Thing 41. Mashup your life. FriendFeed

I starting working with FriendFeed, but found it kinda problematic. I mean, I like the concept of being able to aggregate all your 2.0 items on one site and allow friends to access it and share their stuff. As the conservatives would say, it's downright socialism! A nifty concept. As long as one isn't too paranoid about all your eggs being in a single basket and available for all to see (depending on your privacy setting).

Now the problem(s). As stated, the coolest thing with FriendFeed is bringing all your 2.0 stuff, in FF called services, under one roof. But, just try to find a way to do it. Like so many new 2.0 sites, the developers place very little information on the front page. Often, you have to register just to get an "about" link. So, you're entering like a new-born babe, all blinking and blind and trusting and who knows how your registration info is going to be used. Hopefully it won't be hooking you up to a Russian mob's botnet or something.

After giving in and registering and posting my pic (easy), I needed to set up my 2.0 stuff on FF. But, lo and behold, I couldn't figure out how to do it. I ended up clicking around the site just about forever, tried Googling for more info, even found YouTube vids that weren't too helpful. Finally, under "settings," I discovered the tiny little RSS icon for services and started adding stuff.

But, get this: to do this, you need to find the right url for your 2.0 items within their respective web pages and FF isn't too friendly about helping you do this, either. After more hand-wringing and a few f-bombs, I managed to get the links for my blogs and Delicious to work, but none of the others. So, my FriendFeed page has the blog links and a bunch of Delicious bookmarks and that's it. And as for the other cool thing about FF, being able to add friends and their stuff, that doesn't work so hot either. I send invites off to folks and they all found the site either too confusing or didn't want to register just to take a look around.

So, while FF is a good concept, I think the developers need to user-friendly it a bit. Make adding the services simpler and add some content to help folks join in, that's all. Good idea, but clutzy execution. So far.

Thing 40. Mashup the Web

I took a look at several Mashups on this Thing. I especially liked LibWorm, an RSS aggregator that allows you to track blogs and podcasts on feed catagories (ex.: Academic Libraries, Art Librarianship) and subjects (ex.: Reader's advisory, Reference) from the library world.

My other focus was on mashups that used Flickr: Visual Headlines provides a cool interface and links to photostreams about current news events. Favorite Surfer, from Big Huge Labs, allows you to browse Flickr user's photostreams. Interestingness is a great-looking site, using Flickr images, but it's got little in the way of navigation and is thus hard to work with.

Below is a mashup from Bubblr.

Thing 39. Digital Storytelling. Part 1

I used Smilebox to create the online scrapbook, adding Flickr Creative Commons images to those from family vacations. The application runs on Flash and is a bit clunky in design: there appears to be no logout button, it's hard to find and re-enter a scrapbook in progress, that kind of stuff. But, once you click around the various layers of the site, you can find what you're looking for. All in all, Smilebox is pretty cool. Turn off the music, though, it's gawdawful!

Thing 39. Digital Storytelling. Part 2

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Thing 38.Screencasting

I used Screen-O-Matic to create a simple screencast. I tried some of the others, including Jing (didn't work 'cause the IT folks at my shop wouldn't allow the download) and ScreenToaster (worked ok but I couldn't figure how to post it to the blog). Screen-O-Matic worked fine, but it's a big Java application that flooded the profile on my work box, making me have to go into My Computer, find the folder and delete the darn thing after I was done). I still couldn't figure on to post the 'cast into the blog, but at least I've got a url to link to. The screencast is just a trial, get-to-know the application kind of thing, a simple Ebsco search. It's readily apparent such a tool could be useful for all kinds of library stuff, but especially for tutorials like the one demo'ed here.