tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82031905139296991432024-02-20T05:38:03.683-08:00SuezeeblogThis is my "23 Things" blogSusanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-81751797531038920372009-09-18T09:45:00.000-07:002009-09-20T11:49:44.498-07:00Thing 23: Congratula---THIS HAS BEEN A GREAT COURSE, AND I'MA LET YOU FINISHI'll conclude with my choices for the best links <s>OF ALL TIME</s> that I've discovered while following this course, so they'll be easy to come back to in the future<br /><br />Twitter-related:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.geochirp.com/">Geochirp</a> <br /><br /><a href="http://www.trackthisnow.com/twitter/">Track This Now for Twitter</a><br /><br /><br />e-books<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html">the British Library Online Gallery</a><br /><br />podcasting<br /><br /><a href="http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php?type=topic&id=-1">NPR directory, organized by topic</a><br /><br />Music:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.last.fm/home">last.fm</a> This has remained my favorite online music source, and I have to say it's one of my happiest online discoveries, ever. I still haven't really gotten excited about <a href="http://www.pandora.com/">Pandora</a>, but I'm putting it here to give it another few tries.<br /><br />Additional sites I should probably explore more in the future:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs">Bloglines</a><br /><br /><a href="http://delicious.com/sep120">Delicious</a>Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-45093162808252229762009-09-10T18:36:00.000-07:002009-09-10T20:22:47.994-07:00Week 10, Thing 22 : Social Networking, SupplementFrom <i>The Onion</i>, tips for devoted parents on how to use social networking sites <br />(PG-13? Slightly NSFW?)<br /><br /><object width="480" height="430"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/onn_embed/embedded_player.swf?image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theonion.com%2Fcontent%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FE-Mom_article_9_1.jpg&videoid=97699&title=Facebook%2C%20Twitter%20Revolutionizing%20How%20Parents%20Stalk%20Their%20College-Aged%20Kids" /><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /><embed src="http://www.theonion.com/content/themes/common/assets/onn_embed/embedded_player.swf"type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowScriptAccess="always" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" width="480" height="430"flashvars="image=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theonion.com%2Fcontent%2Ffiles%2Fimages%2FE-Mom_article_9_1.jpg&videoid=97699&title=Facebook%2C%20Twitter%20Revolutionizing%20How%20Parents%20Stalk%20Their%20College-Aged%20Kids"></embed></object><br /><a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/video/facebook_twitter_revolutionizing?utm_source=videoembed">Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids</a>Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-15849381250070365342009-09-10T11:21:00.000-07:002009-09-10T12:44:46.289-07:00Week Ten, Thing 22 : Social NetworkingMy first experience with social networking sites was when I joined Livejournal, about three years ago. Livejournal is sometimes described as a combined blogging and social networking site. When I first joined, it was primarily to read other people's writing and conversations, mostly on the subject of music, but people I "met" at the site encouraged me to set up my own "journal." Although I had <i>heard</i> of blogs, I must not have had a very good understanding of the term at the time, because I recall that I had made several entries in my Livejournal journal before it dawned on me that I had a "blog," and had become a "blogger."<br /><br />I later also joined MySpace, and then Facebook, but found both of these sites disappointing. I find most MySpace pages extremely unpleasant to look at, with badly clashing bright colors and headache-inducing flash animations galore (an impression just reconfirmed when I visited MySpace in preparation for this posting.) While Facebook is generally not as offensive visually, it seems to me that it's primarily a place to carry on <i>existing</i>, pre-established relationships, rather than to find new ones. I can see how it could be useful for people with a wide circle of friends and associates with whom they want to keep in touch, but it's not oriented towards exploring ideas or interests, or towards finding new connections, in my opinion. So, I was surprised to find out how well suited my first social networking platform (LiveJournal) is to my ideal, especially given that it's much less well-known than either MySpace or Facebook. I suppose it really is a sort of niche social networking and blogging site for people who are geekier than average, more passionate about exploring particular interests and ideas than about using the internet to facilitate existing social connections.<br /><br />So, to link the personal history into the question of <i>library</i> use of social networking sites, it occurs to me that different sorts of corporate entities, much like different sorts of people, can have different goals, and that different goals may lend themselves to different tools. It won't do for libraries (or for-profit corporations) to simply jump into the most popular social networking sites, thinking that this will make them cool and popular. Instead, they need to understand various social networking sites well enough to decide which platform or platforms are a match that can help them achieve their goals. <br /><br />One of the most exasperating online experiences is that of being marketed to in places that one frequents for the specific purpose of two-way communication. Self-promotion without any understanding of one's audience is spam. Entities other than individual humans (e.g., libraries, businesses, record companies, which I'll call "corporate entities" for the rest of this entry) do best in the social networking world when they provide useful information. Self-promotion is rarely useful from the "target's" perspective. The best way for a corporate entity to promote itself in a social network, in my opinion, is by providing carefully-considered information sparingly (as opposed to a constant barrage of "noise.") And, a social network is the <i>ideal</i> format for information sharing only under certain circumstances. I'm not sure exactly what circumstances these would be for a corporate entity. I do follow some corporate entities on Twitter, using their "tweets" as news feeds. If they tweet something especially interesting to me, I might re-tweet it, or even mention it on my blog. But, as anti-social a person as I am, I use social networks primarily to interact with other human beings. I suppose librarians can blog in an official capacity, but once a human being is tasked with the job of being an official voice, some of the quirky randomness that pervades recreational social networking must be reigned in. On the other hand, Reference services might find a place in some social networking settings.