Bouncy, bouncy fluff stuff

It's Boing Boing, and it's a CML Power Tool. Boing Boing claims to be "a directory of wonderful things." These wonderful things include items like "How to Make Cocaine," which a few minutes ago was the story found at the top of the home page. Okay, so maybe not so much wonderful as eclectic--perhaps the site's founders should reconsider their slogan. Nonetheless, Boing Boing appears to be a hodgepodge of links ranging from the aforementioned to "Best Microscopic Photos of 2008", and many topics between and beyond.

Boing Boing wins points for time wasting: I found myself jumping from one article posted on Boing Boing ("Houses made from shipping containers") to several other articles, though most of them were posted on treehugger.com (which I highly recommend, by the way, whether or not you're a self-proclaimed treehugger--I learned a great deal about recent innovations in green technologies and found some very useful resources on this site). So, even though I found most of the content on Boing Boing to be fluff, I stumbled upon a few gems like treehugger.com that I might not have otherwise discovered.

A key difference that I found between Boing Boing and many other web 2.0 sites is that instead of allowing users to simply create an account and start posting, it merely allows users to suggest links to add to the site. Thus, there is editorial filtering of the user-provided content by the site's founders/operators. This is probably for the best, though I'd argue that the site's editors lean too much toward weird for weird's sake instead of truly edifying and unusual items of interest. This to me reflects the overall internet's slant toward keeping the masses entertained and distracted from important, real-world issues. Perhaps the library could add some more useful "tools" to its toolbox: sites that offer resources on how to move forward with alternative energy solutions and survive these tough economic times.

Good thing this generation can't spell anyway

Picnik, like Flickr, follows the ever popular misspelling trend in creating brand names, no doubt popular with the illiterate texting crowd. Regardless, it's a pretty nifty tool (and free!) for on the fly digital photo editing. While it is no Photoshop, you can run a number of simple editing tricks, including color and brightness manipulation, sharpening, cropping, rotating and resizing. You can always resort to "Auto-fix" if you're impatient or not feeling so adventurous.

Picnik is a pretty intuitive application, and no Photoshop skills are required to understand how to use the basic editing tools. It's pretty easy to tinker with and offers handy undo, reset and cancel buttons for each action. The only potential drawback is trying to edit a photo during periods of high internet traffic. When I tried Picnik for the first time yesterday, this is what I ran into; trying to perform a basic sharpening function resulted in a minute-long hourglass that I ended up canceling out of. This morning, with relatively slow internet traffic, I was able to perform a number of editing functions with lightning fast speed.

I also appreciate that unlike with many web 2.0 sites, no login is required, and none of your files are automatically saved on the remote server (at least not that I know of). You can anonymously edit a file from your computer and save it back to your computer with no online tracks. This makes it a true stand-alone tool. You can also email the photo by providing just the email address, or print the photo from your computer or through a paid online photo-printing service. You don't have to upload anything to a third-party server, much less are you forced to save the file in a strict pre-fab format like you do on Flickr (unless you have a paid account), and you don't have to share your photos with the rest of the world if you don't want to. However, if you do want to share and/or keep an online repository of your work, Picnik makes it easy to upload your photos to a number of online accounts that you may have with Flickr, FaceBook and the like. Like Flickr, Picnik also offers and encourages their free, registered account and a paid account with more perks, which is very similarly priced to Flickr. If you can deal with the annoyances of banner ads and periodic prompts to register an account, Picnik may be worth your while for quick photo editing--ants not included.

Well, Google Me Docs!

Google Docs is way cool. I was able to create and save new documents online, translate them into Word and download them. I was also able to upload a Word doc and save changes to it online. (I see that one can also create and modify spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations, though I didn't play with these functions very much.) Google Docs would be a good backup tool for important documents. The ability to share documents with others is a good idea, too. I can see this as a useful replacement to emailing documents left and right and having to wait on someone to email a document from their hard drive.

