Monday, October 29, 2007

iTube, uTube, we-all-Tube: Week 9--Thing 20

Posting a uTube video to a Blogger blog is soooo easy! I can't believe I was worried about this Thing! The hardest part of about the whole exercise was yanking myself away from all the videos. I have to say, there are some amazingly weird and twisted Halloween entries. Wow. And I thought I was cracked. But I came across a gem of simple animation. 'Wake Up Cat' below is by an English animator called Simon Tofield and it is actually called 'Cat Man Do.' He works for an animation company called Tandem Films. Enjoy.

Imagine video storytimes . . . Picture books turning their own pages and reading themselves aloud . . . Short instructional classes 'taught' by librarians . . . Booktalk segments . . . even book recommendations by librarians, teachers, and/or customers . . . Video tie-ins to college courses . . . Video tours of each branch . . . Oh, the places uTube can go . . . in the library.

Now . . . how post the video my five-year-old took on his Spongebob digital camera onto uTube? Maybe I'll have him show me. Hey, maybe I'll make a video of my five-year-olds uploading their digital pictures, playing on Club Penguin--the child social networking site--and playing video games. I'd 'play' an old broad clueless about tech. Could be funny. I'll keep you posted:)

iTube, uTube, we-all-Tube: Week 9--Thing 20

Whoa, Thing 10 Deja Vu: Week 8--Thing 19

Yes, I feel like I already looked at those Award sites, during Generate Fun week, but heck, it was fun, so maybe I'll find something else I like.

Reddit had me laughing. I loved Maddox's rant on women's fashion trends. (But as my blog is somehow tied to my place of employment and therefore in need of seeming presentable, not causing people to blush, I will refrain from posting his link--you're on your own, kids). Reddit also had substantial news articles that I enjoyed.

The book and self-publishing site, Lulu appealed to me, also. It doesn't seem like one of the many shady vanity presses out there. And I liked the children's authors section, especially the Aspiring Authors program. I wonder if my children's school is involved? I plan to ask about it.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Zoho-ho and a bottle of rum: Week 8--Thing 18

Well, below is my experiment with Zoho. I hope someone enjoys the anecdotes. I could not copy and paste from my Word files, but had to import them to Zoho. Also, it would not allow me to import multiple documents onto one page, but rather I had to create a new document with each import, and then copy and paste, redo the tabs, and carriage returns, etc. It's a bit off work, but I will play it more because I like the idea of being able to save documents and files without the fuss of a USB or disc, etc. I'll see if I can edit the entry below and rename it.

Ancedotal Zoho: Week 8--Thing 18

1) I was at my in-laws’ dressing for a wedding, when my sister-in-law emerged from the bathroom wearing different shoes.

“I bought these two pairs because I couldn’t decide between them. Which looks better with my dress?” I indicated the flashier pump, but her husband pointed to the other.

She rolled her eyes. “Are all guys fashionably illiterate?” She turned to me. “What would your husband say if you came home with these shoes?”

I didn’t have to think. “He’d say, ‘Good grief, woman! You bought TWO pairs of shoes?”


2) My one daughter
is in her “ask why” phase and it’s making us crazy. The other night my husband attempted to read her a picture book about cars, but her incessant questions made it difficult.

“Why is the car red, Daddy?”

“Because red looks good against the yellow background,” he said.

“Why is he sideways?” she interrupted again.

“Sometimes people look better from the side,” he said.

“Why is doing that?” she asked, pointing to a picture.

“He’s changing his car’s oil.”

“Why?”

“So it keeps running. Cars need oil and gas and I need you to listen.”

“Okay.”

He hurried to the next page, but was ready when our daughter pointed to a picture of a gas pump, the charge of$10.35 written on it.

“Why does it say that, Daddy?”

“Because this book is fiction.”


3) The other day in school my daughter's kindergarten teacher told me Juliet had volunteered the following:
"Juliet, what makes you feel special?"