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-30585785915374437392009-09-09T09:13:00.000-07:002009-09-09T10:57:15.485-07:00Week 10, Thing 21 : Microblogging and MashupsI first visited <a href="http://twitterholic.com/">Twitterholic</a>, which lists the top Twitter users, in order of popularity, calculated according to their number of followers. Twitterholic is truly useful in that it doesn't merely rank an online popularity contest, but also provides information that helps the user figure out whether a given popular person might be truly worth following. That is, it tells how many tweets a user has made. This is useful, because it is hardly worth one's time to follow a person who has two million followers if the person tweeted once or twice and then abandoned the site. Twitterholic also lists the number of users each top Twitterer follows. Some follow only a very small number, while some follow back each of the million people who follow them. I'm not favorably disposed towards celebrities who follow back hundreds of thousands of followers, since they can't possibly read that many people, and the only reason to follow back everyone, if one has thousands of followers, is a lame and transparent attempt at marketing. But, a celebrity with a million followers and a couple hundred of follow-backs, on the other hand, is often a person who has an interest in using Twitter to have actual conversations. I've seen some famous musicians and actors on Twitter have actual discussions with their "followers" on Twitter, and it can be an enlightening (or, sometimes, dismaying) glimpse of people one will probably never meet face to face.<br /><br />Back to the statistics revealed by Twitterholic, it's an interesting measure of the rising popularity of Twitter itself that just a few months ago, Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kushner were having a friendly competition to see which one of them would be the first to get a million followers, while right now there are 118 Twitter users with over a million followers.<br /><br />After spending some time at Twitterholic, I went to <a href="http://twitter.pbworks.com/Mashups">The Twitter Fan Wiki</a> and clicked on a number of the links. Some were no longer working, and some seemed to be little more than keyword search engines (not very useful, given that Twitter has its own keyword search function.) Here briefly are links to the mashups I liked from that list (although there may also be some good ones I haven't listed, since I didn't check every single link):<br /><br /><a href="http://www.geochirp.com/">Geochirp</a> : "allows you to find real time Tweeples within 1 to 50 miles of any location in the world. You can search for specific phrases & see who is tweeting about these keywords, within any neighborhood of interest to you. Also has a language translation tool to convert foreign tweets to the language you understand. (quote from the Twitter Fan Wiki.)" Does just that! Instantly took me to my current location, and showed me tweets from nearby people. It instantly demonstrated accuracy by showing a tweet that referred to someone who I know to be nearby.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.trackthisnow.com/twitter/">Track This Now for Twitter</a> : Enter a search term, see markers on a map of the world, showing the countries where the word is most used on Twitter. Click on a marker to see tweets from a county, using the term entered. Very interesting. I input the politically-loaded term "socialized medicine" (a term which American conservatives use to disparage plans that would extend medical insurance to those suffering under our current, supposedly "free market" system.) As expected, the United States appears to be the top country in the use of this term in Tweets. Other countries with many tweets employing the term more often use it ironically, disparaging conservatives' attempts to portray progressive policies as "socialist."<br /><br /><a href="http://favrd.textism.com/">Favrd</a> : shows popular tweets, as calculated by number of users who "favorite" each tweet.<br /><br /><a href="http://linkstore.ru/tfood/">Food From Twitter</a> : Food-related tweets with food pictures, via Twitter's photo ap, yfrog. You can select breakfast, lunch, or dinner photos to view.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-64576376472044974562009-09-01T11:08:00.000-07:002009-09-01T12:17:34.145-07:00Week Ten, Thing 20 : Explore TwitterI first joined Twitter many months ago (I've forgotten whether it was late 2008 or early 2009.) At first, it looked pointless, but I got an idea of how I might enjoy it, and started an account from which I tweeted only song lyrics. I started following people I knew from elsewhere on the internet, and, if they tweeted something I could reply to appropriately using existing song lyrics, I'd reply that way. <br /><br />Over time, it got more and more frustrating, wanting to say things I couldn't use lyrics for, so eventually I got a second, "normal" Twitter account. I followed many of the same people I followed on my first account, as well as new people I found while talking to my "followers." I do find that terminology a little weird. I don't mind it as a verb, e.g. "I'm going to follow you on Twitter," but, describing someone as a "follower" of another person on Twitter bothers me a bit. Referring to "my followers" makes me afraid of sounding like a cult leader, or, at the very least, someone who thinks a little too highly of herself.<br /><br />On the other hand, I've gotten used to the "friend" terminology that is used on many social networking and blogging sites. Some people find this novel use of the word "friend" disconcerting, or indicative of a contemporary inability to distinguish casual contact from emotional intimacy. However, I don't feel the term to be personally harmful. Some of my online friends really do deserve the term, while for others it's mostly a label that indicates only an extremely week tie within a specific social network. I don't think the word is polluted by the usage, as some commentators have suggested. I know that people I've only "talked" with online once or twice, but who have agreed to read my blog, and me to read theirs, do not thereby become "friends" in most meaningful ways. <br /><br />I do believe that the multiplication of "weak ties" that the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html">New York Times article</a> mentions can be a very positive development. I even enjoy the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?pagewanted=5">unidirectional weak ties that the NYT article disparages as 'parasocial' (middle of page five.)