I love the utilization of online dictionaries and the like to replace the limited (and often dated) database spelling and thesaurus tools that Word uses. The online word lookups performed much faster than their Word tool counterparts, too. Just about everything I like about Word is in Google Docs, and the application and storage are free.

I found a minor flaw (or maybe it's intended as a feature) in that a new document that I had created, downloaded to my hard drive and had no intention on saving online was saved anyway, which is not a huge deal, I suppose. But if you're concerned about privacy, you may want to be careful about what documents you work with in Google Docs even if you go through the steps to permanently delete the document, since those of us who are IT savvy know that no "deleted" file is really deleted unless overwritten. And Google is a large, third-party, corporate entity. I just don't know how much I trust such an entity with any personal information.

Another bug I found was that when I attempted to use the File --> Delete function from within a new document that I was working on, the document was still there in the documents list/folder view page where I was sent upon "deleting" the file. I had to select the document from the list and delete it from there and then empty the trash to get rid of it.

I also could not find a way to simply abandon a document without saving it or falsely "deleting" it. The only options available were to save or save and close. I could not find any links to just get back to the folder view page where I could open a new document or some other file format without saving and closing what I had started, even though it was empty. When I was returned to the folder view page, the empty file had been saved and listed as "Untitled Presentation." In short, Google Docs seems determined to save whatever you create, which while being a possible privacy violation appears to have been created as an idiot-proof backup system.

It's nice to know that these free online tools are available, whether or not you plan to rid yourself of Microsoft products. Now, if only we can survive Peak Oil and continue this nifty technology on alternative energy sources....

Wicked Wiki

The CML Learn and Play wiki is a pretty wiki. However, it is not navigation-friendly. Once I created an account and logged in, I was taken to a blank page. Literally. Then, once I had requested access to the Favorite Blogs page, I was taken to a page with no links back to anywhere else on the site. Seems like some basic improvements could be added. I don't suppose I can gain access to the php code as well....

I finally got access to edit the Learn and Play wiki, so I not only added my blog to the list, but I cleaned up the page (yea for wikis!). There were a lot of garbage links at the top and a couple of misplaced links that I moved to the correct location--apparently the sand box spilled over. I also fixed the headers. The page looks much better now. Wonder if the Learn and Play folks will notice. ;-)

Do Wikis

I've been a fan of Wikipedia since its inception. It's an example of collaboration, community knowledge and checks and balances. It has a reputation of being reliable, even if its content is primarily provided by users, because users who see inaccuracies can and do correct them. It is self-maintaining and non-commercial. While not flawless, it's a very democratic source of information on just about any topic imaginable.

Wikis are a great tool. They put the responsibility on users to provide the content and maintain the integrity of it. Users can ask for help from other users to fill in the gaps and to make corrections if needed. If you don't know everything about a given topic, no problem; just ask another user to finish where you left off. And pretty soon you have a nice collection of fact-checked and constantly improving information.

We have a wiki here at CML that our Information Technology and Digital Services teams use frequently. We have all collaborated in one way or another to provide everything from step by step descriptions of how to perform different functions to lists of ip addresses throughout the library system. I know that I for one refer to the wiki often as I'm learning a new process or if I haven't performed a process in a long time and need a refresher. It's easy to navigate and easy to edit. My work time is spent more efficiently now that I can quickly refer to the wiki rather than sifting through paper and electronic notes that I had written for myself on how to perform specific functions. And best of all, I can quickly share those tips that I have discovered with the rest of my team.

It seems that libraries can find lots of good uses for wikis. Our wiki at CML was originally designed for IT and DS staff, but it has been expanded to become a general staff wiki. It's only a matter of time before other CML employees discover how useful a tool it is.

Here's to musty books

Web 2.0, Library 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, n.0. Great. Whatever. Call it what you like. Ben the Libraryman says it well: no matter what we call it or what form it takes, it's still a library as long as it offers the same core services to patrons: reading material, research services, and encouragement to read.

