I'm Hearing Even More Things

Well, I bought me a Creative Zen MP3 player and blogged about the experience of downloading my first audio book on the Library Shhh-out Out Blog recycling the "I'm Hearing Things" title.

I am quite in love with my new little gadget and am really enjoying listening to my first downloaded audio book in the car.

#22 I'm Hearing Things

wOw! There's a ton of audio books out there and all sorts of ways to get them. While I am pleased with all the contemporary material available on Netlibrary and Overdrive, it's hard not to be amazed and overwhelmed by all the old books on Project Gutenberg. A huge number of 19th century novels by H. Rider Haggard can be found as ebooks, way beyond what you can find these days without trawling the old book stores--and two are in audio format. The download instructions there are not as complete as those at Netlibrary or Overdrive, but I think I could muddle through.

I found the World eBook Fair to be a little more obscure. The very small annual fee seemed okay, although puzzling since they get a large portion of materials, including eBooks from Project Gutenberg, it seems. I did get excited by all the science fiction titles from Baen until I saw the small print that explained that they were sample chapters. Booooo! Hisssssss!

It would have been great to have a look inside the scanned children's books, because they would be more like the real books than the text only Project Gutenberg versions, but I wasn't about to plop down eight-bucks-something just out of curiosity. I did enjoy looking at the covers, though. I was surprised to see some scans of Beatrix Potter books published by Warne (now owned by Penguin). I assume they got permission.

There are many collections on the World eBook Fair that think I would never use--but you never know when you might need The Victorian Prose Archive or The Swami Center Collection. It's nice to know they exist. The various collections can provide tips of where else to go on the Internet to find eBooks.

Disappearing Zombies

Yikes! My Zombie News Feed has disappeared. It must have shambled off somewhere over the holidays. I guess I'll have to try and reinstate the link before I move on to the home stretch.

Back again--I've discovered the problem. Feedster is DEAD. Maybe it will become a zombie web site now. I guess I'll see if there is another site that does the same thing.

Back again, again--I did a Google search for news widgets and came up with the suggestion of using a Grazr widget to post a Google Blog Search. Voila! It seems to be working for now (see right column) but we shall see.

#21 Podcasts Have Nothing to do With Whales

According to podcast.net, Podcast Alley, and Yahoo Audio there are no podcasts about me. That's funny, because I was interviewed for a podcast last year. Check out the May 25, 2006 episode of Mr. Ron's Once a Week. It probably doesn't show up on a search because my name doesn't appear in the written description. I did find a weekly podcast about circus freaks called The Human Marvels and added it to my Bloglines account. I already had a science fiction show saved there.
Podcasts are broadcast with many forms of software players so there seems to be something for everyone.
Libraries are starting to use podcasts for news, storytime, booktalks, author interviews, etc. There appears to be a variety of on-line tools to create podcasts. Maybe we should do an audio version of the Library Shhhout-out.

#20 Video Killed the Radio Star

I've been checking out YouTube for quite a while now. You can spend hours there. It's a fun way of getting a glimpse of "where are they now" celebrities, old rock bands, shows from the early days of British TV, and even family members. Yes, my cousin who is a singer is on YouTube. There are clips of his TV appearance on a British TV talent show in the 90's where contestants had to pretend to be famous celebrities, some shaky video of a pub show, and even a clip he loaded of himself landing a plane.

Here he in on Stars in Your Eyes as Bobby Hadfield of the Righteous Brothers.


I was interested in that huge list of other video hosting sites linked to from the Learning 2.0 site. Whew! Who would have the time to explore them all? I see Yahoo videos cropping up more and more these days, though, and some Google video.

I like YouTube's social networking aspect where you can find out more about the person who posted the video and find out their other posts. The comments can be interesting, although there are a lot of trolls.

YouTube might be a good way of sharing programming tips with other libraries or among staff. You'd have to watch out about violating copyright, however, and only use fair use portions of copyrighted materials. It would be great for displaying programs with content created by the participants, though--like improvised drama, booktalks, poetry readings, etc. Permissions would have to be obtained from the performers. Promotional pieces for the library could be produced and linked to YouTube from other sites.

#19 Exploring Web Award Winners

I've tried out some winning 2.0 sites.

I can't get excited about fuzzmail. I previewed it on the site to find out that it just shows you an animation of the way the message was created with the spelling corrections and editing included. Mostly you just don't want people knowing what a spelling dork you are. The message I sent myself hasn't shown up in my in-box yet. I don't instantly see any library use.

Wow! With Shopify you can create your own on-line store as easily as creating a blog. This might come in handy for libraries that have a gift shop.

That's the first time I've looked at Craig's List. Interesting and useful in general. Again, can't think of a library use. I noticed that people don't give away things free in England like they do in this country. I guess this is a land of excess and opulence.

Okay, I knew going in that Cocktail Builder wouldn't have any library applications except for recovering from the library when I get home--I had to look, anyway. I now know how to make a drink called Lady Godiva's Nipples. I've already tagged that puppy on del.icio.us and I'll be picking up the Chambord raspberry liqueur on the way home.

I bet there's a good use for swivel. It looks like a useful tool for putting statistics in understandable visual format--maybe circulation, programs statistics, work flow information, etc. I can't tell right away if you can keep your charts private, however. That may have an impact on what data one wants to upload. I don't see a quick explanation of how to, though.

wufoo: Well, on-line forms and surveys--of course that might be handy to get patron in put and staff opinions. The site is explained a lot better than swivel, too.

ning: Make your own social networking site. That might be a fun way of creating spaces for people to discuss books, etc. or for staff to discuss training.

On to the next thing.

Google Docs is Not a Shipping Company

Well, you know, as frustrating as Zoho was, it's a lot cooler looking than Google Docs, but it already knew who I was when I opened the site because I have a gmail account and I had already logged in there today.

There are some similar features but the interface is not in your face. That is good and bad. The view is less cluttered so may be less daunting to some, but you have to look behind tabs and drop downs to find some features.

You can insert comments in a variety of colors but they seem to be more intrusive; they don't disappear into a small icon when you finish. But neither do they duplicate themselves when you press enter and start a new line which is what happened to me in Zoho for some reason. There's no tagging.

You can track changes made to the document from the Revision tab. I didn't see this in Zoho, but I didn't look for it either. In both programs you can get contextual menus by right clicking. This is useful. You can collaborate on a document with others, and post to your blog from Google Docs as well as publish the document on the web for others to see, as in Zoho.

I had to search further to find the document settings and change the default font.

I think someone who wants very basic functionality and gets confused by too many options might like this better, but might get frustrated trying to find the document settings. The fact that the active document and the home page with saved files are in two seperate tabs may bother some. I like the way Zoho has it all on one screen.