</a> I'd guess that about a third of the people I follow are non-mutual (I follow them, but they don't follow me) and also have extremely large followings. That is, they are celebrities, or at least extremely popular people within smaller cultural groups. I follow them not because I expect them to talk to me, or even to acknowledge my specific existence, but because I'm interested in what they are doing and saying. I find the things they say or the things they link to interesting. That's largely the same reason I follow non-celebrity people--because I like what they have to say.<br /><br />I think a large part of my attraction to Twitter is as simple as that. Anyone, anywhere in the world, if they are on Twitter, and their 140-character messages interest me, becomes a small part of my daily life. If I were prone to delusions, I suppose this might be a bad thing. Indeed, I have witnessed obsessive people harrassing celebrities on Twitter, and, I must admit that I've also been entertained by watching unstable celebrities lash out at perceived insults from fans and other celebrities. As the Times article indicates, Twitter and other similar online phenomena in some ways bring the world back to an earlier time when everyone knew what everyone else was doing. The fact remains, however, that I retain the privilege of keeping some things to myself.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-65743559201526501242009-08-28T11:10:00.000-07:002009-08-28T12:41:15.923-07:00Week Nine, Thing 19 : Explore eBooks and AudiobooksI love the internet, but tend to be skeptical of ebooks. For me, books and magazines are a different animal from websites. When I read fiction for pleasure, I don't want to have to worry about expensive devices. I read mystery novels in bed. If I fall asleep, and the book falls on the floor, and the cat walks on it, there is no loss whatsoever. Heck, the cat can <i>throw up</i> on a paperback, and I'm still only out $9.99. <br /><br />If the eBook existed, but the book did not, the book would be an extraordinarily vital invention. I would buy these new "book" objects by the dozen, thrilled by the freedom they provided.<br /><br />That's not to say that I can't see any point at all to ebooks. I can see how a person or organization with limited storage space, or a professional who needed to read a large amount of material while traveling, over a prolonged period of time, could have previously-unmet needs fulfilled by ebooks. For most purposes, however, I believe that the ancient "technology" of the paper-and-ink book is superior to the eBook, or at least superior to any ebook/ebook reader currently in existence. <br /><br />I think the drawbacks of ebooks tend to be insufficiently considered by those who are especially enthusiastic about them. One important problem, as I alluded to in my first paragraph, is that an ebook reader is expensive. Only extremely rare books come anywhere close to the cost of an ebook reader. I'm not referring to the total cost of buying a large number of physical books, versus a small number of ebook readers, because at some point, if individual titles are cheaper as ebooks than as books, the costs shift in favor of ebooks. I'm talking about the fact that things get lost, or broken, or stolen. It's true that, if one is talking about reading an ebook on a regular computer screen, there's no additional risk to reading an ebook versus using the computer for any other purpose, but then the ebook's portability, in practical terms, for the individual user, is greatly diminished. <br /><br />Another problem, from a library's standpoint, with ebooks versus hardcopy books, is that ownership becomes precarious. Once one buys a book, one owns that copy, legally, forever. Copyright law of course restricts the reproduction and distribution of the contents, but the thing itself, which happens to include personal access to the contents, is the buyer's, forever. With an ebook, licensing rules can complicate the situation greatly. Moreover, where ebook readers are concerned, it appears that contents are not readily transferable between different brands of hardware. If you buy a Kindle Reader, and your friend wants to share a book from their Sony reader, it can't be done, unless they loan you their reader. You're much better off buying a regular book and passing it around.<br /><br />Despite my belief that ebooks are not at all ready to <i>replace</i> books as we have known them through the centuries, I was dazzled by <a href="http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/ttp/ttpbooks.html">the British Library Online Gallery</a>. I did have to download Shockwave first, but the results were worth it. Why do I find this resource so rewarding when my general attitude towards ebooks is so unenthusiastic? I think it's because the British Library here is showing me images of gorgeous books, and their complete contents, which I would not otherwise be able to experience at all. Technology in this case brings me beauty I couldn't access if that technology did not exist. The optional audio also adds to the experience. By contrast, based on what I have heard about ebooks whose print counterparts are readily accessible in "traditional" book format, the traditional item remains superior.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-30443490559555737532009-08-28T10:15:00.000-07:002009-08-28T10:32:30.114-07:00Week Nine, Thing 18 : Podcast SearchtoolsI found the NPR Podcast Directory to be the most useful. Using the <a href="http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php?type=topic&id=-1">directory, organized by topic</a> I found some music podcasts which I added to "My Yahoo." I then added two podcasts from the "Books" category, <a href="http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=89697155">NPR Books</a> and <a href="http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_detail.php?siteId=4949408">Nancy Pearl Book Reviews</a> to my Bloglines account.