All right, I've made it to the dreaded Thing #13: What are you doing?
One of the reasons I signed on to Nebraska Learns 2.0 was to force myself to explore certain social technologies that I have been deliberately avoiding. Twitter is one of those things.
I've known about Twitter for a while. I understand it, but it just never appealed to me. I definitely see the value of Twitter for libraries and businesses. Libraries can send out Tweets like, "Closed on Monday for the holiday," or "We now have Kindles available for checkout!" Businesses can send out, "Big sale on Tuesday. 20% off all linens," or "Nintendo Wii back in stock!" That totally makes sense to me.
For personal use, though, I have never seen the appeal. My life simply isn't that interesting. I don't see why anyone would care what I'm doing. Big things, I can post on my blog. But come on, look at the average length of posts in both of my blogs. Do you think I'm capable of saying anything to my satisfaction in 140 characters or less? Ha! Also, I like my privacy. I don't necessarily want people to know what I'm doing all the time. Thirdly, if I actually AM doing something interesting, the last thing I want to do is stop, go to a computer or get out my cell phone, and type a sentence or two.
I found myself nodding in agreement with most of what Kathy Sierra said in the Creating Passionate Users post "Is Twitter TOO good?" (which I heard about from Learning As I Go). Especially noteworthy is the Twitter Curve graph.
When I searched Twitter for things of potential interest, I found unomaha and decided to follow their Tweets so I can keep up with campus events. Otherwise, I saw a few interesting events happening around Omaha, mixed in with a series of Tweets that told a tale of a jilted lover worthy of a soap opera. I also found that a lot of other people are playing the same video game I am. (Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, if you must know.)
So, to answer the three questions about Thing #13:
1. Did you like micro-blogging?
So far, no. But I'm willing to give it some time to see if I catch the bug.
2. How could libraries use Twitter?
It can be another venue for news and announcements, supplementing rather than replacing existing venues. Really, it's good to send out announcements in as many formats as possible, so patrons can receive them however they prefer. Twitter could also be good for notification of interesting new books, media, and collections; receiving and responding to reference questions; and promoting new services and events.
3. How could you use Twitter?
The 140 character limit might be good for me, as it forces me to carefully consider every word that goes into a sentence. Given my natural tendency toward prolixity, some practice in succinct wordsmithing could be helpful.
I'll keep Tweeting for a few days and report back if my opinions change. My Twitter user name is LunaMurphy, if you want to look in on me.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Thing#12
Moving along at a nice clip, though still far from caught up, I've reached Thing #12: A thing about LibraryThing.
Of course, it's impossible to work in a library and not know about LibraryThing. It is one of the hot topics in libraries right now. My library, the Criss Library at UNO, uses the tags from LibraryThing for Libraries in our catalog. Look at the title Freakonomics to see an example. (Scroll down to the bottom of the record for the tags.)
I haven't started a LibraryThing account before now because I didn't really see the need for it in my personal life. It may seem surprising that as much as I love cataloging, I haven't cataloged my home library. But I do have my collections divided by subject, and I have no trouble finding anything whenever I want it. So my system works for me. Besides, LibraryThing has a fee if you want to catalog more than 200 books, and I'd go way over that.
But this exercise got me to thinking that LibraryThing can be used for many things. So I decided to use it to keep track of books I've borrowed from friends or libraries--things I've read and enjoyed enough that I might want to look it up again sometime, but which I do not actually own. I am not going to record books I disliked and wouldn't read again or books I loved so very much that I immediately ran out and bought my own copy so I'd always have it on hand (after all, those are on my shelves for me to see anytime). And, unfortunately, I'm not going to include the many, many books I really liked but have forgotten the titles of. Those are just gone forever. But with LibraryThing, maybe I can keep that problem from happening again.
And maybe later I may use it to keep track of books I'm interested in checking out later, instead of that five-page Word document I've got them all listed in.
I really only intended to add about ten books today, but once you start, it's hard to stop! I ended up adding thirty. My username is LunaMurphy, if you'd like to see my list.
I wasn't as happy with searching in LibraryThing. I searched for The Story of the Stone, an exact title, and it came back with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as the first hit, and the book I was looking for nowhere on the first five pages. It wouldn't do an exact phrase search with quotation marks, either. I went over to Amazon and found it on the first page (even though it still wasn't the first entry). Then I went back to LibraryThing with the author's name and found it more easily. For several of my books, I had to go to my library's catalog or to Amazon to get enough information to find it in LibraryThing.
I do, however, like that there is something resembling authority control on the tags. I tagged my books "do not own," and when connecting to other users, that tag is rendered "unowned." The LibraryThing tag info for "unowned" says, "Includes: unowned, @unowned, DoNotOwn, Don'tOwn, Don’tOwn, _NOT.OWNED, do no own, do not have, do not own, don't own, dont have, dont own, not owned, not-own, not-owned, notowned." Nice way to round up similar tags without forcing people to use a controlled vocabulary.
