Archive for October 2009

Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blogging Book, tells Mashable readers about 5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets. If you want to learn how to create tweets that get passed along to others, check out these five tips:

1. Always Include a Link
2. Don’t Use Up All 140 Characters
3. When Retweeting, Add Something Original
4. Build Credibility With Your Bio and URL
5. Combine the Personal With the Professional

The Economist discusses the launch of Windows 7 and the “beginning of an epic battle between Microsoft, Google, Apple and others” in Cloud Computing: Clash of the Clouds.

“The rise of cloud computing is not just shifting Microsoft’s centre of gravity. It is changing the nature of competition within the computer industry. Technological developments have hitherto pushed computing power away from central hubs: first from mainframes to minicomputers, and then to PCs. Now a combination of ever cheaper and more powerful processors, and ever faster and more ubiquitous networks, is pushing power back to the centre in some respects, and even further away in others. The cloud’s data centres are, in effect, outsize public mainframes. At the same time, the PC is being pushed aside by a host of smaller, often wireless devices, such as smart-phones, netbooks (small laptops) and, perhaps soon, tablets (touch-screen computers the size of books).”

If you’re interested in text/SMS reference in libraries, please check out my latest Stacking the Tech column, Text Message Reference: Is It Effective?

“The biblioblogosphere is replete with posts announcing the launch of new SMS (text message) reference services at a steadily increasing number of academic libraries. The appeal of these services is more or less self-evident given the ubiquity of mobile devices on campus.

Journal articles and conference sessions are filled with discussions of products and platforms, as well as strategies to market the new programs including YouTube videos, home page links, and Facebook applications. However, so far little has been gathered about how effective this type of service really is and whether or not it’s something that patrons find useful.”

Josh Catone from Mashable has created a quick guide to How To: Organize an Event on Facebook. This useful post walks readers through the following steps to successfully create, manage, and promote an event through Facebook:

• Creating an Event Listing
• Managing and Promoting Your Event
• Selling Tickets

Marc Parry at The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on the advances in library search interfaces in After Losing Users in Catalogs, Libraries Find Better Search Software.

“The problem is that traditional online library catalogs don’t tend to order search results by ranked relevance, and they can befuddle users with clunky interfaces. Bauer, a graduate student specializing in early American history, once had such a hard time finding materials that she titled a bibliography “Meager Fruits of an Ongoing Fight With Virgo.”"

Be sure to also check out the follow-up article, The Library-Catalog Wars: ‘Chronicle’ Readers Weigh In, which sums up reader comments on the article such as:

“Unfortunately, instead of teaching students how to conduct a precise search with few relevant results, faculty and librarians have found an easy way out — googlize everything.”

Breeanna Hare at CNN asks Does your social class determine your online social network? This interesting article explores the online divisions amongst the Web’s most popular social communities.

“Is there a class divide online? Research suggests yes. A recent study by market research firm Nielsen Claritas found that people in more affluent demographics are 25 percent more likely to be found friending on Facebook, while the less affluent are 37 percent more likely to connect on MySpace.”

Jeffry Thurana at MakeUseOf walks readers through the step-by-step process of how to Build A Cool Photo Gallery Website from WordPress. This helpful guide provides annotated screenshots which illustrate how to turn your blog into an image gallery.

• The Cool DIY Way Of Sharing Images
• Finding & Installing The Themes (& The Plugins)
• Building The Blog

The Online Classes website has put together a mega-list of 100 Free Tools to Tutor Yourself in Anything. Find a wide range of free classes and tutorials in the following categories in this helpful post:

• General
• Language
• Music
• Life Skills
• Around the House
• Technology
• General Academic
• Business
• Health and Fitness
• Math and Science
• Liberal Arts
• Fine Arts

If you’ve considered turning your blog into a vlog or video blog, or just adding occasional video content, you’ll want to check out this Complete Guide to Video Blogging. Leah Betancourt at Mashable discusses concepts, tools, and distribution methods for this new media format.

• Video Blogging is Still in its Infancy
• Web Video Puts People on Equal Footing
• What Makes a Good Video Blog
• Creating a Video Blog
• Distributing a Video Blog

Social media guru Chris Brogan posts 14 tips for How to Blog Almost Every Day. Check out his useful recommendations to get yourself in the habit of writing for the Web. Here are his top five suggestions:

1. Read something new every day. Need a starting point? Try Alltop. (Hint: read something outside your particular circle to get new thoughts).
2. Talk with people every day. I get many of my topic ideas from questions people pose to me, or through conversations.
3. Write down titles and topic ideas in a notepad file. ( I’ve given you 100 blog topics and another 20 blog topics just to get started.)
4. Maintain a healthy bookmarking and revisiting habit. I use Delicious.com
5. Find 20-40 minutes in every day to sit still and type.

Barb Dybwad at Mashable has created a guide to organizing your contacts in Facebook with How To: Create Friend Lists on Facebook. Learn how to create these lists which will allow you to filter updates in your News Feed through this step-by-step guide. One thing I will add is that Friends Lists are a powerful way to customize your Privacy Settings in Facebook as well – once you’ve created individual lists you can determine exactly who sees what on your profile – including photos, Wall Posts, and more.

• About Friend Lists
• How to Create a Facebook Friend List
• How to Use Friend Lists
• How to Delete a Facebook Friend List

Gina Trapani from Lifehacker provides an excellent tutorial to the next-gen email app in Google Wave 101. Complete with keyboard shortcuts and instructional screenshots, this guide will get you up and running with Google Wave as soon as you get your invite.

Ann Smarty at ProductiveWise sizes up the most popular real-time search engines in her post How to Search the Web Real-Time which compares each by indexing time, data sources, and advanced search & filtering options.

via Steve Rubel

Christina Warren at Mashable creates a quick guide to How to Integrate Facebook With Your Blog. These helpful suggestions will set you on your way to let your readers sign in with their Facebook login to leave comments, display recent visitors, commenters, and friends on your website, feed your blog content into FB, and more.

Bill Drew, Librarian at Tompkins Cortland Community College Library, has created a Google Site for his recent presentation titled Why Twitter?: What can Twitter do for my library & my community? This website resource provides a Twitter tutorial aimed at public libraries, along with articles, videos, Twitter tools, abbreviations, and other helpful materials.