<br /><br />The advantages of the NPR directory compared to the other two, <a href="http://podcast.com/">podcast.com</a> and <a href="http://www.podcastalley.com/">podcastalley.com</a>, were NPR's straightforward organization, lack of distracting and annoying advertisements on the main page, and the general orientation of content towards a relatively educated audience.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-35752996912195324582009-08-28T08:31:00.000-07:002009-08-28T12:43:31.736-07:00Best "In Plain English" lesson by far<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bVnfyradCPY&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bVnfyradCPY&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />(Noticed this in the "related videos" sidebar while watching "Podcasting in Plain English.")Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-62816418133922327962009-08-27T08:56:00.000-07:002009-08-27T09:37:51.533-07:00Week Nine, Thing 17 : YouTubeBizarre Japanese Game Show: "Silent Library"<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_ZVRpI1-BTA&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_ZVRpI1-BTA&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Anyone who thinks that U.S. or U.K. reality television is the last word in televised depravity needs to broaden their horizons, and consider the Japanese. Yes, our nation produced "Jackass." Japan, however, brings us "Silent Library." Here, six young men sit at a library table and subject each other to pain and humiliation, each "turn" consisting of the chance selection of one "player" to have indignities visited upon him by the others. Throughout their ordeals, they cannot speak above a whisper. I'm uncertain what happens if they break this rule, as the gleeful sadism was all conducted at a low decibal level, one quality that I simply cannot imagine being maintained on an American reality or gameshow set. I'd be curious to learn more about the show, as it touches upon aspects of that culture of which I am only dimly aware, but which I believe are rich in comparisons and contrasts to life in my country.<br /><br />I spent a lot of time today trying to find a good YouTube video to post. Maybe I'm overly critical, but I found this to be an extremely difficult task. My first idea was to search for something that seems inherently interesting to me: time-lapse photography. I thought I should make my post library-related, so I entered "time-lapse library." Unfortunately, the several videos I viewed were poor-quality items. Good time-lapse video should condense large changes that occur over prolonged periods of time into brief visual "summaries," or perhaps give a sense of daily patterns of activity. The time-lapse video of library construction that I watched were badly made, such that the eye was drawn to nearby traffic and the changing cloud patterns, while the actual subject of the video, the construction of the library, was barely visible in shadow. Other time lapse videos I watched were similarly lacking. While one would hope that YouTubes' ranking of video by popularity would cause high quality video to rise to the top of search results, this does not seem to be the case when you search for specific subjects.<br /><br />Oh, as to how I found "Silent Library" : I entered "library" into the search box, and looked at the autofill options, which included "library prank," and "library game." I was curious what a "library game" might be, and I believe that was the search term that led to dozens of "Silent Library" episodes. I had never heard of that show before, and am, if not exactly grateful to have discovered it, intriged as ever by the power of the internet to lead me to strange new worlds I had not previously imagined.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-48450571678159492122009-08-27T07:16:00.000-07:002009-08-27T07:20:33.666-07:00"March of the Librarians"I'm in the middle of exploring the links for Week 17. I just wanted to pause a moment to post this video here, because it made me laugh.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Td922l0NoDQ&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Td922l0NoDQ&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-20959460072202558172009-08-20T11:07:00.000-07:002009-08-20T12:28:05.645-07:00Week Eight, Thing 16 : Web 2.0 awards List, and, the Mystery of Personal TasteI looked at a number of the nominees and winners, then decided to explore <a href="http://www.pandora.com/">Pandora</a>, the Second Place winner in the "Music" category. I've been using First Place winner <a href="http://www.last.fm/home">last.fm</a> since last fall. I love last.fm as a place to discover new music as well as get reacquainted with music I loved years ago but lost track of. Since MTV many years ago stopped showing videos and became a repository of "reality" programming, I've had a hard time finding new music. A few years ago I got an iTunes account, and my husband got Sirius satellite radio installed in his car, and between those two, I was able to begin finding music I loved again. Unlike fm radio, Sirius had a truly diverse selection of music, and four or five stations that focused on genres I really liked. I'd frequently hear new (or new-to-me) songs I loved almost instantly, then go to i-Tunes to purchase them. (I missed out on Napster, etc, and never got the hang of <a href="http://www.last.fm/music/%2522Weird%2520Al%2522%2520Yankovic/_/Don%27t%2520Download%2520This%2520Song">breaking international copyright law by downloading mp3's from file-sharing sites</a> (Press the play button in the upper right.)<br /><br />In any event, last.fm is a wonderful additional channel through which to find new music. One drawback, however, is that, while it organizes music by user tags and genres, it doesn't seem to "learn" one's general musical tastes. You can press a button to say you "love" a particular song, and, using a paid membership ($3.00 a month) you can play a shuffled selection of the songs you love. You can "ban" a particular song. You can ask it to play you music labelled as belonging to a particular genre. You can ask it to play "Your Recommended Songs," but it seems that it simply bases this upon the genre of songs you listen to and love, and perhaps on existing correlations between people liking one artist and liking another. Many people who like Nine Inch Nails also like Rob Zombie, for instance. I like NIN, but not Zombie. Yet last.fm keeps on playing him when I ask it to play "recommended" music for me. It's already decided what tastes go with what other tastes. That is, last.fm doesn't seem to have a mechanism for <i>dynamically</i> anticipating a user's tastes. <br /><br />Such capabilities