2.0 Alphabet

is for reddit, where users submit links to content and then vote on the links, so the most popular items bubble to the top. Similar sites are Digg.com and Newsvine. A study released in September 2007 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism showed a wide divergence in what the so-called "mainstream media" considers to be important and what "the masses" perceive as worthy of attention. This is proof.

"The site has discussion areas in which users may discuss the posted links and vote for or against others' comments. When there are enough votes against a given comment, it will not be displayed by default, although a reader can display it through a link or preference. Users who submit articles which other users like and subsequently "vote up" receive "karma" points as a reward for submitting interesting articles."[Wikipedia]

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Even More Cool Online Tools...

The Internet site - "Webware: Cool Web 2.0 Apps for Everyone" - has just published its list of the Top 100 Web Apps for 2008 (votes by visitors to their site).

Take a look at the follwoing categories for some interesting online productivity tools:

• Productivity & Business
• Storage
• Widgets & Desktop Enhancements
• Education & Reference.

Here's some useful online apps...

10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop
LifeClever has put together a nice list of 10 free Web-based applications which can be used for photo-editing. Be sure and check out the full post for screenshots of each:

• Picnik
• Splashup
• Phoenix
• Photoshop Express
• Snipshot
• flauntR
• Pic Resize
• Pixenate
• FotoFlexer
• Phixr

These were posted to iLibrarian (which posted them from somewhere else).

Lab Graduate

It's time to have some fun in the lab!

Have you been somewhere -- a branch you don't normally work at, away on vacation, at your parents' house, etc. -- and wished you had your computer with you? Or wished the computer that was available had the software to run the document you have on your flashdrive?

Forget the flashdrive, say goodbye to the software.

When you use Google Docs it won't matter where you are or what computer you have available. You can even use your phone. You can create, access, and import word processing documents, spreadsheets, even presentations.

Google Docs is a graduate of Google Labs which is full of good ideas, some great ones, some that may seem silly to you. The reason so many Google products work so well is that they are made available to anyone to play with during development at Google Labs. You too can test drive and give input on such Google ideas as searching concepts and chat resources.

Some of the Google platforms you know and love were graduated from the Google Lab, like the Reader you use to gather your blogs and news, the Maps you use to get around, and your personalized iGoogle pages.

So play in the lab and take part in creating our 2.0 future.

#11 - Online Applications & Tools

Learning Objectives

• Browse some online productivity tool (ex. word processing, spreadsheets, image editing, calendars, mapping, etc.).
• Explore the Web 2.0 Directory categories: Calendar Services, Note Taking Services, Office Services, Mapping Services & Photography Services.
• What's a "Web widget"?

Skills Practice

• Play with some of the productivity products listed on the Best of The Best Web 2.0 Web Sites.
• Create, save and edit a document using ThinkFree.
• Create, save and edit an image using FlashPAINT.
• Log in to Google Docs & Spreadsheets - how could you put this to good use?
• Find a widget that will work on your blog and add it.

Experience Sharing

• Share your experienc with the online tools that you used on the hcplc=Lib2.0 blog.
• Post the document and image that you created on your 2.0 Learning blog.

Resources

1. Michelle Boule, "The Internet is for Use." ALA TechSource Blog.
2. Richard MacManus, "Widgets are the New Black."
3. The Unofficial Web Applications List.
4. Check out Widgetbox.
5. "Learning 2.0: Web-based Applications" by Helene Blowers
   
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2.0 Alphabet

is for Pandora, which lets you create your own streaming Internet radio station that plays only music that you like. The technology at work here derives from the Music Genome Project, which parses a song using 400-plus attributes, making it easy to find more related or similar songs. If you love music, you've probably already found Pandora.

Take a look at the recent article from Information Today - "Pandora lets users create online radio stations.(Link-Up @ Home)." by Thomas Pack. [Information Today 25.5 (May 2008): p.38(2)].

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Back on Topic

I know my post yesterday had nothing to do with the current topic but it was so good, hope you all took some time to explore.
Back on topic, tagging, here's an interesting post from the Free Range Librarian, Karen Schneider. She will be in town tomorrow over at TBLC presenting a class on writing for the web. I'm looking forward to it; I worked with Karen long ago on The Internet Filtering Assessment Project.

