2008 June archive at infodoodads

Archive for June, 2008

Zamzar for file conversion

Published by Sam on June 30, 2008
Categories: Communication, Data and Services 2 Comments

I’m not at ALA right now. I did go to Disneyland earlier this year, though, and had a fantastic time. My favorite rides are Splash Mountain and California Screamin’. Oh, wait, this isn’t my travel blog.

Ahem.

On occasion, I need to convert a file from one thing to another, like .jpg to .tiff or .doc to .pdf. My early attempts to achieve this apparently Herculean task were met with utter defeat as I browsed through downloadable free software, searched the antediluvian wells of my computer’s bowels for hidden programs that I might have missed, or asked for software to be purchased and installed on my work computer. Then I discovered Zamzar.

Zamzar is free online file conversion without an account. You go to the site, upload your file, tell them what you want it converted to, and have it emailed to you. Depending on the file size, this process can take a little while, but in the experiment I did for this post, I received my converted file in about a minute. You can create an account to get faster conversion times and online storage for your converted files, if that is something you need, too.

Besides converting your own files, you can also convert files that are already online and have them emailed to you. As an experiment, I had Zamzar convert one of my One Minute Critic videos on YouTube to .mp3 format. Now I have a sound file of the video. Pretty neat!

One thing that I don’t like is that you can’t convert a jpg to a pdf or vice versa – So if I have a document of some kind that I want to upload to flickr, I might have problems. That’s fairly minor concern I think – and plus, I’m pretty sure that somewhere on my computer I have a program that does that, if I can just find it again. {:0)

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Writeboard: an online whiteboard and more

Published by Jane on June 26, 2008
Categories: Productivity and Web 0 Comments

This week several of us are off to ALA Annual which means committee work, programs and lots of walking between hotels. Oh and hopefully some summery drinks, too!

Committee work usually involves collaboration and one of the committees I’m on is using Writeboard to store information and for for a group writing project.

Writeboard might seem familiar because it comes from 37signals, the same folks who brought us Basecamp and Backpack, both of which I hope to look at soon.

So far I have found Writeboard easy to use. I like how one person can input content and others can easily add their content. Editing has a wiki feel to it because you use codes to make text bold or italicized. If more than one person edits simultaneously you will get notified.

Another way to add content is by adding comments. Of course this can be used to discuss the content as well.

Once your document is complete you can export it as a text or an html file.

So how does this compare to Google Docs? It’s similar in concept, but significantly pared down in features. Fancy formatting is limited to the basics noted above. To share the writeboard each participant is emailed the same url and password, nice for folks who don’t want another personal account to track.

For those looking for a quick and easy way to collaborate, give this a try!

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Sound Maps - listen to a biophony

Published by Margaret on June 25, 2008
Categories: Audio, Maps and Mash-ups 1 Comment

Lately we’ve been reading about the adverse effects of man-made sound on whales, birds and whole ecosystems. Increasing and encroaching sound pollution places a great deal of stress on many species, especially those depending on sound to feed, mate and communicate.

Bernie Krause (Wild Sanctuary) has been recording sounds from all over the world for years and has a huge collection of natural sounds that he calls “biophonies.” He has observed the decline of these natural symphonies in various habitats. Last month he released a Google Earth KML (Keyhole Markup Language) Layer that mashes up Google Maps with Wild Sanctuary sound files. When you download the KML layer you can open up Google Maps or Free Earth and see where you might want to listen today…from the Galapagos Islands to Great Falls, Montana. Field notes and meta data tell you what you’ll hear, who recorded it, and where it was recorded. You can view the maps in Google Earth as well, for a more multi-dimensional experience. It’s really interesting to see how powerful geotagging and geocoding can be in combining various kinds of information based on place. I can see students using these kinds of maps to better understand interdisciplinary topics in geography, biology, ecology political science, etc.

Wild Sanctuary also puts out a podcast series called “EcoCasts” if you’d like to subscribe.

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Drop.io

Published by Sam on June 23, 2008
Categories: Media, Mobile, Personal and Services 6 Comments

Hi everyone - this is my first post as an Infodoodadder, and I’m very excited to be in such good company.

I’ve been experimenting with the site Drop.io, a newish file-sharing site that doesn’t require users to set up an account.

Every ‘drop’ is given a unique URL, which users can then share in the old fashioned way, through email, blog posts, etc. If you so desire, you can password protect your post – try going to http://www.drop.io/crashsolo002 for example. Or, you can leave them wide open, as is the case with http://drop.io/crashsolo001

There will be several files at crashsolo001 – another interesting feature! So you can create one URL and post there multiple times, or on a regular basis, thus creating a real easy podcast platform, for example. Feel free to upload something when you get there – you can comment directly, upload documents or images, or record voice messages by using the voice message phone number. Cool!