Are we still even encouraging people to read anymore? Write? Think? Are these no longer goals of libraries, to encourage learning? I hope they still are. But sometimes I wonder in the midst of all the buzz I hear about embracing new technologies if we've all but forgotten about libraries' role in being a resource for learning. Are all the teens that we lure in with gaming really coming back to the library to read a book at some point, or are they just coming back to play? We all hope it's the former, but perhaps we need to make sure that we are equally promoting good old-fashioned reading along with gaming and learning new technologies.

Dr. Wendy Schultz reminds us that even as patrons become more active in their participation in libraries, they still need librarians with their expertise to guide them. Users bring a wealth of knowledge to the library and to the internet; but they are not always experts. Nor do the more vocal or actively participating users represent the needs of all library users.

I guess my fear in all of this focus on Web 2.0 and revolutionizing libraries is that we will forget some of the core reasons why libraries are here. We're not just here to dish out what is popular. Plenty of entities, most of them corporate, do that already and will continue to do so. Libraries should make sure that not just the most popular, trendy materials and technologies are available, but that hard-to-find, not so popular paper and electronic material is also made available. You can get a copy of a bestseller anywhere, download popular movies and mp3s in minutes from your home pc. But where can you find that out of print book that you can't find on Amazon or the independent movie that you won't see in the theater at the strip mall? What about the researcher who needs to find the exact volume of a specific scientific journal? And how about those of us who just want a good old-fashioned hardback book to hold and read?

So in other words, yes, get users involved in the selection process and the categorization of materials. But make sure that all users' needs are met--not just the technophiles and the young and trendy. Your uncle who has never heard of Facebook and still needs your help to program the vcr (yes, vcr) needs the library, too.

Trends are just that--trends. They wax and wane in popularity. They give way to new trends. And as much as we like to think that we can predict trends, it is rare that we can really tell the future with lots of accuracy.

There seems to be a lot of projecting into the future about how increasingly "virtual" our realities will become over the next several decades. And yet with the world being at or painfully near peak oil production, our dreams of more and more advanced technology may come to a screeching halt, and this may happen much sooner than most of us are expecting. If we continue at our current rate of consumption of fossil fuels, we are in for a very rude awakening, and our dreams of further advances in technology will go up in smoke.

I don't think it's time to throw out all the paper materials just yet. Let's tackle our real world issues before we try to tackle all the virtual ones.

It's Better than Bad--It's Del.icio.us!

I'm glad they got rid of all the extra periods in the url--easier to type.

I explored delicious.com, viewed some popular bookmarks and explored tags. It seems pretty straightforward and intuitive. I enjoyed the lolcats page that was bookmarked for CML and was laughing audibly, though I wondered why no one had tagged the site with, oh, say, "cats."

Del.icio.us could actually be a pretty useful tool, especially if you happen to be on a "guest" computer when you run across a really cool website and want to save it. It also may provide an easier way to find other web sites that you're interested in than doing a Google search, since human beings categorize the web pages instead of a formula determining relevancy by keywords and site traffic. However, this depends on the accuracy and taste of the human beings tagging the sites.

The sharing concept is good: you share your finds and I'll share mine. Still, like with many social networking tools, there often is a lot of garbage to sift through to get to the gold.

Do I give a tweet?

I'm on Twitter now--by the oh so surprising name of Kimpassible. Nice tool, easy to use, amusing to see from time to time what folks are up to, though I don't think it would be very fun to try to read everything if I hadn't checked it in a few days. I don't see myself using this on a regular basis; I see it more as a "from time to time" kind of activity, especially when bored or just frustrated with whatever and needing a break. Like much of the internet's offerings, it has great potential as a time waster.

I also see its potential as a quick way to journal--just a small snippet required--no pressure to come up with elaborate prose. But I'm a private person; I'm just not willing to share too many details with the rest of the world.

It's Your Thing

I set up a small "library" on LibraryThing. It was a pretty easy tool to use. Other than the "Loading" process that got stuck when I added my first book, Wicked, The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, I had no hitches, and the setup was fast. My catalog can be viewed here.

I also found some interesting discussions on LibraryThing, including some political threads. Unlike many forums on the web these days, I found many of the respondents to be refreshingly articulate.