A side observation: LibraryThing is not afraid to try things that are helpful to readers but harmful to bookstores, things you'll never see from Amazon. Check out LibraryThing's Unsuggester. It's the antithesis of the typical "If you liked X, you might also like Y" recommendation system. Unsuggester offers the equally useful counter, "If you liked X, you'll probably hate Z." What better way to say, "That book sucked," than by saving other readers the pain of suffering through it?
Of course, it's impossible to work in a library and not know about LibraryThing. It is one of the hot topics in libraries right now. My library, the Criss Library at UNO, uses the tags from LibraryThing for Libraries in our catalog. Look at the title Freakonomics to see an example. (Scroll down to the bottom of the record for the tags.)
I haven't started a LibraryThing account before now because I didn't really see the need for it in my personal life. It may seem surprising that as much as I love cataloging, I haven't cataloged my home library. But I do have my collections divided by subject, and I have no trouble finding anything whenever I want it. So my system works for me. Besides, LibraryThing has a fee if you want to catalog more than 200 books, and I'd go way over that.
But this exercise got me to thinking that LibraryThing can be used for many things. So I decided to use it to keep track of books I've borrowed from friends or libraries--things I've read and enjoyed enough that I might want to look it up again sometime, but which I do not actually own. I am not going to record books I disliked and wouldn't read again or books I loved so very much that I immediately ran out and bought my own copy so I'd always have it on hand (after all, those are on my shelves for me to see anytime). And, unfortunately, I'm not going to include the many, many books I really liked but have forgotten the titles of. Those are just gone forever. But with LibraryThing, maybe I can keep that problem from happening again.
And maybe later I may use it to keep track of books I'm interested in checking out later, instead of that five-page Word document I've got them all listed in.
I really only intended to add about ten books today, but once you start, it's hard to stop! I ended up adding thirty. My username is LunaMurphy, if you'd like to see my list.
I wasn't as happy with searching in LibraryThing. I searched for The Story of the Stone, an exact title, and it came back with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as the first hit, and the book I was looking for nowhere on the first five pages. It wouldn't do an exact phrase search with quotation marks, either. I went over to Amazon and found it on the first page (even though it still wasn't the first entry). Then I went back to LibraryThing with the author's name and found it more easily. For several of my books, I had to go to my library's catalog or to Amazon to get enough information to find it in LibraryThing.
I do, however, like that there is something resembling authority control on the tags. I tagged my books "do not own," and when connecting to other users, that tag is rendered "unowned." The LibraryThing tag info for "unowned" says, "Includes: unowned, @unowned, DoNotOwn, Don'tOwn, Don’tOwn, _NOT.OWNED, do no own, do not have, do not own, don't own, dont have, dont own, not owned, not-own, not-owned, notowned." Nice way to round up similar tags without forcing people to use a controlled vocabulary.
A side observation: LibraryThing is not afraid to try things that are helpful to readers but harmful to bookstores, things you'll never see from Amazon. Check out LibraryThing's Unsuggester. It's the antithesis of the typical "If you liked X, you might also like Y" recommendation system. Unsuggester offers the equally useful counter, "If you liked X, you'll probably hate Z." What better way to say, "That book sucked," than by saving other readers the pain of suffering through it?
Thing #11 1/2
Nebraska Learns 2.0 used a Voki to deliver the instructions for Thing #11. A lot of participants responded using Vokis of their own. I wanted to make one, too, but I had trouble, even with my shiny new DSL connection. Whenever I tried to change the face shape or hair color or whatever, it would take what seemed like an unreasonably long time to load. Then, when I changed her shirt, her hair disappeared and after five minutes had not come back. The little spinning wheel just kept spinning, so I knew the program had just stalled out. I don't think this is Voki's fault. I think if I had a better computer with an up-to-date browser and all the latest plug-ins, it would have worked fine. I will probably revisit Voki when I replace my computer, but that's months away, if not a year or more.
So this is something to remember about technology. We still live in a world divided by haves and have-nots. The have-nots are further divided into choose-to-have-nots and unable-to-have-nots. Those who choose to have not usually have looked at a given technology and decided they are not interested. They are content. Those who are unable to have it, however, often want it and feel deeply hampered by their inability to get it (which is almost always related to money). And they are deeply hampered, if their economic situation prevents them from doing basic things, like posting their resume online from home.
And this is something libraries have to remember, too. Absolutely, we need to continue our efforts to keep up with the technologies used by our most saavy patrons, the ones who have computers at home that make the best computers in our libraries look substandard. But we have to remember not to leave behind the have-nots who come to us because we provide access to technology and equipment they could only dream of having at home. A good friend of mine called me the other day to tell me how amazing the public library's computers are, and how blown away she was by their speed and all the things she could do with them. Now I'm sure the librarians there feel their computers are old, outdated, and due for replacing, but this friend is using a ten-year-old machine with Windows 95, a dial-up modem, decrepit CRT monitor that turns everything green, and a browser that can't scroll to the right if a page is too wide, much less render Flash animation. So to her, the library's facilities are godly. I have other friends who don't have internet access at all from their homes, and still others who don't have computers. Not that they don't want them; they just can't afford them.