appear to be very important to a number of online businesses, particularly Netflix. It has an ongoing <a href="http://www.netflixprize.com/">contest</a> to improve its <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering">collaborative filtering</a> algorithm, to better anticipate what films a given viewer will like, based upon what films they have liked in the past. For an improvement of 10%, Netflix promises a million dollar reward. It might sound like a lot of money for such a "small" percentage, but Netflix has found that anticipation of tastes in movies gets extremely difficult past a certain point, or when certain movies enter into the mix. I read an article about this a while ago where Netflix gave the example of the movie "Napoleon Dynamite." Apparently, it's one of a select group of films that it is extraordinarily difficult to predict whether a specific person will like, even if one has many other ratings of other movies to base the prediction on. It seems that being able to win the Netflix prize would somehow involve the ability to predict the previously unpredictable.<br /><br />Soooo...I'll test out Pandora some more. Pandora asks you to select a genre or artist you like, then plays other songs and artists it thinks you might like, giving you the opportunity to give a "yes" or "no" to each song. My primary goal here is simply to find a way to discover more music I enjoy, while minimizing the need to listen to lots of things I dislike while waiting for "the good stuff" to pop up. It's an intriguing thing to me, the mathematical, computerized prediction of what will touch a specific person's soul.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-36411976583864666852009-08-18T08:55:00.000-07:002009-08-18T09:25:02.157-07:00Week Eight, Thing 15 : Online Applications and ToolsI'm exploring diagram software at <a href="http://www.gliffy.com/">Gliffy</a>. I'm actually a big fan of all sorts of diagrams. Floorplans, flow-charts, graphs...There are all sorts of situations in which they're vastly more useful and clear than text alone.<br /><br />I looked at the sites of both Gliffy and <a href="http://mindomo.com/">Mindomo</a> and was more impressed with and interested in the examples Gliffy provided, so I've gotten myslef an account there. I've started trying to make a bathroom floorplan (When we bought our house five years ago, we planned to renovate our bathroom right away...) Unfortunately, I'm running into one of my pet peeves as an online learner: the tendency of services to promote their product, even though you're already right there, trying to use it. Don't just tell me what it <i>can</i> do, show me <i>how</i> to use the product. If you have additional products you want to sell me, or you want to keep me on your site and open to your advertisements (I'm addressing the Universe now; Gliffy is just the proximate cause of my irritation) help me right now. Don't tell me what you'll do for me later.<br /><br />So, here I am, complaining, and trying to figure out how to rotate a (little drawing of a) toilet by 90 degrees...Ah, got it. Don't know what I did differently, but now I seem to be able to rotate things. I'll try to figure out how to set the room dimensions next.<br /><br />Gliffy could be quite useful for space planning in a library. Moreover, the ability to make flowcharts could be extremely helpful in demonstrating workflows and proposing alternate workflow plans. To the degree that it can be used collaboratively, it seems it could have some of the same benefits as a wiki, but in a spatial medium, rather than an exclusively verbal one.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-45177828168012628072009-08-13T12:59:00.000-07:002009-08-13T13:08:42.334-07:00Week Seven, Thing 14 : NELINET sandbox wikiI added a link to my blog at the NELINET sandbox wiki. Then, I looked around at some things others had added to the wiki, including <a href="http://www.andersonanalytics.com/SNStype/tool.php">a quiz that tells you what your Social Network Service type is.</a><br /><br />So, I took the quiz and was pleased to learn that I'm a "Social Media Maven." According to the company that created the quiz, the average person of this type is much younger than I am, and makes much more money. Why does this make me feel happy? That makes no sense at all. Shouldn't I feel bitter? <br /><br />I guess the Internet numbs my pain.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-38169911389289436092009-08-12T07:32:00.000-07:002009-08-12T09:16:43.682-07:00Week Seven, Thing 13 : WikisI watched the Cobert Report clips first. He makes the dangers of unquestioning reliance of Wikis clear, given the ease of manipulating such collaborative knowledge sources. Contributors may come to a wiki with maximum biases and/or minimal knowledge, and change entries to reflect their own distorted perceptions of reality. And yet, <a href="http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/87528/may-24-2007/jimmy-wales">as Wikipedia's founder indicates when Colbert interviews him in one of the clips</a>, "vandalism" (disingenuous alteration of entries to diliberately distort the truth about a subject) is discouraged, and the perpetrators often banned, so Wikipedia is not a "lawless" free-for-all filled with gross distortions. Nonetheless, I think Colbert is right to highlight the need for caution in consulting Wikipedia. I think Middleburry College's History Department is likewise wise to ban Wikipedia citation in papers and exams (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/education/21wikipedia.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=middlebury+college+wikipedia&st=nyt">Source: New York Times</a>.) It's not that Wikipedia isn't useful. It's that it's not authoritative. It appears that it contains enough internal checks and balances to make most of the entries reasonably accurate, most of the time. But, this is insufficient to make it a truly reliable, final, definitive source of knowledge.<br /><br />While Wikipedia is a worldwide resource with worldwide authorship, the library Wikis referenced in this week's excercise are more limited in scope and usership. This is not a drawback by any means, but simply a difference that suits them to different sorts of tasks from those for which one might consult Wikipedia. I focused on the library wikis linked under <a href="http://librarywikis.pbworks.com/Collaboration+between+Library+Staff+and+Patrons">Collaborations between Library Staff and Patrons.