What advantages/limitations do you see with using a Ning?
How could you use a Ning in a work environment?
Well a clear advantage to using Ning is the price is right, its free:) Unfortunately, there are limitations involving the storage space and bandwidth with the free service. However, you can chose to pay for more storage & bandwidth, but there is a maximum capacity. Once this maximum capacity is reached you will need to move your network to a hosting service that provides unlimited bandwidth and storage which is no easy task.
As I began learning more about Ning I realized some in the world of education are utilizing its service as a platform for online learning. Ning provides you with the ability to easily create a web page, social network, and blog for classmates, friends, work colleagues or any other type of community so I am not surprised it has become a tool in education.
What information/lessons should libraries take away from the Boyd reading
The Boyd readings provide great insight to the user population of both facebook and myspace. Boyd attributes many of the differences in user population to social status. Boyd's observations show that many individuals from lower socioeconomic class prefer myspace over facebook. However, Boyd does not reference "socio-economic class" as a division in income, but rather adopts sociologists, Nalani Kotamraju's argument that "class divisions in the United States has more to do with lifestyle and social stratification than income. " This concept in itself is quite interesting, providing a new perspective of the term which may have implications for the library world. Perhaps the differences in social class which traditionally affect the access to information could be researched from this perspective. Rather than attributing these differences to income, the differences in lifestyle and social stratification could be studied further.
There are many differences among the two social networking platforms, and it is my opinion that individuals choose one service over another due to the structure, features, and niche market that it may serve. Boyd discusses the emergence of various social networking sites such as six degrees, friendster, Orkut, myspace and facebook among others. It seems that members tend to migrate from one service to another based on performance, cost, accessibility and flexibility. Boyd's readings nicely highlights many of these differences which could prove to be very useful to the librarian looking to reach the teenage population. Librarians should also take note of how quickly one SNS can rise in popularity and should stayed informed of the newest SNS hits.
The following screen cast will show you how to add an application to your myspace profile using the application gallery. Since recently upgrading to the myspace 2.0 interface I have just begun adapting to the new design. Due to the learning curve I have provided quite a basic demo, but I hope it is still enjoyable none the less.
What makes services like MySpace or Facebook "sticky"?
An easier question might be, what doesn't make a social networking site (SNS) like MySpace and Facebook sticky? As stated in one of the class screencasts;it combines various different aspects of the social software world such as the blog, microblog, rss feeds, media enhancements with picture/video embedding, as well as various ways to customize the profile and interface of your site. Not only does it combine all of these great tools, many social networking sites are also very user friendly, allowing even a novice user to create a web page, post a blog, add pictures or video, and customize the look within minutes. With all these fabulous tools so readily available, who wouldn't want to spend time dabbling in various unique ways to represent yourself or business?
A member can also just as easily get lost in browsing the profiles of friends or perhaps those of other members. Whether it be checking out the photos on a friend's profile or perhaps searching for potential new friends with similar interests, SNS sites provide numerous methods for interactions via posts, comments, email, and instant messaging services, although not all SNS's provide all of these features.
Personally I have a profile on both myspace and facebook. I do check the sites on a regular basis, mostly the profiles of my closest friends in everyday life. I like to view any new photos they may have posted as well as read any new blogs or tweets. However, I find it very easy to lose track of time finding yourself spending more time perusing the site than you had initially planned. Considering my friends are fairly active users with frequent updates, I found it very easy to get stuck in the "sticky" web of SNS :)
I really enjoyed viewing everyone's videos, and I must say we do have quite a creative group! I have included a quick description of some of my favorites below.
Lauren's entertainment video featuring pictures from Costa Rica was great. I loved the beautiful pictures and thought her selection of music was fabulous. You can view her video here.
Heather's video featuring strong characters for strong girls was also very nicely done. It also sends a great message to young girls and reaches them using both music and a media in which they could easily relate. To view her video please click here.
Finally, I found Gabrielle's entertainment video to be outstanding :) She was very creative and thoughtful with her graphics and choice of music. It was very very entertaining. You can check out her video below or by clicking here.
Let me begin with a quick definition provided by whatis.com:
An Easter egg is an unexpected surprise, perhaps a message, an image, or a sound, hidden in a Web site or in an application program.
You can also check out wikipedia's more lengthy definition here.
Years ago when I used to teach software application programs, I would usually end the class with an easter eggs hunt. Unfortunately, many of the fun easter eggs once found in the Microsoft programs are no longer available in the more recent verisons. As per wikipedia, "Microsoft formally stopped including Easter eggs in its programs as part of its Trustworthy Computing Initiative in 2002."
I have provided a screen capture of two easter eggs as well as a quick blurb about each egg and the steps to locate each below.