It's a balancing act for libraries, but it truly is imperative that we keep ourselves primed to serve those at both ends of the continuum. To be relevant to the haves, we need not only to understand the tech they're using, but to be able to offer them some level of service beyond what they can get from their friends. It's not enough to be there; we have to be useful while we're there. But at the same time, we have to remember that we are the lifeline of the have-nots, especially in this economy. It's a wide stance, but we really need to stand on both sides of the fence.
So this is something to remember about technology. We still live in a world divided by haves and have-nots. The have-nots are further divided into choose-to-have-nots and unable-to-have-nots. Those who choose to have not usually have looked at a given technology and decided they are not interested. They are content. Those who are unable to have it, however, often want it and feel deeply hampered by their inability to get it (which is almost always related to money). And they are deeply hampered, if their economic situation prevents them from doing basic things, like posting their resume online from home.
And this is something libraries have to remember, too. Absolutely, we need to continue our efforts to keep up with the technologies used by our most saavy patrons, the ones who have computers at home that make the best computers in our libraries look substandard. But we have to remember not to leave behind the have-nots who come to us because we provide access to technology and equipment they could only dream of having at home. A good friend of mine called me the other day to tell me how amazing the public library's computers are, and how blown away she was by their speed and all the things she could do with them. Now I'm sure the librarians there feel their computers are old, outdated, and due for replacing, but this friend is using a ten-year-old machine with Windows 95, a dial-up modem, decrepit CRT monitor that turns everything green, and a browser that can't scroll to the right if a page is too wide, much less render Flash animation. So to her, the library's facilities are godly. I have other friends who don't have internet access at all from their homes, and still others who don't have computers. Not that they don't want them; they just can't afford them.
It's a balancing act for libraries, but it truly is imperative that we keep ourselves primed to serve those at both ends of the continuum. To be relevant to the haves, we need not only to understand the tech they're using, but to be able to offer them some level of service beyond what they can get from their friends. It's not enough to be there; we have to be useful while we're there. But at the same time, we have to remember that we are the lifeline of the have-nots, especially in this economy. It's a wide stance, but we really need to stand on both sides of the fence.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Thing #11
Onward to Thing #11: Blog about Technology. The instructions say, "simply blog about anything technology related."
Anything? ANYTHING? Sit down and grab a snack. This is going to be long.
Technology is everything, literally everything, humans make, ever have made, or ever will make. That statue in the park? The tools used to carve it are technology. The front door of your house? The hinges, the pane of tempered glass, the doorknob, the lock, even the chain, as well as all the tools and machines used to make these pieces--all technology.
These days, people say "technology" when they mean "electronics." Computers, cell phones, iPods, Kindles, Blackberries, video game consoles, and so on. Or they mean "intangibles"--technology that has evolved beyond physical boundaries--operating systems, computer programs, the internet, the web (they are not the same), Flash animations, streaming video, etc.
Folks forget that the book is also technology. It's old technology, but still . . . think about all the materials and processes that go into making a book. Think about how books were made by hand and written by hand in medieval monasteries. Now think about how they are made today. Think about the "Espresso" machine at the New York Public Library, which prints e-books on demand. Think about how that changes the game for publishing as well as for libraries. The book has undergone some astonishing technological developments through its history.
Some people say print is dead. They've been saying it for a long time, and I'm sure they'll keep saying it. Sure, some people love to read books on their Kindles, but others love the feel of paper in their hands. They want books because they don't want to have to worry about batteries running dead or about dropping a $400 dollar device in the bathtub. They want books because they don't want their favorite novel to become unreadable when some technological advance somewhere down the line renders a particular file format obsolete. Books are never obsolete. Of course, they can rot. They can burn. They can crumble into dust. As long as you keep backing up your files and converting them into the latest "standard" format of the day, you can keep them forever.
Some people drive sedans. Some people drive pickup trucks. Big deal. Some people read on paper. Some read on screens. Big deal.
The point is, the book isn't going away, not so long as there are people who value the tactile sensation of paper upon their fingertips.
The other point is, it doesn't matter. Paper books. Electronic books. Whatever. The library's mission remains the same: providing access to information and entertainment. The way we do our business is transitioning, but that's nothing new. Think about the first library that got an online catalog. Heck, think about the first library that decided to include non-print media in their collection, maybe a sound recording or a movie. There had to be a first one somewhere. Go back even further. Think about the first library that dared to open its doors to the--gasp--public. Libraries are all about change. Always have been, always will be. Why? Because libraries are all about culture. Whatever the people want and need, we provide--we MUST provide, if we want to remain part of the culture. And remember, culture is as much I Can Has Cheezburger? as Shakespeare.
Before I retire, I fully expect to be downloading novels and movies directly into my brain, and sharing them to patrons. How will that work? Is that technically "circulating" the collection? What kinds of laws and social mores will regulate direct brain-to-brain file transfer? Yet I expect I'll probably still have shelves full of paper books, as well as movies on VHS, DVD, and at least three other physical formats, both at home and at the library.
