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Deprecated: Assigning the return value of new by reference is deprecated in /home/infodoo/public_html/wp-includes/theme.php on line 540 2008 April archive at infodoodads
My husband sent me a link to PicLens a few weeks ago, and it’s really kind of interesting! Hmmm. I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised… The install is quick, and if you’re a regular searcher for images, it does a great job of giving you a view of many images at once. I did a search on Google for images of Morocco, and with PicLens installed, when I mouse over an image, an arrow appears over the image. Clicking on that, I get the “photo wall,” a surprisingly nice interface for browsing photos. Searching Google for images without PicLens just isn’t the same. And PicLens isn’t just for stills — it will do the same for videos, including YouTube video. A left-click and flick of the mouse in some direction, moves the wall of images, and clicking on one zooms in for a larger view. You can easily jump out of the PicLens 3D view, back into the native search tool. You can also search from within the PicLens interface. Links include Google, YouTube, Smugmug, Photobucket, Flickr, Yahoo, and DeviantArt. PicLens can be enabled on other sites as well, so it would be interesting to see it used as an interface to a digital library photo collection, or as a way to browse book jackets or other book art.
Maybe. Last week I received my “special invitation” to Twine. When I’m out reading up on new things to infodoodad in the future, I sign up for beta testing and the like for interesting things. Then a few months later I get a curious e-mail and wonder where the heck it came from. Such is the case with Twine.
Twine claims to be semantic. That’s right folks, web 3.0. OoOOoooh. They have a nice page that explains just how semantic they are. I was even able to understand some of this, thanks to the metadata class I am taking this semester.
Enough background. In a few simple words, this is what Twine does: share resources with like-minded people and receive related resources and connections to new people. There are “twines” which are groups of information on a topic–say, library 2.0. Within that twine are “items:” bookmarks for websites, people, contact info, events, video, audio, books, etc. These items are all tagged and described as we are used to. Except. These items are tagged with not only regular keywords but with “people,” “place,” and “organization.” This interconnects items and twines to build further relationships. The intelligent twine will automatically add in new items and information based on current and past behavior. Neat? Yeah, pretty.
You can contribute content on the site, or via a bookmarklet in your browser, or via e-mail.
I saw content of some twines that did not fit very well and were “off topic.” Since Twine is new, I wonder if it may just be inexperienced users posting things in the wrong places. Either way, it would be nice to have an option to repurpose an item to a better-suited twine. There is a cartoon sketch in a library 2.0 twine about telling someone their breath is bad. I really couldn’t see the connection on that one.
Go ahead and try Twine out. They are still in invite-only testing mode, but I imagine that a request for invitation will probably not take long at all.
Heard the term “project management” often enough lately to make you feel like you should actually do something like, say manage your projects? If so, you may want to give the free version of Huddle a try. Huddle is an online project management system that allows you to share (and edit - they recently claimed that you may “never need buy software again” as you can just use Doc and Excel files from within Huddle) documents, create online teams, use a virtual whiteboard, and receive updates to changes within your group’s site via RSS.
They of course, have somewhat snazzier versions for a fee, which include the ability to store more data (it comes with 1 GB for free), more work spaces for different projects (3 work spaces for free) and a higher level of security. However, if you haven’t started using something like Google Docs for group work, or just want a more sophisticated experience (better task lists, sense of community, improved file sharing) you may want to give Huddle a try.
My mom called while she was on vacation recently and asked me to help her find a nearby yarn store. My task would have been much simpler if I had known about KnitMap, a yarn store finder that’s more than just a map. Using KnitMap you can pinpoint not only the nearest available fiber supplier, but also shops that suit your particular needs whether they be food, friendly service, or even wi-fi.
KnitMap lists shops not just in the US, but shops “anywhere that Google maps will work” including locations in Europe and Asia in addition to Canada, the US, and Australia. Available information includes hours and contact information as well as user-provided ratings and reviews of the shops’ service, selection, and atmosphere. KnitMap will help you plan a tour de tricoter or just pick up a pair of size six needles just about anywhere you might go.
Captcha programs have been around for some time, but reCAPTCHA is a newer flavor. If you’re like me, you didn’t realize that you are already familiar with captcha (and possibly recaptacha). Most of us encounter it when filling web forms. It often appears as a wavy word in a box that you decipher and then type to complete a form. This extra step helps protect the site from bots and other scraping programs. I recall first wrestling with it when registering for a Yahoo! account.
