Thing 35: Mini or Micro Blogging

I'm not really starting something new here but rather bringing a feature of our Ning Network into focus today. If you are also following there you may have noticed a feature on the left column, where quotes from books are turning up. Jamie has been giving us a bit of mini, micro, or nano blogging for several weeks now.

What is Mini Blogging? Where can I set one up? Why would I?

Mini blogs are limited to short messages (frequently 140 characters), they began as cell phone text messages limited to a geographic region that could be used to find your friends, find out what's going on in the area that night, or to invite your friends to all go to the latest Harry Potter movie on opening night together. The original miniblog, Dodgeball, has all but disappeared and isn't available in Charlotte. However, several others have appeared and brought it to the web, though they still have the option to send and receive the messages on your cell phone. I don't advise getting that unless you have unlimited text messages in your phone plan though.

The new mini-blogs are:
Twitter - your posts are called Tweets



Jaiku - allows you to set up groups and has easy search




Hictu - mostly popular in France, Italy, and England
Frazr - French and German
Pownce - allows the biggest posts and also can be used for file transfer (up to 10MB in the free version, sounds more like email) since an invite is required I can't find out much more about it.

Jamie is using Jaiku. My Finnish expert tells me it is pronounced yai-coo to rhyme with haiku but the j is pronounced as a y.

Jaiku is perhaps my favorite as I find it easier to find people I'd like to follow. Twitter doesn't have a built in search but refers you to another site to find people. I found the people I follow by going to Jaiku and following them back to Twitter, which is kind of backwards. When you set up an account you will then want to find your Friends and "follow" what they are doing or saying. As time goes on you will find other people are following you much like we have people from all over the world following this Learning 2.1 blog and the Ning Network. There are still people using their mini-blog to arrange meetings at restaurants or movies but there really isn't a limit to how you use it. It has been used for mini-emails between colleagues, as Jamie did to share a quote a day, or to put out a call for info for a news article. Twitter does have a few good features mostly due to being open for people to modify it however they would like. Both allow you to create "badges" so you can have your feed from Twitter and/or Jaiku show up in your blog or social network page on Ning, MySpace, or other websites. You can even set them up to show up on each other. This is another example of the interconnectedness of Web 2.0 services that we've seen over the last year with many of the "Things" we have explored.

So this week go to either Twitter or Jaiku and set up an account. Post a message, find a few friends to "follow." If you have unlimited text messaging you can go that route but be warned you could find yourself having your phone ring all day long. Alternatively just enjoy Jamie's quotes of the day on Ning. Don't forget to write a blog post about your experience.

August's Discovery Guide

Wow, it's August 1st already. The summer truly seems to be slipping by. But as I look at all the new discoveries that Julia has led us to this past month (BTW: I love Mr. Picasso Head) I'm getting even more excited to see what Mary Kyle has in store for us this month.

Mary is a MacBook lover, but also plays a lot with Windows too. She is a Technology Assistant at ImaginOn's Tech Central and has hobbies and interests that "run to the enviroment and technology." According to Mary, what she likes "most about Web 2.0 is that it bridges the gap between the two operating systems since it runs in a web browser."

Please join me in welcoming Mary as August's Discovery Guide. I can't wait to see what she has in store.

PS: The image is Mary's Meez avartar. Want one of your own? Check out Meez.com

Thing 34: Using the Web for Better Health

For some of us losing weight is never easy. Fortunately, there are nifty online tools available to help you along the way. I've found two that I recommend - FitDay and Nutridiary. They have similar features, and both are helpful. Set a target weight and track the calories consumed and calories burned. You can do this daily or, if that's too much of a time commitment, use these tools to occasionally look up the nutritional content of last night's dinner or find the approximate number of calories you burned working in the yard.

Here's how it works. You enter basic information about yourself (height, weight, age, lifestyle level). Using this information, the website calculates an approximate value for daily basal (metabolic) calories burned and lifestyle calories burned. For any given day, you can enter calories burned from activity, which ranges from biking to household chores to yard work. The sum of these three categories equals the total calories burned per day. Then you can enter the foods consumed on any given day. From this information, the website calculates total calories consumed, as well as where these calories come from and how they are distributed. It also creates a chart of all of the necessary vitamins and minerals and records how much of each you are getting, highlighting any that you are not getting enough of.

The only significant difference that I can find between the two services is that Nutridiary is also a social network. If you diet better with "community" support, perhaps Nutridiary would be a better choice for you.

Discovery Exercise

1. Create an account at Nutridiary or FitDay
2. Fill in the food chart and the activity chart for a typical day. Find out how the number of calories consumed compares to the number of calories burned.
3. Find out whether you are meeting recommended nutrient requirements. Are there any nutrients for which you aren't getting the recommended amount?
4. Evaluate the site in your Learning 2.1 blog.
   

Thing 33: Express Yourself Through Online Art

Since the previous two entries were so darned useful, it seemed entirely appropriate to make this one equally useless. Indeed, the Internet provides endless opportunities to waste time. Here are a few sites where you can be creative, have fun, and, yes, waste time - but hopefully not too much time.