But here's where it gets sticky. Some technologies go obsolete. For technologies requiring no additional tools to operate (e.g.: books, door hinges, etc.), this takes longer, if it happens at all; quite often they continue to thrive alongside other technologies because people still find them useful. But technologies that are not self-contained tend to fall by the wayside. How many libraries still have U-Matic tapes in their collection? Do you even remember what U-Matic is? And when the last U-Matic player breaks, the information on any remaining tapes is gone forever, unless someone thought to copy it to VHS, and then copy it again to DVD, and then copy it again to YouTube, and so on. Maybe you're using Word 2007 now, and your computer doesn't even have a floppy drive. Your colleague retires, and you find a bunch of diskettes filled with Word Perfect files. What can you do with them? The information is gone forever. Maybe it's just old procedures that were outdated anyway. Maybe it's the mythical Great American Novel. Dross will be lost to the sands of time, but so will treasures. But that's nothing new with the modern age. Medieval monks decided which books to copy and preserve, and which ones to let go. Dross was lost, but so were treasures. And this will continue to happen so long as people have opinions on what is cool and what is crap, in other words, until the end of time.
But even if the manifestations change (oh Lord, did I just bring up FRBR?), it's the content that is key. U-Matic, VHS, DVD, .avi, or whatever format you put it in, it's still an episode from The Muppet Show, and it's still funny. So libraries need to stay cognizant of the fact that we gather, search, and provide access to content, whatever the carrier. Evolving technology provides evolving tools to perform the same essential functions for society. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
How do you predict which technologies are going to stick? You can't, really. But here's one guideline. Technologies that are useful and make people's lives better will stick, and continue to evolve. Look at how quickly cell phones and GPS became integral parts of our culture. Why? Because they directly and immediately enriched people's lives. Technologies that are sufficiently entertaining will stick around, too, because people love to have fun. Case in point, the video game. Sure, things have changed a lot between Pong and World of Warcraft, but it's still all about fun. And sometimes people whip out the old Atari 2600 games just for a trip down nostalgia lane. (I do, from time to time, and my friends play them with me.)
But we must guard against a new Dark Age. Can you imagine losing our computers? That can't happen, right? Well, did you know that computers existed well before the 20th century? If you're nodding and thinking of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, you'll have to go back a lot further. The ancient Greeks had computers over two thousand years ago. No joke. Look up the Antikythera Mechanism. Of course, they weren't surfing the web or sending out Tweets to all their pals, but it was still an astonishingly advanced piece of technology. How did such sophisticated tech vanish? Could it happen again? Think about it. (If you enjoy that line of thinking, read Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs.)
Libraries are in the best position to protect and preserve the "good stuff." New technology isn't to be feared, but explored. Some of it will be junk, and some of it will transform our lives. Creation and use of technology are what make humans human.
Anything? ANYTHING? Sit down and grab a snack. This is going to be long.
Technology is everything, literally everything, humans make, ever have made, or ever will make. That statue in the park? The tools used to carve it are technology. The front door of your house? The hinges, the pane of tempered glass, the doorknob, the lock, even the chain, as well as all the tools and machines used to make these pieces--all technology.
These days, people say "technology" when they mean "electronics." Computers, cell phones, iPods, Kindles, Blackberries, video game consoles, and so on. Or they mean "intangibles"--technology that has evolved beyond physical boundaries--operating systems, computer programs, the internet, the web (they are not the same), Flash animations, streaming video, etc.
Folks forget that the book is also technology. It's old technology, but still . . . think about all the materials and processes that go into making a book. Think about how books were made by hand and written by hand in medieval monasteries. Now think about how they are made today. Think about the "Espresso" machine at the New York Public Library, which prints e-books on demand. Think about how that changes the game for publishing as well as for libraries. The book has undergone some astonishing technological developments through its history.
Some people say print is dead. They've been saying it for a long time, and I'm sure they'll keep saying it. Sure, some people love to read books on their Kindles, but others love the feel of paper in their hands. They want books because they don't want to have to worry about batteries running dead or about dropping a $400 dollar device in the bathtub. They want books because they don't want their favorite novel to become unreadable when some technological advance somewhere down the line renders a particular file format obsolete. Books are never obsolete. Of course, they can rot. They can burn. They can crumble into dust. As long as you keep backing up your files and converting them into the latest "standard" format of the day, you can keep them forever.
Some people drive sedans. Some people drive pickup trucks. Big deal. Some people read on paper. Some read on screens. Big deal.
The point is, the book isn't going away, not so long as there are people who value the tactile sensation of paper upon their fingertips.
The other point is, it doesn't matter. Paper books. Electronic books. Whatever. The library's mission remains the same: providing access to information and entertainment. The way we do our business is transitioning, but that's nothing new. Think about the first library that got an online catalog. Heck, think about the first library that decided to include non-print media in their collection, maybe a sound recording or a movie. There had to be a first one somewhere. Go back even further. Think about the first library that dared to open its doors to the--gasp--public. Libraries are all about change. Always have been, always will be. Why? Because libraries are all about culture. Whatever the people want and need, we provide--we MUST provide, if we want to remain part of the culture. And remember, culture is as much I Can Has Cheezburger? as Shakespeare.
Before I retire, I fully expect to be downloading novels and movies directly into my brain, and sharing them to patrons. How will that work? Is that technically "circulating" the collection? What kinds of laws and social mores will regulate direct brain-to-brain file transfer? Yet I expect I'll probably still have shelves full of paper books, as well as movies on VHS, DVD, and at least three other physical formats, both at home and at the library.
