Project Gutenberg March 16, 2008

Project Gutenberg is all about making what is legally accessible, as accessible as possible. Not only do they offer thousands of books, often scanned to retain the orinal formating, illustrations and FEEL of the book, but now offering audio books read by volunteers and very nicely done, too.

Our library can’t afford a downloadable collection of audioboos–we’re still checking out cassette tapes and CDs.

But fortunately I can steer my patrons toward Project Gutenberg, and show them their offerings.

Impressive.

Again, here is the link.

A is for Apple…and Achievment Wh*re February 22, 2008

heh … I just had to share. No I’m not an achievement whore but I need one. (I’m stuck on a volcanic planet in Mass Effect)  but I’d be in such trouble with the Spoiler Whore..
SUCH trouble since I’m always tempted peek at my presents and check out the end of a book I’m thinking of ditching … and Drew just beat Mass Effect yesterday. I could know ALLLLLL muhahaha 

Goodreads and LibraryThing February 4, 2008

A good friend asked me today an interesting question which– as we chatted– boiled down to this: is there room in your life for LibraryThing and Goodreads? Is it either or both, and more importantly (remember the sloth factor: ease = good!) how?

The answer is yes, both and here’s why and how

LibraryThing and Goodreads are completely compatible and unique in their usefulness because

LibraryThing is an excellent personal manager for your books. It is good to find groups and authors and interesting data, but especially its a very good way to manage your book collection.

I love the possibilities for small bookstores or Friends of the Library bookstores. The turnover would increase and the Friends groups would be a whole lot closer to knowing just what they had if they could enter donated book data, and get valuable information such as if the book is a first edition, how many others have it (how popular a book is, increases value), and everything you need to know in order to sell it.  Not to mention good stuff like Library of Congress number, Dewey class, date of publication, and all the other types of things library-types like to know. The database is tied to the Library of Congress and Amazon.com to name a few, so the user simply enters the ISBN number or Library of Congress number…or heck just the title and author of the book and a selection of books appear for you to simply click and enter them into your new online catalog.

Cataloging your books is invaluable for many reasons, and its lovely to see your collection in full color digital form. The interest groups give you a chance to interact with other book lovers and to see what people are reading and talking about. Also there is an Authors Who LibraryThing group. Savvy marketing and fun for the rest of us, yeah?

Goodreads is brilliant. Your Friends’ comments on what they’re reading come into your own page right away. Its automatically a pool of not just yours, but all your friends’ books as well. I have librarian friends, so you can imagine how fun! Also, there is a place for you to write, if you are a writer. Your work is visible to the degree you wish, and the writing segment, to me, is very exciting.

Also, its a great readers advisory, if you ask me. I want to mose around what my friends have picked up, and to go off and see what everybody is saying about the Kite Runner. I have a ARC of Stephenie Meyer’s new book so I am now friended by Meyer fans. Its great. The main thrust of Goodreads is to share titles and thoughts about what we’re reading.

For example. George may read a lot, but not own many books. He checks his books out at the library or re-donates what he buys. He may have few actual books, so to look at his LibraryThing account, you may think he doesn’t read a lot, but if you go to his Goodreads account where he simply lists the books he’s read and is reading, you’ll find a whole lot more.

I was a LibraryThing user before I started using Goodreads, so I simply started importing my collection onto Goodreads. It was very simple.

MASS EFFECT for XBOX 360 January 27, 2008

When I read Sesslers Soapbox on Fox News treatment of Mass Effect, I watched the news show for myself on YouTube, then went out and bought the game.

I have to admit, I couldn’t get all the way through the segment– it was just that bad. The panel on Fox News was worthless. Why were they there if they’d never played the game nor were familiar with game culture? What were they there to do? Pronounce their opinion on a game they knew nothing about? Oh wait! Some ‘researched’ by looking at trailers on the game website. These people don’t even know that the trailers they were viewing, were at levels that could be achieved after countless hours of playng. This is kind of important to know, you think?
Graphic interactive sex was the heinous charge of this game . . .

well.