The Kitchen Sink - Mozilla Firefox
Type "about kitchensink" in the address bar of any version of Mozilla Firefox and hit enter.
If you have trouble locating "the sink" click here to view it.
Do educational videos stand a chance vs. entertainment videos? Why/Why not?
Videos on the web have greatly enhanced collaboration on the internet and web 2.0 as a whole. Whether it be your favorite television show, news broadcast, or demo of an exercise workout, you can find it on the web. You can even easily produce your own video with the help of a basic webcam and upload it to youtube or blip.tv within minutes.
Of course the most popular videos on the web may not be classified as educational, I do believe that educational videos do stand a chance. Prior to reading the PEW Internet & American Life Project I assumed the most popular videos were those with comedic value. The Pew reports that amongst adult internet users, comedy videos placed third with educational videos placed fourth (22%) amongst the user group however more interesting "Yes to any" and "News" placed first and second respectively. Even without the viral nature of humorous videos on the web, the news and educational videos still rank amongst the top. Not to mention, that "yes to any" was overwhelming the winner with a 57%. All of these statistics clearly indicate that educational videos do stand a chance against entertainment videos.
I have included a short video featuring CEO of Cisco Systems discussing the power of video. To view the original video click here.
What do we have in common? what are our differences?
Scils598f08 I really enjoyed viewing everyone's photos. It was nice to place some faces to the names of my fellow classmates. I noticed several of us are nature lovers with various pictures of scenic landscapes. Many of us are also animal lovers, with man's best friend showing up in several shots...As for the major differences, some of my classmates seemed to have quite a skill behind the camera where I am definitely an amateur in that department. Several of you were also quite creative with the photography the pictures of the two shadows and family of skies comes to mind, Great Job :)
ScilsEd-Experience As expected plenty of shots of laptops and desk shots. Also oddly enough books were also a popular pic (lol) and I simply adored the picture of the little girl peering behind the large stack. Again I must comment on the creativity of some of the pictures :) I loved the fatal error with the bags of chips, simply hysterical. Especially since I have a small bag of 100 Calorie Doritos next to me as we speak :)
I apologize for the late posts, but I had a doggie emergency this evening and just returned from the vet :( But no worries all is well ....
As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, Monday evening the conference hosted a private concert for all attendees. I was lucky enough to see the Foo Fighters perform. So I decided to create a montage of photos from the evening accompanied by their song "My Hero."
One of the guess speakers at the Dreamforce conference was Neil Young. He presented the LincVolt, a smart car utilizing clean automobile propulsion technology the dream he was able to turn into a reality. He and his group utilized salesforce collaboration techniques to gather the knowledge to build the vehicle as well as build the site where potential customers can request to have their cars converted. Salesforce is also used to collect and compile the output data from the control center calculating mileage, total distance traveled etc.which can also be viewed here.
I found the idea of LincVolt to be quite interesting, refurbishing old vehicles and thought some of the pictures I took from the conference would serve as a good movie. Who wouldn't enjoy the thought of using a car to power your home :)
So as some of you may have read from my previous blog postings, this past week I was fortunate enough to attend the Dreamforce convention's Global Gathering conference in San Francisco, CA. However, up to this point I haven't really discussed much about the service. Since I plan on using some of the information and photos I collected during my experience at the event, I figured I should tell you more about the service itself.
Salesforce.com is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions vendor, which is delivered using the software as a service model. In the past software programming was once static, Saas allows for dynamic attributes where the vendor can click a button and deploy a new version to over 47,000 companies utilizing its services.
Salesforce.com's Platform-as-a-Service product is known as the Force.com Platform. The platform allows external developers to create add-on applications that integrate into the main Salesforce application and are hosted on salesforce.com's infrastructure. This setup provides a collaborative environment where partners are able to build on the platform allowing users to share applications. So not only is the CRM's design and structure built in a collaborative environment, completely customizable, but the platform itself is as well :)
I have quickly summarized a few of the many features that make this tool extremely powerful:
Deployment There is no software involved with the salesforce vendor. All services are web-based so updates to the service are rolled out seamlessly without the user having to perform any system changes. The service also provides price points for non-profit vendors making it quite affordable for higher ed, and perhaps the library world. Design & Structure The interface is easily customizable. A user can easily change field labels, add or remove fields without having the skill set of a DBA. Many of the table relationships are pre-defined. However, the user can easily add additional lookup fields to establish their own connections. A more advanced user can even choose to change the code driving the web pages themselves with the complete flexibility of html/xml code.
Integration (with other web services) In addition to the web-based interface and design, Salesforce has many partners and offers a Web Services API enabling easy integration with other systems. One partner is Google which allows for full integration of their products which include Google Calendar, Doc's, Talk, Adwords, Analytics etc. Some other systems that can be integrated include Facebook, Plone, even Mobile devices, PDA's, and much much more.
