It's All in the Family

My kids have blogs, too. My daughter's social justice blog is here, and my son's computer information blog is here.

Thing 24: the OS Revolution

It was inspiring to learn about the idealistic movers and shakers behind the open source software movement in Revolution OS. Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Eric Raymond and others in this movement squarely oppose the proprietary software model, as embodied in Microsoft and its creator, Bill Gates. Free, or open source, software is subject to an intense peer review process, which enables programmers from all over the world to contribute and improve upon the code, and even to adapt it to their own needs, as HCL plans to do with Koha. Proprietary software features a "closed development" modus operandi. No peer review outside the proprietor's limited scrutiny takes place. Instead of pooling the intelligence and resources of the global programming community, the proprietor (most often Microsoft) issues lots of patches and hotfixes rather than improving upon the basic OS code, which remains in its impenetrable black box. Maybe this is why Microsoft VISTA is such a mess.

Is Open Source the wave of the future? It looks like we're heading in that direction, and computer users will certainly benefit from this trend.

Thing 23 & 3/4: Anyone Can Paint Like Jackson Pollack

Scroll to the bottom of the page, and move your cursor along the white rectangle. Click the mouse to change colors.

Jackson Pollack was an American Abstract Expressionist Painter who lived from 1912-1956. If you go to jacksonpollack.org, you can paint like Jackson Pollack across your entire monitor screen by simply moving your cursor and clicking the mouse.

Thing 23: Surfacing from My Blog Fog

23 Things has captivated me. It seems that we are in the midst of a transformation every bit as revolutionary as the invention of the Gutenberg printing press. The Web is a democratizing force. Anyone can publish a blog, or a book; people can organize politically, or socially, or professionally, with great ease and efficiency. Geographical boundaries are disappearing, as techie professionals in Bangalore work with their colleagues in Silicon Valley via the internet and video-conferencing.The new technologies that we've explored in 23 Things are all contributing to this incredible technological transformation.

The YouTube video The Machine is Us/ing Us, held me spellbound for four + minutes, and then prompted me to have a conversation with my 17-year son -- who has been working and playing with computers and programming for the past three years--about the Semantic Web.

He explained to me that in the "old" Web, HTML programming language linked form and content. The two were inseparable. The code told the computer where (form) to put what (content), but the meaning of the text was opaque to the computer.

In the Semantic Web, programmers are basically inventing an entire programming grammar that enables the machine to understand the content of a paragraph, just as a person would when reading text. Resource Description Format language, or RDF, makes this possible. By parsing the text, or breaking it up into individual components, and assigning a grammatical code to each component, RDF can infer the meaning of a sentence or a paragraph and then store that information in a structured database that is easily accessible by computer programs and search engines. People are teaching the machine to "think", and as this capability strengthens, the Web will evolve in complexity, utility and efficiency. This is amazing.

Anyway, I loved this learning experience, and hope to revisit many of the Things and explore them in greater detail. I would definitely sign up again for such a program, but would recommend that more time be allotted, maybe 4-6 months, so that there's no need to rush to make it to the finish line.

I don't have a single favorite exercise, although I did especially enjoy setting up my own RSS feeds on Bloglines, my own search engine on Rollyo, my own library on LibraryThing, and learning about wikis. I think all of these technologies will be helpful to me in my work as a librarian at HCL, and I plan to use them.

I'm now in a better position to assist our customers with technology queries since I've studied and played with these 23 Things. It has been really gratifying to develop enough of an understanding of HTML to be able to alter the appearance of elements on my blog by changing some of the specifications within the code. The only way to learn this is to do it, and 23 Things taught me how to figure this out for myself.

I am grateful that I've had this incredible learning opportunity, and thank HCL for its generosity in sponsoring 23 Things and giving us those MP3 players! Who ever knew work could be so much fun?

Thing 22: Downloadable Audiobooks

I recommend listening to the Overdrive Digital Media Guided Tour, which takes about 20 minutes, before tackling this Somewhat Involved Thing. I was surprised that Overdrive didn't offer any of the titles I typed into the search box, including the highly popular The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency. I had more success just browsing through the different subject categories. Finally, I decided upon The Kabul Beauty School. After checking it out, I downloaded Part I and was able to listen to it on my PC.

