Thing#23-The end or the beginning?

It has been a worthwhile journey exploring many of the "things" offered on Web 2.0. I didn't really get going until after Christmas, and wish I'd have started earlier. There were a couple of hard applications that didn't work right for me and that took a lot of time and I wondered if I would be able to finish on time--but here I am, and with a couple of days to spare before the deadline. I'm glad I stuck with it! I learned a lot, and even if I don't use some of the specific applications, just having the general understanding of what these things are and how they work is beneficial.

I'm starting to encounter some of these things in my workplace, and I don't have to be intimidated wondering what this is and how they do it. Yesterday I got a Google meeting invitation, and I could easily sign up and respond to it confidently. I also looked at a presentation by a vendor who used his own interface and just had some of the Web.2 applications plugged into it.

The "things" that were the hardest for me were Thing #3 and #4, and putting the link for my blog post into the comments after the "Thing" for the first couple of times. Of course by now, due to all the opportunities to use it, it is second nature. I thought Instant Message would be an easy one because I've used it in the past, but I had all kinds of trouble getting it to work and the first time never did connect to the other person, so I finally did what I should have done sooner and just started all over again and created a new account. That's one of the frustrations in technology; something that should have been easy takes hours to figure out.

I liked the fact that there were easier lessons interspersed with harder ones, so it wasn't as grueling. I wish I would have kept track of the time I spent on each lesson. Some were short and took under an hour, and others I spent 5-6 hours on. Of course some of it depends on how much time you want to spend looking around at all the options.

My favorite things were Thing#19 on Web 2.0 applications, Google Docs. I was intrigued with how it was set up. I looked like it might be a good option, especially for those who don't want to pay for Microsoft Office. I wondered though, about where your documents are stored and how secure they are. I also enjoyed Thing#20, Picnik. I love digital photography and spent a lot of time playing with all the different effects and options that program offered.

Thank you so much for this opportunity. I learned a lot more than just sitting in a workshop or seminar because I was actually practising what I was learning. I hope you offer more options like this in the future. It was definitely worth my while.

Thing#22: Podcasts

I liked Podcast Alley because of the easy searching options. You could chose from a podcast genre (I chose Education), and then narrow your search by entering a search term in the "Search for a Podcast" box. I entered "library", and found 146 results, mostly pod casts from libraries. I was amazed at the variety of pod casts offered in this area. There was an enticing one called, "The Library Survival Guide" that gave research tips to patrons. One was for events held in the library. One library offered "Click a story" for kids to listen to a story online. One podcast featured book, movie, and music reviews by the teen patrons of that library. One library featured business seminars to help businesses succeed. There was a podcast for one librarian's thought on things of general interest to librarians. LibVib featured headlines in library news. I added that feed to my Bloglines account.

PodcastDirectory was set up in a different format that wasn't as user friendly for me. I clicked on "education" and got a list of topics, but library wasn't one of them. I clicked on "K-12", but it just took me back to the main menu of topics. I choose choose "education" again to see if there was anything for an elementary school, but got topics such as hypnotism, weight control, and quitting smoking. I'm not finding what I want quickly so I'm ready to move on.

Podcast.com looked professional and had pod casts from various news agencies like Fox News easily accessible. You could also easily e-mail one to another person. It seemed slow and took a long time to navigate, maybe because it was right after work during peak user time?

iTunes looked sleek and clean without all the distracting advertising of some of the other directories. It was easy to see all the options, and there was even a link at the bottom with tips for creating and publishing your own podcast.

Thing#21 YouTube

I checked out the "Most Viewed" tab first and was disappointed at the offerings. I am reminded of a quote I read somewhere just recently, "There's no interest like self-interest."

Then I clicked on the Howto/style link, and found many videos on how to apply eye makeup for the smokey eye look and how to give haircuts. I wonder if they make this an assignment at beauty schools: create a YouTube video using the techniques you've learned. There was one that looked promising on how to find files and Geotag photos.

I found a great one that was created by research librarians giving a tour of their library and the services they offer. It was very well done and had great music and video. You can view it below.



One that I liked was a self-depreciating look at YouTube called "How to Annoy your Viewers." Click here to get some good tips on what not to do on YouTube:



I went to the Education section, but was disappointed in the selection even there. Four of the top eight sites had names like: PickUp Girl, How to Get the Girl, Love and Sex Trade in Jamaica, Birth at Home. I think you would have to wade through a lot to find useful information. I did come across this site on how to use an editing tool in Photoshop CS4, which could be of use in a library setting if you are taking photos to use on posters or displays. Here's that video:

Thing#20 Web.2 tools - Picnik

I explored Picnik, a photo editing tool that was fast and free. You didn't have to register or log in, which was a nice touch, but you can register for more options, and you can upgrade to Premium, which lets you download up to 100 photos at a time, as compared to 5 for free. You could select a demo photo to practise on and learn how to use the editing tools.