Have an urge to express yourself artistically? Try Mr. Picassohead. It's a drawing program with Picasso-like pieces that you can drag and drop onto a “canvass.” Each piece can be enlarged or reduced, rotated, or colored. When finished, you can add your work of art to their gallery or send the link to family and friends.

More time to kill? Then click over to String Spin to create string art or try your hand at snowflake making.
Then for more fun and fascination, try one of the Falling Sand games. Is this art or is it a game? You decide. Here's the general idea. You are given materials (sand, oil, salt, water, seeds, etc.). You can use these materials to draw on a board (game field?). These elements interact with each other. For example, you draw a plant. You also have the option of drawing fire which will burn the plant. Or you can draw water which will put out the fire and also make the plant grow. There's absolutely no purpose to any of these sites except just idle fun. So if you’re feeling a little creative and would like to kill some time, check one or more of them out.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore one of the following:

• Falling Sand


• Mr. Picassohead


• Snowflake Maker


• Sting Spin
  

2. Blog about your experience.

Thing 32: Online File Storage with Omnidrive

Online file storage sites are not new. However, some of the services have added features that make them hard to resist. I've discovered two that I particularly like: Box.net and Omnidrive. Both allow you 1 gigabyte of storage space, and both are absolutely free (and I REALLY like free). In addition, they both allow you to share your files with others which makes for an optimum opportunity for people to collaborate from different locations. Hmmm ... I can think of a lot of PLCMC teams that might need to collaborate from different locations.

I really love Omnidrive. They have combined forces with Zoho so that you can create new documents or edit ones you've uploaded using Zoho Writer or Zoho Sheet - all right from inside your account. In fact, I created this blog from inside Omnidrive using Zoho Writer.

Maybe I'm easy to impress, but I'm impressed. In the first place, I really like the idea of having a web-based storage site. I often find that I'm at home and want to see a file stored on my computer at work. I can just upload those files, then whether I'm at home or on my next trip to Paris, Rome or London (oh, how I wish), I can view them wherever and whenever I choose.

Then there's the sharing feature of Omnidrive. Want to collaborate on a file? If so Omnidrive sends an email to the people you want to share the file with. You determine the level of access. Files can be read-only or editable by the people you share them with.

Photos are another reason to use Omnidrive. SnipShot is another one of their affiliates. You can upload images, then edit them in SnipShot. You can crop, resize, adjust for brightness/contrast and rotate - in short do most of the things you'd ever want to do to an image and all from inside. There's even a option to view your images as a slideshow. Clever.

Another nice feature of Omnidrive is that they let you create a 'Live Folder' that will fill up with files from an RSS feed of your choice.

I've found lots of reasons to like Omnidrive. I'd like to hear what you think.

Discovery Exercise

1. Open an account at Omnidrive.
2. Upload a text document, then edit it online using Zoho Writer.
3. Upload an image, then edit it online using SnipShot
4. Blog about your experiences using Omnidrive.

Thing 31: Get Organized with Plaxo

There are a number of websites that allow users to set up organizational calendars and task lists for free. Among these are Remember the Milk, Jotlet, and Plaxo.

My personal favorite is Plaxo, which seems to have all of the best components of the others with its own special features. For starters, it can sync data with other programs such as Outlook, AOL, and various Web based email services including Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail. It will automatically pull your contacts and events from any of the programs that you choose, which definitely saves a lot of time and trouble. You can add feeds from Flickr, blogs, and Amazon, which automatically update. You can also subscribe to schedules for sports teams, bands, television shows, etc. using iCal. A great thing about Plaxo is that you can share all or part of your calendar with your contacts, or you can publish it and make it public. Then, of course, there's always the option of just leaving it private and allowing no one else access.

Discovery Exercise

1. Sign up for Plaxo Basic (or if you're willing to spend the money, Plaxo Premium).
2. Add a couple of events to your calendar and be sure to mark recurring events.
3. Try creating separate categories for your calendar (such as home and work), and edit your events into these categories. Make sure you're able to view calendars for each category separately and that you can overlay them onto one another.
4. Make a countdown of important birthdates and anniversaries.
5. Create a task list, and be sure to check things off as you complete them.
6. Pick a band, tv show, or sport of interest and, using icalshare.com, subscribe to it on Plaxo.
7. And finally, be sure to create a blog post about your discovery experience. While you're at it, think of ways you and your coworkers could use Plaxo (or Jotlet or Remember the Milk) during library hours.

Introducing July's Discovery Guide

I don't know about where you are, but it's hot here and it makes sense ... after all it is July! A huge thank you to Jamie who did a super job guiding us through four new discoveries over the last few weeks. This month, our Discovery Guide leader is Julia Hanson.

Julia's a terrific gal and a very seasoned technology trainer who works in the Main Library's Virtual Village. Although she's not one to tout her own accomplishments (& I'm sure she'll blush when she reads this), I do have to share with you one other little tidbit about Julia... she's also a 2005 NYTimes Librarian Award winner.

Anyway, please join me in welcoming Julia as July's Discovery Guide. I hope you're as excited as I am to see what adventures she has in store.