"Uh, I am a triplet. That means I was squished in my mom's belly underneath my brother and sister. And they kept kicking me! That's because my mom kept saying to God, 'Can I have a baby, can I have a baby, can I have a baby, can I baby?' And boy, did He say yes!"


Sand-In-My-Shorts: Week 7--Thing 17

First, I think the "Sandbox" exercise was flawed, and not because of the problems with the Maryland Libraries' site. If I'm understanding the concept of a "Sandbox" correctly, it's supposed to be open for many people to add to/change, etc. The "Sandbox" designated for us is basically a run-on blog. The rules strongly discourage (read: prohibit) changing, deleting, and/or editing another's entry. Exactly how is that supposed to convey the feel of and participation in a wiki?

Initially I considered posting a faux program--I was loving the idea of Pimp My Pram (for those of you on this side of the pond--a pram is a baby carriage, though, of-course I would have included strollers in my program.) Along the idea of Pimp My Bookcart, proud parents could enjoy testing/seeing all the pimp-potential toys in our collection. I'd also include information on where to buy the best cup holders, Wiggles hi-def, and tinting options for bug netting. And for the parents desperately in need of self-validation through the exploitation of their children: Pimpfants attire.

Again, allow me to reiterate, this would have been a fake program, for the sake of FUN and PLAY, but one other employees could tweak, add to, comment on, erase, whatever. That would have been an organic experience more in the vein of what a wiki really represents.

Still, I enjoyed playing the crazy on the "Sandbox" and hoped it illustrated a major short-coming in the validity of wikis.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Hiki nô wiki! Week 7-Thing 16

Aloha Web 2.0!

Laki librarians, learn on wikis (say that five times fast--go ahead, you know you want to)! There are some âiwaiwa wikis out there.


There are tons of time-saving, smart uses for collaborative editing of documents. My husband uses wikis when he's working on a project tapping science teams around the world. It's a lot easier than making the poor Chinese members stay up until four o'clock in the morning to dial in for a conference call.


Obviously, there are tons of applications for such wikis in the library community, both internal and external. Most of the pages I viewed lent themselves well to subject guide design. Librarians and consumers can add news of interest to the the public sites, growing them into organic, relevant sites people will be interested and motivated to keep checking. One miki`oi wiki was the Princeton Book Lovers. I've thought for a long time that our customers would appreciate and benefit from the documentation once a month of a few librarians' personal puke recommendations in the Source catalog, but such an invaluable reader's advisory would be even better on-line where customers can also contribute to it.


A kupaianaha wiki I posted to my he `ono was EZ Library Programs, offering a searchable index to a wiki dedicated to sharing children's programing ideas. Now, each entry was a bit raw and pa`akikî to understand, the data run-on and stream-of-consciousness. But in spite of needing serious paragraph breaks and requiring a great deal of ho`omanawanui to sift through it, the material proved useful and hoihoi.

Pau!

P.S. Thank you, Pukui, Mary Kawena & Elbert, Samuel H.,
Hawaiian Dictionary, Revised
and Enlarged Edition, University Of Hawai`i Press, Honolulu, 1986. This post would have been blah without the real Hawaiian words!

Âiwaiwa Amazing

Aloha Hello, goodbye, love

He `ono! Delicious

Hiki nô! Absolutely able to do!

Hoihoi Interesting

Ho`omanawanui Patience (it takes patience just to pronounce the whole word:)

Kupaianaha! Wonderful!

Laki Lucky

Miki`oi! Excellently made!

Pa`akikî Hard

Pau! Done!

Puke Book




Perspective: Week 6--Thing 15

I loved the following quote about Web/Library 2.0:

Dr. Wendy Schultz's OCLC Newsletter article, Infinite Futures

"
So while books may get in your 3D face all by themselves, people will prefer personal introductions—they will want a VR info coach. Who’s the best librarian avatar? How many Amazon stars has your avatar collected from satisfied customers? This could create librarian “superstars” based on buzz and customer ratings. People will collect librarians rather than books—the ability not just to organise, but also to annotate and compare books and other information sources, from a variety of useful perspectives."