The straighten slide bar let you manually adjust the straightness of your picture and placed grid lines across your photo so you could get it perfectly level or at the angle you desired. I liked the fact that it gave you so much control. It was more flexible than the one I use in Paint Shop Pro. I also liked the zoom tool better. It was in the lower right corner and used a slide feature to zoom in and out rather than clicking in increments with your mouse.

You could change the size by entering in a percentage with the re-size tool. The crop option lets you choose between pre-sets like 4x6 and shapes like square. There is an auto fix button that will automatically adjust your photos for you, as well as two slider bars that let you fine tune the adjustments. You can set the sharpness for just certain areas instead of the whole picture, which helps if it's just needed for the eyes, for example.

When you save your photo after you are done editing it, it lets you select the format, but also lets you select how much you want to compress it if it's a jpg file.

The Create tab is where the fun options begin. Click on Dots and Dots and your picture turns into many small dots, kind of like an impressionistic painting. There is a brush tool that lets you paint an effect in or out of portions of the photo. Some effects were not available unless you had the Premium version. You could select the fade slider and fade a color picture to black and white or change it to any degree of sepia that you would like. The boost option really brightened and saturated the colors. You could choose the soften feature, then use the brush to make some areas of the picture clear while leaving the background muted and soft. The vignette option created a smudgy black area around the outside edges of the picture to give a fade effect. Very nice, and you could choose colors as well as black. There was even a button to give a soft, ethereal Orton effect called Orton-ish.

You could create rounded corners on your photos with the 60's option. I really like the button called Focal B&W. You could click on the photo where you wanted your focus, then that area would stay in color and the rest of the photo would turn to black and white. You could get a similar effect with the Focal Soften tool. Click on the area you want sharp, then the background is softened and out of focus. Focal zoom was an option I've never used. The area you click on stays focused, but then there are lines zooming in from all edges so it creates the effect of movement in toward the object. Way cool! As well as having Pencil Sketch, they had a neon option, which made your photo look like it was created with neon light strips. Very interesting effect. Doodle let you draw on your photo. You could create puzzle pieces of your picture if you had the Premium version. The snow feature made it look like it was snowing in your photo and turned out pretty realistic looking.

The shapes options included adding stamps or shapes like hearts or lips to your photo, or putting a beard shape on a face or adding a crown to some one's head. You could insert speech bubbles. One useful feature was a stamp for a copyright symbol you could add to your photo.

The Touch Up Feature let you change eye color, fix blemishes and whiten teeth. It was rather limited as far as frame options, but had a few basic ones to select from.

There is a Developer Toolbox where people can create their own image effects and have them put on the website if they are selected. The Clone feature was only available in the Premium version, and that is one of the most useful tools for photo editing. The Premium version is available for $24.95 a year.

I noticed that after I had been working for awhile and trying a lot of features, the program started to slow down, perhaps as a result of a bandwidth problem. That's something you don't have to worry about with a program installed on your hard drive. Picnik probably won't replace the photo editing programs I own (Paint Shop Pro and Adobe Photoshop Elements), but I probably will use it at times for some of the special effects that aren't included in my software.

I could use it in the library to create posters for announcements or advertising events.

Thing#19 Web Applications (published from Google Docs)

Google Docs---Some Definite Advantages over Microsoft Officecn insert comments they r ahe top of the document, which is nice so you can see them at once ather than scrolling down to the bottom,-Daneda Heppner 1/24/09 10:19 AM
Google Docs looks a lot like Microsoft Office Word. One difference is that when you click File, New, you get options for a new document, spreadsheet, template or presentation as well. I opened a template for cute snowman address labels. I could select the snowman and delete it, but I didn't have success replacing it. I tried right clicking and choosing an option, then going to Insert, picture. I thought maybe it would give me an option for Microsoft clip art on my computer, but it didn't. It went to my personal jpg files. When I clicked on a picture to insert, it inserted the picture as the background for the whole page, not just the snowman. There may be some way to figure it out but I moved on. There were 161 template options: including Book Report, Parcel Labels, Fax Cover, Business Cards, Photo Calandar, Recipie Card, Lesson Plan, Resume, and Meeting Minutes.

I also looked at File, New, Presentation. It lets you create or download a slide show, but with some unique options. You can download a picture, then add a speech bubble to it and insert text (I created a text box in the speech bubble.) That adds a different dimension to the presentation, rather than adding text outside the picture.

I clicked File, Save to see what format this document would save as. I had the option to save either as an html file, a text file (*.txt), or a Web Archive, single file (*.mht). I wasn't familiar with the bottom option for the default "encoding Unicode (UTF-8)", but when I looked at the options, it looked right. It is an advantage to save it in the format you need for either the web or your desktop application.

I clicked on the Share tab, and was given the option to invite people either as collaborators or as viewers by entering their e-mail addresses.

There are only 12 Font styles to choose from, but that will be adequate for my use as I tend to pretty straightforward in my documents. I don't remember if Word has an option to create background color for text. This is nice, just like using a highlighter to emphasize a point.