Well, captcha programs have matured and now reCAPTCHA enables you to digitize books and combat spam simultaneously. How? By installing the software on your web site, blog, etc or by using their mailhide feature. The digitizing books piece comes into play when users type in the words to solve the recaptcha. Apparently, it’s easier for the human eye to decode words than computer programs so when we solve the recaptchas we are digitizing words that OCR software couldn’t. According to the reCAPTCHA site the books currently being digitized benefit the Internet Archive. Pretty cool, huh?
Thanks to KG and MM for the nod. And, if you want to learn more about captcha, Wikipedia gives a nice overview.
Lately I’ve been sending a rather large, ugly spreadsheet around to several very nice people, after which all of us would get messages from our e-mail system administrators telling us that our accounts were over the limit. One of these very nice people told me about pando, P2P software for sharing enormous files (up to 1 GB) without requiring anyone to ftp, zip, unzip or lose access to their e-mail because of overly large attachments.
After downloading the pando client, I was able to transfer files and folders (packages) directly to another person’s computer via e-mail. That person then gets an e-mail from my address, telling them there is a package for them and directing them to download pando if they don’t have it yet. Encrypted copies of packages are stored temporarily on pando’s servers; there is an expiration date for the file to to downloaded by the recipient - 7 days for the free version and 14 days for the pro version.
Pando has been around awhile and has won a bunch of awards. In addition to it’s utility for dealing with bloated spreadsheets, it’s really great for sharing media files and works with IM or the web as well as with e-mail.
So have you ever been at work and thought to yourself “I wonder if I got any new text messages this morning…” but don’t want to dig around for your cell phone and wave it around to let your co-workers know what you’re up to? In comes Dashwire. It essentially brings the functionality of your mobile phone to your desktop. It has a great dashboard that shows your text messages, call history, contacts, pictures, video, ringtones, voicemail, and even bookmarks.
You sign up for an account, install the software on your phone, and you’re all set. In the initial setup it can take a very long time to sync everything together. I had about 400 pictures on my phone and it restarted several times while transferring them so took a few hours. Once that is done, it does a quick update periodically to get recent changes.
My favorite feature is the text message module. You can view text messages as well as reply to and create new ones. You compose in the browser and then it sends the message to your phone to then send via your network. So as far as your friends know, you are sending messages from your phone. It also has a search feature for your messages, really handy!
Another neat feature is sending photos to services such as Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Bebo. It is normally a pain to send my mobile photos to Flickr one by one. I can associate my Dashwire account with my Flickr account and in a few clicks have the photo feeding right into my photostream. Nifty, right? You can also e-mail or MMS them from Dashwire as well.
And, probably the most important feature of all. Dashwire is your backup copy of everything! You drop your phone in a toilet or in the big tank at SeaWorld and smashed by Shamu, your contacts will be safe.
If you’d like to make your feedreading experience even more personal than it currently is, try adding FriendFeed to your feedreading experience. Now, not only can you keep up with the gossip news (or, ahem, I mean important news from your profession), you can keep track of your friends’ and family’s (F and/or F) web publishing activities. FriendFeed allows you to see when a F or F posts a video to YouTube, adds photos to their Flickr account, or posts a riveting presentation on SlideShare. F and F can also share songs they liked from Pandora, Netflix faves, or LibraryThing suggestions via FriendFeed. And of course for you Twitter-ers, you can track some Twittering this way.
You do need to sign up (for free) for a FriendFeed account, and then invite your F and F (they don’t just magically appear in FriendFeed’s interface). I think FriendFeed sounds like an excellent alternative to receiving these kinds of updates through email, and that FriendFeed will be a helpful component in helping the different social components of the web to be even more enmeshed. It’s even pretty easy to imagine the leap for a whole class joining FriendFeed to keep track of their progress through a project or to see what updates had happened to blogs, pictures or slides. Hmmm, the possibilities are endless. Let me know if you try any fun options!
If you are like me you use tinyurl.com to shorten long URLs into something more manageable. However, there is only so short the URL can be when it always has “tinyurl.com” in it. Enter is.gd. The name isn’t as memorable as tinyurl, but it is shorter! I just tested a long URL using both tools, and there was an eight character difference between tinyurl.com and is.gd.
What would you do if you were college webmaster who was frustrated with Blackboard and the Web 1.0 functionality of most educational websites? Well, if you were Abdullah (David) Yahya, who works at Chabot College, you’d use your precious free time to create a Web 2.0 course management website that is free, fun, and easy for instructors and students to use.
