My Gadget Life

Some thoughts from Michael’s talk:
- Control your technolust - sexy technology
- beware “technomust”
- technodivorce - can we let go of dead tech?, cabinet of dead & dying technology, library garage sale
- article: “planning for wireless in kansas city”
- user-centered planning
- expose hidden costs: training, staff time, promotion
- technology landscape: bringing structure to unstructured data, open source software, security, authentication and DRM, distributed, component-based software
- best practices for instant messaging: make IM part of your technology plan (”the millienials”), promote your screen name, add your IM name to your business cards, sig files, web site, use a multi-client, use away messages well
- report and de-brief your staff, give them numbers
- blog/wiki your planning for new projects
- be discoverable: offer access via handhelds, check your search rankings, offer RSS feeds of important content
- Stephen Abram: The Google Opportunity
- new Mac OS (Tiger) has screensave with RSS feeds built in (he demo’ed this), also Safari browser has RSS button built in
- make your own downloadable toolbar for users
- jybe.com (co-browsing plugin)
- unplug - get away from the computer!

Some ideas from Jenny’s talk:
- use a wiki for OPAC documentation: let users ask questions
- password protect your wiki to hide from spammers (most people don’t have time to keep doing the rollbacks to kill spam)
- del.icio.us has 50,000 users & growing 20-30%/month
- ideas for del.icio.us for libraries: Thomas Ford Memorial Library:
Here is a list of things we’ve bookmarked recently - they show that with RSS feed for their tags. Cool.
- del.icio.us / popular/ reference: Google cheatsheet is number 1
- people use the tag: howto
- del.icio.us: inbox - subscribe to people you think are interesting
- Furl is not as social as del.icio.us - really cool but not as many people using it. They give you 5 Gb of space. When you bookmark, it saves the whole page.
- Furl tags are not public - you can only access your own stuff.
- How Joe Q. is using social bookmark managers:
Furl ideas from the public - gift ideas, xmas wish list, housing rental listings, streaming music stations, job listings, school work - save and retrieve online research, reading lists.
- Rubric and Unalog
- Citeulike.org (academic del.icio.us)
- Connotea
- U.Minnesota blogs: integrated SFX into blogs: link to SFX URL (I’ve seen this before, it’s great).
- Flickr could be a daylong session.
- Flickr great for current events.
- SeattlePublicLibrary on Flickr.
- Flickr calendar view - show when your books are due.
- make a tag for your library on Flickr
- photos of books, add comments with links to the OPAC
- more Flickr ideas: teaching 7th grade math, geography (Mappr - uses Flickr photos to do cool stuff), available for reference within Flickr - going where your users are!
- promote the Yahoo Worldcat toolbar to get direcctly to your holdings
- Technorati
- we should be making our own toolbars for libraries
- “books we like” - tagging recommendations
- libraries could add “tags” in addition to subject headings
- getting our information, expertise and resources in the mix (of social tools)
- we should examine tags and folksonomies
- use RSS to put your content somewhere else, you can appear in other people’s web sites and aggregators
- rss feeds for new books, etc.
- spurl.net (js button) - they give you the HTML to put their feed into your web site
- blogs + RSS = better ranking in Google, Bloglines, Feedster, PubSub, BlogPulse, puts you into the online conversation
- Yahoo360, 43 Things, Audioscrobbler, Last.FM, NetFlix, GPS, RFID
- http://www.sls.lib.il.us/infotech/presentations/2005/neasist.pdf

Megan Fox is giving an overview: Tools in Personal Environments: A Taste of New Technologies. Here are a few ideas that I’m interested in:
- there is a mobile edition of Bloglines (for phones)
- Personalized RSS: Library Elf (I’m using this one already)
- Podcast: Schoolhouse Rock
- use wikis for staff manuals (reference docs) (UWinnipeg Library)
- Wiki for the ALA Conference in Chicago, everyone can contribute, local restaurants, free wifi hotspots, etc.
- let your users create subject guides using Wikis, or book recommendations from users
- IM for reference (taking off)
- Dawgtel (Southern Illinois Univ. Carbondale): text message service
- Google Toolbar (I just started using the A9 Toolbar myself).
- desktop search: she talked about Google Deskbar (for Windows), but now that the new Mac OS Tiger is out, I’ll be trying Spotlight as soon as I get my new Powerbook (coming soon!)
- Bloglines bookmarklet
- Yahoo MyWeb
- A9 toolbar: just got this myself yesterday
- idea: take a photo of the library’s new books, put it on Flickr, and link to the new book list on the library’s web site

There is a lot more, but I just wanted to capture a few thoughts for myself here.

I’m working with the NEASIST Program Committee on our spring program about various new technolgies that libraries are experimenting with. Just finished a bibliography for the event. And we have a blog. I just love all this stuff: rss, syndication, podcasting, social bookmarking, etc. I’ve been feeling so many “wows!” and “aha’s!” lately when I try all these new tools. It seems like we’re in a period of more intense and quick change (than usual) with Internet technologies these days. It’s fun!