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2007 October archive at infodoodads

Archive for October, 2007

musicovery - discover a rainbow of music

Published by Margaret on October 30, 2007
Categories: Music and Visual 3 Comments

musicoveryGarrett Santos at Webupon blogged on “15 Ridiculously Useful Websites” last month. One of the sites I hadn’t seen was musicovery, a web radio player that you can “tune” to different moods, genres, dance tempos, and decades. So you can have combinations of music from dark to positive and energetic to calm, slow or fast dance music, 80’s music (why?) or anything from classic to metal.

As each song plays, it shows a web of connections to other songs that match the settings you chose. All the genres have corresponding colors of the rainbow, from red to violet. When musicovery plays Eric Clapton’smusicovery2 “Traveling Riverside Blues,” a pulsing blue circle radiates from the song’s place in the display. Oh , the pretty colors… The selection of music can be changed so that you listen to “Hits”(Rolling Stones), “nonHits” (Leadbelly), or Discovery ( Ze Manel).

There are two levels of service: free members have lo-fi quality, the ability to mark favorite songs and ban duds; premium members can have direct access to their favorite songs, hi-fi sound quality and no ads starting at 4 dollars a month. For either the free or premium membership, Musicovery opens another view into the colorful world of music.


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Everyscape - get inside!

Published by Hannah on October 29, 2007
Categories: Maps and Visual 0 Comments

I just read about Everyscape this morning, and if you haven’t heard about it yet, I hope I can convince you to check it out too!  I talked about Google Streetview a couple of months ago, and Everyscape is kind of like that - only arguably better (if not yet bigger).  Google Streetview lets you see different cities on the ground through real pictures in a 360 degree traveling experience - so does Everyscape.  However, Everyscape lets you (and me) add pictures too AND you can add indoor shots.  (I’ll get to why I think that could be cool in a second).  Okay, so the downside is, Everyscape only covers 4 U.S. cities at the moment, so I guess realistically, even if I added pictures from Corvallis or Portland or Bend, they wouldn’t show up yet.  However, I would bet it’s only a matter of time until they expand further.

So why could this be cool for Ms. or Mr. Librarian?  Well, check out the Aspen Everyscape for an example.  They start you off on autopilot, and you’re quickly guided to a rental condo where you explore the inside to see if it’s a place you might want to plunk down several thousand for on your next vacation.  Okay, I bet you’ve already made the leap with me - what if you could use this as a way for new/potential users to explore your library?  This could be a really fun (and a not too difficult) way to create an online tour for your library.  Aspen has several cultural centers that have already jumped on board - the Opera House, the outdoor theater…

Overall, the navigation is pretty simple, logical links are included for places near your initial place of interest, and the visual experience is quite rich.  So head on over and give it a try!


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Ski Bonk–find freshies faster

Published by Kate on October 28, 2007
Categories: Mash-ups 5 Comments

Though I love fall, as a skier I have to admit that it also makes me excited for winter. October is the month when we start going to ski movies, ogling new equipment, and obsessively checking the snow cams. Now Ski Bonk, a ski hill mash-up, makes keeping an eye on ski conditions a little more efficient by mapping current conditions and snow cams from all the resorts near you onto a single page.

Ski Bonk screenshot

Time is of the essence when you’re deciding whether conditions warrant trying for first chair or staying in bed for a few more minutes. Hovering over each resort mapped on Ski Bonk will instantly give you the name of the resort, opening information (including number of open lifts,) base snow information (the number of inches already on the ground,) and inches of new snow. Clicking on the icon will also give you current weather information, forecasted snowfall, and a tab to view the resorts’ snow cams, plus links to the resort’s webpage and more.

A mashup of several sites including Weather Underground and snocountry.com, Ski Bonk is only as good as the data it can compile. I did notice there were a few wonky reports (like an open resort located in the middle of Portland,) but I suspect the numbers will start to make more sense as ski season really gets underway. I know I’ll be checking back.


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WordReference - Spanish, Italian, and French Translation and Forums

Published by Laurie on October 27, 2007
Categories: Academic, Communication and Instructional 3 Comments

I recently met a new professor on campus; she is Argentinian and teaches Latin American Literature and speaks Spanish, Portuguese, and English. We both have a love for all things web 2.0 (we met each other after she sent me a message in Facebook - that’s right, you too can make friends through Facebook).

Last week, after explaining to her what the word “nix” meant, she told me her favorite Spanish-to-English translation website is WordReference. She said I should write about it in infodoodads because the WordReference Forums is the website she uses for translation.

