2007 December archive at infodoodads

Archive for December, 2007

Best of infodoodads 2007

Published by Hannah on December 31, 2007
Categories: Web 0 Comments

This was our first year in the blog-osphere, and we’ve had a rollicking good time. We thought we’d recap a bit of where we’ve been this year with a best of the ‘doodads posting list. In (mostly) chronological order we have our top ten:

Wesabe - Kate blogged about Wesabe, an online financial management system, back in April and was interviewed by the New York Times afterwards!

Weebly - Not everyone has access (or desire) to use website creation software like Dreamweaver, so Jane’s April review of Weebly was definitely an empowering move for those looking to get out on the web quickly and easily.

The Top 13 Web 2.0 tools for Libraries list - In August we compiled a list of what we consider to be the Web 2.0 tools that all librarians should either know about or be using to make their professional life better. The list included tools to improve communications, find books, and create web content.

do.Oh - Back in August, Margaret couldn’t resist the Simpson-esque name of this helpful productivity tool. I’m going to start using it any day now (to keep up with my New Year’s resolutions, of course

Bubblr - Kate made us a hilarious comic strip in August using Bubblr. For those of you celebrating Greek Orthodox Christmas, you still have time to give your friends and family the gift of an original comic strip. Very useful.

Tafiti - Margaret highlighted a really nifty way of doing research using Tafiti in August. The visual nature of this research tool should give librarians lots of ideas about how to increase visual literacy options on their own websites.

WordReference - Laurie gave us the back-to-school scoop in October on how to translate from Spanish, Italian and French right from your toolbar!

Make video games from scratch - In November, Kate gave us the low down on a way to make video games yourself, and we’ve since learned that there are a TON of people out there who are itching to use their creative talents in this way.

Remote Desktop Set Up - Super-practical Michael (oh wait, he’s also the one who gave us Coastr) taught us how to set up a remote desktop connection in December. Yippee!! More chances to work from home! or wherever!

BookSwim - Hannah’s BookSwim post created a December storm of comments as librarians of all stripes discussed the ability of libraries to provide Netflix-like services to patrons.

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Vacations and Random Postings

Published by Laurie on December 18, 2007
Categories: Uncategorized 1 Comment

Hi everyone out there! We want to thank all our readers for subscribing to, reading, and participating in our blog. It’s been great fun over the last year and a learning adventure! If you have any suggestions or comments never hesitate to email us or post them, because we love hearing from our readers (it really keeps us motivated!).

Today a few infodoodaders (that’s what we call ourselves) were chatting and we’ve decided that we’re going to take a little vacation from our regularly scheduled postings for the next two weeks. We have six writers and at least 1/2 of us will be on vacation. So, we may post once or twice, maybe more if we’re in the mood.

We will return to our regular posting schedule after vacation (probably about January 2nd).

Happy Holidays and Thanks for Reading!

Michael Baird, Laurie Bridges, Kate Gronemyer, Margaret Mellinger, Jane Nichols, and Hannah Rempel

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Tabblo - make gifts from your photos

Published by Margaret on December 18, 2007
Categories: Photo, Publishing, Visual and Web 0 Comments

We are in the midst of our holiday scramble, and one of our challenges was to package up those ubiquitous gift cards in a personal and imaginative way. Here’s what we did. Tabblo is a place where you can use photos and words to create “tabblos,” or web page creations that tell a story. Using photos from your online accounts or your hard drive, you can build Tabblos in your web browser, share them with others, and integrate them into blogs and social networking sites. Another thing you can do is to create photo cubes.

We made photo cubes in which to nest our gift cards. Each of the photo cubes can be customized to match the theme of the gift. One of our gift cards is intended to help with a home improvement project, so we used photos of renovated rooms, appliances and lighting to get the idea across.

For a gardening center gift card, one could use photos of flowers and garden tools.

Tabblo has some nice photo editing features, so that you can change the look of the photos, rotate them, and add words in a thought balloon.