</a> In my opinion, the best of them are <a href="http://seriesbinder.lishost.org/index.php?title=Main_Page">The Children's Series Binder</a> and <a href="http://www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page">The St. Joseph County Public Library Subject Guide.</a> The Children's Series Binder fulfills a very specialized need simply and quickly, showing parents, librarians, and anyone else who may be interested, what children's book series and titles-within-series exist. Series are broken down by broad headings (eg, "Animals," "Historic Fiction," "Books Based on Movies") which seems really useful for finding the right book series depending on an individual child's interests. The Joseph County Public Library Subject Guide is impressive in its organization and integration of printed and online resources in the listings for each subject area. This Wiki is by no means exhuastive, but it is instantly relevent, showing periodicals and books available at the library, as well as online resources with both local and worldwide reach. I find this latter characteristic particularly welcome. For instance, on the page for Arts and Entertainment, the wiki provides links to local museum and music venue websites, along with links to nationally and internationally renowned institutions like the Louvre. It also highlights arts magazines held within the library.<br /><br />The wikis I found less impressive were disappointing in their "outsourcing" of information. That is, rather than highlighting what the library itself holds on a subject, or directing the user to rich online resources on the specific subject in question, some simply linked to JSTOR or another such aggregator. While JSTOR is certainly a useful resource, it is too vast to belong on a subject guide, unless it is accompanied by dozens of specific, direct links to relevent information as well. A useful subject-guide wiki needs contributors to point the user towards multiple, diverse, but <i>specific</i> resources. Otherwise, it seems, it's just a generalized catalog or search engine, not a collaborative resource bestowing the user with the benefits of others' experiences.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-78349311235702420152009-08-07T12:03:00.000-07:002009-08-07T12:42:27.376-07:00Week Six, Thing 12 : The Cult and the SkepticI watched <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZblrRs3fkSU">Librarians 2.0 : a Manifesto</a> and read The Annoyed Librarian's post, <a href="http://annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com/2007/08/cult-of-twopointopia.html">The Cult of Twopointopia.</a><br /><br />I think that the video is exactly the sort of thing that the Annoyed Librarian is railing against, and I could not possibly be in more sympathetic agreement with her annoyance. The platitudinous mantras, the New Age soundtrack, the grab at counter-culture street-cred in the use of Burning Man festival photos, all reek of corporate fad marketing. I'm not claiming that there's some Evil Force behind the video, but only that, like a corporate marketing campaign, the video seems designed to put your critical faculties to sleep while filling your soul with the lust to buy, or, in this case, the lust to buy-in, to accept a set of untested assumptions and refuse to consider counter-arguments.<br /><br />Like The Annoyed Librarian, I am not a luddite. I've been using social networks for several years, and I find them both useful and fun. I think librarians can probably benefit from learning how to use all sorts of web resources. But, I agree with AL that the function of librarians is not simply to mirror their patrons, uncritically sharing every enthusiasm. A librarian needs to know not just <i>how</i> to use Twitter, but <i>when</i> and for what purposes to use it. In those cases where a printed dictionary serves a specific need or inquiry best, it's foolish to insist upon ignoring that source and going to an internet resource instead just because "patrons like the internet better." A professional's job is not simply to give their client what feels comfortable and familiar, but to figure out what the client <i>needs</i>, and use professional knowledge to help fulfill that need.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-46336223138343348132009-08-07T11:09:00.000-07:002009-08-07T11:29:59.385-07:00Week Six, Thing 11 : Revisiting TechnoratiI got a Technorati account a long time ago, but have hardly used it in the last several months. Exploring Technorati in the last couple of days, via the discovery exercises, I have a better idea of why my use of it dropped. Purely on an aesthetic level, I find the site wanting, with its tiny type and bright green font. And, I find the sidebars on many screens intrusively large, crowding out primary search results and necessitating paging forward to read more than a couple of headlines. <br /><br />In terms of content, it seems that the most popular political stories there have a decidedly conservative slant. I don't know enough about how Technorati works to know whether this is simply a result of the political leanings of the people who use the site, or those who run it. Of course, those two factors could be mutually reinforcing, as well. That is, a slight political slant on the part of the people who run it would attract users who agreed with their politics, which would cause certain stories to rise in popularity. In any event, "Rising Posts and Stories" under both "news" and "blogs" seem to be a mixture of anti-Obama punditry, general-interest stories (like the death of director John Hughes), and computer-related posts. I'm interested in technical news where it's especially groundbreaking and well-written, but the couple of stories that appear on a cursory search don't look especially compelling. <br /><br />When I tried using the tag "libraries," only about a third of the headlines that appeared seemed to lead to stories that actually have libraries as their primary subject matter. This may be partly due to the readership of a technically-oriented site like this using "library" in a different sense from the one I think of as the primary definition, but it does make the service less useful to me.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-63572713674392391442009-08-05T09:35:00.000-07:002009-08-05T10:08:58.387-07:00Week 6, Thing 10 : Tagging and deli.cio.usI made myself a deli.cio.us account, but couldn't add a button to the toolbar--I got a message about not having permissions on my computer. So, I've just been looking around using tags and popularity ranking to find interesting sites. I also looked at deli.cio.us's blog and saw an RSS button, so I went to Bloglines and added that blog to my Blogline feeds. I searched deli.cio.us using the "photography" tag and found and saved to my deli.cio.us account some useful sites, including <a href="http://www.golden-hour.com/">The Golden Hour Calculator</a> which calculates the time of the "golden hour" just after sunrise and just before sunset, when the light tends to be optimal for outdoor photography, for any given day, at any location on earth.