Library Voice

So I’m struggling with something.  I have this blog, and I have just started another blog for my biking interests.  So I have content here and at WordPress.com.  The pictures that I have for this blog are generally uploaded to this blog directly, although I’ve started using my free flickr account to host my pictures. I also have a blip.tv account for videos that you see here, on my bike blog, on my Business Blog, on the Biz Wiki, and in other places.  I also have separate Flickr and Blip.tv accounts for family pics and videos. I also have a Vimeo account, a YouTube account, Picasa, and more. The cool thing about the web today is that it enables you to get your content all over the place.  The bad thing is that you have to remember where you put everything (and also remember the usernames and passwords).  These days I’m lucky to remember to take out the trash on Wednesdays.

Ideally it would be nice to have all my content in one place, but that’s kind of hard.  Frankly, services like blip.tv and Flickr make it so easy to post content.  Options for hosting this on your own server with applications like Gallery are available, but it takes a lot of work to make sure things are working right.  I had an install of Gallery for quite some time, but it was too sluggish on my  host to be of much use.  I ditched Gallery and moved my family pics to Flickr.  I also use to upload family videos directly to my host, but those videos take up a lot of room, and my space on the server is limited.  I have several blogs, including this one, hosted on the same server.  My new bike blog is currently located at WordPress.com, though I don’t know how long I will leave it there (there are pros and cons of wordpress.com vs. wordpress.org).  I suppose the nice thing about having the content separated from the engine (i.e., pics and video separate from the blog) is that it allows you to more easily take your content (pics and text) wherever you wish.  If in the future I want to move the Redneck in Spandex from WordPress.com to my own domain or host, it should be as simple as exporting the blog content.  Since the images and videos from the blog are linked to Flickr and Blip, then everything should display okay after the migration without any broken images (in theory).

Now the librarian and geek in me struggles with the issue of how long my content will be available.  If Blip.tv folds tomorrow, that would mean that I would have broken video files and links on about 6 different blogs and websites.  A demise of Flickr would have very similar consequences.  And since I have two accounts for both services (only one Pro Flickr account), then I could have broken image links all over the place.  The thought of that is unsettling, although I guess it would make sure I have plenty of work to do.

Does anyone else struggle with this?  Is this even something to worry about?  Will my content always be threatened by the possibility of extinction?  If not, do I need to be concerned about where my content will live next?

A funny, but sadly true, look at Twitter.

Off to tweet some more. I’ve been away too long while posting this.  Gotta feed the habit.

So I was teaching a class this morning at another building on campus. Unfortunately the provided computer I was using was having network issues.  While we waited on the IT guys for the building to come in, I took the following picture with my phone and sent it to twitpic, which then sent the tweet to twitter.

Here’s what I posted on twitter with my phone:

Click to go to twitter page

Within 1 minute of sending that text to TwitPic, I got a text message from one of our system administrators at the library.  He asked me what room I was in, and if I needed help.  I replied that I was outside his territory, as I was in another campus building, not the library.  Although he could not help me, it was amazing that he could respond so quickly.

There are a few things here that made this work.  First, we have IT folks who get it.  Seriously, our library IT department is top notch in a lot of ways.  They’re willing to try new things such as twitter,  if only simply to see how they work and how they might be used.  Secondly, my colleague happened to be following me on twitter, and I also follow him.  If he had not been following me, he would not have seen the text at all.  Third, he happened to refresh the twitter page, and there I was.  Finally, he knew my cell number, so he was able to send me a text message.  He could have also sent me a direct message in twitter, but he had no way of knowing that I get direct messages via text messages on my phone, so a text message was the guaranteed way of asking me if I needed help.

While there are definitely some hoops to jump through, I can definitely see how an organization could use this for technical support or other kinds of immediate assistance.  (This also assumes we don’t see the twitter fail whale).  All of my colleagues in my department are on twitter, although some use it a lot more frequently (@cguder, @lolebek, @hagman) than others.  With the ability to extend twitter with pictures via TwitPic, with video via 12Seconds, and with SMS, twitter has the potential for being a very robust communication tool.

Are the Creators of Twitter Living in the Last Dreamworld on Earth? — New York Magazine.

