Thing #45 -- Cloud Computing

I commented on the rise in web applications in Thing #2. It's an update of early days of computing. Back then, everything was kept on a large mainframe computer, and so-called dumb terminals (basically monitors and keyboards) were hooked up to it. Then desktop computers became more and more powerful, and everything was done locally, using the workstation's own processor and memory. Now we've arrived at cloud computing, which is just the modern day equivalent of the mainframe and not-so-dumb-anymore terminal--applications, documents, all kinds of data, really, are stored on a server somewhere and accessed anywhere via an Internet connection and a web browser.

My primary experience with cloud computing is using Apple's MobileMe service, and account that gives me space on the cloud to store files, and access to my email, calendar, contacts, and photos. My husband and I are able to synchronize between what is on the cloud and all our computers, whether at home, at work, or on our iPods. Eventually we would like to purchase a new router for our home network that would allow us to use the Back to My Mac feature. Then we would be able to access files between computers directly, without needing to upload them to the cloud for sharing first.

For work, I've used both Google Docs and Zoho, and written about them in previous posts. I haven't used Zoho beyond the one, rather unsuccessful, experience. Google Docs, on the other hand, continues to be an important tool as I collaborate on projects with librarians from other instutions.

There's always a tradeoff between access and security, and cloud computing is no different. It's nice to have access to files from anywhere, but that also leaves open the risk of others getting unauthorized access to those same files. Our campus, like most others, has a firewall in place to prevent many kinds of access to campus networks from off-campus. However, as more and more tools I use are web based, I have discovered that I can do increasing amounts of work from home without running into firewall problems. This can be important as the college makes contingency plans for how to continue operations in the event of a swine flu pandemic, or other severe outbreak.

Thing #42 -- Music 2.0

I've been a heavy iTunes user for years. When our home DVD/CD player started having trouble reading CDs we imported all our music into iTunes and loaded it onto an iPod which is hooked up to our home audio system. This lets us combine our CDs and purchased downloads in one place. We never listen to actual CDs anymore.

I also began listening to internet radio at least 5 years ago (probably longer). I've used Live365, iTunes radio, and other services that no longer exist. When I got my iPod the MPR Radio app (which streams their 3 stations plus Radio Heartland) was one of the first I put on it. My husband introduced me to last.fm a few months ago, when he sent me a link to a station he made. I like the way it lets you follow chains of connections between artists to discover some you might like but didn't know about. Also the ability to create a station based on a particular artist or genre/tag.

I big problem with listening to internet radio for me, especially at work, is buffering. It's hard to enjoy music when you only hear it a few seconds at a time! I think the campus network gives lower priority to streaming radio than other applications.

One type of music I like is what I call "contemporary classical"--not the big orchestral symphony stuff, but things composed during the second half of the 20th century or later. Here is a station built with the 'minimalism' tag.




Even with all these options, I don't know if broadcast radio will go away. I still listen to it, especially when I'm driving. Even so, the internet has had a positive impact on my broadcast listening. I love online playlists! If I'm driving and hear a song I like but don't know, I make a note of the time it played. Later, I'll look it up on the radio's web site. And now that I am familiar with sites like last.fm, I can use them to find more of that artist's music to decide if I really like them or it was just that one song.

Thing #38 -- Screencasting

The things in this Thing are pretty old hat to me at this point. I've been using SnagIt for years to put screen shots in the database guides I create for students or email answers to student requests for help. And I also use Grab when on my Mac. In fact, it's how I captured my Wordle word cloud to put in the previous Thing.

I've used various tools for screencasting. The first one I created was about 2 years ago, using Wink. I didn't find the learning curve very steep, and it has a surprising amount of functionality for a free program. While it didn't take long to record my capture, it was extremely time consuming to edit my tutorial to get it the way I wanted it--adjusting the timing and adding branching. I have since given up on Wink in favor of Adobe's Captivate, which makes it a lot easier to edit my captures.