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-84149478302190119882009-07-30T13:43:00.000-07:002009-07-31T13:27:22.775-07:00Week FiveI just created a profile at <a href="http://rollyo.com/index.html">Rollyo.</a> I've been looking at Starter Search Engines, and wondering why Angelina Jolie is a starter search engine name. I suppose she's popular, and some people care what she's searching for? Or is that a starter search engine in which one peruses the wealth of online information sources pertaining to Anglina Jolie?<br /><br />I've selected several starter search engines from the <a href="http://rollyo.com/dashboard.html">Dashboard</a>. If I get a chance tomorrow, I'll try them out.<br /><br />I added a couple more searchrolls by going to <a href="http://www.rollyo.com/createroll.html">Create Searchroll</a> and selecting "Need inspiration? Check these examples!" I added "New Search" and "Travel Search."Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-85548588528447308962009-07-27T13:30:00.000-07:002009-07-27T13:46:59.853-07:00Week 4, Things 8 and 9 : RSS Account Setup and Adding FeedsI listened to the audio and the two recommended videos. I set up a Bloglines account, but when I tried to add feeds using what I learned from the videos, I was confused. I think the interface has changed somewhat since the videos were made, as there seems to be a "Bloglines Beta" that I kept finding myself in, even as I attempted to use the "basic" service. I expect the interface will become clearer to me as I explore the service more and attempt to find and add more feeds. <br /><br />I created folders for some categories of feeds this morning, although I'm now having trouble figuring out how I did this. I can't find the option for creating folders. I used the "Top 1000" list to look for feeds to add. I now have a feed for the movie review site "Rotten Tomatoes" in a "movies" folder, a feed for I Can Haz Cheezeburger in a "lol" folder, and a feed for librarian.net in a "Library" folder at my Bloglines account.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-75736055789302936862009-07-23T09:49:00.000-07:002009-07-23T13:10:07.730-07:00Week 3, Thing 7 : Technological Thing of InterestInternet Filtering in Public Libraries<br /><br />In one sense, filtering the internet in public libraries is just an update on the age-old practice of attempting to ban books deamed unsuitable for children. On the other hand, it is both more widespread and more insidious than any such attempt. The Blog of the National Coalition Against Censorship has a good article about the issue <a href="http://ncacblog.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/theres-no-such-thing-as-a-safe-library/">here.</a> As noted there, the U.S. government supports internet filtering in public libraries, virtually mandating it in many places, since the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) states that public libraries <i>must</i> filter the internet in order to receive public funds.<br /><br />The arguments for filtering, in my opinion, depend on a little grain of truth and a heaping supply of misinformation and fear-mongering. The obvious little bit of truth is that there is a lot of material readily available on the internet that is unsuitable for children. Many would agree that plenty of this material is inappropriate for humans in general. The government should not be supporting pornography, some argue. What an adult wants to see on their own computer in their own home is their business, but the government shouldn't be paying for computers used to view porn in public libraries. So, if these libraries want the government to fund them, they need to use software that keeps the porn out. That way, impressionable children in libraries won't be harmed by it.<br /><br />The problem with this argument is partly a problem of technology. Filters lack the "intelligence" to filter out all material that fits a reasonable definition of "pornography" without also inadvertently filtering out much clearly non-pornographic material. As the article cited above notes, filters tend to filter out all materials relevant to sexuality along with the explicitly sexual sites that the majority would agree actually are unsuitable for use by minors. Suppose a fifteen year old wants information about sexuality or sexual health. Unless one is an extreme social conservative, most would agree that even children may be legitimately curious about these issues, and would be well-served to have reliable information. It's not simply a matter of curiosity in some cases, but of health, and even of life and death. Is the threat to childhood innocence of inadvertantly running into explicit sexual pictures so severe that, for instance, we have to deprive a gay teen of the ability to use the internet to find information about LGBT support organizations? I don't believe so.<br /><br />An additional problem is that some filtering software is not merely inept at determining the difference between helpful information and pornography; some is designed by people who actually <i>want</i> to see the distinction blurred. For instance, there are filters that ban the sites of organizations that provide helpful information on sexuality and birth control, but allow sites that promote the dubious goal of convincing gay teenagers that their sexuality is a disease that can be cured. Companies that provide filtering software have proprietary standards, so neither the library nor its patrons can know what it is that they're being "protected" from. Certain sites, whether by accident or by design, simply vanish.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-55533812962017183552009-07-21T06:45:00.001-07:002009-07-23T06:43:11.804-07:00Week Three, Thing Six: Flickr FunI made a badge based on a random selection of my public Flickr images tagged "houses."<br /><br /><!