Topic 23: Where to from here?

Well here I am at the end of 23 things. I'm sad to see it finish! I enjoyed the mental break trying different applications each week. I had the most fun with Library Thing and image applications (Flickr, image generators). Studying online was easy and I found the module easy to navigate, perhaps because as a library studies student for several years I've had experience with online study and using Janison. I enjoyed writing my blog, it helped me focus instead of just idly clicking on links. I also enjoyed reading other participants' blogs - I "followed" everyone with a blog. Would have loved to see more entries though - but then writing isn't everyone's thing and if it is, not all have time in their work day to wax lyrical. I'll still visit my "Blogger dashboard" from time to time to read the feeds from blogs as people finish the course. Thanks to Helen and Steve for running the show, you've done a great job!

Topic 22: Web tools

I had a look at sites I was interested in and there was quite a range to choose from. I chose Picnik to look at in the end, as I enjoy digital photography and experimenting with photos. This tool would be useful for creating eye catching promotional materials for handouts or displays. Some of the features are for "premium" (paid) subscriptions but there are enough free tools to keep you busy. Here two creations of mine, using photos from Flickr:

Topic 21: Web-based documents

For this topic I signed up for Zoho Writer which was very easy as it uses your Google login and password. The introductory document that explains the features of Zoho Writer seemed like a good one to post to my blog - instead of a boring "test...testing..." type document (I lack ideas to create my own sample document today!). You can view it in the post below. It was very easy to post the document - see the previous post with the sample document to see instructions on how to post to your blog. A website like this would be great to use to share documents and collaborate with others on a document. Unlike a normal document in a network drive, more than one person at a time would be able to view it and edit it.

Welcome

Welcome to Zoho Writer
Your Word Processor on the Web

Thank you for signing up with Zoho Writer!

Zoho Writer sports a new, refreshing and intuitive user interface. It is the word processor designed for you, the next generation web citizen. Built using AJAX technology, it's fast and revolutionizes the way you work with documents. Having all your documents online (and offline too! we'll get back to that later!!), you have access to them from any computer, at home or at work. And no more emailing them back-and-forth to your colleagues, clients or friends for review, thanks to its instant collaboration, inline commenting and chat facilities.

It will take a lot more than this short welcome document to list all of Zoho Writer's features and hence a chosen few of the Zoho Writer's functionalities are mentioned below :

Elegant User Interface

Zoho Writer has undergone a makeover with a newly introduced tab-based user interface. The features are categorized under different tabs for easy accessibility. You have the flexibility of navigating around any of the tab features with a single click, thanks to the friendly toolbar. Here is how the new UI looks:

What's more, each tab in the toolbar comes with a drop down arrow that lists the features in the form of pull-down menu. Browse through the features and apply them to your document at the same time using the pull-down menu, without having to navigate away from the existing highlighted tab.

Use formatting options - Bold, italicize, underline, color your words, set background color, link to a web page, set margins, use cool smileys and do much more. Use the same keyboard shortcuts as with any other word processing application for accessing these functions.

Enhanced Sidebar

The left-side bar, that lists all your documents (personal and shared), has some nice little enhancements in the version.

Filters:
We have added few filtered views - "Shared by me", "My Public Documents" & "All". Look for the View menu in the sidebar.

File Info and Actions:
Along side each file in the sidebar, users will find an icon hovering over which will display the file info such as users shared to, public document etc. Users also have an action icon to Trash, Share, Rename or Export the specific file.

Page View Editing

The most requested and the much-awaited feature is out with Zoho Writer. Switching back-and-forth from edit view to page view will be a thing of the past. Users can edit their documents in "Page View" mode and get to know the print-layout of the document real time.

And there's no restriction on the language direction. Type content in LTR as well as RTL languages and in the same document too.

Users can also choose from among the various document page sizes - A4, Letter, Legal & Executive.

