Religious about Podcasts

Okay, first of all, I have to comment on a couple of observations I had while just starting this exercise. I went to www.podfeed.net, and marveled at the number of religious (presumably Christian) topics listed under "popular" tags. I went back and counted: ten percent of the topics in the list were religious, ranging from "Christianity" to "Bible" to "Jesus" to "faith." Okay, interesting.

I decided to click on "science." The podcast at the top of the list was an item from "College & Young Adult Podcasts from Exodus Interactive Forum" that claimed to have "Christianity explored and defended in a way that pushes each believer to examine their own faith." The item had been tagged with "science," along with many others including "adult," "intelligent," and "sex." I wondered how many users clicking on those tags would be surprised to find this podcast in the list. I also found several podcasts dealing with the paranormal, another topic I wouldn't expect to find under "science." Apparently those who post the podcasts have a great deal of latitude in how they tag their presentations.

I sorted through the questionable material and found something that looked promising. I clicked on Brain Food and was not disappointed. This episode was a special Q&A edition covering topics from the constancy of the speed of light to the difference between static and kinetic friction. The host explained these concepts in an engaging and easy to understand format. This is definitely a podcast I want to tune into again. I might even start to follow it religiously.

Food for Thought

While most of YouTube is fluff at best, there are some eye openers. I started this journey by clicking on the 70's commercials link provided by Learn and Play and watched the Kool Aid commercial, which reminded me of other commercials from my childhood. I viewed the classic "I Want to Buy the World a Coke" commercial from the 70's (nothing like good old fashioned peace, love, harmony and consumerism), and then marveled at the difference in the messages and images behind commercials from 1967, the mid-70's and 1978 for McDonald's. Then there was a local news story of a meat processing plant for McDonald's that promoted eating McDonald's hamburgers as a way to support a farmer providing for his family. Yeah. And finally, I found a video featuring Morgan Spurlock of "Super Size Me" demonstrating McDonald's french fries that had not even begun to decompose after 10 weeks. He posed the question to viewers of what was in these things to keep them from decomposing, and what did that do to our bodies when we eat them?

I think what I find most eye-opening about sites like YouTube, though, is not the occasionally thought-provoking subject matter that pops up, but the vast array of inarticulate and simple-minded responses from users. I continue to be amazed at the vast majority of responders who are not only unable to write coherently but who seem completely unable to formulate an independent thought. I'm saddened by this. Time after time I've seen social media that has so much potential to educate and to provoke thought; yet most of these efforts seem lost. My hope lies with the occasional user who does scratch his or her head after viewing a video like the Morgan Spurlock piece and thinks about things.

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.