is for VCarious, "a new way to explore travel destinations." You can read travel guides written by others, post your own photos and journals, and share interesting items with your friends and colleagues. This is based on a core Web 2.0 concept to get the users to create and contribute the content. Actually, this site is quite cool; it's definitely worth a look if you're planning a trip somewhere.

VCarious is a new kind of travel site for exploring destinations in the same way as first-hand travel. Using Web 2.0 technologies, VCarious provides a dynamic, interactive environment for exploring photos, journals, and travel guides. Members can interact with other travelers, share their photos and journals, and participate in creating community travel guides.

VCarious was created by travelers who were tired of canned, one-size-fits-all printed guides and frustrated with disorganized travel web sites filled with sponsored links. With its dynamic and interactive tools, VCarious enables travel enthusiasts to share their experiences and truly explore the world.

and Yes, I know I skipped "U".

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

2.0 Alphabet

is for Twitter, "a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!" My immediate reply was, who the heck cares? For some reason, Twitter has received a lot of buzz in the library community. It's not as though we weren't already plagued by information overload.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web site, via the Twitter web site, short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.
Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application. [Wikipedia]

There's always a lot of chatter on Library 2.0 blogs about the significance, need, point, etc. of Twitter. I'd comment more, but I've got to read my email (8:05am); then I'm going to drink some coffee (8:07, 8:15 & 8:34am); I have an appointment with my supervisor (9:15am) but will stop by the restroom first (9:06am) ... "What are you doing?"

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

2.0 Alphabet

is for Squidoo. Squidoo is a network of user-generated lenses --single pages that highlight one person's point of view, recommendations, or expertise. Lenses can be about anything, such as ideas, people or places, hobbies and sports, pets or products, philosophy, and politics. Lenses aren't primarily intended to hold content; more emphasis is placed on recommending and then pointing to content on the web. Annotation and organization and personalization delivers context and meaning.

Squidoo's goal as a platform is to bring the power of recommendation to search. Squidoo's goal as a co-op is to pay as much money as we can to our lensmasters and to charity. And Squidoo's goal as a community is to have fun along the way, and meet new ideas and the people behind them.
Read more about Squidoo at The SquidLens.

Check out Squidoo's Library 2.0 Lens.

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

Social Media in Plain English

I know this is somewhat out of order (unless you consider all Web 2.0 stuff to be "social media") - Common Craft has released another great explanatory video.




Take a look!

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).

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).

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.

1.0 Stuff About Online "Collaboration"

Here's a few recent - thought provoking - books that discuss about the mass participation in creating Internet content, ratings, reviews, etc.

Wisdom of Crowds (why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations) by James Surowiecki. New York, Doubleday: 2004.

"While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we're all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest)."[Amazon]

Smart Mobs, The Next Social Revolution, by Howard Rheingold. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2002.

"Mobile, wireless, Net-connected devices are now being hawked by the computer and telecom industries, prompting technology author Rheingold to take stock of the incipient revolution. Glimpsing the future in vignettes of wireless users in Helsinki and Tokyo, Rheingold primarily explores the sociology that might characterize a world of "ad-hocracy," in which people cluster temporarily around information of mutual interest. Rheingold describes how consumerism might change when pedestrians, as their mobiles detect stores and restaurants, patch into electronic gossip about an establishment. The location-detection feature of these devices will inevitably breach privacy, which informs Rheingold's somewhat skeptical stance toward this brave new world, and contrasts with the enthusiasm of certain computer scientists he interviews, such as Microsoft's promoter of a wireless urban space pervasively connected to the Internet. The cyber-savvy and socially aware will be interested and undoubtedly concerned by Rheingold's informed report. " [Booklist]

Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen. New York: Doubleday/Currency, c2007.

