RSS Feeds

I am familiar with the general notion of RSS feeds because of the iGoogle home page for my own computer, which has a tremendous number of possible RSS feeds. I had never worked with them before, though, other than adding them from those that Google offered.

I added feeds about three of my favorite things: Tuscany; Shetland Sheepdogs; and chocolate using the Bloglines search function and was surprised how user-friendly it was. I liked the ease of use, the convenience of your interests gathered in one place, the enormous choice of feeds and the time that they save.

I already use this technology in my personal life, as I mentioned above. Professionally, I can see using it as one stop shopping for library-related websites, blogs and journals. New materials received, library news and programs planned could be disseminated to our patrons by RSS.

I can tell there is more for me to learn about RSS and Bloglines, so I intend to spend more time investigating them.

23 Things Overview

My favorite part of the 23Things exercise, to be totally honest, was exploring and learning more about YouTube, as it was the most fun assignment and one that we might use to reach people who don't use the library. I learned about a few features I hadn't known about, such as the channels and message capability.
Zoho Wiki was the most surprising and perhaps the most interesting of the Web 2.0 sites that I
visited and would provide a handy way for collaborating on a system-wide project with mutiple participants. One of the people at GB has already used it to gather suggestions for activites for his stay-at-home vacation.
I don't believe that 23Things has changed my lifelong learning goals. I have always wanted to continue to learn the newest developments. It has helped teach has taught me about tools like blogs, YouTube and ZuloWiki that I very well might be using in my life-long learning journey.
Flickr was one of the bigge surprises, as i didn't know it was so feature rich, with additions such as maps, items you can have made, and the comments you can add on your photos. I have a hunch I'll be spending time on it.
As far as what could be done better next time, I'd allow for more time. It definately took many people more than the alloted 90 minutes a week to finish. I also would redo the Technorati discovery to somehow make the site easier to understand. I believe it was a worthwhile project, though, and am glad PBCLS offered it.

Overdrive

I tried to listen to an Overdrive book at work, but security on the computer at work prevented a complete download of their Media Console, so I had to do this discovery exercise at home. I found it easier to download the console, locate "Fahrenheit 451" , check it out and listen to "Part One: The Hearth and the Salamander" than I expected, although I did have to back out and then return to Overdrive after the Console was downloaded.
The audio quality was fine and the person who read it does a good job, but it would be be better to have several people provide the voices, although I realize that's seldom done.
The only issue I have with audiobooks is that I'd prefer to hold and read a book than listen to a very lengthy recording. Burning the book to CD and then playing it on a long drive would be distracting, but downloading the book to an MP3 player to listen to on a walk might be a possibilty. Too bad I have an iPod.
A portion from Overdrive's description of "Fahrenheit 451" is: "The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning, along with the houses in which they were hidden. Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires, and he enjoys his job. "

Podcasts

After listening to the podcast of The Frog courtesy of the Denver Library I turned to Podcast AlleyI was surprised and pleased by how many library related podcasts there were. I had some trouble getting the first couple book review lated podcasts to work - I ended up with nothing at all or HTML. I did get the Stephen King podcast to play and started listening to The Green Mile, which is located at http://feeds.feedburner.com/StephenKingBookClub.

You Tube

First I searched for library videos from my home state of Minnesota and found a rather cute video from the Eden Prarie Library about common misconceptions about their library. Best of all it's hosted by a teenager, so maybe it will reach some of his contemporaries. You can find the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi78YJ1CD4Y.
There were 1,980 returns for my favorite dog, the Shetland Sheepdog, and if you'd like to fall in love with this breed, take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me46O63yT0g.
The features I most like about You Tube are the different ways to sort returns, that's it's democratic in the sense anyone can participate, that you can see videos from around the world, that tagging is allowed, that viewers can rate the videos, and that there's a huge variety of contributors from a young kid to the Associated Press. I like that the possible postings are almost endless - I even found the recent Wimbleton.
YouTube features could probably benefit a library in a number of ways. Most obviously, a video could provide publicity for the library and you could could continually update what's new at the library. Book talks could be placed on a site like YouTube. Perhaps some of the best programs outside speakers and staff have done could be archived on YouTube.
Drawbacks would include the same democratic nature that I sited as a positive, in that there are many videos not worth watching because of the content or the poor quality of the videography.
The sheer size could be considered a drawback, too, in that there is so much available to wade through. One drawback that they've already experienced are people posting malicious pranks that are then copycatted.

Web 2.0 Awards: imcooked.com

imcooked.com is a useful and fun-to-use website that could be even better with a few tweeks and additions. The videos must make the cooking experience more interesting because of the added dimension and the people you'd get to meet. Also, you'd be able to see if the recipe turned out like it was intended to. If it didn't, you could probably chat with people in one of the groups to find out the reason why it didn't turn out the same way.
The search function seems to return good results and there certainly are a lot of tags for many of the recipes, which would make them easy to find. I couldn't find a way to add your own tags, though. Perhaps the person submitting the video can tag or I may have overlooked the way to add them.
One drawback I see is making the video. Most of us are far from professional videographers and it would be a challenge for us to make an attractive video of the quality people are used to from watching cooking shows on televion.
imcooked.com also,in my opinion, should include a written copy of receipes to accompany the videos without having to resort to e-mail to obtain it.
I don't see the concept of imcooked.com translating to libraries unless people wanted to create short book reviews.
All-in-all I give imcooked.com 4 our of 5 stars.

