Fin

Some reflections upon the completeion of PLCMC's 23 Things program. First, I really enjoyed creating this blog and walking through each step has been a learning experience. I tried out some Web 2.0 applications I knew about but would not have otherwise tried and learned about a few new ones as well along the way. I will continue to use some of these applications regularly. LibraryThing and Delicious in particular have become favorites. Applications such as wikis remain on my to do list to explore further and develop a level of comfort and familiarity.

Most important I'll now be able to count some of the things from the list of 23 as skills that I can market in the future.

NetLibrary

I don't have access to NetLibrary so I can't really complete this step. Let me say that I think offering eAudiobooks via a service such as NetLibrary is a really good idea. I think the concept can be expanded upon to include MP3's for music and video as well. There should be sufficient technology in place to protect from copyright infringement. For example, Zune MP3 player allows its users to share songs by "squirting" them wirelessly to another users player. The transferred song is able to be played for a set period of time before it disappears from the player. Similar principles should be able to be employed in libraries to allow users to borrow such content electronically.

Podcasts/iTunes/iTunesU

I explored some podcasts through Podcastalley.com. While they had a lot of podcasts in a variety of categories, I didn't find the design interface to be very user friendly. In comparison iTunes has an excellent interface and a lots of options. I didn't feel like I had to go searching for much as many excellent options where presented right up front. I found public radio podcasts, Barack Obama's weekly address, a podcast from Al Jazeera and was able to search for podcasts among a variety of specialized categories. This is a much more pleasant experience and I can manage it all through my iTunes without having to subscribe to podcasts via Bloglines or another RSS reader.

One of the features of iTunes that I think is really great is iTunesU which offers lectures on a variety of topics from some of the best Universities in the country. I think that this is a fantastic idea. I think this really gets at the core of the power of 2.0 applications making expertise and learning available far beyond the walls of a classroom.

I personally don't use podcasts much. Mostly due to time constraints, one can only follow so much! However, I see many uses for them. Specifically, in libraries podcasts could be used to offer bibliographic instruction, do book reviews or book talks, and internally they can be used to relay information from conference presentations to staff unable to attend.

I do want to learn how to create and post podcasts. I'm going to save this to tackle in the near future.

YouTube

Discovering Web 2.0 Tools/Twitter

From seomoz's list of award winning web 2.0 applications I chose to explore Twitter. I chose Twitter primarily because my brother won't shut up about it. I also chose Twitter because I've seen it pop up in more and more places and I still didn't really understand the concept. Twitter is basically a micro-blogging/social networking site. Users' posts are limited to 140 words or less and are generally just brief updates about what you are doing. Twitter is an easy way to keep up quickly with your network of friends, family or relatives. It has other uses as well, as during the primaries and general election, slate.com, gave up on live blogging debates and switched to a Twitter account. This allowed the writer for Slate and Slate readers to comment on presidential debates live. Since the posts are much shorter than most blog entries it is possible to keep much more current especially in something as fast paced and fluid as a debate.

In comparison to other social networking sites such as Myspace or Facebook, Twitter has relatively few users. Despite this they form a powerful community. This story from American Public Media's Marketplace radio show details some of the profound effects Twitter has had in the area of customer service. You can listen here.

Zoho

I'm using Zoho to compose this post. It has lots of features and is perhaps even easier to use in some respects than Microsoft Office. While I can see the utility of web based applications, such as Zoho, I wouldn't see myself using Zoho or other online word processing applications much. I think perhaps the best use for Zoho or other web based applications is with collaborative projects. Using a web based application would eliminate the need for having to e-mail work back and forth and having a person appointed to compile that work and then run it by everyone involved again for approval. And with Zoho's many project templates (even one for a wiki) there are quite a variety of projects for which it could be useful.

I published this post straight from Zoho. Very simple.

PB Wiki Sandbox

Since you need an invite in order to play in the PLCMC's PB Wiki sandbox, I just created an account at Wikipedia instead. I had noticed a couple of weeks ago, while doing an assignment for another class, that there was an omission in the article about noted Science Fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin. So I decided that in place of playing in the PB Wiki sandbox I would go and edit the Ursula K. Le Guin page on Wikipedia.

I made a minor edit adding that she had won the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in Young Adult literature in 2004. I found the process to be relatively simple and was able to make this edit within 10 minutes of creating my account and reading up a little on making edits/additions on Wikipedia's help page. What I hadn't imagined was that Wikipedia would have its own style guide and that some of the considerations could get quite complex i.e. how to represent complicated mathematical formulas.

I use Wikipedia a fair amount. Mostly, for preliminary explorations of subjects or topics with which I am unfamiliar and occasionally for pop cultural trivia. I find that it is often a good starting point and I've rarely encountered instances of any outright bias. The problem I frequently encounter however, is that many articles lack citations. This is an annoying problem especially if you are merely using the Wikipedia article as a jumping off point.