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Image of the Day
Nov 17, 2008 Things That Made Me Laugh Leave a comment
Given the current state or our economy, I thought the following was funny AND appropriate:
Recent Entries
Webtools and Possibilties
Nov 5, 2008 Internet 1 Comment
I came across yet another “upload your photo and have fun with it” site the other day, but found this one to be quite good at manipulating the image and making it “fit” with the intended placement. The effects are nice and entertaining. Anyway, it’s just another example of how the internet is replacing the desktop as the preferred place for applications, etc. That said, It’ll be a long time before I give up Picassa for photo organizing and management of pictures of our family and kids!
The site is http://photofunia.com. Oh, and you haven’t seen Yearbook Yourself yet, you should probably stop by there first!
I made three photos with Photofunia, and here’s the full set.
My Wordle
Nov 2, 2008 Interests, Internet, Personal 1 Comment
Robert Frost’s poetry has long spoken to me, especially “Stopping by Woods…” Thanks to a heads-up from friends Eric Palmer and Tom Woodward, I’ve used Wordle to create a word cloud with appropriate coloring:
Click the image for full size and visit Wikipedia’s entry on this poem to learn more about it…
New SelfCheck Machine for Boatwright
Oct 22, 2008 Libraries, UR Libraries Leave a comment
We recently “recycled” our 3M Model 6210 SelfCheck unit (old and busted) in order to prepare for the arrival of the new V Series unit (new hotness). Our Circulation Supervisor worked hard with 3M support and other staff to get the new one up and running as there was a snafu with our ILS vendor, but that has been resolved and we’re up and running. The old one was running Win95. The new one is on Vista. The old one required a keyboard and mouse to be connected anytime you wanted to update settings, etc. The new one has a web interface we access via IP address. The new one is also much less industrial looking. What we need to focus on now is boosting its use as the old one was only able to garner around 8% of our total circulation volume.
LITA 2008 - 5 Minute Madness Videos Online
Oct 21, 2008 Internet, Libraries Leave a comment
I attended LITA 2008 which started on Oct. 17 and finished this past Sunday (Oct. 19). One of my favorite sessions was the 5 Minute Madness presentation on Saturday morning. Each presenter was restricted to 5 minutes to discuss a topic of their choosing with as many slides as they could squeeze in. I had originally planned on video recording my former co-worker Keith Weimer, but decided to capture the whole session due to the broad range of topics. I’ve processed the videos and have uploaded them to a YouTube playlist. I’m embedding the full playlist below but will also link directly to the list on YouTube. There are a lot of good sessions, so take a few minutes and watch some of the clips. You can also head over to the Eclectic Librarian for some brief coverage of each topic.
Full embedded playlist (mouse over to move between clips):
or:
Playlist - http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A1F2683346CC7224
iPhone & Flip Mino Package Comparison
Oct 7, 2008 Internet Leave a comment
I ordered two Flip Video Minos as part of this year’s equipment requests for work. I want our group to experiment with them in making tutorials, video blogs, etc. to help promote the library’s services and collections. After receiving the first one, I instantly recognized the packaging, and it had Apple written all over it down to the black matte finish on the box. Even after taking the Flip out of its sleeve you’re presented with a flip-open box which elegantly holds the device. Apple’s impact is far and wide…
Lunar Transit of Earth, From 31 Million Miles.
Jul 18, 2008 Interests Leave a comment
Being a space buff, I’m blown away by this Nasa video, (picked up by the BadAstronomy blog). This is the first recording of this event from “the other side.”
Jim Rettig’s Travel Schedule for 2008/2009
May 21, 2008 Internet, Libraries, Tech Tools 1 Comment
My director, Jim Rettig, is currently the President-elect of the American Library Association. I had the idea of creating a mashup of his travel itinerary for the year to help the library community visualize where he’ll be appearing over the course of the next year. The result is below.
Here’s a link to the full version on Google Maps: http://snurl.com/29z6i
To accomplish this, I created a dedicated calendar in Google Calendar, fed the xml data from the calendar into a custom Yahoo! Pipe, and then exported the KML data back to Google Maps.
Props to the team at Lifehacker for picking up on a post of how to do this!
Mainstream Music!
Apr 30, 2008 Personal Leave a comment
I participated in a focus group tonight for a local radio station and based on the song selection, I’m 100% sure it’s our classic rock station. The songs ranged from 80s hair metal to 60s protest songs, with singer/songwriters from the 70s, Southern Rock and New Wave all thrown in for good measure. I’ve done this type of focus group before but not for this particular station. Having been a young child in the late 70s and being a mid 80s teen, many of these songs brought back a lot of memories about good friends and good times. I found myself giving the highest ratings to songs from The Eagles, U2, The Rolling Stones, Jackson Browne, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac, James Taylor, David Bowie, Queen, Tom Petty, and Heart for starters. Most of the songs fell somewhere in the middle of my ratings, which meant that I didn’t overly like or dislike them. For some reason I found myself tired of hearing songs from Elton John, Eric Clapton, and The Beatles. I’m not sure why. There was a total of 900 songs and we listened to “the most representative” 8 second sections of each. I’m not sure if it was the most effective way to gauge users musical tastes and preferences, but hey, I still got paid for the time! 
Here’s a muxtape I’ve put together which represents some of the songs that were sampled. And like Steely Dan asks, are you reelin’ in the years? 
TechTips Blog
Apr 25, 2008 Internet, Tech Tools, UR Libraries Leave a comment
So a few weeks ago, I began distributing tech tips every Friday afternoon to our library staff via our internal mailing list. My goal in doing this is to share some of the more helpful web services and tools that I come across on a regular basis. Recently my director asked me to approach our VP for IS (we’re part of our campus IS group) to see if this would be something of value to the rest of IS. She gave approval and also thinks this is a good idea to try. She also suggested using a blog for archival purposes. Working with our Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, I now have another blog installed on their WordPress MU platform. I will continue to distribute tips via email, but will simultaneously post them to the blog for wider distribution and archiving. Your comments and feedback are welcomed! I may also aggregate them here for further coverage.