"Keen's relentless "polemic" is on target about how a sea of amateur content threatens to swamp the most vital information and how blogs often reinforce one's own views rather than expand horizons. But his jeremiad about the death of "our cultural standards and moral values" heads swiftly downhill. Keen became somewhat notorious for a 2006 Weekly Standard essay equating Web 2.0 with Marxism; like Karl Marx, he offers a convincing overall critique but runs into trouble with the details. Readers will nod in recognition at Keen's general arguments—sure, the Web is full of "user-generated nonsense"!—but many will frown at his specific examples, which pretty uniformly miss the point. It's simply not a given, as Keen assumes, that Britannica is superior to Wikipedia, or that record-store clerks offer sounder advice than online friends with similar musical tastes, or that YouTube contains only "one or two blogs or songs or videos with real value." And Keen's fears that genuine talent will go unnourished are overstated: writers penned novels before there were publishers and copyright law; bands recorded songs before they had major-label deals. In its last third, the book runs off the rails completely, blaming Web 2.0 for online poker, child pornography, identity theft and betraying "Judeo-Christian ethics." [Publisher's Weekly]

Instant Feedback & Ratings on Tech Help

Social networking meets technical support with FixYa, a social networking site dedicated to helping people with their computer and gadget problems. Recent solutions and problems, as well as a plug for the top experts, can be found on the homepage. You can search for both products and solutions or browse by manufacturer to find the help you need.


The site also lets you register and store all of your product warranty and support information in one place. Registering also gets you alerts when warranties are about to expire and direct manufacturer contact information, among other things. Nice!

There are thousands upon thousands of problems and solutions in this database - a great place to check when the library (or one of its customers) needs help with a technical problem. [From Librarian in Black]

FixYa lets users rate the effectiveness of the help provided so that you can use only those tech tips provided by the highly rated postings.

The Charms of Wikipedia

"Without the kooks and the insulters and the spray-can taggers, Wikipedia would just be the most useful encyclopedia ever made. Instead it's a fast-paced game of paintball." Nicholson Baker

Take a look Nicholson Baker's latest - The Charms of Wikipedia [New York Review of Books, March 20, 2008] in which he reviews the new book Wikipedia: the Missing Manual by John Broughton. He also gives a few of his opinions too.

25 Useful Social Networking Tools for Librarians

Librarian Jessica Hupp recently published a profile of 25 social networking sites which can be used by libraries to share information with customers and students. Very specifically she highlights tools which can be used for communicating (blogs, MySpace), distributing (Flickr, You Tube) and organizing information. How many of these are new to you?

Social Networking for Book Lovers

If you would rather spend a day curled up with a good book than in front of a computer, have I got some 2.0 sites for you!

I discovered LibraryThing about a year ago and decided to organize the books in my home library using the site.

More recently, a friend sent me an invitation to join her on Goodreads, and, while I am partial to LibraryThing, suddenly I had lots of friends on Goodreads, so I set up an account and invited some other people and now I know what my friends are currently reading, what they thought about books they have already read, and what they plan to read next. I've found books to add to my "to read" shelf this way.

The book club I belong to, which has had trouble finding a good meeting time lately, is considering having some meetings online.

You can even find out what is going on in local bookstores and libraries on some of these sites, as I mentioned in my post on mashups last week.

Listen, or read, more about these sites as heard on NPR's All Things Considered recently.

Maybe you'll decide to sign up for one of these; let us know if you do in the comments and let us know how you like it on your blog.

Web 2.0, Libraries & Generation Y...Oh My!

The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a new study on December 30th about the research capabilities of Americans and their use of public libraries. The study - Information Searches That Solve Problems: How People Use the Internet, Libraries, & Government Agencies When They Need Help - show some surprising findings:

• More than half of Americans visited a library in the past year with many of them drawn in by the computers rather than the books.


• Of the 53 percent of U.S. adults who said they visited a library in 2007, the biggest users were young adults aged 18 to 30 in the tech-loving group known as Generation Y.


• The survey showed 62 percent of Generation Y respondents said they visited a public library in the past year...


• Most people use multiple avenues to find information: 64 percent of those who went to the public library were very successful; 63 percent of those who used the Internet were very successful.

The report's findings were against popular stereotypes, especially in relation to Teens & Twenty-somethings. "We were surprised by these findings, particularly in relation to Generation Y," said Lee Rainie, co-author of the study and director of the Pew project.

Take a look at the recent Web 2.0 column in the online tech magazine, TechNewsWorld - "Survey: Techie Gen Y Is Also Library-Savvy." It has some pretty flattering stuff to say about libraries and their adoption of tech solutions.

The report was also covered in Yahoo! News and Assosiated Press.

International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media

Conference Dates-March 26-28, 2007
Yes, they have whole conferences on this sort of stuff...

There are plenty of interesting papaers to read - see a wrap up from The Resource Shelf.