Primarily I use these tools for creating full-blown database tutorials. However, over the winter I discovered Jing, and have been using it heavily since. Since there are no post-capture editing options, it doesn't have the functionality of Wink or Captivate (or Camtasia, for that matter), but it fills a need for creating "quick and dirty" videos. Students often ask me for help via email. In the past I would answer their questions with a combination of screen shots and blow-by-blow text descriptions of what to look for and where to click. With Jing, I just create a short video of what they should do, upload it to Screencast.com, and email a link to the video. The students have found this approach very helpful, and it takes much less time to make the video than to explain the same concepts in the text of an email.

Thing #37 -- Photo Tales

For organizing personal photos I use iPhoto and combine it with the Gallery feature of my MobileMe account to share them on the web. I've found iPhoto extremely easy to use, and it's pretty economical for getting prints of pictures. The application comes with tools to design cards and upload the images and your design to Apple for printing. We used this for our Christmas cards this past year. One other project my husband is working on is a family memory book of old family photos. He is using iPhoto to layout the pictures on each page and add captions of who is in each photo. Once he's finished we'll be able to get a hardcover book of the pictures to give to family members.

Obviously, I have found a lot of use for these kinds of tools in my personal life, but (as with many of these Things) I'm not sure what place they have in my library. My college has a Flickr account used to share photos of student events and other happenings on campus, but the library doesn't. Photos that we share are posted to our Facebook page. One potential use of the tools in this thing would be to post links to some of the stock photo sites or captioning sites for students who may need to use images in presentations. But then again, how likely would students be to think of the library web site as a resource to fill that need?

I've played around some with iMovie, but for this Thing I tried One True Media's montage site. It is pretty intuitive to use, and offers a lot of choices for editing, even if you don't have a premium (ie. paid) account. My only quibble is the image quality of the online sharable version isn't very good, and the watermark takes up a lot of real estate. I used it for this project, but don't know if I will go back to it agian. Given the time of year, I created a story about my garden.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Thing #29, part 1 -- Google Tools: Productivity

I should have gotten to this Thing earlier...it solved an annoyance I've been dealing with for several years.

The Background
For what seems like a long time now, I've been using 2 separate calendar applications. My husband and I share several calendars on Apple's iCal to keep track of various schedules, and I use Mozilla Sunbird at work so I can print my weekly agenda and post it outside my office (my library doesn't use our campus' calendar program to share staff schedules). While the 2 applications use the same calendar format, they couldn't share calendars. That meant I either had to remember to enter everything twice, once in each place, or continuously export and import from one app to the other.

The Solution
I had looked at Google Calendar a little over a year ago to see if it was a better alternative than Sunbird, but it wasn't then. This Thing made me take a second look. Upon reading this sentence: "You can sync you calendar with Outlook, Blackberry devices, and Apple's iCal" [emphasis mine] I became excited. Finally, no more double entry calendaring! A quick install of Google's calaboration code on my MacBook, and I was all set. Now, anything I add to my Google Calendar while I'm at work will show up in iCal at home and my husband's work, and anything either of us add to iCal will show up for me at work.

Productivity tool indeed! This Thing is the winner so far for most immediate application of something I've learned.

More with Thing #25 -- Post by email

I decided to test posting by email using my iPod Touch. It's easy,
but time consuming to type with only one finger. I can see it might
be helpful if I was doing live blogging somewhere and didn't have a
computer with me. But pretty much anywhere I'd have email access I'd
also have web access to post directly. So email posting doesn't seem
terribly useful.

---------------------
Sent from my iPod Touch

Thing #19 -- Podcasts

My library has discussed creating a blog for our web site a couple of times, and we always bring up the same objection--content. Would we have enough content to make it worthwhile? We don't want it to end up a stale section of the our page that hardly changes. I think this goes double (at least) for podcasts, so I can't see us taking on any podcast projects anytime soon. (Which isn't to say it will never happen.)

In my personal life, I've found and listened to podcasts using iTunes--I really like iTunes U. I also knew that MPR had podcasts, but had never listened to any until doing this Thing. I added one to my feed list. It's getting pretty long by now! I also added a couple from NPR to my iTunes.

While I was working on this Thing I took a break to go through some mail. One item contained a notice about a new OCLC podcast and webinar series. I'll have to keep my eye (or is that ear?) on these.