This exercise was helpful in gaining an understanding of what Overdrive has to offer, how it works, and its limitations. I'll be able to answer customers' questions from first-hand experience now. I just need to figure out the MP3 transfer part and I'm all set!

Thing 21: Tools for Locating Podcasts

I explored Podcast.net and Podcastalley.com, both directories of podcasts with huge databases, but in the end found exactly the podcasts that interested me by going the Google route. I subscribed to three podcasts through my Bloglines account: the Diane Rehm show, NPR Books, and NPR Book Tour. I considered subscribing to a podcatcher, such as Juice, Odeo, or FeedDemon, which would then automatically download all my podcast subscriptions to my PC, but I think I'll wait until I have more time to listen to podcasts. (Maybe I'll buy the cable that will connect my MP3 player to my car radio, so I can listen while driving.)

Anyway, while perusing the Merlin podcasting learning link, I came upon the Kankakee Public Library website (Kankakee is in Illinois), which features an excellent FAQ on podcasts as well as a large listing of podcasts from previous library programs in Kankakee, including author events, Teen Poetry Slams, and music programs (Arlo Guthrie visited the library in 2005.)

Howard County Library could harness this technology to broadcast its own podcasts of popular programs, such as Supper at Six, Meet the Author talks, and educational seminars on diverse topics in finance, health, personal growth, and more.

Thing 20: YouTube

The following YouTube video is from one of the best movies I've seen in years, "Paris, Je T'aime" (Paris, I Love You). Imagine a master's short stories-- think Chekhov, Alice Munro...in movie form, and there you have it. The film consists of eighteen vignettes, each about five minutes long. This particular vignette is titled "14th arrondissement". At first, you think the director is making fun of this frumpy American tourist in Paris with her distinctly American accent....but as the sequence progresses, you begin to understand, with aching poignancy, how brave and beautiful she is. The scene culminates in a Parisian park as Carol experiences a transcendent understanding of what it means to be alive.

Thing 19: Best of Web 2.0

How to choose among so many amazing websites, tools, and applications? First, I looked at some of the blog posts of my Thinging comrades since I was curious to see their top picks. Then I went to the shortlist, right here, to take a peek at the best of the best: the category winner and the two runners up. That helped narrow it down a bit.

During the course of my 23 Things odyssey, I've explored a variety of utilitarian, whimsical, and customizable tools in this Brave New Web. Some of my favorites are: Rollyo for designing your own searches; Del.icio.us for social tagging; and LibraryThing for book information, cataloging and tracking.I also like Craigslist--this is where you can post your lost and found notices (lots of messages about lost keys and cats), look for jobs, search for mates, sale items, housing, and so on, anywhere in the World Wide World. Although I don't use Facebook, my kids tell me it has supplanted IM'ing as their social networking tool. Instead, they post messages on Facebook or text each other on their cell phones. (We've had to seriously upgrade their monthly text message allotments, and now I'm seeing charges for photos sent and received.)

But I digress. I also like Zillow for displaying aerial maps of a house's location on the street, along with its current market value (give or take a buck or 100,000), and YouTube for old rock and blues video clips and music, or to catch a blooper that's buzzing along the webwaves.

Just for the fun of it, I've posted on the sidebar a "widget" from SpringWidgets, a website that won the first runner up prize for widgets. I think of widgets as "web gadgets". [How about "wadgets"?] This one displays the local weather. Thank you, Cotonmom, for blogging about this gidget, I mean, widget.

Thing 18: Online Productivity Tools [Zoho]

Zoho offers an impressive array of applications, all portable, all web-based. (I'm beginning to sense a trend here with Web 2.0!) Not only does Zoho feature Writer, its basic word processing application, but it also features web services for creating spreadsheets, presentations, wikis (!), project management software, database and reporting software, and more! It offers more options, greater convenience and enhanced flexibility over desktop-anchored software. No need for USB drives and disks to save your work, and collaboration is easy because it's web-based, not chained to your PC.

Will  the new online productivity tools supplant Microsoft one day? I'm willing to bet my dollar they will.

I wrote this post in Zoho writer, purposefully choosing a different font and color to make it stand out from my other blog entries. It's fun to change things around a bit.

Thing 17: Learning 2.0 Sandbox Wiki

I added my entry to the HCL Sandbox wiki. You can find it here.

