I wasn't familiar with any of the tools listed in the Search Tools category, so I looked at most of them. The ramifications concerning privacy, or lack thereof, in using Web History made me a little uncomfortable. I wasn't sure the benefits of saving my search history were worth it, so I didn't explore this one very far.
I went further with SearchWiki, watching the video and reading the articles. Opinion is mixed regarding its usefulness. Many people who commented on the articles also questioned Google's motives for having SearchWiki--whether they were looking to provide a beneficial tool to users, or interested in enhancing their search algorithm based on users' comments. I suspect it was probably a little of both. For my part, I don't see a need for custom search results. If I find search results I wanted to keep track of, I would add the sites to del.icio.us or another bookmarking tool, rather than have to repeat a search just to get to them. The ability to view others' comments on a site doesn't appeal to me either. I don't tend to use other review/opinion kinds of web sites, so why would I use this feature in Google?
The search tool I did implement is Alerts. I set a few up for parts of the library's web site that I maintain, to get an idea of who is linking to or commenting on them. I am intrigued about the idea of using alerts to detect copyright violations. I work with a collection of images owned by the library, and in constructing the search to use for one alert I discovered several blogs using images from the collection. Note to self: decide if it is worth tracking down blog owners...
Just for fun, I created one for my name, and was surprised to receive an alert informing me about my previous blog post!
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Thing #28 -- Custom Home Pages
I created an iGoogle home page as part of Thing 13 and decided to stick with it for this Thing. Since I had explored Pageflakes and MyYahoo previously I didn't look at them again, but I did play around with Netvibes. Netvibes is a lot more appealing visually than iGoogle, but I just couldn't see creating yet another account to keep track of, or taking the time to basically duplicate everything I had in iGoogle. Also, I use both Google Groups and shared Google Documents. If the idea is to increase productivity by having all resources in one place, then iGoogle is the obvious choice for me.
Working on this Thing caused me to reexamine what gadgets I had on iGoogle and whether there were any I should add. I did put 3 new gadgets on my page. Two of them I should have added months ago: Google Reader and Facebook. Now that I am using Twitter, I also added a gadget for it.
Working on this Thing caused me to reexamine what gadgets I had on iGoogle and whether there were any I should add. I did put 3 new gadgets on my page. Two of them I should have added months ago: Google Reader and Facebook. Now that I am using Twitter, I also added a gadget for it.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Thing #27 -- Twitter
I'd heard of Twitter before, but didn't know much about it before this Thing. I did join, and choose a few people (or organizations) to follow. These are primarily for news (NPR, Star Tribune) or fun (James Lileks, The Onion) or MPR's Bob Collins who is both. I also added mnmorethings. If Twitter is at all useful to me, and I'm not convinced that it is, it will be for doing this kind of following. Very few of my friends or colleagues are on Twitter, so it doesn't work as a method to communicate with them. Since most of them are on Facebook that will probably remain the main way I connect with them online.
Since the ACRL conference is going on now, I wondered if following ACRL or tweets that have the #acrl2009 hashtag would be worthwhile. There are many people using Twitter to live blog ACRL sessions, and I could kind of follow what was going on, especially if I concentrated on just one or two people. I'll have to stick with it a bit longer to see if I learn anything useful, however.
As far as library uses for Twitter go, I don't see an application for them at my library yet. We've been talking about a library blog, or other more social ways to share library news, but haven't done anything except a Facebook page. Once we get our blog going perhaps we'll look into using Twitter to help spread our news.
I thought this would be a good post to share a video I came across several weeks ago. It's John Cleese's Twitter--The Movie from his blog, Cleeseblog.com.
Since the ACRL conference is going on now, I wondered if following ACRL or tweets that have the #acrl2009 hashtag would be worthwhile. There are many people using Twitter to live blog ACRL sessions, and I could kind of follow what was going on, especially if I concentrated on just one or two people. I'll have to stick with it a bit longer to see if I learn anything useful, however.
As far as library uses for Twitter go, I don't see an application for them at my library yet. We've been talking about a library blog, or other more social ways to share library news, but haven't done anything except a Facebook page. Once we get our blog going perhaps we'll look into using Twitter to help spread our news.