Also (I’m starting to gush here. Am I gushing? I feel like I’m gushing.) Another feature worth testing is the fax feature – you can fax documents out of drop.io – meaning that if you have a document you want to fax, you can upload it to drop.io, then fax it someplace else. I tried this out with our fax machine, and it worked perfectly. I can see this being a potential workaround for people on library computers, at least at my library – we don’t have a fax machine for public use, but people are always asking for one.

So. Interesting. I can imagine that drop.io will likely attract a large amount of adult content, but because of the way its set up it would not appear to be the kind of thing that users could accidentally stumble upon, like with Scribd or other file-sharing social networks, which allow users to search the site for content. Drop.io seems to be more the kind of tool that enhances other social tools, by giving users a way to place almost any type of content online at a unique URL.

I think there’s more to explore here, but for me it’s already proved itself of interest, if only for the fax and for the phone-in podcasts.

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Office-chair birding at WhatBird.com

Published by Kate on June 20, 2008
Categories: Instructional, Reference and Science 1 Comment

Earlier this week I looked out my office window just in time to see two Bald Eagles fly by. It was pretty awesome, and I knew they were Bald Eagles because their markings are pretty distinctive. Often, though, when we spot an avian creature, the conversation goes something like this: “look, look, look!” “what is it?” “uh…I dunno…an osprey?” “no way, that’s not an osprey!” And so on. We have a few bird books, but I’m pretty excited about WhatBird.com, a free bird search engine.

There are quite a few different ways to search WhatBird.com. If have the name of a particular bird you can do a regular search. If, however, you saw an unfamiliar bird you can search by attributes: where did you see it, what did it look like, and what did it do? The Step-by-Step search allows you to narrow down possible birds one attribute at a time, and it’s smart enough not to give you options that will result in a dead end search. Just want to browse all the birds commonly found in Louisiana or shaped like ducks? That’s an option too. You can even listen to bird calls.

WhatBird.com’s interface isn’t always intuitive. In part that’s because as a totally novice birder, I sometimes had trouble knowing what to choose (was that bird perching-like? Was its bill cone-shaped?) but browsing around in WhatBird.com should help me know what to look for the next time I see an unfamiliar bird. Despite some minor confusion, I’ve found something interesting every time I go back. Happy office-chair birding!

(HT: eMusings)

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Guest Blogger: Sam Wallin (and yes, Hannah has gone into labor)

Published by Laurie on June 19, 2008
Categories: Blogs 4 Comments

Well, as many of you know, two of the six members of the infodoodads team are pregnant. One of our bloggers, Hannah, just went into labor this morning. I’m the other pregnant one, and I’m due to pop at the end of August. So, we’ve lined up a GREAT guest blogger for the next 6 months, Sam Wallin. Sam will be blogging on Mondays (at least for the first three months) and we’re excited to have him on board and get his perspective!

Here’s a little info about Sam:
Sam Wallin is an Information Services Librarian at Vancouver Community Library in Vancouver Washington. Some of Sam’s duties there include teaching introductory and intermediate computer classes around the library district, conducting staff training in a variety of technology related areas, filming one minute book reviews, and keeping up with major and emerging technologies. Sam keeps a regular library related blog and a video book review blog, which you can check out at Super Crazy Librarian Guy and One Minute Critic respectively.

Please join us in welcoming Sam!

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WorldCat gets a little more social

Published by Jane on June 19, 2008
Categories: Books and Searching 0 Comments

Have you searched WorldCat recently? If you are like me it has been awhile and when I do search, I usually go through the FirstSearch interface. Today, I was looking at WorldCat and discovered some features I hadn’t remembered seeing before.

WorldCat now includes more cover art and clearly displays options labeled Get It, Save It, Add to It and Share It. Nicely done. The Get It option lets you search your library and nearby libraries and has a link to purchase the item. Not sure yet how I feel about the links to Buy this Item which are not subtle.

You can create a list of results and easily save to your list. I created a list for a course that I work closely with and used the Share It feature to send my list to the instructor’s del.icio.us account. We’ll see what comes of that. The Add to It feature lets you write a review of your result and edit public notes about it. Very 2.0. The optimist in me likes to think that faculty and students would use this for something like indicating if a book was helpful for a specific course.

Of all of the changes, I most enjoyed creating the list of books. It’s a little like going to Powell’s and browsing to my heart’s content.

One drawback that would be great if OCLC could fix is saving results from more than one page at a time. Other than that nice changes in the move towards making catalogs a little bit friendlier.