-- Start of Flickr Badge --><br /><style type="text/css"><br />#flickr_badge_source_txt {padding:0; font: 11px Arial, Helvetica, Sans serif; color:#666666;}<br />#flickr_badge_icon {display:block !important; margin:0 !important; border: 1px solid rgb(0, 0, 0) !important;}<br />#flickr_icon_td {padding:0 5px 0 0 !important;}<br />.flickr_badge_image {text-align:center !important;}<br />.flickr_badge_image img {border: 1px solid black !important;}<br />#flickr_www {display:block; padding:0 10px 0 10px !important; font: 11px Arial, Helvetica, Sans serif !important; color:#3993ff !important;}<br />#flickr_badge_uber_wrapper a:hover,<br />#flickr_badge_uber_wrapper a:link,<br />#flickr_badge_uber_wrapper a:active,<br />#flickr_badge_uber_wrapper a:visited {text-decoration:none !important; background:inherit !important;color:#3993ff;}<br />#flickr_badge_wrapper {background-color:#ffffff;border: solid 1px #000000}<br />#flickr_badge_source {padding:0 !important; font: 11px Arial, Helvetica, Sans serif !important; color:#666666 !important;}<br /></style><br /><table id="flickr_badge_uber_wrapper" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="10" border="0"><tr><td><a href="http://www.flickr.com" id="flickr_www">www.<strong style="color:#3993ff">flick<span style="color:#ff1c92">r</span></strong>.com</a><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="10" border="0" id="flickr_badge_wrapper"><br /><tr><br /><script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.flickr.com/badge_code_v2.gne?count=10&display=random&size=m&layout=h&source=user_tag&user=8042558%40N06&tag=houses"></script><br /></tr><br /></table><br /></td></tr></table><br /><!-- End of Flickr Badge --><br /><br />Oops! Too wide for the page. I'll try a different design. I'll use the tag "concerts," small images, and vertical placement:<br /><br /><br />But, that's better suited to a sidebar than a blog post. Maybe I can figure out how to put it somewhere else on the blog?<br /><br />It's now horizontal, at the bottom of the page.<br /><br />ETA: Got help from Amazon Queen in a comment on how to put a badge in the sidebar, so I did that, and now I'm removing the vertical badge from the post. (July 23)<br /><br />Ooh! It changes every time I refresh the page!Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-15778674691477581532009-07-17T09:44:00.001-07:002009-07-17T09:49:32.416-07:00Week Three, Thing 5.5I thought I should post a pretty travel photo as well, after all<br /><br />Note: please click on the photo to see a larger copy. It's awfully small here. For an even bigger version, click on "All Sizes" over the photo at its flickr page.<br /><br /><div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hwr21/179147443/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/74/179147443_32b2f5a844_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/hwr21/179147443/">Ards Peninsula by Helicopter, Northern Ireland, June 2006</a><br />Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/hwr21/">Howard.</a></span></div><br clear="all" />Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-60536227708914908472009-07-17T09:28:00.001-07:002009-07-17T09:48:39.762-07:00Week Three, Thing Five: Explore flickr<div style="float: right; margin-left: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tidewatermuse/198930068/" title="photo sharing"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/70/198930068_bfed08dcc6_m.jpg" alt="" style="border: solid 2px #000000;" /></a><br /><span style="font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tidewatermuse/198930068/">"M/V COUGAR ACE" disabled in the Pacific Ocean</a><br />Originally uploaded by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/people/tidewatermuse/">Tidewater Muse</a></span></div>"M/V COUGAR ACE" disabled in the Pacific Ocean<br /><br />In order to find a flickr photo I could blog without the photographer minding, I went to <a href="http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/?">flickr Advanced Search</a> and clicked the "Creative Commons" option near the bottom of the page. <br /><br />I tried many different locations of places I want to travel to in the future, including Spain, the Caribbean, and Alaska. I couldn't choose among the gorgeous scenery and architecture. While looking at Alaska photos, I came upon this one. I was shocked to find the origin of the infamous "FAILBOAT." It turns out to be a vessel that failed off the coast of Alaska.<br clear="all" /><br /><br />In case you haven't yet viewed an example of this much-abused visual meme:<br /><br /><a href="http://media.photobucket.com/image/failboat/JKG33/Failboat.jpg?o=13" target="_blank"><img src="http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd71/JKG33/Failboat.jpg" border="0"></a>Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-15000816723571715432009-07-16T08:58:00.000-07:002009-07-16T09:06:15.435-07:00Week Two, Thing Four : Register Your BlogRegistered my blog a couple of days ago.<br /><br />I wonder if anyone else has looked at it. I checked out my "profile views," and it says I have 19 profile views, but I think that includes the times I've looked at my own profile.<br /><br />Come to think of it, that's pretty sad, if I've looked at my own profile 19 times. That's much worse than the logically-consistent correlate, that no one else has looked at my profile. To be alone is not necessarily shameful, but to be both alone and compulsively self-regarding, well, that's another thing entirely.Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8203190513929699143.post-67877285052126143982009-07-16T07:30:00.000-07:002009-07-16T07:48:12.664-07:00Week Two, Thing Three: Set up your own blog and add your first postI set up this "23 Things" blog last week. I hope it's okay that I haven't been sticking very strictly to the topic of each "thing" in question.<br /><br />I was going to hold off on writing this post until later, because I haven't been able to watch "Blogs in Plain English" yet. I need Adobe Flash 10 installed on my computer, and I asked the IT department to install it, but they haven't done it yet.<br /><br />In a way, it's strange that I am waiting to have the latest version of Flash installed on my computer. I detest the rampant misuses of Flash throughout much of the internet. If I'm casually browsing the internet on my nifty, 21st century broadband connection, I do not want to wait for things to load. Isn't waiting around for things to load what we did on the internet back in 1998? Yes, waiting for things to load, and having our eyeballs burned by flashing-fluorescent-green-on-black web pages. <br /><br />And yet, I wait. Because, for all my hatred of unnecessary Flash, the program does seem to have legitimate uses, and appears to be necessary for viewing videos online.<br /><br />Marginally relevant quote: "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it." (usually attributed to Mark Twain)Susanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04739516566430406942noreply@blogger.com1