Archive for April 2009

David Spinks puts together a helpful post for the Mashable blog listing 10 Must-Try Social Media Sites for College Students. There are quite a few in this top ten list which I will be checking out for the first time including:

• Cramster
• CampusBooks
• Gradefund
• Zumeo

If you’re a Mac user, you may want to head over to the AppStorm blog where David Appleyard has put together a list of 60 Open Source and Free Mac Apps. This guide to free software is divided into the following categories:

• Web Browsers
• Email & Communication
• RSS
• Twitter
• Music & Audio
• Video
• Photography
• File Sharing & FTP
• Office & Text Editing
• Utilities

Educause has published a guide to 7 Things You Should Know About Live Question Tool. This brief article answers the following questions about this web-based application that lets audience members at a presentation pose questions for the speaker:

1. What is it?
2. Who’s doing it?
3. How does it work?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

Hongkiat.com has put together a collection of 41 Free Great Looking WordPress Themes. If you are using this popular blogging platform, you will want to check out this helpful post. And if 41 isn’t enough for you, see their previous articles:

• 16 Free Premium WordPress Themes That Don’t Suck
• 49 Most Downloaded WordPress Themes

The ACRL has published a new environmental scan of academic libraries in the wake of today’s economic challenges. This 8-page guide “considers three important drivers in the current environment and poses questions to stimulate conversations and action in your libraries and on your campuses.”

• Driver #1: The Economy and Higher Education
• Driver #2: Students
• Driver #3: Technology

via Stephen’s Lighthouse

Steven Snell of DesignMag outlines 17 different content management applications which can be used to create powerful websites. The article includes a brief description of each of these solutions, a screenshot, and a list of relevant resources for those interested in finding out more. There are many here which I hadn’t heard of before and I look forward to checking them out.

Ben Parr at Mashable outlines four useful steps to take to Get the Most Out of Gmail Labs, including taking advantage of new GMail features such as the ability to undo sent messages, insert images into emails, and enable location-based signatures. Additionally he offers a list of 10 Recommended Features some of which include:

• Create a Document: Turn any email into a Google doc with this useful little Gmail Labs feature.
• Tasks: Tasks takes your to-do list and makes it part of Gmail. Tasks makes it easy to add items to your to-do list, even allowing you to take emails and turn them into tasks.
• Multiple Inboxes: If you’re a Gmail power user, like most of us at Mashable, you have a lot of different mail sources and lots of labels. See more information at once by activating Multiple Inboxes. Note: this creates new inboxes for labels, not inboxes for secondary Gmail accounts.

The Library of Congress has gone public with their YouTube channel, presenting over 70 videos in the following playlists:

• 2008 National Book Festival author presentations
• Books and Beyond author series
• Journeys and Crossings (a series of curator discussions)
• “Westinghouse” industrial films from 1904
• Scholar discussions from the John W. Kluge Center
• The earliest movies made by Thomas Edison, including the first moving image ever made

From their press release:

“But this is just the beginning. We have made a conscious decision that we’re not just going to upload a bunch of videos and then walk away. As with our popular Flickr pilot project, we intend to keep uploading additional content. We’re modifying some of our work-flows in modest ways to make our content more useful and delivered across platforms with built-in audiences of millions.”

Boxes and Arrows has made podcasts available from Day 1 of the IA (Information Architecture) Summit 2009 which was held in Memphis, TN from March 20-22. More podcasts are to be published over the next two weeks. Here are a few that look interesting:

• Portable Research: Observing Users on the Go – Nate Bolt
• The Semantic Web: What IAs Need to Know About Web 3.0 – Chiara Fox
• Motivating Teams: Inspiring People To Do Great Work – Dorelle Rabinowitz
• Designing Rules: The Engine of User Experience – Dan Brown
• Site Redesign: When Hell Freezes Over Use A Blowtorch – Melissa Matross

The Common Craft Show has produced another in Plain English video – this time on how the World Wide Web works including explanations of browsers, packets, servers, addresses, and links.

Dan Schawbel, author of Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, guest posts on Mashable with How to Leverage Social Media for Career Success. This helpful post outlines how to make the most of new social media tools to build your personal brand and achieve your professional goals. Here are his recommendations:

• Conduct a situational analysis
• Unearth your personal brand
• Select the right tools
• Build your online empire
• Market your brand
• Monitor your reputation

Aaron Schmidt, Digital Initiatives Librarian for the District of Columbia Public Library, has announced that the library has made their code available for their iPhone application. If you’ve been pondering creating your own iPhone app and want to see what they did to create the snazzy DCPL app, you can do so by grabbing their code.

According to a recent press release, the Library of Congress will build on its recent success with the Flickr Commons pilot by sharing audio and video content from its collections via YouTube and Apple iTunes. Library of Congress channels on these services will launch over the next few weeks.

“New channels on the video and podcasting services will be devoted to Library content, including 100-year-old films from the Thomas Edison studio, book talks with contemporary authors, early industrial films from Westinghouse factories, first-person audio accounts of life in slavery, and inside looks into the Library’s fascinating holdings, including the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and the contents of Lincoln’s pockets on the night of his assassination.”

Yahoo!Tech reports that U.S. wireless subscribers sent 1 trillion SMS messages in 2008, three times the 363 billion text messages sent in 2007. “That comes out to about 3,700 text messages annually—or 10 texts a day—for every cell phone subscriber”.

And SMS messaging is even more popular with college students, 94% of whom send and receive text messages according to a recent study by Ball State University. The survey of 300 college students found that text messaging is now the main form of communication amongst college students.

via Textually.org

Ben Parr at Mashable puts together a guide to tracking twitter trends through Twitter accounts, Web applications, and iPhone apps in 15 Fascinating Ways to Track Twitter Trends. Here’s a sampling of his suggested methods:

“1. Twitter Search: The simplest way to see trends on Twitter is on their official search page. Hot trends on Twitter appear on the search page and on the Twitter homepage, and clicking any will bring up a feed of the public conversation.

2. Twist: For those who are visual, Twist provides a graphical interface to see trends and keywords on Twitter. It not only lists out the hot trends over the last few hours, days, and week, but it provides embeddable charts and the ability to compare trends.

3. Monitter: Monitter is one of the best ways to track trends in real-time. Type in keywords and it will automatically update with the most recent tweets containing those terms. Add or remove columns to give you the right amount of information.”