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....