I also added my blog to the Maryland Libraries Sandbox favorite blogs page.

Thing 16: Wikis

I've used wikipedia for some time now as a quick and easy reference source. As Cotonmom mentions in her blog, they're a great resource for locating lists of books in a favorite series. Example: Can you please tell me the title of the 6th Lemony Snicket book? Click here for the wiki answer, scroll down and you'll see the entire listing of the titles in A Series of Unfortunate Events.

HOWEVER, caveat emptor. As Nancy points out, the opportunities for abuse are well documented. Good names have been slandered by pranksters and cybervandals. Nancy gives this link to real world examples of wiki vandalism.

I do think we can use wikis responsibly in assisting library customers by making sure that they understand the need to back up any information from this egalitarian, community encyclopedia with authoritative, vetted reference sources.

The possibilities for collaborative work using wikis are endless. Six years ago, I became involved in a community project involving high school redistricting in Howard County. We probably generated 2000+ e-mails over the course of five months, all with their own attachments, distribution lists, etc. I can only begin to imagine how we could streamline such a project by using a group wiki, with links to sub-projects, documents, calendars and timelines.

I would like to invite the Central Branch of Howard County Library to start a project wiki of this sort. For example, we could create one for HCL's new HCC partnership. Some library staffers from the fiction department have met with their departmental liaisons at HCC. They developed an excellent, informative handout for their initial presentation. Why reinvent the wheel? We can create a Central HCC+ wiki, post a link on it to this document , and then other Central liaisons can view it and tailor it to their own presentations with other academic departments. This wiki could contain general information, links to sub-groups (such as the arts and humanities liaisons and the social sciences liaisons) and their working projects...the list goes on and on.

Starting a wiki looks like it's as easy as going to pbwiki.com , wetpaint.com or wikispaces.com

Anyone wanna give it a try?

Thing 15: Library 2.0

I'm finding the conversation on Library 2.0 to be intellectually invigorating and mind-expanding, with implications that are revolutionary. I want to comment on two perspectives from the Library 2.0 writings that caught my fancy:

1. Change is constant, and we should accept that we will be in Beta mode all the time. This acknowledgment will allow a flexibility of mind, enabling us to adapt to the rapid technological innovations occurring now, all the time, on the web and in our world.

2. Chip Nilges of OCLC mentions Tim O'Reilly's (Web 2.0) concept of the collective intelligence: WOW! I love this idea. A hundred years ago, Jung expounded upon the collective unconscious to explain the human psyche, our archetypes, our dreams, our origins. Now, Web 2.0 lets us network on a global scale -- pool our resources and knowledge -- to create a technological intelligence and momentum that is revolutionizing life in the 21st century. OCLC is using this model ("Users add value") for its OpenWorldCat, allowing users to "contribute their expertise to the cooperative. OCLC’s work in this area to date has included a pilot program that allows anyone using OpenWorldCat to contribute and share tables of contents, notes and reviews." [from "To More Powerful Ways to Cooperate" by Chip Nilges.]

This is vast, it's infinite, it's interactive, it's uberintelligence.

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Thing 14: Technorati

I explored the Technorati website, the leading authority and search tool for blogs. I also registered as a user and "claimed" my blog so it's now officially listed on Technorati. I don't think I'll use this site on a regular basis, simply because I don't have the time, or the interest, to endlessly explore the blogosphere. Just give me my morning Washington Post, my NPR, and a good novel, or two or three......
Technorati Profile

Thing 13: Del.icio.us

The Otter Group and Commoncraft tutorials both provided excellent introductions to Del.icio.us. I registered with the site, and have begun to create my portable social bookmarking library with two categories of topics: books/reading/reviews and library2.0/23 things topics. The social aspect really widens the net, and connects you to others with similar bookmarks and interests. I've added the del.icio.us icons to my Firefox toolbar at home, and will do the same on my work PC. I like the portability of this tool. Will I use it regularly? Time will tell....

Thing 12: Rollyo

Select...Book Reviews & NewsSearch The Web

I often search for book reviews as an avid fictionista. I used Rollyo to create a meta search using five authoritative book review (and news) sources: The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian Unlimited (UK), and the Christian Science Monitor. I wanted to see if this works and if it would save me time. It does both! Eureka! I think I may actually use this little customized Rollyo search box for quick, filtered searches.