You can also print out photo projects - photo cubes, comics, posters, postcards and books. Tabblo is part of Hewlett-Packard, so it makes sense that another option is to pay for customized printing of your projects (takes 5-7 days, ordinarily, longer over the holidays).

Take a look at some of the creative photo projects, new and popular ones are featured on the Tabblo website.

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Pviewr - Easy Photo Viewing

Published by Hannah on December 17, 2007
Categories: Photo and Visual 3 Comments

I’m about to head back East for the holidays. Some of that time will be spent with my extended family, and one of the big events during that time will be a slideshow in honor of my grandmother’s 90th birthday. I’m not sure what technology will be involved in either creating the slideshow or viewing the slideshow (but it could run the gamut from the old Kodak projector to something fancy that my librarian uncle has dreamed up), but one option could have been to use Pviewr. Pviewr is an application that takes photos from Flickr or Picasa and instantly creates a Flash-based slideshow. You can choose (somewhat) what you want the display to look like - the background color, how many photos you want to see at once. And you can choose whether you want to view photos from a particular account or if you just want to see photos based on a particular tag. For example, this is a slideshow created by typing in the tag “library.”

Pviewr takes photo viewing one step further then Flickrleech and PictoBrowser, which only allowed slideshows based on Flickr libraries; however, I think PictoBrowser still looks a bit snazzier than Pviewr, and I didn’t see any options to embed a Pviewr slideshow. But if all you want to do is view a bunch of pictures at once, Pviewr is certainly an easy way to go.

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TripIt–all your travel information in one place

Published by Kate on December 14, 2007
Categories: Productivity, Social and Travel 2 Comments

When I travel I always take along a file folder to carry all my paperwork: flight itinerary, hotel confirmation, conference receipt, maps, restaurants I want to try, etc.. It’s not a big folder, but it does seem like I’m constantly shuffling through it to find out when my plane leaves or where my next meeting (or meal) will be. Though I’m not going to abandon my folder completely it’s going to be a lot more organized on my next business trip thanks to TripIt, the travel organizer that helps you keep all your travel information in one place.

One of the first things that convinced me to use TripIt is a feature that allows you to email your flight (or hotel) confirmation information directly to your itinerary. For my upcoming trip I just forwarded the information the travel agent sent me to the email address provided, and it appeared in my trip details. You can also do this with confirmation emails from many online travel, hotel, and airline sites (see a list of compatible sites.)

As I added my travel and lodging information, TripIt automatically added useful information like typical weather for the days I will be in Philadelphia and a map of the city (with my hotel’s location marked.) I used the note feature to add information about the meetings I need to attend, and used the TripClipper , a handy tool to add links and notes to your account from your toolbar, to make note of some of the Chowhound threads I will use to plan my restaurant itinerary. I’m really fond of the printable version of the itinerary that shows everything in order, day by day, with its start time clearly marked on the left.

TripIt also has some social networking features that may come in handy if you’re traveling with a group–I haven’t tried them out yet because I don’t know anyone else who is using TripIt…yet. If you do sign up, maybe we can share travel tips (best whoopie pies, anyone?)

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BookMooch - Sharing Books for the Cost of Postage

Published by Laurie on December 13, 2007
Categories: Books 10 Comments

Last night at 3:00 a.m. I woke up and a thought popped into my head, “I wonder if anyone wants to mooch any of my books yet?” I rolled out of bed, picked up my laptop, and tiptoed into the living room. I checked my email and two people wanted to mooch a book from me, one in Singapore and one in Tennessee. I quickly accepted their request and today I will be sending their books (I may regret accepting the Singapore request, depending on what the postage costs, but I’m expecting the book postal rate to Tennessee to be about $1.50).

Are you wondering, “What is Laurie talking about? Mooching a book?” Let me explain. Last night I was pondering Hannah’s latest post about Bookswim, and then I started wondering what else people were trying to do with books online. Of course this led me to the Internet where I did some searching around and uncovered BookMooch. Their tagline is “Give books away. Get books you want.” I started exploring their website and I was instantly hooked. Here’s how it works:

1) You need to have at least one book you are willing to give away. Each time you list a book you will give away you earn 1/10th of a point. You get one-full point each time you actually give a book away. The only cost to you is the cost of shipping your books.