When you visit the WordReference homepage you’ll notice right away it has a very simple web 1.0 design, but don’t let that fool you, because this is a popular website. Select the “language forums” link and you will find a thriving and active online community, for example the Spanish-to-English General Language sub-forum has approximately 1,300,000 posts! You can search the forums by keyword and user name.

Also, you can install a WordReference dictionary toolbar (English > French, Spanish, or Italian; or French, Spanish, Italian >English) for both Internet Explorer and Firefox.


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Stixy: create your own online bulletin board

Published by Jane on October 25, 2007
Categories: Productivity, Social and Visual 0 Comments

Are you a bulletin board person? Growing up we had a chalkboard, bulletin board and huge calendar that my mom used to organize herself and all of my siblings. As a kid, I always found it intriguing to read what everyone was up to. As an adult, I still enjoy browsing the bulletin boards in town. I get a great sense of the community’s interests and am warmed by seeing mine shared with others.
Stixy can be used for the same purpose in the online world. Will this physical experience translate to the online world? Hard to say. Many of us thought people wouldn’t read books online and they do.
stixy
I easily posted photos, created a mini to do list and named my stixyboard. I could have added a document and customized much more than I did. I chose to create a profile so I could email my friend about the board. Maybe she’ll add something! Since she has a newborn & lives on the other coast it can be hard to connect.
I liked that I could play around with Stixy before committing to a profile. The image I posted displays all of the options, you can choose to hide them so you have more “bulletin board” space. Plus, more space is available when you are working with Stixy, you can add content vertically and horizontally.Very fun and easy to play with and use!
p.s. I showed my partner my page and at first she was unimpressed, why would this be helpful, etc. Then, as she played with it she started asking if she and her colleagues could share documents and notes and wondering if this could help them communicate more easily especially, when they work different hours and in different locations. Love it!


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signal map - can you hear me now?

Published by Michael on October 24, 2007
Categories: Communication 1 Comment

Signal Map is a pretty nifty service. Users mark signal strength (or dead zones) for their wireless carrier on a map. The map can then be searched by address or postal code, along with a specific carrier or all carriers. This looks to be a neat tool for folks looking into switching to a different carrier, traveling, or moving to a new area. We all know that the coverage maps produced by the carrier companies are never completely accurate.signal map screenshot


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Exploratree - exploratory thinking

Published by Margaret on October 23, 2007
Categories: Academic, Instructional and Visual 0 Comments

exploratreeExploratree is a “free web resource where you can download, use and  make your own interactive thinking guides.” What is a thinking guide?  Seemingly related to concept maps for brainstorming, or  pros and cons lists for decision-making, thinking guides are tools or frameworks for thinking through an issue and considering different aspects or perspectives.   It’s exciting to see a tool that promotes and enables creative and critical thinking.

Exploratree has a collection of ready-made thinking guides, some with intriguing names like Futures Wheel, Lotus Blossom, Compass Rose, and Digging up Roots (from left to right below). These are highly visual and interactive and encourage students to think for themselves.

futures wheelcompassroseroots

Teachers can start with existing ideas and adapt them, or create new thinking guides. Students can work with thinking guides in class, as homework, on their own, or as part of a group. The guides can be shared by e-mailing them to individuals or groups. 

Exploratree was built as a part of the Enquiring Minds program run by FutureLab and with funding from Microsoft.


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RSSCalendar - you can’t say you didn’t know

Published by Hannah on October 22, 2007
Categories: Communication and Productivity 0 Comments

Having trouble keeping track of your calendar? Need yet another way to be reminded of the important events in your life? RSSCalendar makes it (pretty) easy to insert your calendar onto any webpage you have any control over, and voila! yet another way to keep track of (or publicize) what’s going on in your life (or your organization’s life as the case  may really be). RSSCalendar is a free service that allows you to add events to a calendar, and then gives you a line of code that you can paste into your website that shows your calendar events as an RSS feed.

RSS Calendar In addition to posting your RSS calendar to your website, you can also add the feed to your feed reader so that your personal calendar is one of the feeds you are regularly monitoring (as if you needed another reminder of that upcoming dentist appointment).  And of course, since you can add the RSS calendar to your own feed, you can also invite others to have your feed on their feed readers.  This could be great for friends, or maybe even for a group of patrons that you wanted to keep abreast of library events - say book readings, graduate student workshops, or teen gatherings.  While I am still on the lookout for a cool calendar widget that displays as a calendar (but doesn’t hog my whole webpage), RSSCalendar is at least just one click away from that possibility.