I thought this would be a good post to share a video I came across several weeks ago. It's John Cleese's Twitter--The Movie from his blog, Cleeseblog.com.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Thing # 26 -- Ning (again)
I joined the 23 Things on a Stick Ning as part of Thing 21 in Round 1, but since it came so late in the Things I didn't use it once I joined. I joined 2 other Ning networks. The first was for the Midwest Library Technology Conference 2008 and the second was a closed network used for planning an event. In both cases, use of Ning fizzled out fairly quickly. The technology conference Ning was valuable as a way for presenters to post materials, but it never generated much discussion related to the presentations. The other network suffered from the same lack of use. We discovered email was a more efficient way to discuss and resolve issues.
The 23 Things on a Stick Ning seems to be more active, unless it's just all a result of doing Thing 26! I did explore the groups without finding one that interested me. Most of them seem more relevant to public librarians than academic ones. To fulfill this Thing I uploaded a video and contributed to a discussion. I already added the Ning badge back in Thing #21.
The 23 Things on a Stick Ning seems to be more active, unless it's just all a result of doing Thing 26! I did explore the groups without finding one that interested me. Most of them seem more relevant to public librarians than academic ones. To fulfill this Thing I uploaded a video and contributed to a discussion. I already added the Ning badge back in Thing #21.
Friday, February 20, 2009
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.
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 #25 -- Bloggers' Toolkit
This is a good Thing to have at the beginning, to explore useful tools for blogging. But it's a bad Thing because there's so much to explore it can keep you from moving on to other Things. I've been stuck on #25 for a couple weeks now...
The usability article was informative. It was also validating, as I discovered I'm already following many of the suggestions. I like the one about tag clouds being more helpful than lists of previous posts by date; it makes a lot of sense. I plan to add a tag cloud to my blog--but first I have to go back and add tags to all the posts! It was something I hadn't done originally. That article also introduced me to Copyblogger, where I ended up spending a bunch of time reading.
Some of the 20 usability suggestions were frustrating, however. Since it was written using, and for, WordPress, many of the linked tools are WordPress specific. I'd see something I wanted to try, but not know how to. The frustration was compounded because I don't find Blogger's gadget lists very easy to use. Browsing categories brings up too many gadgets to page through, and searching doesn't seem to produce very helpful results. Kind of strange for a company that built itself on search!
Google Analytics is something I'm familiar with because I use it on a couple web sites I work with. It was simple to add tracking for this blog to the other sites I keep stats for. I noticed my blog has very few hits--not all that surprising. There are so many More Things on a Stick blogs that I've only looked at a small fraction myself.
With such low traffic, many of the Toolkit items don't make much sense. They'd just highlight how desolate my blog is out in cyberspace. ; - ) But I can see their value for more active blogs. I'm thinking about some of the comment tools (recent comments area, post ratings, most popular posts, etc.)
One thing I did add was the ability to subscribe to my blog. That's a key feature that I always look for on other blogs. A section I didn't even explore was the photo tools. I use a couple different imaging tools in my work on various web sites. For me, it's easier to keep using the tools I know than to work with different ones just for blogging.
The usability article was informative. It was also validating, as I discovered I'm already following many of the suggestions. I like the one about tag clouds being more helpful than lists of previous posts by date; it makes a lot of sense. I plan to add a tag cloud to my blog--but first I have to go back and add tags to all the posts! It was something I hadn't done originally. That article also introduced me to Copyblogger, where I ended up spending a bunch of time reading.
Some of the 20 usability suggestions were frustrating, however. Since it was written using, and for, WordPress, many of the linked tools are WordPress specific. I'd see something I wanted to try, but not know how to. The frustration was compounded because I don't find Blogger's gadget lists very easy to use. Browsing categories brings up too many gadgets to page through, and searching doesn't seem to produce very helpful results. Kind of strange for a company that built itself on search!
Google Analytics is something I'm familiar with because I use it on a couple web sites I work with. It was simple to add tracking for this blog to the other sites I keep stats for. I noticed my blog has very few hits--not all that surprising. There are so many More Things on a Stick blogs that I've only looked at a small fraction myself.
With such low traffic, many of the Toolkit items don't make much sense. They'd just highlight how desolate my blog is out in cyberspace. ; - ) But I can see their value for more active blogs. I'm thinking about some of the comment tools (recent comments area, post ratings, most popular posts, etc.)
One thing I did add was the ability to subscribe to my blog. That's a key feature that I always look for on other blogs. A section I didn't even explore was the photo tools. I use a couple different imaging tools in my work on various web sites. For me, it's easier to keep using the tools I know than to work with different ones just for blogging.
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