But here's where it gets sticky. Some technologies go obsolete. For technologies requiring no additional tools to operate (e.g.: books, door hinges, etc.), this takes longer, if it happens at all; quite often they continue to thrive alongside other technologies because people still find them useful. But technologies that are not self-contained tend to fall by the wayside. How many libraries still have U-Matic tapes in their collection? Do you even remember what U-Matic is? And when the last U-Matic player breaks, the information on any remaining tapes is gone forever, unless someone thought to copy it to VHS, and then copy it again to DVD, and then copy it again to YouTube, and so on. Maybe you're using Word 2007 now, and your computer doesn't even have a floppy drive. Your colleague retires, and you find a bunch of diskettes filled with Word Perfect files. What can you do with them? The information is gone forever. Maybe it's just old procedures that were outdated anyway. Maybe it's the mythical Great American Novel. Dross will be lost to the sands of time, but so will treasures. But that's nothing new with the modern age. Medieval monks decided which books to copy and preserve, and which ones to let go. Dross was lost, but so were treasures. And this will continue to happen so long as people have opinions on what is cool and what is crap, in other words, until the end of time.
But even if the manifestations change (oh Lord, did I just bring up FRBR?), it's the content that is key. U-Matic, VHS, DVD, .avi, or whatever format you put it in, it's still an episode from The Muppet Show, and it's still funny. So libraries need to stay cognizant of the fact that we gather, search, and provide access to content, whatever the carrier. Evolving technology provides evolving tools to perform the same essential functions for society. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
How do you predict which technologies are going to stick? You can't, really. But here's one guideline. Technologies that are useful and make people's lives better will stick, and continue to evolve. Look at how quickly cell phones and GPS became integral parts of our culture. Why? Because they directly and immediately enriched people's lives. Technologies that are sufficiently entertaining will stick around, too, because people love to have fun. Case in point, the video game. Sure, things have changed a lot between Pong and World of Warcraft, but it's still all about fun. And sometimes people whip out the old Atari 2600 games just for a trip down nostalgia lane. (I do, from time to time, and my friends play them with me.)
But we must guard against a new Dark Age. Can you imagine losing our computers? That can't happen, right? Well, did you know that computers existed well before the 20th century? If you're nodding and thinking of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, you'll have to go back a lot further. The ancient Greeks had computers over two thousand years ago. No joke. Look up the Antikythera Mechanism. Of course, they weren't surfing the web or sending out Tweets to all their pals, but it was still an astonishingly advanced piece of technology. How did such sophisticated tech vanish? Could it happen again? Think about it. (If you enjoy that line of thinking, read Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs.)
Libraries are in the best position to protect and preserve the "good stuff." New technology isn't to be feared, but explored. Some of it will be junk, and some of it will transform our lives. Creation and use of technology are what make humans human.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Thing #10
And now, Thing #10: Play around with Image Generators. I scanned through most of the image generators listed on the Nebraska Learns 2.0 website. A couple of them didn't really appeal to me, so I passed them by. However, I did blow the better part of my evening playing with this stuff.
Of the ones I played with, I'll start with the ones which left me with nothing worth showing you.
With Dynamic Einstein Picture, I had Einstein writing "I will not tear holes in space-time" over and over, like a kid staying after school. It wasn't really funny enough to save, and I can't imagine that there aren't several thousand variations on that theme out there.
The Comicbook Speech Bubbler was stupid, yet great fun. However, the saved images were defective. The text was perfectly aligned in the word bubble on the screen, but the lines were squished together and slightly overlapping in the jpg I downloaded. I tried multiple times, with the same result. So I just deleted them. Boo.
The Generator Blog lists scads of different image generators. Many of them are silly time wasters, good for a laugh and not much else, but one in particular really stood out for me: Hide Text, which allows you to convert text into an image. So if you have something (like your e-mail address) that you want people to be able to read with their eyes, but which will be invisible to search engines and robots, this is the way to do it.
FD's Flickr Toys included a link to Motivator, one of the few image generators I have played with in the past. About two years ago, I used it to make posters of Ranganathan's Five Laws featuring screenshots from the anime Read Or Die. If you've seen R.O.D., you might be amused by these. If you haven't seen it, you might just be bemused.
I scanned through FD's other entries, and cheered "Cheezburger!" when I saw the Lolcat Generator. This is my long-suffering cat Luna, who was very unamused by my shenanigans. In case you're not a mythology fan, the monsters are a griffin and a chimera.
What made my discovery of the Lolcat Generator truly funny, however, was the fact that mere minutes earlier, on the Custom Computer Keyboard, I had made a lolcat key.
Can you tell I'm a huge fan of I Can Has Cheezburger?
Then, after all that silliness, I came to ALA's Mini-READ posters. Look at their website. So austere. So dignified. I know READ posters are supposed to feature people reading books, but I don't have any pictures of myself reading (and I'm having a bad hair day, so I don't want to snap one now), and I won't post a picture of a friend or family member without their permission, so I went with this massive pillar of books which was on display in the National Library in Prague in 2005. Nothing says "READ" like a mountain of literature.