I’ve been playing Mass Effect, and I can tell you this: If you’re playing for sex? You’re in for a long painful wait, my friend. Little Conner/Ashley is going to be spending a long time reading a lot of terminology and experiencing a LOT of battle scenes, making a lot of decisions before he sees a digital (side view) boob shot. Much less than he could see by just hanging out with mom and dad and watching prime time television. And lets not forget that he/she could see a LOT more if he logs on and finds the bazillion sites that offer free porn, many of which are packaged in their favorite cartoon characters.

 

Mass Effect has amazing graphics and it IS interactive. I love the choice of responses I can make in many situations that will in turn affect others reactions to me. In this way, the game seems to rejuvenate and is especially re-playable. For instance, you may want to develop a character that would do the opposite of your normal reactions and see what sort of scenarios develop. Your reactions que up various reactions, and you won’t know until they happen. Sounds like fun, and folks?
Buy Mass Effect, and hide the Playboy.

Social Reference January 15, 2008

Seems there are more and more incarnations of social reference these days. In my definition of the term, not sure if it IS a term, but to me, it must always include that it is free.

Here are some Types of Social Reference:

• Global Reference Services like Question Point, Ask Now etc. are available free through many local libraries’ both public and academic. The link on the library’s website is the portal to online reference
• Instant Message Chat (Yahoo, Google, AIM, etc using Meebo and Meebo widgets) ‘Ubiquitious’ was waiting for chat to give it new meaning, yeah? Found on their own desktop however your users set up their accounts
• Knowledge Markets– Surfing Librarians that haunt community hubs like Yahoo! Answers, WikiAnswers, Answers.com, Live QnA etc. The good thing is that more librarians are offering answers where people are asking them. Things in this venue have switched. Librarians are looking up the questions.
  
  

Additional Resources here Wikipedia
as opposed to information mines like local regional global Knowlege bases, organized archives of document sharing like bitzi. which I don’t recommend

If you care to add more via a comment, that would be great.

Blogging ALA MidWinter January 13, 2008

I love Philadelphia!

It’s beautiful, clean and a great walking city. I was able to walk around yesterday, and see some historic sights. My favorite was Christ Church’s Cemetary. I had chills the whole time. I think you’ll see my obsession with Gothic cemeteries by the number of photos I took. LOL!

Last night, I went to a reception at the Mutter Museum, also called Physicians College. Beyond the elegant reception rooms was the museum proper, and as guests, we mingled, drank, ate and wended our way back to see the ’specimens’. Interesting…fascinating…but after a while of looking at deformed skeletons and large fluid filled jars filled with ugh…

ahem…

But the reception was lovely, I enjoyed myself emmensely and got to meet Stephen Abram! Does it get any better than that?

I’ll be loading my latest pictures from my walk abouts in Philly onto Flicker once I resize them.

Cheers all from Philadelphia

Zen and the art of convenience… December 27, 2007

In my never ending quest to find the easiest path, I like to try out different tools and applications to see if it is really easier and convenient.
I think the best criteria– at least for me, is:

A) How much effort is it to remember its there
B) How much effort is it to use
C) Do I find myself going back to it? Why?
D) Is it truly useful

Okay, you can see by my criteria, that I am a sloth, basically, and I don’t like to deviate from my busy path.
But, I am willing to be seduced by attractive features that are very cool and tickle my fancy. Such as, NPR’s and Yahoo. Npr podcasts can feed directly to your Yahoo Homepage.

NPR Podcast page. Note the subcription options for iTunes, My Yahoo and Zune.

And here you can see my podcasts on my Yahoo page.

