Archive for June 2008

Columnist Peter Grad writes about 10 Great Software Programs You Can Get Gratis for TechNewsWorld. The article lists ten useful software apps which are available free of charge, along with descriptions of each. His suggestions include:

1. Paint.net 3.08 (graphics editor)
2. EssentialPIM 2.5 (organizer)
3. IrfanView (image viewer)
4. OpenOffice.org 2.4.1 (office program)
5. PDFCreator 8.1
6. CDBurnerXP 4.0
7. 7-Zip 4.57 (compression program)
8. Stickies 6.5 (sticky notes)
9. WordWeb 5.1 (dictionary)
10. ooVoo 1.6.1 (Internet-based telephony)

Last week, Lifehacker asked their readers to share the books which made a difference in their lives. After 250 comments, they compiled a list of the most voted for books along with summaries and links to Amazon. What a great idea, if libraries did something similar they could link to their own catalog records. Here are the top-voted books within the LifeHacker readership:

1. The Bible
2. The Works of Ayn Rand
3. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
4. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
5. The Stranger
6. The Works of George Orwell
7. The Works of Richard Dawkins
8. The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings Trilogy
9. Ender’s Game
10. Dune

What books were life-changing for you? I would have to agree with LifeHacker readers and go with The Hobbit and Lord of The Rings Trilogy myself, please leave yours in the comments!

Looking to give a new browser a try? If you’re a regular user of Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, or Opera and want to test drive an alternative, the latest article from Web Worker Daily presents an annotated list of six that you might try:

• Camino
• Flock
• K-Meleon
• OmniWeb
• Konqueror
• OffByOne

Webmonkey offers up advice for blog authors with its Tips for Better Blogging. Beyond setting up shop, it’s the process of developing your blog’s public presence that’s the real challenge according to the article which offers suggestions in the following areas:

1. Establish a Brand
2. Write Better Headlines
3. Promote Yourself
4. Banish the Bling
5. Syndicate, Track and Analyze

Wondering about assigning a Creative Commons license to your work or perhaps your organization’s next project? Now you can read about other people’s success stories with CC and their various uses of the license by browsing through the Creative Commons Casestudies database.

via ReadWriteWeb

There have been some great presentations posted recently from throughout the library field. Although summer is in full swing, these librarians have been busy:

Stephen Abram
The Open Door: Libraries in the 21st Century Inspiring and Engaging Our Communities and Users Nashville Public Library, June 5, 2008

Top 7 Strategies for Library Success NHEMA May 14, 2008

Reality 2.0: Attracting and Engaging the Millennial Library User NHEMA May 14, 2008

Sarah Houghton-Jan (LibrarianinBlack)
Sustainable Web 2.0 Services for Small and Underfunded Libraries Mississippi Library 2.0 Summit 2008

Online Marketing for Academic Libraries University of San Francisco Libraries June 11, 2008

Methods for Staying Current Arizona Libraries Summer Institute June 2008

Tools for Staying Current Arizona Libraries Summer Institute June 2008

Online Marketing for Libraries OPAL Webcast May 2008

David Lee King
Web 2.0 & Community Experience BIGWIG’s Social Software Showcase Presentation at ALA2008 June 2008

Emerging Trends, 2.0, and Libraries NASIG 2008 (the North American Serials Interest Group) June 2008

Jane Secker
Libraries And Social Software Web 2.0 and Information Literacy June 12 2008

Marshall Breeding
Beyond Web 2.0: Taking the social read-write Web to the enterprise level SirsiDynix Institute June 13, 2008

Ryan Deschamps & Kelli Wooshue
Current Awareness tools for Web 2.0 Canadian Health Libraries Association Conference May 2008

Steve Lawson
Social Software for Library People Jefferson County Public Library All Staff Day, May 9, 2008

If you know of any others, please list them in the comments!