Click here to see my blog. I wt to the link icon on the tool bar and created a link from this document to my blog post. It as cool to put it lyover; text that pops up when you pass your crsor ver the link. I had neer done that before and it gave me a feeling of empowerment.
I found Revision History when I was exploring the File options. You can see the exact time you made changes and what they were, which might be helpful if other people are working on the document as well, so you'd be able to know if the information was current.

Print Settings have the usual options, but also include the option to put in page numbers, include comments, or include footnotes. This would be helpful, because often I try to print out just the body of a site without the comments, and I end up guessing how many pages to print.

There were some nice features when I went to Edit, Document Styles. I could change the background color, the line spacing,
and view a larger sample of the Font type all in one place and easily change them. I noticed, however, that I couldn't click Undo to change them back. I had to go back into the Document Styles box to do it.

I could insert a picture from my files, or from a site I would select on the Internet, but could not connect to clip art on my pc. Here'a picture of my grandson on the cover of a magazine from a previous assignment.

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You can choose an image size when you insert it (small, large, thumbnail), and you can also choose your text placement around the image, in this case, to the right of the image. When I first downloaded the image, I couldn't change the size by dragging from the corner and have it maintain the correct proportions. I tried different options, and when I think when I finally chose to download as a thumbnail, I could make it smaller and maintain the correct proportions by dragging from the corner. I tried to click on File, Revision History to see if it would show if I had tried Thumbnail or not, but now I can't get it to show. I tried saving and then checking, but still can't get it to show.

Another great feature is that it is easy to insert a special character, such as the cent sign ¢ or the copyright symbol ©, which is useful for librarians. It wasn't this easy in Microsoft Word. You can also insert a Table of Contents using your paragraph headings I think, which would be a useful feature. You can insert a horizontal line, as seen above the picture, which might be useful for breaking the page up into sections.

There is an option to Insert a bookmark, but it is only as a shortcut to specific places within this document not to bookmarks for other websites. It can be used to create an index or table of contents.

You can click on the Share tab and choose to either publish as a web page on the Internet, or publish to your blog by adding your blog site settings and then posting to your blog. I will definitly be back to Google Docs to use many of the expanded features I've discovered today.

Document created for Thing#19

Thing#18 PBwiki

It was fun playing with all the cool features, and it looks like you can even get more if you want to pay for them. I went to the Favorite Books blog and added my own, as well as a comment, and I also added a few of my favorites on the one for Favorite Seasonal Books. I printed some of the lists off and will use them when I purchase books next time.

I entered a post on Favorite Vacation Spots, and then added a link to the European slide show I created and put on the new page I created. Most of it went smoothly, but I didn't like the default music that came with it. I went back and selected other music and created the slide show again, but this time I got both sound tracks playing simultaneously, so I deleted the second show and thought, enough playing, time to get back to work. Maybe later?

Thing #17 Wiki

A Wiki (Hawaiian for fast) is quick, easy website where information can be entered, edited, or changed by the users that are members of that site. It's a great collaborative tool for exchanging ideas, planning events, or just pooling your expertise. Wikipedia, an open source encyclopedia, is the largest wiki. The advantage is that anyone can add more information to keep it updated and supposedly more accurate, as users can edit the information and add their own knowledge.

The disadvantage is that there are no solid means for verifying that the information is correct, and members sometimes engage in editing wars to try to get their perspective entered and delete an opposing viewpoint. For this reason, teachers will often not allow Wikipedia to be used as a source, even though it contains a lot of valuable information. Since anyone can add to or edit someone else's entries, the theory is that the end result will be a consensus of community ideas. But in the real world there are hackers with malicious intent who can wreck havoc. On the Library Success wiki, there is this update notice: "Because of vandalism problems, e-mail confirmation is now required." There was also an additional notice stating that from here on, if you add to the list of recommended vendors or software, you have to identify yourself so they know it's not coming from a vendor.

In spite of that, the Library Success site offered some helpful options, like professional opportunities for conferences, tips on public speaking and publishing your work, library resources like how to weed your collection or select materials, and even how to contact other librarians who IM. There was a place for librarians to showcase their successful library projects, which could be inspiring to other librarians.

The Bull Run Library has a fund raising option to donate to their library by purchasing a book from WorldCat. They were sponsoring a poetry writing contest that looked inviting. There was a link where you could check out copyright laws.

The St. Joseph County Public Library had an enticing link called "Talk to the Library." Patrons could leave feedback, comments, opinions and even IM a library staff member. There was also a phone number, which was a nice touch. You could renew your books, place holds, or pay fines online. There was a teen link with a gaming tournament schedule and pictures from previous tournaments. Under the discussion tab, patrons are told that if they have suggestions for new pages, to tell the librarians and they may add them, rather than letting the patrons have that control.

The Book Lovers Wiki was a place where members of a book club could write their own book reviews. They also sorted the books by genres and included an index for reviews.

The best part is that users don't need to know HTML to develop their own website with a wiki. It is simple to make new pages and links by just clicking on a button, which makes it easy to create and collaborate. This tool has given even non-techies the opportunity to develop their own web page.