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The ARL and ALA have published A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement. Those of you who wish to get up to speed on exactly what occurred during the October 28th settlement concerning Google’s book scanning “Library Project” will want to check out this 23-page synopsis which explains the terms and conditions with a particular emphasis on the provisions which apply to libraries.
Are you redesigning your website or creating a new one for your organization? Get some great advice on how to properly design and code your site for optimal usability and search engine optimization from this rap video.
Stepcase Lifehack offers 10 Tips for More Effective PowerPoint Presentations in their latest post. If you have an upcoming talk that you’re planning, you may want to check out the article for more details about their ten suggestions:
Tom Haymes, Director of Technology and Instructional Computing at Houston Community College Northwest, outlines a Three-E Strategy for Overcoming Resistance to Technological Change in the latest issue of Educause Quarterly. According to Haymes, the successful adoption of any new technology is rooted in its ability to fulfill three criteria for the user including making its potential evident, being sufficiently easy to use, and essential to the user’s life.
“The dirty little secret of technology in education is that a lot of it doesn’t get used effectively—or at all. As technologists, many of us find it hard to understand why. We constantly search for new ways to employ technology in the service of teaching and research. Most users, however, be they faculty, staff, or students, do not approach technology the same way we do. According to a 2007 Pew/Internet study, 49 percent of Americans only occasionally use information and communication technology. Of the remaining 51 percent, only 8 percent are what Pew calls omnivores, “deep users of the participatory Web and mobile applications.””
Anyone who works with the WordPress blogging platform will want to check out this posting of 100+ Wordpress Video Tutorials, from Basic to Advanced. These videos will step you through how to do everything from how to manage posts to how to build templates. Some of the videos which look particularly interesting include:
For those of you who are as crazy about making lists as I am, you may want to check out this article from Mashable titled 40 Great Resources for Making Lists. Doriano “Paisano” Carta details 40 useful organizational tools which are categorized into the following list types:
Danielle Dreger-Babbitt of the Seattle Books Examiner has posted a 4-part article series covering the Top 20 things librarians wish patrons knew before visiting the library. The listed items were supplied by librarians from in Boston, Dallas, Detroit, Indianapolis, New York City, and Portland who took part in an informal poll. Here are a few items from the first installment:
Enough with the “sexy librarian” jokes
Ask us for what you really want
Ask us what we read
Do not leave your child (or children) unattended- for their safety
The official Gmail blog has announced the rollout of themes and color customization for Gmail. Users of Google’s Gmail program can now deck out their inboxes by accessing the “themes” tab which is available within the Settings section.
The folks at Common Craft have put together a new video explaining Windows Live in plain english. If you have an interest in setting up a profile in this website community, you may want to check this out.
Google announced the LIFE photo archive yesterday, a collection of images photographed by LIFE Magazine photographers and newly digitized by Google. The collection which has been added to Google’s Image Search consists of approximately 10 million photos dating back to the 1750’s, of which about 20% has been digitized so far with the rest expected to be added over the next few months.
One of the principals here at OEDb has just started a venture called Tip’d, a social news website for finance, investing, and business topics similar to Digg. Those of you who have an interest in or provide reference in the area of finance may want to check it out.
Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent discusses some of the reasons why businesses and organizations would want to start a blog. She goes on to provide 25 useful tips to make blogging work for your business. Among her top suggestions are:
Find the domain name
Figure out what blogging tool would work best for you
Pew Internet & American Life Project published a new report yesterday about what technology users do when their devices fail. A key finding from this study showed that 48% of technology users need help from others with new devices and many tech users encounter problems with their internet connections, home computers or cell phones.
If you are managing projects for your organization, you may want to check out the latest article from Smashing Magazine which discusses 15 Useful Project Management Tools. The piece covers six different types of tools for the job including:
Basic Project Management Apps
Wiki-Based Project Management
Bug and Ticket Tracking
Collaboration and Conferencing
Invoicing
Time Tracking
In addition to these I would add OpenProj which is a free, open source alternative to Microsoft Project, and also Project Manager Plus, a free application built to work with Zoho Creator and available through the Zoho Marketplace. Know of any others? Please leave them in the comments!
Mashable presents a list of 20 Great Online Image Editors. These are both free and subscription-based online applications which will allow you to import your images from social networking websites in order to crop, resize, remove redeye and more.
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