2) Once you have a full point you can “mooch” a book off of someone else. There are two ways to do this. First, you can browse through the books listed as “available for mooching.” The browsing function is a little bit confusing and clunky, so I suggest using the “Advanced Search” feature under the Browse tab. I browsed by topic and book titles, but didn’t find a lot I was interested in as “available for mooching”. This leads me to the second method of searching for books — your wishlist. Once you add a book to your wishlist you will get an email if/when someone adds that book to their “available for mooching” list. Then, you can request that book. Note: If you have a really long list of books you are interested in mooching, you can import an html or text file list.

3) Additional information: I’m still exploring BookMoch, but did find a toolbar addition that I added to my Firefox browser. With the “Mooch” button in my toolbar I can browse around in Amazon and if I see a book I’d like to add to my BookMooch wishlist I just click on the “Mooch” button and it’s automatically added to my list.

4) More Additional information: You can donate your points to the Public Library Charity Fund.

5) I noticed in my Profile there is the option to “Enable Features for LibraryThing”. I’m not sure what that means since I don’t have a LibraryThing account, so I couldn’t explore it, but I thought some of our readers might be interested in it.

So, sign up! I’m looking for some good books to read!!

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remote desktop connection - now you can work 24/7!

Published by Michael on December 11, 2007
Categories: How-to 0 Comments

A tool within Windows XP called Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) has been around for a good while. I think I’ve been using the tool for about 4 years now. For those of you not familiar with the technology, it is basically a utility within Windows that allows you to connect to another computer and use its desktop as if you were physically sitting in front of it. RDC is great from windows pc to windows pc, but has been very cumbersome and sometimes just not very possible for mac to windows pc. Microsoft recently released a beta version of Remote Desktop Connection for mac which made me exceedingly happy.

Here are a few handy situations when I have used it:

1) Needing to access a file on my work computer or network from home, or use software on my work computer that I did not have on my home computer.

2) Working at a reference desk workstation that sees several users per day. My specific environment requires that I not modify the desktop/settings/appearance/layout of the workstation. I’m a bit of a geek so my workstation is more than a little customized. I can establish a Remote Desktop Connection to my desk workstation from the reference desk and then use my own computer and not interrupt my workflow (or mess up everyone else’s!).

Here is a great page from Microsoft that explains how to set up Remote Desktop Connection for a Windows to Windows connection. For those of you with complex work networks, you will need to talk to your tech folks for specifics on how to accomplish this.

The website for RDC for mac has a good link to set it up with pretty clear instructions. In my process I ran into one hurdle. RDC did not initially work for me. My work network is pretty tightly secured and required that I use something called a Virtual Private Network (VPN) as well. Basically, it is a utility that allows your computer to securely pretend it is on the other network and access things with more rights than it would as a stranger. My campus has a very nice website for me to use to download the software, install it, and then give me all of the settings to put in for it to work properly. So now when I want to remote desktop on my mac I run the VPN software, connect, and then run RDC. After that, it works like a dream. Good luck!

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BookSwim - Real Competition for Libraries?

Published by Hannah on December 10, 2007
Categories: Books and Business 23 Comments

So this post does not follow infodoodading rules on a couple of counts - the service soon-to-be reviewed is not free and it is not exactly a Web 2.0 tool. That said, this is one of those services that I want to know about as a librarian, so I’ll assume that’s true for at least 2-3 of you.

Okay now that I’ve got that out of the way, prepare to be shocked by this new service/business idea. BookSwim’s advertising tag line is “don’t buy books, rent them.” Or, hello? Go to the library and check them out??? BookSwim is being referred to as the Netflix of books, or as a the “first online book library rental club.” The basic idea is that you pay $14.99 a month (the cheapest option where you can have 3 books out at a time), make a booklist of stuff you’d like to read based on titles that they have in their “library” and as they become available you get the book. When you finish a book, you send it back and they send you another one.

