Forums and Ning

Online forums seem like a great way to draw people together, for example, as a medium for "conversations" about the books people have enjoyed. It's like an interactive book review which could draw out the different aspects of the book and occur over a period of time. Alternatively the forum could be used for a more instantaneous or "live" chat following a seminar, providing a more informal discussion with an author or presenter and allowing a greater number of people to participate.

There is a range of software available to run forums with options for downloading and hosting the forum yourself or having it hosted by a third party. Wikipedia has tables providing a comparison of a number of different software options and sites based on factors such as price, threading, whether or not the user can select the theme and whether images can be included. Another option is to use a site such as Ning which provides not just forums but a whole social networking site including chat. There is a Library 2.0 site that has been set up on Ning. It's worth having a look at this site. I haven't tried setting up an "online community" on there yet but think it would be really interesting to try.

Tiny URL

TinyURL.com - shorten that long URL into a Tiny URL232010
Originally uploaded by Shellingfordinjugem

Leading on from sending tweets you don't have enough characters to send a long website address so the answer is Tiny URLs. A website that converts all web addresses to a small and easy to access Tiny URL.

You can send the Tiny URL in an email, a tweet and instant message and the link will send you to the correct website address each time. The tinyurl is unique to each website address and never expires.

Try this one for size Turn this URL turning the long website address below into a tinyURL
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqmap.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bIgpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvNlygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrfXNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

into this tinyURL:
http://tinyurl.com/6

Twittering

My extended Twitter page
Originally uploaded by wboswell

Twitter, the social networking website that allows people to communicate with friends, family etc in short text messages answering the question 'What are you doing?'. You can send tweets via your mobile phone, instant messaging tools and using the simple but effective website.

Evan Williams the founder of Blogger has found this simple yet effective website for family and friends to keep in touch.

Not only are family and friends using this service but politicians are now using Social Networking tools to attract the younger generation. It was used widely in the American US Presidental campaign along with other Social Networking tools. Our own Prime Minister and Leader of the Oppposition have their own twitter accounts.

Out of interest Lance Armstrong is a regular user of the service and fans of him knew when approximately he would arrive in Australia as he had not sent a Tweet in severeal hours.

How you could adapt this to a Library I am not entirely sure, but it looks to be the way of the future in the current atmosphere.

Top Technology Developments in 2009

It was interesting to read Kathryn Greenhill's interpretation of 3 of the Top Technology Developments in 2009

These included -

The Semantic Web - a new name for linked data. It is about creating conceptual relationships between things found on the internet. Similar to the traditional library card catalog - have an item in hand, give it a unique identifier, describe it and have all descriptions in one place. Then allow people to navigate to the space.

Blogging - although it is here to stay people have discovered how hard blogs are to maintain and how hard it is to keep coming up with meaningful things to say. For me a wiki seems a more organised approach with perhaps a page for the blogging format of "New Technology - What's Out There??".

Word/tag clouds - very fashionable and a whole lot like concordances - one of the first types of indexes. Perhaps this is a way around organising the rambling blog. (Sorry fellow bloggers)

Bye for now,

Talk to you after the Online Conference...

New Year Resolution: 1680 * 1050

Well it looks like I will be breaking my resolve never to use computers for the year, proving too difficult yet again to go without. So perhaps I should go with more, ala Darien Library's new and stupefyingly gorgeous Surface! Mr. Blyberg of said establishment has a brief chat on this amazing new technology, and the best part you ask? They are giving it to the KIDS first! Yep, the most advanced piece of hardware in the library to the youngest users, based on the fact that its interactive and intuitive interface will be something children will be able to virtually pick up and use. For mine it really is a wonderful piece of technology that multiple people can use at a time, and of course I wonder just how much this piece of technology costs. I wonder when they will be for personal use...