I'm going to finish with the first image generator I looked at this evening, because it actually turned out to be my favorite. Dumpr has an "Amazing Circles" generator that held me mesmerized. I made a dozen bubbles out of my 2005 Czech Republic vacation photos. I leave you with one of my favorites. If you want to see the rest, check out my other blog.
Of the ones I played with, I'll start with the ones which left me with nothing worth showing you.
With Dynamic Einstein Picture, I had Einstein writing "I will not tear holes in space-time" over and over, like a kid staying after school. It wasn't really funny enough to save, and I can't imagine that there aren't several thousand variations on that theme out there.
The Comicbook Speech Bubbler was stupid, yet great fun. However, the saved images were defective. The text was perfectly aligned in the word bubble on the screen, but the lines were squished together and slightly overlapping in the jpg I downloaded. I tried multiple times, with the same result. So I just deleted them. Boo.
The Generator Blog lists scads of different image generators. Many of them are silly time wasters, good for a laugh and not much else, but one in particular really stood out for me: Hide Text, which allows you to convert text into an image. So if you have something (like your e-mail address) that you want people to be able to read with their eyes, but which will be invisible to search engines and robots, this is the way to do it.
FD's Flickr Toys included a link to Motivator, one of the few image generators I have played with in the past. About two years ago, I used it to make posters of Ranganathan's Five Laws featuring screenshots from the anime Read Or Die. If you've seen R.O.D., you might be amused by these. If you haven't seen it, you might just be bemused.
I scanned through FD's other entries, and cheered "Cheezburger!" when I saw the Lolcat Generator. This is my long-suffering cat Luna, who was very unamused by my shenanigans. In case you're not a mythology fan, the monsters are a griffin and a chimera.
What made my discovery of the Lolcat Generator truly funny, however, was the fact that mere minutes earlier, on the Custom Computer Keyboard, I had made a lolcat key.
Can you tell I'm a huge fan of I Can Has Cheezburger?
Then, after all that silliness, I came to ALA's Mini-READ posters. Look at their website. So austere. So dignified. I know READ posters are supposed to feature people reading books, but I don't have any pictures of myself reading (and I'm having a bad hair day, so I don't want to snap one now), and I won't post a picture of a friend or family member without their permission, so I went with this massive pillar of books which was on display in the National Library in Prague in 2005. Nothing says "READ" like a mountain of literature.
I'm going to finish with the first image generator I looked at this evening, because it actually turned out to be my favorite. Dumpr has an "Amazing Circles" generator that held me mesmerized. I made a dozen bubbles out of my 2005 Czech Republic vacation photos. I leave you with one of my favorites. If you want to see the rest, check out my other blog.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Thing #9
Two in one day? Yes indeed! Trying to make up for lost time. Here is Thing #9: More Flickr Fun.
Flickrvision - New photos pop up on a map, wherever they are. This would be fun if one was seeking random inspiration, but that's the only practical application I can think of for it. I watched it for several minutes and saw some interesting pictures, and also some incredibly boring ones. On several occasions, a popup popped up blank, with only a note saying the photo was "unavailable." I can only guess that these may be pictures the Flickr member opted not to share publicly, or perhaps deleted immediately after uploading. Too bad there isn't a mechanism for excluding them from the popups. Sometimes the pictures came quickly, sometimes not. When they came slowly, the whole experience was boring. I probably won't visit this site again. I have plenty of other sources for random inspiration.
Flickr Color Pickr - Pick a color from a mosaic, and it shows an array of photos containing predominantly that color. Now this one I imagine a real use for, especially if someone is building a photo mosaic and wants each small photo to behave like a pixel within a larger picture. I know there are programs that create such mosaics automatically, but if you wanted to create an original work of art not existing as a source picture, this could be useful. Also, if you wanted a picture to match a given background, decor, or mood, this might be a good way to search. You even have limited control over the types of pictures the come up, if you want only pictures of doors, graffiti, or urban decay. This could be a big bucket of fun for artists and creative designers. And it has much better potential for sparking random inspiration than Flickrvision, because you control the pace.
Montagr - And this site does automatically what I described above: rendering a larger image out of a mosaic of smaller images. However, the resolution isn't great, and the montages aren't very identifiable. For the few I looked at, I could not identify what the montage was trying to depict. They provide the source picture the program is trying to render, and each time I thought, "Okay, I can kind of see it, but not really . . . no, no. That really looks absolutely nothing whatsoever like it." It ended up looking more like abstract art. Also, the montages take a very long time to load, even with broadband.
Spell with Flickr - This is really fun, and potentially very useful for graphic design. However, the site is frankly ugly, and once you've spelled a word with pictures of letters, it's not terribly obvious how to return to the main page to enter another word. (It's a very tiny link labeled "Entry form" in the middle of the page.) Clunky site design aside, this app is just plain cool. If you enter the same word twice (or if you keep refreshing the results page), you get different images spelling it out, so you could keep retrying until you get one that fits your aesthetic.