 Yahoo and NPR Hook-up

Yahoo, like every other global Internet services company of its kind, offers a personalized homepage, for free. On this homepage, you can access your Yahoo email, IM chat, news, weather etc just like the rest, but one thing stands out for me.
NPR Podcasts! NPR offers their podcasts sent directly to your Yahoo homepage like a podcast aggregate. Cool!
I stumbled upon this one day when I was browsing NPR’s Podcast directory. You can download or save to i-tunes, or to your Yahoo HomePage. How cool is that. For a public library that does not allow downloading, this is excellent news. Patrons who can’t access itunes, can access podcasts from Yahoo instead.
Also, check this out:

“Yahoo! Podcasts works great with iTunes. Use Yahoo! Podcasts to find great podcasts, then use it to subscribe to them in iTunes. You’ll need the latest version of iTunes, which you can download from Apple. Once you have iTunes installed, you can subscribe to podcasts on Yahoo! Podcasts by clicking the “Subscribe” button. After you selected “Open” in iTunes at the file dialog, iTunes will automatically recognize the .pcast file that you opened and will add your subscription to the “Podcasts” tab in iTunes.” (source http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/podcasts/podcasts-52681.html)

How much effort is it to remember its there?
Not too much effort, since its one of my email hosts and I do check my mail.

How much effort is it to use?
Very little effort, I can make it my default page if I like so that there is no effort at all.

Do I find myself going back to it? Why?
Yes I do, and not only for my mail, but for All Things Considered, and for Nancy Perl’s book reviews, and for my new Kitchen Window series I subscribed too.

Their background textures to personalize your page aren’t too shabby either.

BET “Read a Book” Video December 7, 2007

What do you think? 

free fast foto editing December 5, 2007

Online photo editing is more important to public libaries than we may realize at first glance.
Why?
Because of the restrictions on downloading we place on our public computers.
Because of that, applications such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, were unavailable to our patrons.
Now, with Web-based online editing, patrons can crop or enhance their images without downloadable software, and simply edit their photos on the Web.

The only downside to these applications below, is that none so far have added text editing. So there is no ability to print over or on your images.
At least, not yet.

Picnik
Picnik is the best and most intuitive. Once you are done editing, you can transfer your photos directly to Flickr. Picnik has replaced Ajax-based PXN8 as our favorite online photo editing tool.

Snipshot.com previously called Pixoh, is a good Ajax-based editing tool that stands out because of its above average design and the fact that they have an API into their service.

Pixenate Has a Firefox extension that puts Snipshot in your right-click menu. Their free API lets you use Snipshot for your own website
I love that No download is necessary—100% browser based, no plug-ins required. You can edit an image on the fly, and edited photos can be transferred to Flickr easily.

PreLoader
PreLoader is a very useful flickr-based photo editing tool. They’ve integrated the Flickr API with nexImage photo editing software and presented it as a new, free online service. No registration is required (or even possible) – you simply log on to your flickr account through the Preloadr site

Google Presentation saved me November 7, 2007

I love free things on the Web.

I just do.

So, when I stumbled upon Google Presentation, I found how easy it was to create PowerPoint-like slides without having Microsoft Office. I got busy.
I was logged in to Google and clicked on More, then on Documents.

I’d used Google documents before so there was a reason for my poking around, and ah hah!
I found something. Google Presentation. Bingo

Here’s How
First thing is to have a Google account. Then log in.
At the main Google search page, click on More (top of screen)
then click on Documents
then on Presentation
Google Presentation is similar to PowerPoint slides.

Some neat features–

Your slideshow is Web-ready
You don’t need to save your files to a flash drive
You don’t have to worry if the computer you may be using has PowerPoint
You have an instant interactive class for students anywhere around the world.

Here’s How

Once you are finished with your slides, click on Start Presentation.
This makes the slides you created available on the Web.
You’ll see a meeting sidebar pop up on right, next to your slides.
There is a box at the bottom to type into.
The ensuing chat shows in the larger center box like any IM messaging window.

When your presentation is finished, simply close your file.

You can access the Presentation file from the Documents link under More

or under My Account.

All Google Document and Google Presentation files are stored there.

A few things to note:

If you click on Publish, you can get the URL for your slide presentation to put onto your blog.

If you are usuing an overhead and do not want to use the interactive chat feature, simple click on the separator bar between the slide and the chat window. The slide will expand to the right and the chat window disappears.