I learned about Pyuple today when I attended a presentation given by David Yahya at the TechEd 2008 conference. I am very impressed with David’s entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to higher education. And, because David has a full-time job in addition to launching his brain-child, Pyuple, he hasn’t had much of an opportunity to do any promotions or marketing. I thought I’d tell our readers about it, ask you guys to spread the word, and give any feedback you have to David (he makes changes to the site based on user input and feedback). During the presentation today it was obvious university instructors in attendance were excited about the product David has created and I think Pyuple has some great potential.
Pyuple allows instructors to create course pages for their students that include the ability to social network with their classmates (similar to Facebook and MySpace) while also interacting with course content (like Blackboard). All the instructor needs to do is fill out web forms directly online to get the site up and running. Features include a customizable calendar, the ability to upload reading materials, space for instructor announcements, grades management, discussion board, online tests and quizzes, and up to 10 customizable pages. For more information about how to create a page for your course, visit “How it Works - For Teachers“.
According to a recent press release, “Pyuple’s goal is to connect all college students, faculty, staff and alumni to facilitate inter-class and school communication, networking and collaboration by building the world’s largest network of online school communities. Currently, Pyuple has launched “Pyuple Spaces” for colleges in the San Francisco Bay Area and will be adding more colleges periodically.”
Turns out today is the unofficial Blogger Appreciation Day. I’m not sure if this means that there is an actual official Blogger Appreciation Day, or if this means that some higher level sanctioning is required to make it official, but there you have it. As a nod toward this special day, I am going to cheat and not post about an exciting doodad, but will rather tip my hat to my fellow infodoodads bloggers who come up with the really cool stuff. Yay for collaborative blogging! And if you’re interested in what my fellow bloggers and I have had to say recently about collaborative blogging in general and infodoodads in particular, check out a recent conference presentation we gave at Online Northwest.
Speaking of conferences, several of us doodaders also attended and presented at Computers in Libraries, so watch out for some Computers in Libraries-inspired posts in the near future.
It’s pretty obvious that we love Flickr and Flickr apps around here; we’ve reviewed allkinds of funtools that make use of Flickr photos to do their thing. Now Flickr has released a new fun feature of its own: Flickr Video.
You’re probably thinking “Video! How innovative!”
No, wait, you’re probably thinking “haven’t they heard of YouTube?”
So there are already lots of places to upload video out there on the web. Flickr does what it does, photos, really well. Why on earth would they add videos? On some level it does make sense. Many (most?) digital cameras also record video so it’s not unusual to have both video and photos from the same event. Flickr’s tools for organizing photos and sharing them with friends, family, and the rest of the world are some of the best and they work equally well for video clips.
To make long-time Flickr members feel better they’re calling them “long photos” which might not appease the anti-video folks but amuses me. They are limiting video length to 90 seconds and only “pro” (i.e. paying) members are able to upload videos, so it really does have an entirely different feel than the specifically video-focused sites that I’ve used. It feels like…Flickr. Not convinced? Check out Fridgets, Flickr’s “test meme” of videos shot from inside the refrigerator. There’s even someone who keeps books in the fridge….
Although (or maybe because) I never even considered having the option to upload videos along with my Flickr pics, I’m actually pretty excited about the possibilities. It might be a fun challenge to see what kind of tutorials we could make in 90 seconds–even I don’t get distracted that quickly!
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Enough background. In a few simple words, this is what Twine does: share resources with like-minded people and receive related resources and connections to new people. There are “twines” which are groups of information on a topic–say, library 2.0. Within that twine are “items:” bookmarks for websites, people, contact info, events, video, audio, books, etc. These items are all tagged and described as we are used to. Except. These items are tagged with not only regular keywords but with “people,” “place,” and “organization.” This interconnects items and twines to build further relationships. The intelligent twine will automatically add in new items and information based on current and past behavior. Neat? Yeah, pretty.
So have you ever been at work and thought to yourself “I wonder if I got any new text messages this morning…” but don’t want to dig around for your cell phone and wave it around to let your co-workers know what you’re up to? In comes 
My favorite feature is the text message module. You can view text messages as well as reply to and create new ones. You compose in the browser and then it sends the message to your phone to then send via your network. So as far as your friends know, you are sending messages from your phone. It also has a search feature for your messages, really handy!
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