All the bells and whistles (Explore -- Week 13)

I got quite excited about Slide share and Thumstacks. Another cool way to share slideshows. Something I could see being used widely for training purposes. A good way to share powerpoint presentations.

Googledocs and Zoho had a lot of good office applications: Googledocs is good for sharing documents without the hastle of having to be in the same R drive group; Zoho was good for Zoho Meeting and Zoho Projects and very cool because it lets you chat while you work on documents in real time.

I didn't really get Zamzar till I started trying to download a document to Googledocs from my home Del computer that uses Windows Vista. I needed to save the document in rich text or a typ of file that Googledocs accepted. One of the draw backs of beeing the leader of the pack (ha, ha).

I had this one thought though, aren't some of these apps. standard features on your home computer these days? Like Picnik is part of the Windows Photo Gallery on my p.c. The "cool" thing is probably that it is free.

This is says it all for me -- Slideshare

This slide show starts with the invention of roll film for cameras and traces some of the technology we all take for granted like video recorders. They all started with the wow factor and then people started to ask themselves "would I like fries with that?" This is how the creative process works, a continual refining of the product building on what you had before.

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Mashup Adventure -- Week 12

On the question about different types of mashups and how you might use them in the library, I had a bit of a surf on Google about mashups. Wikipedia has "Web Application Hybid" at the end of a list of options. This took me to Yahoo Pipes. This is quite a mind blower. You can harness a number of a number of applications like Google maps, RSS feeds, etc. to create your own mini web site. Think of the power. This site about wineries in the Napa Valley was one of their "hot pipes". Check out this address:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=bMPFtO342xGrr53VyzUFzw

I can see departments like Public Libraries Branch getting a lot of use out of this type of application. Where are the libraries? Where are related services. What are the feeds that would provide public libraries with community information that they need? These are all questions you might ask.

Mashups -- The value of Energy and Teamwork

Recently we've been seeing a lot of Energy and Teamwork on our floor. In this mashup I'd like to pay tribute to some of Ela and Chris Fam's excellent work. It was well appreciated by all!!! The only problem is that Joanna will have another title to catalogue but then she loves doing that. Good on you Serials Team!!!

The law of precession

I started looking at Stanen Design and what it does and it reminded me of The law of precession. This is like when a bee makes honey. That's it's goal. It's purpose is to fertilize flowers. This is like when you tag pictures on Flickr and then some one like these guys comes along and makes a mashup with tagged photos of peoples holidays and then mash them up with place names from the United States postal system. You never know what your goal is going to end up producing. So you better keep doing it! Flickrvision blew my head away as well. All these places all over the world and all these moments from people's lives being fired back at you. What is this all about? How can you take it all in?

Podcast Opportunities

I went into Online education database and Yahoo podcasts search with some interest but soon I was mentally back at university wondering why can't I understand any of this stuff?

Am I an idiot, I wondered. Of course I'm not an idiot, none of us are; totally. It's just either the recording situation or the speaker is not up to par. This issue was highlighted for me the more podcasts I looked at.

If we want to use this media at the State Library I would hope that we would consider:

1. Choosing a form of file that is compatible with a wide range of recievers (does everyone have/want ITunes?).
2. Get a type of file that downloads quickly (do you really want to spend a long time downloading a file?).
3. Make recordings that are of a good quality (clear to listen to and the speaker actually knows how to speak).

Library Success at the State Library

At the State Library podcasts could be used for a number of purposes we have previously used flyers and other written material. Young clients seem to be keen to take up the new information technology and we can exploit this self provided conduit. Here are some of the ways:

1. Oral History tapes online or MP3 player
2. Presentations by interesting speakers in the library on interesting items we have in the collection. Elizabeth Ellis and Paul Brunton doing a Betty Churcher.
3. Answering frequently asked questions on reader education subjects
4. A personal guided tour of the Library
5. Talk me through I.T. procedures.
6. Talk me through cataloguing procedures.
7. Induction information for new workers in the library