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wiki.com - Google continues with world dominance

Published by Laurie on June 13, 2008
Categories: Searching 2 Comments

Who would have thought of this idea? Of course, Google. Yes, I’ve searched in Wikipedia, but it never crossed my mind that one day I might want to search all wikis and only wikis. But now that I’ve seen the future of wiki searching, I love it! I’d like to introduce you to wiki.com.

Granted, every search I tried returned the Wikipedia hit as the first in the list, but that’s not surprising.

I did a search for “information literacy” and found some extremely useful wiki sites. I also did a search for “star wars” and was taken to Wookieepedia. This is fun! Off I go to search more random terms and see what’s out there.

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280 Slides: a step up in online presentation applications

Published by Kate on June 13, 2008
Categories: Publishing and Visual 2 Comments

I’ve done a lot of co-presenting lately, and I’m still looking for the ultimate collaboration-friendly slideshow program. I know, we could use Google Docs, Zoho, or several others, but they all seem to have quirks that make them more trouble than they’re worth and we always end up sending PowerPoint presentations back and forth. With all the buzz around 280 Slides, I was hoping my new favorite tool had arrived, but I still don’t see quite what I need.

Granted, 280 Slides is still beta, so perhaps this stuff is in the works, or maybe it’s just not the point, but what I’d really, really like to see is an option to edit collaboratively. I also kept looking for an “undo” button–does this brand me as a PC user forever? Most of the chatter about 280 Slides starts with “hey, this looks like Keynote!” which I haven’t really used, so I suspect some of the features I had a hard time figuring out are probably really obvious to Mac users.

On the other hand, some handy features like the option to upload a presentation from PowerPoint are already on the way. That alone will make 280 Slides a useful tool for me since I don’t have the double-p on my home computer and would love to be able to edit a presentation without trekking back to the office. Saving the presentations you create in 280 Slides in the .ppx format is already available. There are also some nice options for sharing your finished product including publishing to SlideShare, linking directly to the presentation, or embedding it in your blog or other web page (though the embedding doesn’t play nicely with our Wordpress setup, so you can check out my silly little test presentation here.) With more presentations on the way, I’m going to keep my eye (or should I say “i”?) on 280 Slides.

All you Apple Keynote users out there, anything to add?

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ShoZu: mobile connecting to your social network

Published by Jane on June 12, 2008
Categories: Mash-ups, Mobile and Photo 2 Comments

Now that I have a fancy phone (T-mobile Wing), I’m beginning to explore mobile applications. The first application I’m trying is ShoZu. ShowZu caught my eye because of its promises to connect me with Flickr, Facebook and other sites. My first test was posting photos to my Flickr space. Before posting, using my phone I downloaded the application. Then I chose Flickr and Facebook as sites which I wanted ShoZu to connect. this was a somewhat confusing process because I initiated the download and the site connections by going to their website using my laptop. The download didn’t take until I used my cell phone to download. I also was a little confused about when my sites were connected and set up but once everything was set up, I easily started sending photos to my Flickr account. You can see a couple of the uploaded photos. Before sending, if you want you can name your photos, add a description and tag them. Here, I did for one but not the other photo.

Nifty! Pretty easy way to move your photos from your cell to other locations. ShoZu offers other services that I haven’t tried out yet. You can download feeds from your friends, read and reply to comments and update your status. Once I’m ready to take the next step, I’ll have to try these out. In the meantime, it’s photo uploading for me.

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eXtension - Web 2.0 the Land Grant Way

Published by Hannah on June 9, 2008
Categories: Academic, How-to and Instructional 0 Comments

The old horticulturist in me was very excited to see that the long-standing extension service has a great new website, eXtension. eXtension goes beyond offering the normal state-based portal to a nation-wide portal to all things extension (motherhood, apple pie, rope tying guides, fire ants, garden advice, parenting and more). Not only does the new eXtension site have a ton of great information, but they have also included many Web 2.0 features that should make the site more interactive and a product of the people they are trying to serve. They even self-describe their site as an “interactive learning environment” (librarians should be jealous). Many of the Web 2.0 features we have all come to expect are here - RSS feeds, comment options, a ratings system, and tag clouds. Check it out, post a question online, read what university experts have to say, or rate a post, because every citizen needs a little dose of eXtension in their lives!

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Archive for June, 2008

Zamzar for file conversion

Writeboard: an online whiteboard and more

Sound Maps - listen to a biophony

Drop.io

Office-chair birding at WhatBird.com

Guest Blogger: Sam Wallin (and yes, Hannah has gone into labor)

WorldCat gets a little more social

wiki.com - Google continues with world dominance

280 Slides: a step up in online presentation applications

ShoZu: mobile connecting to your social network

eXtension - Web 2.0 the Land Grant Way

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