What a thrilling, frighting idea. So no more lounging with feet propped behind the Information Desk eating bon-bons anymore, huh? Seriously, the idea of on-line geek fame has a certain appeal. I want to be a 'superstar' avatar librarian! Talk about book deals! (timpani, please)

Being the mother of triplets, I'm used to constant cycles of change. It was the initial upgrade (ie; birth) that was so hard. So the analogy that 2.0 is more a mindset of constant cycle of change versus a series of upgrades appealed to me. I also appreciated defining 2.0 along the lines of user-centric and uber-customer (pardon the lack of umlaut) friendly. Not only is that a concept I can wrap my brain around, it's one I genuinely like.

It's not proscuitto. Technorati ham, sliced thin: Week 6-Thing 14

Technorati Profile


I'm attempting to claim my blog on Technorati. Quick claim didn't work--possibly because of the @ sign in my blog's username. So we're going old school here and just posting the HTML on my blog.

Cool beans! It worked. It even flipped me into the Howard Participants section, where I could view my name. Woohoo.

Okay, now that I've created another new Web 2.0 something-or-other, let me ramble a bit about Technorati, the blog search and tracking tool where any blog that's any blog goes to the head of the pack results, the blog equivalent of Nielson ratings. And like the Nielsons, Technorati's most popular blogs were mostly pop-culture, tech, and current-events related. Big surprise. Actually, what did surprise me was how ill-written some of the blogs were. Here I've been afraid to put my less-than-witty self out there. Forget witty, people are out there hurling the F bombs at other bloggers. (Maybe Valerie should consider taking the 'Civility in Howard County' webside.) Anyway, Boing Boing was interesting, if crude. I did notice that much like the amusing agitators (read; hams) in my own family, the Powers That Be at Technorati chose articles and news bites guaranteed to get a rise out of the population. Clearly, though, they are doing it better than other, similar blogs.

Searching Technorati's blog posts for learning2.0 turned up 169 blogposts, many of which just mention the term learning2.0 someplace in the overall text. Not necessarily helpful. In contrast, the blog directory hit my target dead on--librarian journal/blogs about the 23 things. I especially liked reading the Australian blogs and seeing all the ones in different languages. 23 Things is big--really big.

Monday, October 8, 2007

del.icio.us--Week 6 Thing 13

Wow, people come up with some interesting tags. It's even more interesting when people post seemingly unrelated tags. For example, you have to know Gina Z to know she tagged her Pennsylvania Polka pictures 'oceanscapes' because she had 'escaped' a bad marriage and her 60-year-old Aunt Ethel cheered her up by entering her in the annual Lady's with Liver Spots dance contest. Now, before you all Google Gina Z, I made her up. But hers is the sort of voyeuristic, Deer-in-the-Headlights-compelling, personal drama I found myself stumbling into by following the labyrinthine tag paths on del.icio.us. Really, I can see the fascination. Though disturbing. Sooooo disturbing. Who knew polka could go so wrong? My PC needs a serious cookie purge. It will never be clean again!

Anyway, yes, I can see it as a personal bookmarking tool. Emphasis on the personal. I'm not entirely comfortable with it as a reference tool. I'm actually rather creative, really, I am. But I can't figure out how to use del.icio.us for solid, fast reference. I'd be terrified to use it in a formal setting. Heaven forbid I try to answer a customer's question about finding a local sewing circle with del.icio.us and stumble on a punk site with high quality graphics. Far better to use the tried and true.

That said (yes, yes, here it comes--the part where she contradicts herself. Pick an opinion and stick with it!), I did sign up for an account and am using it for bookmarking. How long will I last? Beats me. But I'm game.

I originally chose the username bosilovicious, but realized what worked for Sid might not work for me. Did I mention names are hard for me? Is there such a thing as being name deaf? I thought a cool, hockey-sounding, Slavic name for my son would be Sergei. How great a match is that for my last name? Then my brother pointed out that the poor kid would get called "Sir . . ." well, you know. At school. So he's Ethan. Much better. But if anyone wants to check out my del.icio.us, there it is.

