Archive for February 2009

Educause has put together another of their “7 Things” guides titled 7 things you should know about QR Codes. Quick Response codes are 2-D mobile tags which contain information such as URLs, and can be read by mobile devices with a barcode reader installed. Waving your camera phone in front of the above barcode would give you a quick link to the mobile version of the iLibrarian blog, which you could then access on your cell without having to type in a URL. To find out more read the 7 Things document, and you can also check out my report on the mobile Web, On the Move with the Mobile Web which is available open access on E-LIS.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has published a new report on Twitter and other applications which enable users to update their status online.

Key Findings:

• As of December 2008, 11% of online American adults had used Twitter or other status update service.
• Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have ever used Twitter and its ilk, as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34.

“As with many technologies, enthusiastic users have used Twitter for more than just answering the question, “What are you doing?” Twitter has been used to help organize and disseminate information during major events like the 2008 California wildfires, the recent American elections, the Mumbai massacre and even the January 2009 crash of US Airways flight 1549 into the Hudson River. Janis Krum, a passenger on a ferry that rushed to the scene, took a photo of the plane with a cell phone and sent it out via his Twitter feed.4 Twitter and other status updates have also been used for many other purposes including the airing of complaints against companies, sharing ideas, forwarding interesting material, documenting events, conversing and flirting.”

Webdesigner Depot presents a list of 14 Applications for Project Management and Collaboration. Each annotated entry includes a screenshot of the application, description of its functionality, and price.

In sync with today’s tips and tricks theme, here are 20 WordPress Tricks to Improve Your Blog from Steven Snell at Design Mag. This helpful post of tutorials and plugins includes instructions for adding tabs to your sidebar, creating a “Send this to Twitter” button, displaying a featured post carousel, and more.

gHacks publishes a mega-list of 90 Tools And Tips To Make You A Gmail Pro, including the best Firefox extensions, Greasemonkey scripts and desktop tools which will help make you a Gmail expert.

(Photo: Hugh Kretschmer)

Will Leitch profiles Twitter founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams for New York Magazine in How Tweet It Is.

“Twitter, founded by Stone, Williams, and Jack Dorsey, has about 6 million users, which, all told, isn’t all that many. (The Twitter user with the most followers is Barack Obama, with 237,500, or about as many people who voted for him in Idaho.) Compared with Facebook, which has more than 150 million users, it’s puny. But it’s different from Facebook. It, as Williams puts it, “lowers the bar.” Twitter is the logical next step from blogging. It’s one thing to start a blog. But it’s much easier to type 140 characters and send it out into the ether. It’s streamlining information. “It’s another step toward the democratization of information,” Williams says.”

Related Stories:
Twitter: Productivity Tool or Time Waster? – Web Worker Daily takes a look at 10 ways Twitter can really help your productivity, and 10 ways that it can waste your time.

Mashable’s Twitter Lists – The “Twitter Lists” category on Mashable brings up 25+ articles run by Mashable about the popular microblogging tool including posts such as “9 Ways Twitter Can Help in the Real World” and “40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them”.

Walt Crawford discusses the current state of blogs and wikis in the library field in this month’s issue of Cites & Insights. Based on his presentation at the 2009 OLA SuperConference in Toronto, his article Shiny Toys or Useful Tools? discusses trends and presents over 30 success stories.

“We’re out of the shiny new toy phase for blogs (and
wikis). I’m guessing most libraries these days will only
start blogs after making reasonably certain the blogs
will serve real purposes and will be updated regularly.
I’m guessing very few library people start blogs in the
expectation of becoming rich and famous.”

via Librarian.net

Amazon introduced the Kindle 2 today which will hold over 1,500 books and retails for $359. The wireless device is just over 1/3 of an inch thick, has a hi-res 6-inch electronic paper display, and is lighter than a paperback at 10.2 ounces. There are currently over 230,000 books available for the device as well as newspapers, magazines, and blogs. Readers can choose from six text sizes, add bookmarks, read personal (Word, pdf, etc.) documents, and search the Web. Read the press release here.

A new article in KMWorld by Art Murray and Ken Wheaton discusses the Future of the Future: Rise of the Knowledge Librarian. The authors discuss the transformation that the traditional corporate librarian must undertake in order to remain relevant and make the transition to the knowledge librarian. According to Murray and Wheaton three role shifts must occur in order for this to happen:

Role shift #1: A knowledge librarian should be the “content czar” of the enterprise.
Role shift #2: A knowledge librarian understands the strategic information needs of the enterprise.
Role shift #3: A knowledge librarian is a lead agent of change.

“The librarian of the future is uniquely positioned to be at the center of the creation and alignment of intellectual assets across the enterprise. That leads to improved innovation and business performance on a sustained basis. Maybe the time will soon come when we will see librarians as CKOs.”

His Holiness The Dalai Lama joined the popular microblogging website Twitter yesterday and already has over 13,000 followers. In other social media news, the Vatican has created a YouTube channel, as has UK Parliament, (which is also blogging, on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter), The US House of Representatives and Senate. Know of any other interesting personalities or organizations which have recently joined an online community? Please link to them in the comments!

Update: It has been reported that the Dalai Lama Twitter account was actually started by an impersonator – news which hit Twitter almost immediately after the account was suspended. Although the account has been restored, it no longer claims affiliation with The Office of the Dalai Lama.

According to the Official Google Blog, it is now possible to implement multiple inboxes in your default Gmail view, allowing users to categorize their incoming messages, yet see everything at a glance. To enable this feature, click into “Settings”, find the “Labs” tab, and enable “Multiple Inboxes”. If you want labeled emails to show up in a separate pane, go back into Settings, find the new “Multiple Inboxes” tab, and create a new pane by placing “is:” in front of the desired label, for example, is:professional.

Looking to amp up your personal productivity and get organized online? You might want to check out Alisa Miller’s 100 Powerful Web Tools to Organize Your Thoughts and Ideas. Miller categorizes one hundred handy tools into the following sections:

• Note-Taking and Documents
• Bookmarking
• Mind Mapping
• Personal Wikis
• Highlighters and Sticky Notes
• To-Do Lists
• Collaboration
• Calendars
• Time Trackers
• General Organizers and Task Managers

Smashing Magazine has published a how-to guide by Paul Boag detailing 8 Useful Tips To Become Successful With Twitter. Twitter users, both new and experienced, will want to check out these useful tips:

1. Above All, Keep It Personal
2. Learn From Others
3. Get A Good Desktop Client
4. Use Twitter On The Road
5. Tracking The Results
6. Follow And Be Followed
7. Integrate Whenever Possible
8. Don’t Over-Think It

Related to today’s theme of controlling your online information, here’s a post by Stan Schroeder at Mashable about how to backup your data on all of the Google properties. HOW TO: Take Your Data Back From Google’s Claws provides a practical guide to creating backup copies of your content on the following websites:

• Google Docs
• Gmail
• Google Reader
• Google Calendar
• iGoogle
• Blogger
• Picasa
• YouTube

Nick O’Neill at AllFacebook creates an effective how-to guide for protecting your privacy on the social networking giant in 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. Readers will learn how to take the following steps in order to control access to their information:

1. Use Your Friend Lists
2. Remove Yourself From Facebook Search Results
3. Remove Yourself From Google
4. Avoid the Infamous Photo/Video Tag Mistake
5. Protect Your Albums
6. Prevent Stories From Showing Up in Your Friends’ News Feeds
7. Protect Against Published Application Stories
8. Make Your Contact Information Private
9. Avoid Embarrassing Wall Posts
10. Keep Your Friendships Private