Thing #18 -- YouTube

As I discovered with Thing 4 and Thing 11 (also Thing 12 to a lesser extent) it's hard for me to find useful things on sites like YouTube without a clear need. If I'm simply browsing aimlessly it seems primarily like a big jumble of content. That's probably why most of my experience with YouTube has been from following links in email and other places that take me directly to individual videos.

My library currently has one video on YouTube. We haven't discussed adding more, but I'm sure we will at some point.

As a Mac user, I thought it appropriate to include a video of the classic Apple commercial that aired during the 1984 Super Bowl.

Thing #13 -- Online Productivity Tools

Once again, on first reading through the Thing I think to myself: I'm already doing a lot of this with my Mac...

• My husband and I share an iCal calendar, and use our iDisk to keep it in sync.
• Mac's OS comes with a built-in PDF converter. Just choose File>>Print>>Save as PDF. I use this all the time, both for converting word processing files and for saving web pages.
• OSX also comes with both a Stickies application and a Stickies widget for the Dashboard.

The other thing I'm noticing (no pun intended) as I work through the Things, is the process makes me take closer looks at things I've been aware of, to a greater or lesser extent, and examine whether there's a place for them in my life or my library. In some cases the answer is yes, in others it's no.

One yes goes to iGoogle. I chose iGoogle over Pageflakes because I already have a Google account (still trying to keep the creeping account-itis down...), although they seemed equally appealing. I had tried My Yahoo! a bit ago, but found it frustrating to customize the way I wanted. One feature I like is creating multiple tabs. I can put work related items on the main tab and things more for personal use on a different tab--still easily accessible, but not right in front of me. I did add both the New York Times and Village Voice gadgets, so in spite of what I wrote for Thing #12 I may stop receiving their content via email.

I had tried Google Calendar previously, and while the web accessibility from anywhere is nice, I was a little uncomfortable with the safety consequences of having my schedule "out there" and stopped using it. I didn't want some hacker knowing that I would be leaving work at night after an evening shift, or that my house would be empty if I was out of town.

It's not exactly a calendar, but one useful tool I've discovered for scheduling meetings is Doodle. It works via a "poll" of available times that participants vote on, and automatically calculates the best time for the most people. Especially if you're scheduling people from multiple institutions and calendar systems it saves a lot of time. There's no need for multiple emailing back and forth.

It's interesting how some of these Things play off and refer to each other. For an earlier Thing I was trying to remember where I had seen something I wanted to mention. I tried searching for it, and while I couldn't find it I did discover Lifehacker, which looked really interesting. I added it to my list of feeds, and now here it is mentioned as a resource for Thing #13.

Thing #8 -- Tools for Sharing

This Thing includes lots of tools for putting content on the web. In general, I prefer to work with other non-web applications, probably because I value features and efficiently over sharing. As a Mac user at home, I am familiar with Apple's iLife suite of tools for personal use. Plus, it is fairly easy to share content using those tools and my iDisk. (I don't need to share with the world, just friends and family.)

For creating slideshows, I tried Thumbstacks and Zoho Show. Thumbstacks was extremely tedious to use--I can't imagine ever using it for anything. Zoho, by contrast was easier to use and more robust. I created the same presentation in both applications and it took me far less time in Zoho. My presentations are below.

First, from Thumbstacks. Unlike with the Zoho presentation following, I couldn't find a way to embed this in my blog.

Then from Zoho:



I also like that Zoho allows you to import an already created file. If I were to use Zoho for presentations I am likely to still create them using PowerPoint and upload them to Zoho. One use that struck me with both Thumbstack and Zoho is the ability to give the presentation remotely.

Of the other tools mentioned for this thing, I played around with LazyBase and eFolio Minnesota. (I decided I'd worked with pictures enough already and so skipped those.) LazyBase is certainly easier than Microsoft Access or FileMaker Pro, both of which I use for work and personal reasons. I like their template for "restaurants I need to try."

One thing with all these tools that I see as a drawback is having to create, and remember (!) all the different accounts I create to access the tools. Both Google and Zoho provide several different applications for one login, but these other stand alone tools make things more complicated.