Still trying to understand Twitter?  This article is one of the best that I’ve read, as it discusses a little bit of the tech, and a lot of the folks, behind Twitter.  I highly recommend it to read and to pass on to others who might not “get” what Twitter is all about.  So what is Twitter about?

“Twitter is not about the triumph of technology. It’s about the triumph of the human spirit,” says Twitter founder Biz Stone.

Facebook vs Twitter on TwitTip

Trying to figure out the difference between Twitter and Facebook?  This post may be helpful in understanding the two social networks, and perhaps help you decide whch one is for you.

I caught this just now via some of the people I follow on Twitter.  I have to say, this looks way cool.  Basically, in a nutshell, this application, called Ubiquity, could be the solution to those of us who hate having too many windows or tabs open.  Watch the video on the page for a good demo.  It does look very cool, even at the alpha stage of .1 in development.

http://labs.mozilla.com/2008/08/introducing-ubiquity/

I know SlideShare is a really cool service, but I honestly did not want to create yet another account to share my stuff.  Since I have a Blip.TV account, I figured there had to be a way to get PowerPoint slides up on blip.tv.  After experimenting yesterday, here’s the process that I found that actually works.  It’s not easy, but it works.

1.  In PowerPoint 2007, Choose Save AS–>Other Formats, and then save the file as a Windows Meta File  (.wmf).

This will save each slide as its own metafile in a parent folder.  In my case, I had 66 slides, so this saved 66 .wmf files.

2. Next, open Windows Movie Maker, and import the .wmf files you just created into a Movie Maker collection.  Then drag all the slides down into the movie timeline to add to a movie.

3.  Theoretically, you could add audio or voiceover there if you like, and you could also extend each slide to match your voice over, but I just opted for pasting in my slides.

4.  When you are ready to render your project, Choose File–>Save Movie File.  Choose the My Computer option for playback on your computer.  I chose the Other Settings Option, and the quality appears to be fine and of a reasonable file size.

5.  Finally, upload your new movie to your blip.tv account.

Granted, the process is probably not as easy as SlideShare, but once you do it, its a relatively painless process.  I really think the ability to add audio (music) or a voiceover can make the slides a little more interesting.  I also Iike the idea of having all of my video and powerpoint content in one place, and blip.tv satisfies that need.

Via AdverBlog:

Samsung just launched an online campaign to promote the supposed iPhone killer, the Samsung Instinct. First there is a campaign website including a fun product placement programm. But more innovative is the interactive short movie ‘Follow Your INSTINCT’, which can be watched on YouTube only. The movies are connected through YouTube annotations, which makes it the first commercial use of annotations I’ve seen so far. Pretty cool, simpel(sic) and interactive.

Take a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoOCiaxIZF4 .

It’s almost like choose your own adventure, and makes me ponder how we might do something like this for a library video tour. Thoughts??

This guy wrote this about video games:

I hate video games, on or offline. I hate the way they suck real people into fake worlds and hold on to them for decades at a time. I hate being made to feel hateful for saying so, and I hate being told to immerse myself in them before passing judgment, because it feels like being told to immerse myself in smack and teenage pregnancy before passing judgment on them.

This is not because of anything wrong or bad about video games or heroin or teenage parents. It’s not even because of game-induced homicide or web-grooming of little girls by perverts – serious problems, but statistically low-risk. It’s because, compared with everything else on offer in a kid’s life, video games and heroin and teenage pregnancy are a colossal waste of time.

Turns out he’s also written a book, which happens to be on Amazon. Which of course, is now getting glowing reviews like this:

Now that’s web 2.0 in action. Beautiful.

My wife pointed me to this interesting article this morning:

A new study from Northwestern University finds that college students’ choice of social networking sites is related to race, ethnicity and parents’ education. The review included social network sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Xanga.

According to the authors, the findings challenge the democratic nature of online interaction and contradict conventional opinion suggesting that all college students communicate via Facebook, the popular social networking site (SNS) launched in 2004 by a Harvard undergraduate.

“That race, ethnicity and the education level of one’s parents can predict which social network sites a student selects suggests there’s less intermingling of users from varying backgrounds on these sites than previously believed.”

More information can be found here.

The complete article citation is:
Hargittai, E. (2007). Whose space? Differences among users and non-users of social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 14. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/hargittai.html