ReadWriteWeb presents 4+ Ways to Quickly Create Excellent Presentations Online in which they offer an annotated list of free Web-based presentation software – 7 in all including:

• Zoho Show 2.0
• Google Docs
• 280 Slides
• SlideRocket

If you do have a presentation coming up, you may want to download iPresentee’s package of 100 free Keynote Objects for Apple’s Keynote, and also check out 4 Ways to Spice up your Presentations.

OStatic blogs compiles a listing of 8 very useful collections of open source software programs. Here are their top 5, be sure and check out the full article for explanations and more collections.

• 75 Popular Open Source Desktop Downloads
• 16 Free Tutorials for OSS Apps
• 100 open source applications
• 6 Must-Have Firefox Extensions
• 6 Free Apps and Utilities for Working with Video

Laura Milligan at College@Home produces another monster list of useful resources. This time it’s search engines, and plenty of them in her 100 Useful Niche Search Engines You’ve Never Heard Of. Milligan categorizes her specialized search recommendations into the following sections:

• Extracurricular
• Quick Answer Guides
• City Guides and Travel
• Shopping Search Engines
• Business
• Academic and Reference
• Social Media and People
• Multisearch
• TV, Video and Radio
• Medical Students and Health Search
• Law Students
• Metasearch and Megasearch Engines
• Photos, Images and Visual Search Engines
• News Searches
• Jobs and Real Estate

An interesting article from The Social, a C|Net news blog reports on a study conducted by the University of Minnesota. According to Study: Social networks may subvert ‘digital divide’, social networks are evening the playing field for low-income teens who are building technology skills through interacting with them.

“Social networks build beneficial technological, creative, and communication skills, the study says, leading the researchers to actually describe social networks with the adjective “educational.” Who knew?”

Kathryn Greenhill at Librarians Matter has created a step-by-step guide to how to stream audio and video live from a webcam into Second Life. She has video clips of this amazing feat which she accomplished in preparation for an upcoming conference presentation. If you’re at all interested in presenting or streaming media in-world, you’ll want to check this out.

Christina Laun at College@Home has complied another mega-list, this time it’s 57 Useful Google Tools You’ve Never Heard Of. While I consider myself a heavy Google user, I did find a couple surprises. This is a nice list divided into the following categories:

• Must Haves
• Maps and Travel
• Web Browsing and Development
• Social Networking and Communication
• Custom Search Tools
• Miscellaneous Google Tools
• Third Party Tools

Sarah Perez at ReadWriteWeb has penned a two-part series of articles about today’s information overload issue. In part one: Info Overload: The Problem, Perez defines the problem and clues us in to the issue of too much information and not enough filters:

“Information overload is no longer a joke. For those who suffered with this affliction, it never was, but now that there are real numbers attached to the problem, it has finally prompted companies to take action. Those numbers come from a recent study by a research company called Basex and they are to the tune of $650 billion in wasted productivity. Ironically, the time wasted comes from use of applications and technologies that are supposed to make workers more productive. Unfortunately, they seem to have the opposite effect.”

In part two: Info Overload: What Can We Do?, Perez goes on to suggest some possible coping strategies for dealing with too much information including:

• Create a Routine
• Easily Distracted? Dial Down the Noise…Temporarily
• Learn To Embrace Distraction
• Create Your Own Filters

The result of a group writing project, 100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn aggregates over one hundred useful articles about how to make the most of the LinkedIn network. This helpful guide includes writings suggesting different ways to use the social networking website which include the following categories:

• Business Development / Marketing / Sales
• Career Management / Personal Branding / Resumes
• Job Search
• Recruiting
• Growing Your Network
• Keeping in Touch
• Meeting Face-to-Face
• Organizing and Extending Groups
• Miscellaneous
• Specific Jobs / Industries
• Lists

One more article you may want to check out which was just published today is the New York Times’ At Social Site, Only the Businesslike Need Apply.

A recent study released by comScore Video Metrix revealed that U.S. Web users watched 11 billion online videos during April 2008, and that 4 billion of them were from YouTube. The study also showed that 71% of the total U.S. Web audience is watching videos, with 18-34 year olds making up the heaviest viewers.