brought me in contact with some exquisite nature photography by Marianna Koutna. One of her photos added during the past seven days, 'The Green Eye", is a wonderful study in colors and textures, with contrasts between the quiet silver-gray of bark and the vivid green of leaves edged in a red that veers toward magenta. I admire photographers who can capture the majesty of great landscapes, but I stand in awe of those who make us aware of the beauty of small, everyday things that too often go unnoticed.
Check out mariannakoutna's photostream; there's much to appreciate. "The Green Eye" is at
www.flickr.com/photos/mariannakoutna/1348251022/

Friday, September 7, 2007

Bloggings Will Continue...

...until I come to the end of my list. I played with LibraryThing a bit, then realized that trying to think of all my favorite books at once was making me freeze, as though I were taking an exam. Where to begin? There are the books I loved as a child, the ones I come back to every couple of years, the ones which made an indelible impression on me in a special place and time but which I feel no need to read again, the ones I didn't appreciate fully on first encounter but grew to understand gradually. Rather like trying to make a list of your friends. I guess I'll have to categorize books--which, as with friends, seems a pretty cold approach--every time I sign on to Thing to add titles. This problem aside, LibraryThing certainly could be a good way to connect with readers who share my tastes.

Thursday, September 6, 2007

High Tech/Low Tech

This morning I started skimming through a bit of The Shifted Librarian, where a post from 8/24/07 brought into focus the strange jostling of technologies and expectations we're experiencing today. Apparently one of the e-book content providers, CafeScribe, is trying to combine the experience of reading a bound book with the ease of viewing the same text on line, using the fairly old technology of shipping scratch-and-sniff stickers with an "old book" smell when filling orders. It makes you wonder how much we humans have changed in our desire for tactile sensations. Many children certainly start to appreciate reading through the experience of nestling in a parent's lap, exploring the feel and smell--and taste!--of paper pages. At what age do we stop needing those comforting details and find everything we need in the text itself? Do we ever stop?
Will the next generation want those same stimuli, or will those readers become more visually oriented at an earlier age?

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

With a Little Help from My Friends

09/04/07: Starting the new month with a new (to me) technology, I've begun to set up my own blog. My first experience with a blog came several years back when hurricanes hit Florida and my family got updates on relatives living there through the blogging efforts of a tech-savvy cousin. Useful, I thought at the time. Ought to try this.
Now I can, with a little help.