(the return of ) 2.0 Alphabet

is for Google Labs, a sandbox for all kinds of Google-based Web 2.0 toys. Not all innovations will become permanent features, but here you can find a definitive "Graduates" list of those which have, including Google's suite of online office applications (Docs & Spreadsheets), Google Reader, and Google Maps (an application programming interface that provides the basis for many Web 2.0 goodies).

Google Labs is a website demonstrating new Google projects "that aren't quite ready for prime time". It serves as a testing ground for new services being developed. This is a way for Google to gain feedback on the products before releasing the final versions. Google's services do not always appear on the Labs page; some are beta tested by invitation-only, like Gmail and Google Calendar once were. [Wikipedia]

Take a look at Google SMS - reference help by cell phone!

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

Let them come to you

The more blogs I read, the more I click on the blogs that their writers read and refer to in their posts and next thing I know I have another blog, or ten, I want to stay up to date on. I started with only a few library blogs and now there are more and more that are of interest to me. It can be time consuming, and frustrating, to have to go looking for new posts. And then there are the newspaper blogs, the theater blogs, oh, I could go on and on. Until I hooked up with Google Reader. There are other readers out there, of course, but I'm going to focus on this one today because it is the one I use. And because, since most of you set up your blogs using blogger, also a Google product, you already have gmail accounts. So with one login you have your email, your blog, and your news reader at your fingertips. (There's much more but that's for another time.) It's all so easy to use, and to tie together. But if you would like some help, here's a short tour, here's a short video (a bit dated but you'll get the idea), and here's the official Google Reader blog.