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Roll a Rolly--Week 5 Thing 12

I wish all the Things were this easy! Originally I thought, why bother making your own search engine? But it wasn't a bother. In fact, I'd rate this exercise a 2 of 10 on the Hard-O-Meter (10 being the most difficult). It wasn't a 1 because I actually had to read stuff and move my fingers on the keyboard. But once I began playing with other Rollyos, I saw how handy it was to pull a series of good hits versus one or two good hits stacked atop a pile of garbage.

So I made a Reference one and 'borrowed' someone else's work by using the sites suggested for a Reference Search Engine. I mitigated my guilty sense of cheating by adding a few more sites that I'd seen turn up on the trial searches I'd performed earlier. The Searchbox looks pretty spiffy, too!

Thing Me--Week Five Thing 11

Well, I played with Library Thing.

Liked: The Unsuggester feature--recommendations based on the opposite of a book's tags. It worked, too. I put in a Terry Pratchett book and got back unsuggestions for all sorts of humorless, right-wing, fundamentalist non-fiction.

Disliked: The Suggester feature. I entered The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and it returned a list of a dozen books with Thief somewhere in the title, as if that were the only criteria for the search. Granted, it did list the The Thief Lord by Funke, which is award winning children's literature. But The Thief Lord targets a much younger, less sophisticated child reader. By comparison, for the same book, Amazon suggested three outstanding newer YA titles: The Boy in the Striped Pants by John Boyne--Holocaust, historical fiction, Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy--Holocaust, poetic, fictionalized biography, and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation by M.T. Anderson, which while not about the Holocaust, is still historical fiction that resonates with similar themes: free will, racism, the causes of war, human rights, slavery, etc.

That said, when I called up
Equal rites : a novel of Discworld by Pratchett, the page produced a decent list of titles generated from Library Thing's recommendation machine. So maybe the detail and appropriateness of the recommendations depends on the popularity of the title?

Click on the site below to see
My Library Thing Catalogue

Avatar Redux

Ethan had to redress his avatar this morning. I hope this doesn't become a ritual.


Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Generate Some Fun--Week Five Thing 10

I already made an avatar on Yahoo, but I while exploring The Generator Blog I stumbled across DoppleMe Generator which allowed me to make an avatar of myself and three others and join them to create a family, which I absolutely loved. By the way, I tried to talk my son, Ethan, out of the mad face, but he really, really wanted to look mad. "Like this," he said, scrunching up his face. (I wisely refrained from telling him he looked more adorable than mad, as it would have upset his tough-guy-5 year-old self identity.) Must be a boy thing. I don't understand. Anyway, Katie said she wanted to look like a "pistol," yet chose an evening gown. ??? I don't even want to know what she thinks she's hiding under the taffeta. All kinds of Getting-into-Trouble gadgets, no doubt. Juliet wanted better hair, but then, don't we all?

Oh, I also enjoyed the Real Name Creator that randomly generates a real German name and lists a Google search for each one. 'Cause really, everyone needs a German name. I mean, how funny is a language that sounds like perpetual sneezing? (I am in large part German, by the way.) My favorite names: Traute Eisenhauer and Detlef Garbe and the last name Deppenkemper. Gotta love it.

Street Sign Generator was also a fun site. Ye Olde civic engineers of Bucks County, Pennsylvania sure could have used it. Anyone ever visited Street Road? Really, that's the name of the street . . . or is it a road? Whatever. Can we say creatively lazy? But I guess Thesaurus hadn't been born when they named the . . . er, thoroughfare.

Well, join me for another installment of Deb's (I mean Penguin's) mind meanderings at a later date . . .

New Avatar


Going on a Blog Hunt--Week Four Thing 9

Well, below is my Yahoo avatar. I'd wanted a Meez but for some reason the site kept crashing while loading a female template. I tried it several times throughout the day, checked my cookies and read the on-line help which led me to believe it had something to do with my computer's settings with Firefox. Way too much headache for a fun little cartoon. So I made a calculated retreat to Yahoo and actually enjoyed the experience of "designing" an avatar.