Zoho

Zoho is a pleasant surprise, although I still a few questions about some of its functions. Why would someone want to redo their last action? Undo I can understand. What do they mean by "insert layer" and what's a bookmarklet as compared to a bookmark? That said, Zoho seems good enough that I might even give up Microsoft Word for it. I am impressed with Zolo's relative ease-of-use and intuitiveness. It didn't take long to locate and learn the basic functions. It also has a rather attractive interface.
Zoho dis take a little getting use to, being a web based application. When I went to save my document,I was expecting it to ask me which location to save to!
I am not an expert on Microsoft Word, but Zoho appears to have some functions and flexibility that I couldn't find on Word, such as the capability to import more types of documents and websites. I noticed it also has support for a number of languages. Word might to, but I wasn't able to locate it. Word probably has some functions that Zoho doesn't, but I couldn't find any that I'd use.
I wish that we had Zoho when I was in school all the way from grade school through graduate school because it would have made the group projects we had to do easier more convenient and more fun.

PBCLS Wiki

I entered Tuscany under "Favorite Vacation Spots" and Fark.com under "Favorite Website".

Wikis

"To More Powerful Ways to Cooperate" was enlightening in showing that OCLC might well be on the cutting edge of using, implementing and innovating with Wikis and other Web 2.0 software. That makes sense, as they began as a resource sharing cooperative,which is Web 2.0 at its most basic.

I was surprised that, apparently, OCLC will be opening up WorldCat as a Wiki to anyone with an internet connection. At first glance it sounds like a wonderful idea but I doubt the service will include interlibrary loans and relatively few people outside of libraries and academia would be looking for bibliographic information. I'm curious how they envison this type of wiki being used.

At the risk of being cynical,I don't see OCLC's consideration of public tagging, list creation, citation management and more as a good idea. Wikipedia is riddled with errors and the same fate would befall Worldcat, unless they have something very different in mind that doesn't effect WorldCat itself.

I learned something new from this article! I was not familiar with OpenURLs, so I did some extra reading and found out that, in the simplest terms, they are URLs with bibliographic information included about library holdings, articles and e-information.

The most interesting part of the article to me was the mention of OCLC's
cooperartion with Google in making hardcover books available in full text e-format. Also,I didn't know that Wiki archived copies of every version of each page.

The aspect of Wikis I found the most interesting was its usefulness for several people in different locations to easily collaborate to plan an event, communicate in an organization or create a community guide. Those possibilities never occurred to me.

Wikis and libraries seem made for each other. There are many possibilites in a public library to enrich your patrons' experience , as mentioned in the reading we did for week seven. Patrons could add book reviews to the catalog, groups in community could put information about themselves on the library's website, subject guides could be created and meetings could be planned. Doubtless, someone with a better imagination could think of more!

To sum this week up, I see Wikis as networked computers using specially designed software that enables the public to contribute information, possibly edit contents and communicate with others using the same website. They are dynamic, ever changing and flexible sites that can be adapted to the particular user's needs.

Web 2.0 Articles

"To More Powerful Ways To Cooperate" by OCLC's Chip Nilges is probably the most interesting and best written article of the three I read. OCLC sounds like one of the leaders in
aggressively adopting Web 2.0 philosophy, technology and principles to it's products.
Some of their ideas like list creation and sharing notes sound practical and useful, while some of the possibilities he envisions, like tagging and citation management, don't seem like good ideas to me. OCLC already has a professional subject search and I think tagging would open it up to amateur searches. If citation management means allowing the user to modify the initial citation, clearly that could spell disaster.
When I think of Web 2.0, words like sharing, customizing, tagging, cooperation, user friendly technology and social networking come to mind. These and other qualities would allow libraries to offer service that's current, enhanced, useful and more rewarding for our patrons. We've already made a good start! Web 2.0 means, if we are committed to incorporating it into the daily life of the library, we will provide enhanced and more enjoyable service for our patrons as well as keep libraries relevant and viable in our digital age.

Technorati

I am having a little trouble with Technorati and don't find it particularly user friendly. The information they have about their site is too technical for noncomputer people, I think. I did manage to claim my blog and add tags to it. Perhaps later I will try to add the widget codes they suggest to help people find your blog and find out how many people have linked to the blog.
The results from putting pbcls.org were interesting. There was such a diverse range of sites, but I shouldn't have been surprised that there were so many linked to our mouse tutorial. I'm still surprised about the links to Groundhog Day. I'm not sure how the results are ranked, though. Technorati says by freshness, but it's not clear what that means.

del.icio.us

Del.icio.us took me a liitle while to familiarize myself with, but the basics were rather easy. It's certainly a nice site, but I don't see it that different than an expanded and indexed favorites list.
I posted and tagged a couple wesites for PBCLS's del.icio.us's page.
If I had a lot of time, sorting through websites others have posted under a term I was interested in would be benefitial, but for now I'll mostly stick to Google.
I suppose del.icio.us could be a big aid to research, but it would probably be difficult to gage the reliability of many of the sites.