There were scads of third party apps listed in the Great Flickr Tools Collection. Just reading the list would have taken me all night, to say nothing of trying any of them. I'm sure there's an app for just about anything you could possibly want to do, but I'm not sure how you'd find an app in that incredibly long, unordered list. They need to break their tools down into categories or something. (They need a cataloger!) I did try a couple of them, but neither worked with my (horribly outdated) browser.
Flickrbits has the same problem. A big list of apps without any discernible order. If you're just browsing for something to play with, that's fine. Finding something specific is more difficult.
From that list, I picked Bubblr, which is a neat concept (allowing you to add dialogue/thought balloons to images and create your own comic strips), but I found it clunky in the execution. It's not very forgiving about letting you correct errors or edit the order of your images once selected. I got frustrated before I even had a complete comic.
I was just about ready to quit looking at Flickr apps when I noticed The Internet Inferno: Dante's hell as seen by Flickr. You descend into Hell (scroll down the page). Each circle of torment is populated by images that happened to be tagged with the name of the sin associated with the layer of hell. Some of the images are disturbing, but a lot of them are just weird. Many make little sense. Sometimes It's a mystery why a particular photo was tagged so that it ended up where it did. I mean, I wasn't surprised to see a sloth under Sloth--in fact I would have been disappointed if I hadn't--however, I am still puzzling as to why a goose appeared under Envy, or a bunch of lizards under Avarice. The page took a long time to load, but it was bizarrely fascinating. It's not particularly interactive, so it may be best to view this page as a creative work in and of itself, a work of art that changes every time you visit.
Anyway, of the six Flickr apps I looked at tonight, the only ones I am likely to revisit are Flickr Color Pickr and Spell with Flickr. But who knows what I'll discover in the future.
Which of these tools and toys might be of use in a library setting? Any of them. You never know what kind of question someone might have. It's good to have a passing familiarity with many many strange things as possible, because what seems esoteric to me might be the absolute perfect thing for someone else.
Flickrvision - New photos pop up on a map, wherever they are. This would be fun if one was seeking random inspiration, but that's the only practical application I can think of for it. I watched it for several minutes and saw some interesting pictures, and also some incredibly boring ones. On several occasions, a popup popped up blank, with only a note saying the photo was "unavailable." I can only guess that these may be pictures the Flickr member opted not to share publicly, or perhaps deleted immediately after uploading. Too bad there isn't a mechanism for excluding them from the popups. Sometimes the pictures came quickly, sometimes not. When they came slowly, the whole experience was boring. I probably won't visit this site again. I have plenty of other sources for random inspiration.
Flickr Color Pickr - Pick a color from a mosaic, and it shows an array of photos containing predominantly that color. Now this one I imagine a real use for, especially if someone is building a photo mosaic and wants each small photo to behave like a pixel within a larger picture. I know there are programs that create such mosaics automatically, but if you wanted to create an original work of art not existing as a source picture, this could be useful. Also, if you wanted a picture to match a given background, decor, or mood, this might be a good way to search. You even have limited control over the types of pictures the come up, if you want only pictures of doors, graffiti, or urban decay. This could be a big bucket of fun for artists and creative designers. And it has much better potential for sparking random inspiration than Flickrvision, because you control the pace.
Montagr - And this site does automatically what I described above: rendering a larger image out of a mosaic of smaller images. However, the resolution isn't great, and the montages aren't very identifiable. For the few I looked at, I could not identify what the montage was trying to depict. They provide the source picture the program is trying to render, and each time I thought, "Okay, I can kind of see it, but not really . . . no, no. That really looks absolutely nothing whatsoever like it." It ended up looking more like abstract art. Also, the montages take a very long time to load, even with broadband.
Spell with Flickr - This is really fun, and potentially very useful for graphic design. However, the site is frankly ugly, and once you've spelled a word with pictures of letters, it's not terribly obvious how to return to the main page to enter another word. (It's a very tiny link labeled "Entry form" in the middle of the page.) Clunky site design aside, this app is just plain cool. If you enter the same word twice (or if you keep refreshing the results page), you get different images spelling it out, so you could keep retrying until you get one that fits your aesthetic.
There were scads of third party apps listed in the Great Flickr Tools Collection. Just reading the list would have taken me all night, to say nothing of trying any of them. I'm sure there's an app for just about anything you could possibly want to do, but I'm not sure how you'd find an app in that incredibly long, unordered list. They need to break their tools down into categories or something. (They need a cataloger!) I did try a couple of them, but neither worked with my (horribly outdated) browser.
Flickrbits has the same problem. A big list of apps without any discernible order. If you're just browsing for something to play with, that's fine. Finding something specific is more difficult.
From that list, I picked Bubblr, which is a neat concept (allowing you to add dialogue/thought balloons to images and create your own comic strips), but I found it clunky in the execution. It's not very forgiving about letting you correct errors or edit the order of your images once selected. I got frustrated before I even had a complete comic.
