Custom Framing for those family photos!

OK, I couldn't resist doing another one using Big Huge Labs. Here is a favourite picture of mine: Alien Loves Predator done as a homely framed photograph. Cute! (image from http://www.alienlovespredator.com/)

Woo Hoo! Look at me!

How fun was this?!? I tried a few different things out at Big Huge Labs but thought I would post this 'mashup' of my Bambino photo as a Billboard.

Mashups vs Portals

I found the Wikipedia article on Mashups absolutely fascinating. The grid showing the main difference between portals and mashups was very useful. I can see that mashups are a lot more malleable than portals and therefore much better for personalised use or to obtain a certain 'snapshot' or view of something, using different sources, at a particular time presumably in real-time if possible (such as in business). The possibilities are incredible really with this hybridisation or aggregation technology. I particularly noted the two comments "The web 2.0 is all about the personalisation of information" and "As they are a part of the web 2.0, mashups increase the level of personalization of the Internet". These comments hit the nail on the head regarding so much of this new technology. Society at the moment seems to be a weird mix of the "look at me", and "it's all about me" generation and yet people have an interest in global things too.

The British Library London maps site was cool, but I was thinking how much better it would be if, as you watch the journey video, it would show you progressing on the map. See, I'm already wanting my own personal mashup of the information! I thought the Voicethread software and design was pretty amazing. The interactive functionality is great. I especially liked, for example, the teacher and his class commenting (using recorded audio) on the dragon drawing and the animation they added circling the dragon's tail to illustrate their comment. How great is that technology?!? I can definitely see how this type of software would make visiting local and/or historical information so much more exciting, especially for younger library customers. Older people could add their own comments about local and /or historical photographs, adding richness to the original resources.

I tried out a couple of the London map mashups on the Virtual Tourism blog, which combined videos and mapping sources. The Southbank Walk was quite good although, again, it would be good to have a marker of some kind move from one location to the next on the map as the video progressed. The user really needs to know what the landmarks look like already and what they are called otherwise. The downside of all this technology was evident in one which combined Google Maps with a YouTube video of St Paul's Cathedral. Better than nothing but the home-made type video was poor quality, compared with the high quality production we are used to with TV and DVDs. The mashup of the Katherine Gorge would be useful for tourists and schoolchildren although again, the quality of the YouTube video was poor. Zooming into the Gorge on the TerraMetrics image was fun though! I suppose these types of mashup are good for a quick 'snapshot' about one thing. The Star Viewer was very cool, combining fun interactivity and lovely clear, wonderful images, with pleasant audio. The Hubble Story, drawing video from YouTube was fantastic.

Go Poddy over Pottercast!?!

I have noticed podcasts popping up everywhere and two websites I visit fairly often, TripleJ and The Leaky Cauldron both offer regular and varied podcasts and have done so for quite some time now. I thought about it: when would I actually listen to these? I no longer spend an hour each way on the train - how useful it would have been back then to have these Podcasts! I can see the benefit of listening to a radio program or interview that I might have missed, but that's just downloading or streaming to the computer (or then to my iPod). I now understand that what makes podcasts different is the distribution factor.

I did try some time ago trying to set up a Triple Jay podcast to my iTunes software but I am not certain it worked properly. Unless you are opening the software and getting the updates daily, or at least often, I am not sure it's that useful. I gather the idea is that your podcasts are updated with the latest ones, you plug in your iPod or other player which is updated and away you go!

Today, I ended up subscribing in a few different ways. I subscribed to a podcast from The British Library which was about the birds of Madagascar. Then I subscribed to The Book Show from the ABC website. Sometimes clicking on the link seemed to link directly to iTunes but other times it added the podcast to my Bloglines reader (not sure how useful that is!). The best method seemed to be physically copying and pasting the relevant URL from the website directly into iTunes, as I did with Dr Karl's Great Moments In Science from the ABC website. Interestingly, when I clicked on the iTunes link for both the TripleJ film guide and Pottercast (Harry Potter), the software connected with the iTunes store (although it was free to subscribe).