Imagine this with Burgert Brothers photos....

Grant Schindler is my best friend's son; I've known him since he was born and I couldn't be prouder of him. He's a PhD. candidate at Georgia Tech and his research project is an amazing mashup of Atlanta in 4D you must take some time to play with. His group is working on a way to make this software they have created work automatically, so eventually we will be able to enter "Tampa" and it would do the same thing they have done for Atlanta, pulling Burgert Bros. and other photos off the web and creating a visual history.

2.0 Books

Everyone's a cataloger...

"Tagging : People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web," by Smith, Gene.
Berkeley, CA : New Riders, 2008.

Tagging is fast becoming one of the primary ways people organize and manage digital information. Tagging complements traditional organizational tools like folders and search on users desktops as well as on the web. These developments mean that tagging has broad implications for information management, information architecture and interface design. And its reach extends beyond these technical domains to our culture at large. We can imagine, for example, the scrapbookers of the future curating their digital photos, emails, ticket stubs and other mementos with tags. This book explains the value of tagging, explores why people tag, how tagging works and when it can be used to improve the user experience. It exposes tagging's superficial simplicity to reveal interesting issues related to usability, information architecture, online community and collective intelligence. [Amazon.com]

"Everything is Miscellaneous : the Power of the New Digital Disorder," by David Weinberger. New York : Times Books, 2007.

Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.
In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children’s teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by "going miscellaneous," anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.
From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think--and what you know--about the world. [Amazon.com]

2.0 Alphabet

is for Ourmedia, "a community of video producers, podcasters and other grassroots media-makers coming together to show off citizen creativity, discuss methods for creating higherquality works, and interact with one another." This one is interesting (at least to me) because J. D. Lasica, who has a long professional history in print journalism, started it. With those at so many print publications scratching their corporate heads over how to remain relevant (not to mention profitable) today, sites such as Ourmedia need to be on the radar screen as an archive for grass-roots multimedia content.




Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Great Google Mashup

Wikipedia added to Google Maps!

Tagging Gone (terribly) Wrong

Tagging items with keywords that are meaningful to us and assumedly to other online viewers sounds like a great idea - and it is. What could be better that helping like minded people find the same things we like, using the vocabulary that we share?

But...what about when tagging goes terribly wrong? There's a phenomenon called "protest tagging" where folks tag products, books, videos and anything else they can tag with purposefully misleading descriptions. The single most obvious example of this would be Ann Coulter's recent book, "Godless: the Church of Liberalism." Let the political rhetoric begin...

Take a look at "The Long Tail of Ann Coulter" [on LibraryThing] which details the popular - and very political - tagging of the book.

Here's another summary from Michael Huang's technology blog: “Ann Coulter's Godless shows up [on Amazon.com] as the #1 result, with 9 instances of 'poop'. Other top tags include: hateful (143), lies (101), propaganda (80), evil (73), fascist (64), hateful divisive political rhetoric (49), and horsecrap (48). What I find interesting about the tag "hateful divisive political rhetoric" is that 49 people all tagged it the same 4 words -- it's not "divisive political" or "hateful rhetoric" but "hateful divisive political rhetoric". I'd guess it likely that whoever tagged it "hateful divisive political rhetoric" probably also tagged it "horsecrap" too.” [Micheal Huang]

Yes, that's right - Amazon.com shows Ann Coulter's latest book ranked first under the search tag "poop".

LibraryThing has tried to examine the vialbility of tagging in, "When Tags Work and When They Don't".

Just to be fair - viewers of MySpace TV have also tagged Ann Coulter - she's in the top 10 search results for "pundit"!

It's all about me!

My delicious site is what I'm talking about. And it really is. It's got urls to things I might post on a blog one of these days, recipes I might cook someday, things and people I might need when I move one of these years, stuff I might buy as a gift for someone, or for myself, and so on. Lots of library 2.0 links. Anywhere I see something I want to come back to I just grab that url and put it on my delicious page. And as long as I tag it right I will be able to find it when I need it. There is much more that can be done with delicious, but I love the organized way it helps me keep track of things I might want to find again one day.