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infodoodads receives mention in C&RL News

Published by Laurie on October 20, 2007
Categories: Academic 0 Comments

Woot! We’ve received a mention in a print publication! Check out the recent story in C&RL News (College and Research Libraries News), Exploring the Faculty Blogoverse.


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Picasa - because I can never remember where I saved that photo

Published by Laurie on October 20, 2007
Categories: Business, Personal, Photo, Video and Visual 4 Comments

Yes, it would be a good idea if I kept all my images in one folder on my computer, but that never happens. Imagine me at my computer this evening thinking, “I’d really like to find that one picture of me and my sister. I wonder where I saved it?” I looked through a few folders and then I gave up–and then I remembered Picasa.

I found out about Picasa several years ago when I worked in marketing (before becoming a librarian). Our graphic designer wanted to know what photos were on the shared drive, so she downloaded Picasa and scanned it for photos. It worked great.

So, this evening, I downloaded Picasa, which is now owned by Google. After downloading the software, Picasa scanned the entire hard drive for photos. Then, I could view all the photos, but the location of the photos on my hard drive (or shared drive) never actually changed.

picasa

When you open an image, Picasa gives you the option to edit it by changing the photo effects (sharpen, sepia, tint, warmify, soft focus, glow, etc), tuning (fill light, highlights, shadows, color temperature), and basic fixes (crop, straighten, redeye, contrast, auto color).

And, because it’s a Google product, you can also geotag your photos, publish them to Blogger, and upload to Google video (Picasa also displays your saved videos).


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Folia–it takes a village to raise my garden

Published by Kate on October 19, 2007
Categories: Instructional, Personal, Social and Visual 1 Comment

Unlike Hannah, our resident plant expert, I am an utter failure when it comes to gardening. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found an invitation in my flickr inbox to beta test the online gardening community folia. Maybe they could tell from my garden (a term I use loosely) photos that I needed a little help, I don’t know.

As a perpetual novice I am often frustrated by gardening information. I can’t find the plants I read about in magazines or I can’t figure out what the plants I have are called. Discussions about soil pH leave me paranoid. Our less-than-ideal growing conditions mean that most of the generalized advice out there is less than helpful, and I spend money on seeds or starts only to sadly watch my little plantlets shrivel and die. You’d think I would just give up, but no. I still harbor fantasies of eating sauce made from my own home-grown tomatoes, snipping baby lettuces just before dinner, and making beautiful bouquets for birthday celebrations. I just need some help. Folia to the rescue!Kate's Folia Profile

Interested folks may have to put yourselves on a waiting list for a bit as folia is still in limited beta, but once you create an account you will join a surprisingly international group of gardeners. Then you can get to work describing your gardens, whether they’re in your windowsill or covering acres of your backyard. One of the cool features of folia is that it is designed to work seamlessly with your flickr account (yup, I’m back on my flickr kick) so you can easily post photos of your vegetal progeny. That helps the rest of the community help you to identify plants, solve any pest or disease problems you might be having, plan your next landscape architecture project, or just revel in your gardening skills. There are groups centered around different types of gardens too, and I’m hoping there are future plans to let the gardeners themselves create groups. Anyone else out there have an 80-day growing season?

Another feature I’d love to see is some kind of planting “alert system” targeted to my growing region. I’m never sure when I should start tomatoes so that they’re ready to move outside in May (or is it June…or July?) I don’t know when I should move plants inside (or which plants are likely to survive such a trick.) The green thumbs out there may be laughing, but I’m not ashamed to admit it; I need all the help I can get.

So, gardening junkies, please check out folia so I can take advantage of your expertise. Fellow wilted-thumbs, please sign up so I have some company. If I ever grow anything good, I promise to share.


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Blue Dot: when you’re feeling dotty

Published by Jane on October 18, 2007
Categories: Bookmarking, Searching and Web 0 Comments

This week I came across a bookmarking tool I hadn’t heard of so I thought I’d check it out. Blue Dot lets you “dot” or bookmark web sites and then share them with friends. Like other bookmarking it’s easy to download their buttons to your Firefox browser so you can easily dot sites and get to your Blue Dot home page.

Blue Dot also features it’s own home page buzz with popular and the latest news, videos, funny, music, tech, etc., submitted by seasoned “Dotters”. I think what draws me to their home page is the variety of what’s new themes and the colorful site. Although the home page and my account are peppered with ads, their presence doesn’t dominate the pages.

bluedot

I found the Blue Dot tags helpful because I discovered some sites I want to explore more. Another option for discovery is touring sites tagged by Blue Dot community members. While there are plenty of great bookmarking tools out there, this is a good option to add to the mix. Who knows? This may become a hot doodad!


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