I noticed, like most things, the quality of podcasts varies considerably. The Pierce County Library podcasts seemed very professionally done, whereas some that were clearly designed to get the community involved (which is good for its own sake) were not so great. I listened to some MP3s and watched some MP4s from different USA libraries and I could see that, although the quality wasn't that great, local audiences would find them interesting. A lot of the podcasts were author talks and book reviews. I can see the benefit of an author talk, especially a vodcast, as a podcast, but as for book reviews I can't see a huge benefit over reading the information. I suppose many people like to listen or watch other people, whereas personally I would rather just skim read what I want. I wonder if podcasts will become popular because we are all so addicted to television? I personally tend to 'tune out' when listening to audio. Besides, it takes time to listen to podcasts or watch vodcasts, although at least you can use the Fast Forward and Rewind buttons!

One of the most interesting podcast ideas that I came across was scavenger hunt podcasts posted by the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. The children could embark on their scavenger hunt activity, listening as they went for instructions and they were able to pause the audio whilst they looked. I thought this was a great use of the podcasts for children's activities which could be developed by the library and many children who use my library have MP3 players. The other use I could see for podcasting would be historical, local information in video format with audio. I think using new technology to encourage interest in library resources, such as local studies, is a positive step. Getting the community involved would also be a good thing, such as getting teenagers and children to review books and these could be posted as audio podcasts on the library websites.

I visited the Online Education Database and perused the list of podcasts. After I selected one "The Future of the Internet" I soon realised it was 1 hour and 40 mins long! Perhaps some other time... Actually, some of the topics looked really interesting and it would be fun to listen to these on the train or in the car, but it is a shame the duration of each one is not given on the main list. I guess the topic is more important here than how long it takes to listen to (and download) it.

(iPod picture from http://pottercast.the-leaky-cauldron.org/default)

AnswerBoards to promote library services

I noticed some of the exemplary answers were signed off by librarians who gave the name of their library and a nifty tagline, eg "Librarians: Ask Us, We Answer!". I thought this was a great idea as it promotes the already good reputation librarians have of providing quality information, but with a friendly tone. If there was a local version of this database, it would be great to 'advertise' our libraries on it in this way. It's up to librarians to keep ourselves in the public eye and maintain our good reputation!

Slammin' The Boards

Aha! My concerns about non-authoritative answers to questions (see previous post below) have now been addressed. We get reference librarians to answer questions! Okay! This is a great idea and could be the way of the future for many librarians, with dwindling numbers of customers wanting to physically come up to the reference desk at the library. I had a thought though: wouldn't it be good if users of Yahoo!7Answers, WikiAnswers, etc, could CHOOSE an answer posted by a librarian over others posted by non-librarians. If nothing came up, they could just go with a wider search. I wondered if this has been suggested previously. I clicked on the link "Help us improve Yahoo! Answers.Tell us what you think." and searched on 'librarian', 'librarians', 'library' but no results in their Suggestions database! I also tried 'reference' but that yielded no obviously relevant answers. I had a look at the method Yahoo! uses to encourage participation by users in grading answers, it's "Points and Levels" system. There could be potential for development there but at the moment it's all apparently in the 'spirit' of the online community, much like eBay and various others are supposed to be. I discovered that those who abuse the system and don't play by the rules are branded 'trolls'. I just love the lingo of the internet! Troll piccy from http://www.tolkiendepot.com/images/products/trolls.gif.

Consult the oracle?

I admit to being absolutely passionate about information retrieval and knowledge-based systems. I had not heard of the term 'social searching' previously though. I had not deliberately tried either Yahoo!7Answers or WikiAnswers before, although some Google searches I had done (I think where I had used a question in the search field instead of a Boolean search phrase) had led me to Yahoo!7Answers. I was not that impressed, I suppose because of the lack of authority of the answers, however for a quick answer to a more general knowledge question I could see that it might be useful to some. I tried a couple of questions today and much preferred WikiAnswers. I liked the way that, you ask a question and it gives you a selection of questions that are similar that have been asked before. In this way, there is some control over quizzing the database and extracting the answers and the computer system can measure the results more accurately. The Yahoo! tool seemed more conversational, more social and less structured, although I only tried both a few times. Both tools looked incredibly similar (colours, layout, etc). I think I will have to test these a bit longer to see if I think they are okay tools or great tools!