So even the non-librarian reviewer that I linked to early thought this was a totally weird niche. What about the social element of going to a bookstore? What about the fact that there is NO limit on how many books I can have checked out for FREE from my local public library at one time? The only redeeming feature I see to BookSwim is that they have a recommender system that shows the people who rented this book have also rented… (ala Amazon). But you don’t even have to subscribe to BookSwim to see this recommender information.

Does BookSwim make me nervous for libraries? Not really, but it does make me curious about the gap that BookSwim’s creators must have perceived between the way people want books delivered and the way most libraries currently work. Maybe this service will push direct delivery conversations a bit further along in library land.

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Foamee–never forget who owes you a beer

Published by Kate on December 9, 2007
Categories: Food, Personal, Productivity and Social 1 Comment

After checking out coastr, the social network for beer lovers that Michael reviewed last month, you’re likely to have a long list of beers to try. This ought to come in handy the next time someone wants to buy you one–if you can remember to take them up on it. Enter foamee, the twitter-based system for keeping track of beer IOUs.

Foamee is not a social network, and if you’re already using twitter there are no new accounts to create. Just log into your twitter account, start following foamee, and you’ll be ready to send and receive beer IOUs.

Here’s some photo evidence that I’ve promised to pick up the first round the next time any of my fellow infodoodaders make it over here to the land of the microbrew.

So, does this fill a burning need in the world? Um, probably not, but maybe it will trigger an idea about how you can use twitter or another infodoodad out there to solve a little problem. You can hash out the details over a beverage of your choosing.

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Wallstrip - Stock news for the normal (and slightly sarcastic) person

Published by Laurie on December 7, 2007
Categories: News and Video 0 Comments

I’m the business and economics librarian at Oregon State University. Recently I was at a party and I told a new acquaintance my job title and he said, “Really? What stocks should I buy?” I have no idea! Give me a break. I think I’ve answered one question at the reference desk about stocks in the last year.

Even though I may not know a lot about stocks, I do own a few shares and I’m always curious to hear how the market is doing. But unless the market is highly volatile, stock market news can be kinda boring. That is, until I discovered Wallstrip. Their tagline is “stock culture meets pop culture” …and there is something Tina Feyish about the news host. However, she’s not even remotely as funny as Tina Fey — I do have to give her some credit for trying. Hopefully her schtik will improve in the future. I did like this video about Google, it made me chuckle and was informative: did you know that Google employees use the term Googlie? Watch the video to find out if your style-sense it Googlie.

If you’d like more information about Wallstrip, they do have a couple videos explaining their site. I also did some sleuthing on the web to see if I could find more information, but all I found out was that Wallstrip was purchased by CBS in June. I wonder if I can expect more news sites like this in the future?

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Splashup - is that Photoshop?

Published by Margaret on December 5, 2007
Categories: Photo and Visual 2 Comments

Splashup, formerly Fauxto, is a web-based tool for editing and managing images.

My significant other just walked by and asked “Is that Photoshop? ” A reasonable question, as Splashup both appears and works in Photoshop style. There is the canvas work area and there are palettes and familiar tools like brushes, paint bucket, eraser, and the marquee tool. You can work in layers, merge layers when you are finished, and save the final image in other file formats, while retaining a copy in a native Splashup format. Splashup integrates with Facebook, Flickr and Picassa photo-sharing.

Today when I tested it again, I could neither open one of my own photos from my computer nor pull in photos from Flickr. Another thing that tripped me up was the plus and minus signs for adding and removing layers. I kept removing layers when I meant to add them. But otherwise, I’m really excited about using such a powerful (and free, for now at least) image editing tool on the web.

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Archive for December, 2007

Best of infodoodads 2007

Vacations and Random Postings

Tabblo - make gifts from your photos

Pviewr - Easy Photo Viewing

BookMooch - Sharing Books for the Cost of Postage

remote desktop connection - now you can work 24/7!

BookSwim - Real Competition for Libraries?

Wallstrip - Stock news for the normal (and slightly sarcastic) person

Splashup - is that Photoshop?

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