Archive for March 2010

Dan Freeman at ALA Techsource was kind enough to write up my Library Technology Report on mobile libraries with regard to my discussion of QR codes and their potential uses for libraries and Jason Griffey’s recent blog post about them. They have made the issue publicly available for a limited time via their new online archive, and I have made the pre-print of the report open access via E-LIS.

Library Journal has just issued its annual list of Movers and Shakers for 2010. These are cutting-edge librarians who are making a difference in the field. Congratulations to everyone on this well-deserved honor.

Today I had the pleasure of presenting on cloud computing in libraries in Copenhagen to the IT-faggruppen interest group of the The Danish Librarian (Workers) Union. It was a great all-day conference dedicated to cloud computing topics.

Free Technology for Teachers rounds up Nine Tools for Collaboratively Creating Mind Maps. Each entry in this helpful list includes a discussion of the application’s best features, cost, and usability.

Nick O’Neill at All Facebook has put together suggestions for 4 Ways To Monitor Your Facebook Page Traffic. In addition to Facebook’s inherent tools for tracking traffic, this post recommends some techniques to track traffic within custom tabs and more.

1. Webtrends Tool
2. Facebook Insights
3. Core Metrics
4. Google Analytics

Vanessa Davis at Web Design Ledger has compiled a list of 10 Useful Website Analytics Tools. If you want to track information about your website or blog traffic you may want to check out some of these tools.

The folks at Educause have put together 7 Things You Should Know About E-Readers. This brief guide details the essentials about these portable devices such as:

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

Twitter can be used as a powerful listening tool and Cindy King at Social Media Examiner offers 8 Easy Twitter Monitoring Ideas. If you’d like to monitor your organizations brand as well as what’s happening in your field, you may want to check out these suggestions:

1. Decide What You Want to Monitor
2. Find the Best Real-Time Monitoring Tools
3. Track With URL Shorteners
4. Follow Hashtags
5. Monitor Trends When It’s Appropriate
6. Use Twitter Lists to Monitor People on Twitter
7. Set Up a Listening Plan
8. Build Relationships

Isaac Gube at Six Revisions has published a lengthy article on How to Make Remote Team Collaboration Work. He provides tips and guidance by discussing common remote collaboration problems and how to address each in turn.

• Problem #1: Staying in sync
• Problem #2: Task management
• Problem #3: Idea generation and brainstorming
• Problem #4: Version control of files
• Problem #5: Task delegation

Drew McLellan of The Marketing Minute has put together a helpful Social Media Cheat Sheet listing the best ways to leverage today’s popular social media websites.

Kristin Burnham of CIO.com writes for PCWorld about 8 Must-Have Twitter and Facebook Add-Ons. Most of these are Greasemonkey scripts and require first downloading the program, but many seem like they’re well worth the effort. The two I’ll be addimg right away are:

• Nested Twitter Replies which displays tweets in a nested conversation format.
• Facebook Purity which removes third-party games such as Mafia Wars and FarmVille itens from your newsfeed.

Mike Troiano, President of Holland-Mark Digital blogs for VentureFizz about Ten Steps To Build A Basic Content Hub. This helpful post gives advice about sharing content and building relationships.

“Using the Web to build your brand is less and less about creating destinations, and more and more about creating content useful to the people you want to reach, then empowering them to access that content wherever and however they like.

The key to this is creating something we call a “content hub.” A content hub is more than just a standalone site or application, it’s both the heart of a distributed network of information, and a destination for those that share the interest it supports.”

There are some great FB application recommendations in this Social@Blogging Tracker post about 16 Facebook Applications to Boost Popularity of Facebook Fan Pages. Considering that over 20 million people join as fans of Facebook Fan Pages daily, this is a fantastic way to build your community and engage patrons. Here are the top five suggested apps:

1. SlideShare
2. NutshellMail
3. Reviews
4. Poll
5. YouTube Video Box

Claire Cain Miller writes for the New York Times Technology section about Getting the Most Out of Twitter. She gives some great tips for making the most of the microblogging app, even without posting to it. Here are her suggestions:

• A custom news feed
• Check your lists
• Attend a conference, virtually
• What’s around you right now
• Ask questions

Greg Ferenstein at Mashable discusses How Twitter in the Classroom is Boosting Student Engagement by increasing participation and building a community of learners.

“Professors who wish to engage students during large lectures face an uphill battle. Not only is it a logistical impossibility for 200+ students to actively participate in a 90 minute lecture, but the downward sloping cone-shape of a lecture hall induces a one-to-many conversation. This problem is compounded by the recent budget cuts that have squeezed ever more students into each room.

Fortunately, educators (including myself) have found that Twitter is an effective way to broaden participation in lecture. Additionally, the ubiquity of laptops and smartphones have made the integration of Twitter a virtually bureaucracy-free endeavor. This post describes the two main benefits professors find when using Twitter in lecture.”