Other sites of interest this week's Thing revealed to me thanks to a web 2.0 Award Winners blog entry on MERLIN

1) Cocktail Builder

A great site for helping the aspiring alcoholic in all of us create an elixir of sheer genius based on whatever meager potables happen to be stocking one's drink library on any given bad day. Imagine my delight upon learning the dregs in my liqueur cabinet yielded the following:

Malibu Baked Apple cocktail:

2 oz of malibu coconut rum
2-3 oz of heated cranberry juice
2- 3 oz of heated apple juice

combine in stemmed mug.top with whipped cream (optional).

Nice. Not 99 Bananas, but nice.

2) One Sentence


True stories, told in one sentence. Ransom Stodder, if you're reading this, really--One Sentence is for you! I've actually bookmarked this puppy and practically slashdotted it with one-liners!

Oh, I got to explain RSS to my husband (Mr. Technocrat)! Actually, I just regurgitated the Plain English example. But hey, it's amazing how much information I retained from an on-line non-classroom teaching medium.

As for feeds, Technorati was too busy for me and a bit confusing. I preferred Blogsline's search tool. It wasn't as flashy, but also not as distracting. You all might not know it, but I can become distracted . . . Oh, look, a squirrel!

Avatar

Yahoo! Avatars

Go Eagles!

Monday, October 1, 2007

RSS is not Infectious! Week Four Thing 8

First, here's my Blogsline newsreader URL:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/dbosilov

I tried without success to add it to this blog using the template. I'll fiddle with it some more later (read: get my handy-dandy super techy hubby to show me how tonight).

RSS. Okay, why do techies love obscure acronyms? I mean, what's the thought process here? Hey, let's abbreviate the most unwieldy, high-brow, officious sounding words into a string of seemingly unrelated letters! What a great idea. Anything that sounds like a incurable disease has to be catchy. Get it, catchy? Timpani please.

Okay, but to find the point . . . I liked--and needed--the Plain English video. So easy to understand! But will I actually use the blogsline? No, probably not. Call me crazy old-fashioned, but I genuinely like the feel--and yes, smell--of newsprint. I do not enjoy reading on a PC screen. And there is just too much news out there to read. As it is, I don't finish the Sunday Post until Saturday. (If you're asking, "Which Saturday?" you know me well.) Seriously, when does anyone have the time? I killed an entire afternoon just setting up the account! Though, okay, I may look at Google's RSS. Maybe. So, I'm guessing no one's going to be subscribing to this blog:) Just a guess.

Tech Talk Week Three Thing 7

Finally, a Thing where I can ramble!
Albeit about anything techy.

I had the brilliant idea of composing an ode to 2.0, but the best I could manage was a doggerel riff on the classic nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty. Those of you wanting a laugh, here it is:

Humpty Dumpty lay all amok.
Humpty Dumpty then had great luck.
'Cause with freeware and My Friend Flikr
I mashed Humpty Dumpty back together.

Here's where I'd post the mosaic of Humpty Dumpty if I'd been successful with the mosaic thing. By the way, most of the free Only, it seems like my idea might be a bit big for free. I'm not giving up on the idea, but I do need to move on.

In the meanwhile, I've created a few new 2.0 tech terms that I'd like to copywrite so as to collect on all the money I'll make off them.

debooger: a programmer who picks out software errors caused by sneezing.
Expresso: A trendy, speedy programming language.
meta4: a special, undisplayed HTML tag used for storing golf-related information.
Richard Rollyo: a Rollyo of leonine verse and ballad search engines.
VCC: Stands for "Virtual Channel Change" used in conjunction with the ATP ("Asynchronous Transfer Person") by ESP's ("Entertainment Service Providers" also called "parents"). The ESP elects the ATP who stands in front a blank TV--possibly wearing PJs--and displays a DAWP ("Dance Around With Puppets").

Anything I missed?