Generators

I took a look at all the generatrors on the list and decided on "TV Guide Sexiest Stars" because it would let me upload a photograph. The URL for my "cover" is http://www.tvguide.com/special/sexieststars2008/covers.aspx.

WebFeet

I grew up in Minneapolis, so that was my WebFeet search, which yielded an impressive 41,249 results. These articles covered everything from expensive condos in the Uptown area, to articles about Al Franken (Senate candidate), to light-rail plans.
The biggest surprise was how many publications were covered. They included industry-specific titles that in many cases must have a small circulation, yet at least one of the databases picked them up. Another surprise was that the Lexile level was included - I've looked at WebFeet before but hadn't noticed that.

Library Thing

I was surprised by how much is available on Library Thing as far as discussions about genres and actual books. It looks like a great place to go for book-related questions and recommendations and to find out which books are currently trendy. I was also surprised by how many varied groups there are and that participants also come from other countries. I also didn't know that the site offers a chance to review an early copy of a book!
The creation of your own "catalog" is surprisingly easy, but I thought they might import more information about the book, such as the publisher. I guess that isn't necessary though, and importing the cover art is a nice touch.
My library can be found at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/anninwellington.

RSS Feeds

I recently became more familiar with RSS feeds, even though I have them on my iGoogle homepage. One thing I realized when doing the exercise of placing RSS tags on my Blogline page, was the difficulty of locating websites that are RSS enabled. I'm still researching ways to find them right now. One thing that surprised me is that I ended up with several RSS feeds that I hadn't selected or added.
As far as being useful for libraries, I don't know how many library related feeds there are - my guess is not many, but the technology is still relatively young. I see it a lot more helpful for people who need to keep up with current news or sports or business information.

Italian Television

We are supposed to write about something technical, so I found some information on Italian TV. Digital television is expanding rapidly in Italy. Most of the major networks offer programming through digital transmission and some offer pay-per-view events. The goal was to have digital TV available in 100% of the country by the end of 2006.
The end of analog transmission, which will require analog TVs to have a converter box, is scheduled for the end of 2012.
There are other ways to obtain your television programs in Italy. Satelilite TV has been available since 1997 and is currently provided by Sky Italia. which provides at least some of its programming in HD.

Tuscan Food

One of the highlights of a trip to Tuscany is the region's many culinary delights. The Tuscan diet is considered a Mediterranean style diet, so it's relatively healthy.
Breakfast is often a cappuccino or expresso accompanied by a sweet pastry and prosciutto or salami.
Lunch is light and can be a smaller version of dinner or a pannini. The basics for lunch/dinner include raw or steamed vegetables, such as asparagus, artichokes, fennel, spinach, arugula and cannellini beans. They're accompanied by rice, pasta, gnocchi or bread for starches and pork, chicken, wild boar or rabbit for the meat dish. Fish also is served, especially near the coast.
Pecorino cheese, a specialty of Tuscany, might well make it into the meal, as well a scrumptious soup made from bread and vegetables.
Should you still have room, dessert could be a delightful pastry, cannoli, tiramisu or that heavenly Italian ice cream called gelato.
No discussion of the foods of Tuscany would be complete without a mention of the wines that accompany them so well. Chianti is the wine most people associate with Tuscany, but it is far from the only worthy wine. Brunellos from the small region of Montalcino are highly prized - and very expensive. Most of the wines, such as Tignanello and Sasicaia, are reds although Sauvignon and Chardonnay are also made.

Thumbnail Sketch of Tuscan History

Historians tell us that the ancient Etruscans entered Tuscany from the east during the 9th century BC, possibly attracted by the plentiful food sources such as the still popular wild boar. Lingering evidence of the Etruscan occupation can still be seen in many places, such as the underground water system of Chiusi, the necropolis at Cerveteri and the tumuculus tombs at Populonia. They called their region Etruria. Etruscan society was progressive for the time, as women appear to have had great freedom and were treated as the equal of men in many ways, even when it came to politics.
The Romans arrived in Etruria in the 3rd century BC, but they received an unexpected defeat at the hands of the Eutruscans at Lake Trasimeno and decided to give them Roman citizenship. The Romans then established or expanded such vital Tuscan cities as Lucca, Pisa, Sienna and Florence.
Although political and religious changes of many sorts transpired over the centuries the next earth-shattering change didn't occur until 570 AD when the Lombards conquered Italy as far south as Florence. including Tuscany.
Tuscany eventually became divided up politically by such competing families as the Guelphs, Ghibellines and Medicis and those who followed until Italy became united as a country under Victor Emmanuel II in 1871.