"It's the best of both worlds: a complete, fully customizable customer relationship management (CRM) solution that's built on the cloud computing model, so you can get up and running right away and get more bang for your buck than you ever could with traditional software." - salesforce.com
I could blog on and on about the genius of Marc Benioff and the other salesforce creators, but I would rather provide a brief video clip that talks more about the technical evolution of Saas and the platform as a service concept as well as demo's some of its uniquely powerful tools. I think the video definitely gets it right as my one word summary of the service so far is simply amazing.
To view the original video click here or watch a short webcast from the conference here.
Found this video on Youtube and found it hysterical :)
Ever have trouble printing a document? Did you ever get so frustrated you considered attempting to photocopy your monitor?? Check out this guy's day at the office and hopefully it may give you a chuckle and help brighten yours...Hope you enjoy!
You can also go directly to the original video by clicking here.
Can libraries as a whole effectively utilize the "long tail" of our collections? Is it worth it? What would we have to do?
In order to successfully implement the long tail concept with libraries, I suggest following the nine rules to help create a thriving environment for the long tail to grow. However, like the music industry, legal restrictions such as copyright may impede the rate of growth. I have listed a brief description of the nine rules below, along with my suggestions as to how they may applicable to the library world:
More inventory- In order to create the long tail phenomenon, first and foremost an ample selection of inventory must be available. Since traditional shelf space is limited, the optimal collection would be a virtual with a corresponding virtual catalog.
Let customers do the work - Create a user interface that allows them to search the virtual catalog and easily locate their need. With so much added noise as you travel further down the tail, findability is a crucial element that needs to be addressed.
One size doesn't fit all - There are really three rules that fit this one idea which I listed below. Put quite simply, most of the long tail success was from providing an almost unlimited number of choices in distribution methods, products, and prices.
One distribution doesn't fit all
One product doesn't fit all
One price doesn't fit all
Share Information - The ability to offer recommended readings to patrons would also help in crease the length of the tail by driving customers to lesser known novels.
Think "and" not "or" - Rather than assuming a consumer is looking for one or the other of an item, our thinking needs to shift to "or". Providers need to become conditioned to offer multiple selections.
Trust the market to do your job - Avoid pre-filtered content. Unlike the old days of limited shelf space, the virtual world allows you to offer every product available. The market will dictate to the producer the supply & demand as opposed to vice versa.
Understand the power of tree - More choice is changing demand
There are clear advantages and disadvantages to using podcast vs text based blogs. One of the clear disadvantage with any text based entity is that you lose a sense of inflection which is often vital to communicating a message. When people communicate verbally they are able to stress certain points by raising their voice, changing their tone, or take pauses when necessary to add more emphasis. These speech tools are lost in a text based environment. Sure we can add bold text or use ALL CAPS to add more stress, but this pales in comparison to the flexibility of the verbal communication.
However, podcasts are not a perfect tool either. Many times users may want a transcript or text based document of the message communicated in the audio file. So only using a podcast may have its drawbacks as well. In my opinion, using a blended model of both podcasts as well as text based blogging is the most beneficial and well rounded approach.
As I mentioned in a previous assignment, last year I was fortunate enough to attend the salesforce convention in San Francisco, CA. Salesforce.com is the worldwide leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) services. I was lucky enough to be able to participate in the Dreamforce conference again, and am creating this podcast from San Francisco. As you can imagine after traveling over 51/2 hours via plane with a crying baby on board, driving & checking into the hotel, experiencing difficulty with my Sprint wireless card, and attending the welcome reception I am quite tired L So I will keep this as brief as possible…
For the next three days I plan on attending various administrator training sessions as well as research some of the services and products available through the salesforce partners. The conference also keeps us quite busy with after hour events. For example, tomorrow evening they are hosting a private concert for all attendees with the Foo Fighters scheduled to perform. They also have some great guest speakers lined up. Last year I was fortunate enough to hear George Lucas speak. You would never guess that he is so actively involved with edutopia, a hands on learning initiative (very interesting please check out the link!!). Once again I am looking forward to this year's guest speakers some of which include, Neil Young (Musician), Larry Brilliant (Google.org) and Sheryl Sanberg (Facebook). If you want to see what else I may be up to this week please feel to browse the conference website here.
I am a Rutgers College alumni (99') and MLIS graduate ('10) at Rutgers University. I am also a Rutgers staff member and work as a Manager of Academic Programs with the Continuing Studies. I create and maintain various databases, and manage practically all digital information for our off site locations in Freehold, Mays Landing, and North Branch locations as well as help oversee the digital data for all off campus departments university wide.