#10 - Social Bookmarking, Tagging & Folksonomies

Learning Objectives

• Review the Learn More: Tags & Tag Clouds tutorial.
• Learn about the process known as “tagging” – why is everybody trying to catalog the Web?
• Explore del.icio.us and learn about collaborative tagging or descriptive indexing of the Web.
• Review the Learn More: del.icio.us tutorial.
• Take a look at the CommonCraft video, "Social Bookmarking in Plain English."
  


• Using del.icio.us (tutorial on YouTube)
  

Skills Practice

• Create your own portable bookmark page using del.icio.us , Diigo or another online bookmarking service; create an RSS feed for a topic that interests you and subscribe to the feed.
• Explore Technorati and see how blog tags/labels relate to this search engine of the blogosphere.
• Play with the library database – Fiction Connection – and see how tags/subject heading relate to each other in a graphical display.

Experience Sharing

• Share your experience on your 2.0 Learningblog.
• How could a service like del.icio.us be used in the library – comment about this on the hcplc=Lib2.0 blog
• Discuss how this trend to collaborative description could effect libraries on the hcplc=Lib2.0 blog (visit the library catalog of the Ann Arbor District Library for some ideas).

Resources

1. Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Tagging.”
2. Jason Morrison, "Why Are They Tagging, and Why Do We Want Them To?"
3. Joan Beaudoin, "Flickr Image Tagging: Patterns Made Visible."
4. Thomas Pack, "A 'del.icio.us' Way to Use Bookmarks."
5. "A Librarian's Guide to Creating 2.0 Subject Guides." at iLibrarian.
6. "Folksonomy" on Wikipedia



7. "Learning 2.0: Tagging & Del.ico.us" by Helene Blowers
   
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8. "Learning 2.0: Getting not so Technical with Technorati" by Helene Blowers
   
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2.0 Alphabet

"is for Ning, an oddly named service that lets you "create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds." Well, we like anything that is free, and that's a good thing about Web 2.0 apps in general. Ning is one I really don't get, but apparently plenty of others do; thousands and thousands of networks are listed on the site. I couldn't tell you how many are active. I'm not sure why someone would choose this particular social network rather than Facebook, for example, but a Library 2.0 Network exists here."

Here's another example of a user created social network: The Barista Exchange - just for Baristas (one who has acquired some level of expertise in the preparation of espresso-based coffee drinks):

"Ning hopes to compete with large social sites like MySpace and Facebook, by appealing to users who want to create networks around specific interests or have limited technical skills.[5] The unique feature of Ning is that anyone can create their own custom social network for a particular topic or need, catering to specific audiences. At its launch, Ning offered several simple base websites developed internally and by members of a closed beta. In late September of 2006, Ning narrowed its focus to offering a group website, a photos website, and a videos website for people to copy and use for any purpose. Later, these three templates were superseded by a single customizable template aimed at allowing non-developers to more easily customize their copy of the social website. However, Ning does allow developers to have some source level control of their social networks, enabling them to change features and underlying logic." [Wikipedia]

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Take the challenge

or just read along, for now. The 31 Day Comment Challenge encourages blog readers to become blog commenters and take part in the great 2.0 conversation.

Make it yours

Here is a nice and simple example of how a library attracts children and teens to use their homework help site. Check out the drop down menu on the right under the log in boxes -- Choose page style.

No April Fools Joke?

There's really a book for Amazon.com!

Amazon.com for Dummies. by Friedman, Mara. Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, c2004. You can learn all about the personalization services and how Amazon recommends items for you based on your searching and shopping preferences - wouldnt it be cool if the Library catalog did that?


Of special interest:

-Chapter 3: You Are the Master of Your Account
-Chapter 11: It's All About You!
-Chapter 12: Putting Your Two Cents In


You could just visit Amazon.com and check out how their recommendations feature works.

2.0 Alphabet

is for meebo, which is "instant messaging everywhere." If you're stuck at a place where the IT department has locked down the computers to keep people from installing stuff, head for meebo to use popular IM programs, including AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber. Its versatility makes it useful for librarians doing chat reference or as a bookmark on public access computers, if you don't want to mess with separate applications for all these IM services.


Remember meebo? Way back in Lesson #2 - IM & Virtual Reference we used meebo to sample chat with each other -> take a look...


Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 1 (letters A - M) were originally published in Information Today 24.9 (Oct 2007): p.17(2).