Thing 37. Photo Tales. Part 1

Lots of fun stuff on this Thing. I used Animoto to create a video from images, Collagr to build a collage of Flickr photos, FlickrSLider to create the slideshow on the blog and Picnik to do some image editing before I got down to work. Each worked easily, was fun to use and had great results.

Of course, libraries could make use of any number of the apps on this Thing. Each one offers ways to make photos and videos more interesting, to provide information and/or publicity for the library.

Thing 37. Photo Tales. Part 2

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Thing 36. Comic Relief. Part 1

From Poseygalore

Thing 36. Comic Relief. Part 2

As the "Thing" folks said, this was a fun one to do. I explored some of these sections:

Password Generators
Hashapass worked pretty well, and much more simply than other generators I've found. I'm a bit reluctant to use it, though, as I'm not sure of the site's security.

Illustration/Images
Big Huge Labs has some fun tools to play with, including one for creating your own magazine cover and another to turn an image into an Andy Warhol-style image. Obamaconme was easy to use and created a stylish take of yours truly on the famous/infamous Obama poster.

Tag Cloud
Wordle is a pretty slick tool for creating tag clouds from blogs, websites, etc. It's also cool to be able to adjust the design, etc., once you've got your cloud.

White Noise
Simply Noise works easy as pie, too. I can't see having the laptop in the bedroom at night, sucking up power while drowning out the sound of the birdies, but the website is a lot cheaper than the machine I just bought from Target!

Silly Generators
I used the application that converts your name to a Dewey number. Hmm, interesting that I got a 200 (Religion, if you ain't a librarian). Maybe Melvil is trying to tell me something?

I also used some comic generators. Hence the posting you see above from ToonDoo. I also created my own comic using Stripgenerator. It's a bit balky to use. I may have created a strip, but I can't figure how to post it here yet. Maybe if I was Slovenian (like the folks who do Stripgenerator), it'd be easier to figure out.

Thing 35. Books 2.0

This was another one of those complex "Things." So many sites to look at; so many tools to try out. It was quite impressive to find all this stuff in one basket. Here's a quick summary of what I looked at and checked out:

Lib.rariou.us (Book organization site)
I found this site a bit hard to use, as it's not intuitive. For example, I don't get the ASIN thing at all. What is it? Why is it necessary, and how come you have to figure out that clicking in the box is the only way to make it work? Liked the tag cloud, though.

Twitterlit (Phone application)
I added this to the blog, just for fun. Can't see much use for it, however.

Reading Trails (Reader's advisory site)
I liked the concept of this site: creating or following a theme and adding/changing it to suit your tastes. Nonetheless, I found the search engine to be pretty balky. Also, like most of the sites on this "Thing," the "help" content was either nonexistent or hardly useful.

Overbooked (Online book community)
This is a good site. I like the idea of finding reviews via searching by title or author, or browsing a number of ways, including genres and themes. The only aspects I found funky about the site are the links to downloadable Excel files (how 20th century is that!) and that there are no links from discovered titles to sites like Amazon.

Wired for Books (Book group resource)
Cool site. It's great to have access to author interviews through MP3s.

Podiobooks (Audio book site)
Another excellent idea for a site, with great accessibility: MP3 content available as an RSS feed or by direct download. Pretty cool.

BookMooch (Book swap site)
This a nifty concept: a Netflix for books. Just search or browse for a book, put it on your want list, get it and mail it off again when you're done. Or make your own books available in the same way. Pretty slick, with even a point system to keep things fair for all.

A final note:

None of my comments dealt with the 2.0 functions of the sites I reviewed. I guess there's a couple reasons for this:
1. I'm not a big 2.0 person. I like being able to access content like book reviews or MP3 files of author interviews, but, frankly, I'm not really interested in what other people have to say about such things.
2. You need to sign up for most of these sites or become a member to access the 2.0 aspects. I really didn't feel like joining yet more websites at this time. So many passwords; so little time.

Thing 34. Competition...

Obviously, the influence of the internet and web/library 2.0 has drastically changed the reference universe. A part of this shift, of course, is more common acceptance of websites that allow the user to ask a question and receive an answer. For me, such sites involve too much uncertainty: who has the authority to give the right answer? When will the answer come? Will the answer ever show up?

Another consideration is the type of question asked. In looking at several of the sites linked in "Thing," some questions were simple, some complex and many just plain weird. My favorite, from WikiAnswers (unanswered animal life questions): "What is the Meaning for releasing a trapped wren?"

In a way, answer sites mirror what is problematic about the internet: there's too little authority and too many people who think they know something, too much information and too few ways in which to organize it. Certainly this could change, but the solution might be not be websites that rely on the 2.0 world for answers. Instead, I anticipate smarter search engines to be developed. A glimmer of this is Wolfram Alpha, a "computational knowledge engine," that the tech. blogs are starting to chatter about.

I have yet to receive a response from the sample questions I posted on a few sites. I have no way, either, to know if anyone is, or will ever consider them. While I'm waiting, of course, I could always call the library....

Thing 33. Travel 2.0

This Thing, unlike the last, is a good one. I mean how could you go wrong: it's based on the whole idea of interactive travel. What could be better than a bunch of sites that give you ideas for travel, help plan your trip, provide booking for planes, trains and automobiles AND allow folks to tell you about their own journeys.

Here's a few I took a look at:

Notes from the Road - This blog is one of most striking visually that I've seen. You can choose a region, then check out way-cool images as well as blogs about places there.

Trip Advisor - This site's been around for a while, and you can do a lot with it. But, as I especially enjoy exploring new cities, I find Trip Advisor's "Things to do" tab an excellent tool for suggesting itineraries. You can limit to topics like "history and culture" and get a nice list even further broken down, like "education sites and libraries." Warning--the site is pretty slow.

Vcarious - This site is based on a great concept: you can read about trips people take, then post photos and journals of your own. I didn't sign up to use it, but the site seems to run well and has tons of useful content besides images and text, like maps and ratings.

Wines and Times - Another useful site. You can plan a wine tour (just about anywhere, apparently), using Google maps to pinpoint locations. In some cases, you get just a sick amount of hits, such as Healdsburg, California's 400+. And each hit links to the winery's website. Cool, if the place has a decent site. Not so great if they haven't built one, or the one they have sucks. Still, it's a step beyond the print version of a wine guide. Real cool aspect: there's a pulldown in the corner that brings up each winery in a region and locates it on the map. Pretty sweet!

Thing 32. Google Maps and Mashups

While the last Thing on Twitter was great, this one sucked. I find Google Maps to be very difficult to use. For example, there's no documentation other than that slick Google video linked from the Thing page. Let me tell you, it ain't as easy as the kid does it in the vid!

Besides the lack of help, Google Maps is just a pain. The navigation tools are clunky, the features, placemarks and line-drawing tools don't work very well and God help it if you start using the mouse wheel to scroll! (You'll need an airsick bag from the resultant nausea as the world spins by on your computer screen.)

As long as I'm complaining, I'm not even sure about how to do this Thing. The blog prompts suggest describing the mashup you've created, but you're supposed to create a map, not a mashup. In my understanding, a mashup combines various sources of data, like a map and another application. While the Thing page links to some examples, there's very guidance about creating this critter called a mashup--besides the fore-mentioned not-too-useful vid.

To end on a positive note, sure, it'd be cool for libraries to create and use mashups. For instance, a local history collection could use a map and images to show places referred to in the library's books or a library system could build a map that shows building images and webcam shots from inside the libraries.

So, be my guest and create a map and/or mashup for your library. I wish you more luck with Google Maps that I had.