I was just about ready to quit looking at Flickr apps when I noticed The Internet Inferno: Dante's hell as seen by Flickr. You descend into Hell (scroll down the page). Each circle of torment is populated by images that happened to be tagged with the name of the sin associated with the layer of hell. Some of the images are disturbing, but a lot of them are just weird. Many make little sense. Sometimes It's a mystery why a particular photo was tagged so that it ended up where it did. I mean, I wasn't surprised to see a sloth under Sloth--in fact I would have been disappointed if I hadn't--however, I am still puzzling as to why a goose appeared under Envy, or a bunch of lizards under Avarice. The page took a long time to load, but it was bizarrely fascinating. It's not particularly interactive, so it may be best to view this page as a creative work in and of itself, a work of art that changes every time you visit.
Anyway, of the six Flickr apps I looked at tonight, the only ones I am likely to revisit are Flickr Color Pickr and Spell with Flickr. But who knows what I'll discover in the future.
Which of these tools and toys might be of use in a library setting? Any of them. You never know what kind of question someone might have. It's good to have a passing familiarity with many many strange things as possible, because what seems esoteric to me might be the absolute perfect thing for someone else.
Flowers for Kafka (Thing #8)
Good gravy, has it really been since Nov. 26 since I've been able to work on this? Yikes. Well, it's looking more and more like I won't be able to finish the 23 Things by the end of January. But I'm not giving up quite yet, anyway.
So, here goes . . . Thing #8: Discover Flickr.
The Online Photo Sharing in Plain English video was very convincing, of course, but creating a Flickr account and adding my photos is the kind of thing I could end up spending a lot, lot, lot of time on. I know me. I'd spend hours and hours writing the descriptions for each photo. And right now, that's just not an option. So to keep this short, I'm afraid I'm going to have to do the first exercise, which is just choosing any photo in Flickr and blogging about it.
Back in 2005, I had the opportunity to visit the Czech Republic for two weeks. It was one of the most exciting and wonderful experiences of my life. I took somewhere between 700 and 800 pictures with my digital camera. (And yes, they are all just rotting on my hard drive. I'll do something about that some other time.) But there was a statue that I remember clearly, which I did not get a picture of. So I searched Flickr for a picture of that statue. And here it is.
This statue honors Franz Kafka. Kafka is forever linked to my Prague vacation in my mind because I read a comprehensive book of his short stories on the way there, not only on the flight, but also during my eight or so cumulative hours sitting in airports. So by the time I actually reached Prague, the absurd writings of Prague's crazy son were well in my mind. So of course I had to check out places where Kafka lived, dined, etc. I even ate at the Franz Kafka restaurant. (Which has excellent food, by the way, if you're ever in Prague.)
Now, there are a lot of pictures in Flickr of this particular Kafka statue, but I chose this one because that bright red bouquet of flowers caught my eye. That is obviously not part of the statue. Did the photographer put it there? Or did she find it that way? If not her, then who thought to place flowers in the empty neck of Kafka's human steed? Why? What was the meaning behind it? It reminds me of when I was on Charles Bridge and found a coral necklace fastened around one of the lamp posts. There's a story there, a mystery. And it is almost assuredly lost to history. However, it can inspire creative minds to craft new stories. A sighting like this is fuel for the imagination.
So that's one use for Flickr--a place to cast around, looking at photos of the familiar which happen to capture some small detail of the unusual--sparks for the imagination.
So, here goes . . . Thing #8: Discover Flickr.
The Online Photo Sharing in Plain English video was very convincing, of course, but creating a Flickr account and adding my photos is the kind of thing I could end up spending a lot, lot, lot of time on. I know me. I'd spend hours and hours writing the descriptions for each photo. And right now, that's just not an option. So to keep this short, I'm afraid I'm going to have to do the first exercise, which is just choosing any photo in Flickr and blogging about it.
Back in 2005, I had the opportunity to visit the Czech Republic for two weeks. It was one of the most exciting and wonderful experiences of my life. I took somewhere between 700 and 800 pictures with my digital camera. (And yes, they are all just rotting on my hard drive. I'll do something about that some other time.) But there was a statue that I remember clearly, which I did not get a picture of. So I searched Flickr for a picture of that statue. And here it is.
This statue honors Franz Kafka. Kafka is forever linked to my Prague vacation in my mind because I read a comprehensive book of his short stories on the way there, not only on the flight, but also during my eight or so cumulative hours sitting in airports. So by the time I actually reached Prague, the absurd writings of Prague's crazy son were well in my mind. So of course I had to check out places where Kafka lived, dined, etc. I even ate at the Franz Kafka restaurant. (Which has excellent food, by the way, if you're ever in Prague.)
Now, there are a lot of pictures in Flickr of this particular Kafka statue, but I chose this one because that bright red bouquet of flowers caught my eye. That is obviously not part of the statue. Did the photographer put it there? Or did she find it that way? If not her, then who thought to place flowers in the empty neck of Kafka's human steed? Why? What was the meaning behind it? It reminds me of when I was on Charles Bridge and found a coral necklace fastened around one of the lamp posts. There's a story there, a mystery. And it is almost assuredly lost to history. However, it can inspire creative minds to craft new stories. A sighting like this is fuel for the imagination.
So that's one use for Flickr--a place to cast around, looking at photos of the familiar which happen to capture some small detail of the unusual--sparks for the imagination.
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