I invite you to give it a try: Type in the name of a random book and author, such as A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, select "Book Reviews and News" from the drop down menu, and see what turns up.

In addition to searching for book reviews, this searchroll does double duty and will also work for general news queries. Try typing in "Pakistan AND lawyers", select "Book Reviews and News" from the drop down menu, and give it a roll.

Thing 11: Library Thing

I was impressed with how easy this site is to use. You can list, review, tag and keep track of all the books you read on Library Thing. The colorful book cover displays are appealing and help jog the memory. Library Thing has some cool interactive features as well-- you can join groups, leave comments for other members, and see what others are reading. I was interested to see that there are readers out there who share my fondness for Laurie Colwin's HOME COOKING and MORE HOME COOKING.

Thing 10: Online image generator: My Meez

Here I am, enjoying a good book in an office with a view. Composing a Meez was entertaining, but this aspect of library 2.0 doesn't interest me.

Thing 9: Merlin, Library Blogs and Feed Finders

I really liked the Merlin site -- added it to my Bloglines account -- will revisit later to explore the learning links in greater detail.

Came across an interesting library blog, by the Ann Arbor Public Library, whose homepage is, in fact, a blog, showcasing information on library, community, and civic events (including a reminder to vote on Nov. 6 with links to local elections websites, ID requirements, etc.) Chock full of useful, relevant information. Is this the wave of the future for library homepages?

I also played around with the various search tools -- feedster, bloglines, technorati, topix.net --but the hits yielded too much junk and just too much information to sort through. For the time being, I'll stick to my handful of hand-picked subscriptions.

Thing 8: RSS Feeds

I opened my bloglines account, and so far, I've subscribed to The Washington Post and New York Times book reviews, as well as Roberta Rood's outstanding Books to the Ceiling and Nancy Pearl's Book Reviews, which are broadcast every Monday on Seattle's KUOW 94.9. You can either read an edited version of the book review interview on the KUOW program archive or listen to Nancy Pearl talk about her book picks by clicking on "MP3". My goal is to use these feeds to keep current with all the news, books and buzz in the world of fiction and selected non-fiction.

Thing 7: Technology Musings Upon a Fractal

Have you ever watched a fractal video? Here's one from YouTube. Just click the play icon and watch -- listen, too, if you have speakers or headphones. You may recognize the mesmerizing melody as the theme music from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. If you're wondering what a fractal is, it's a geometric shape that can be infinitely subdivided into parts that are self-similar -- each part is a reduced-size copy of the whole. To see the world in a grain of sand...

This particular fractal is from the "Mandelbrot set" and is generated from a simple mathematical formula: z=z^2+c. (Simple to mathematicians, that is.)

Thing 6: Flickr Fun, Mash-ups, & 3rd Party Sites

I created this trading card using FD Toys’ Trading Card Maker, a 3rd party flicker app. It took only a few simple steps, and now my trading card is posted on Flickr as well as on my blog. I used a photo that we took 6 years ago while visiting family in Oregon. The Columbia River Gorge is one of the most beautiful places on earth--I spent many happy hours hiking its trails and marveling at its waterfalls as a child and teenager.

Thing 5: Exploring Flickr

In library school, we went on reference assignment "treasure hunts" using card catalogs like this one. Back then, who could have conceived of Library 2.0? (Maybe a handful of academicians at MIT--or Al Gore.) What will Library 3.0 hold in store for us? Whatever it is, we'd better get ready!


This photo popped up on Flickr when I entered the search term "Multnomah County Library, Oregon", the main library branch in downtown Portland.

Thing 4: Register your blog

Done. That was quick and easy.

Thing 3: Set up your own blog

I did it. (But I inadvertently set up 3 blogs instead of 1, because I fooled around with some artsy titles before settling on the obvious one, and had to ask my 17-year-old computer geek son to help me delete the extra blogs.)

Thing 2: Lifelong Learning

The easiest habit for me is the learning toolbox. I like to consult varied resources -- books, people, the web, classes -- when I set out to learn something new.

Viewing problems as "challenges" is a bit more difficult. I'll give it a try in the next few weeks as I proceed through the Things.

Thing 1: Learning About 23 Things

Read the blog. Looks like fun.