Document Info and More

Get document related information both ways - with or without a click of a mouse. With the enhanced status bar, users will get real time info on the word & character count, number of pages, author name and more. Clicking on the "Document Properties" button from the toolbar will display the relevant document info in the form of a pop-up window.

Improved Header/Footer

Add header/footer in your document on the fly. Choose from among the options of having them in one, two or three columns. There's an auto-field feature too that lets you insert Page Number, Page Count, Current Date and Author Name into the document's header and footer directly from the toolbar.

Document History - View & Compare Version

Messed up the current version of the document? Ever wondered if you could revert to an earlier version of it? With Zoho Writer, you can.

We create new versions of the document with each explicit save. At any time, you can view a document's history, seeing those previous versions and, if you want, reverting to an earlier draft.

Writer also lets you compare two versions of a document, so you can see specific changes and go back to version of your choice.

Spell Check

What's a word processor without a spell checker? Zoho Writer's does all the dirty spell checking work for you so that you needn't worry about whether it's receive or recieve

Moreover, the spell-check feature is available in more than 75 different languages. So it doesn't matter whether you are typing your document in French or Swahili.

Tags as Folders

Get the best of both worlds . Tags are the new folders. Not sure whether you want to put a document in the Sales or Marketing folder?

That's where tags-as-folders come in. Make the document available in both the folders! Now, you can click on "Tag Folders" in the Sidebar to view all your tag folders. Isn't that cool?

Post to Your Blog

Being on the web, you can post to your blog from within Zoho Writer. As you have seen above, Zoho Writer's WYSIWYG editor is more feature-rich than a typical blog editor's. Be it Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, LiveJournal, TypePad or any blog that supports metaWeblog API, you can make the post from Zoho Writer. You can add tags and optionally make the post as a draft as well.

Comments

Add inline comments to particular paragraphs/sentences of a document. You & your friends (or your team members & your boss) can add comments in a document you are collaborating on.

Adding contextual comments is very useful for reviewing purposes. And this comes in handy for journalists/editors & teachers/students, in particular.

Share your Documents

Zoho Writer responds to the basic human need to connect with others - share a document with others & allow them to work on it.

When you share a document in Writer, you give others access to that document so that they can view it or, if you prefer, work on it with you. And all in real time — so when someone makes a change, the document gets updated for everyone.

What's more users have the flexibility of sharing the document with individuals on a personal level or share them with multiple users belonging to a personal/organizational group at once.

Go Offline

Not sure you'll have internet access all the time? Zoho Writer allows you to take your documents offline. You can view as well as edit your latest 25 documents offline. Changes made during offline editing will be synced with the online version once you switch.

Integration With Other Zoho Apps

Zoho Writer comes from the widely diversified stable of Zoho. Signing up with Zoho Writer allows you to access a plethora of Zoho apps - be it our web based spreadsheet tool, Zoho Sheet, the online presentation creator, Zoho Show or the net meeting enabler, Zoho Meeting.

The integration doesn't stop with just single sign-on. You can embed sheets and slideshows. And here's more - any change done to the sheet/slideshow gets automatically reflected in your Zoho Writer document!

Those are just a few things that can be done with Zoho Writer. You will get to discover more as you work with it.

We have a very active users forum at http://forums.zohowriter.com/. And your queries, valuable feedback & suggestions are most welcome at feedback@zohowriter.com as well.

Again, thanks for signing up with Zoho!

Topic 20: Second life

"Second life" looks rather interesting! It appears it is a bandwith sucker so I don't think I'll install it at home. From what I've seen on you tube it looks like a fun way to interact with people and also play a virtual reality version of paper dolls (choosing outfits for your avatar, how you want it to look etc). Establishing library services, such as reference, in a virtual world is a good idea - if that's where people are it makes sense to be there too. If TAFE establish virtual classrooms it would be great to have a library presence there too, for reference and also for promoting resources and events in real life campus libraries.

PS-I wrote the above in a draft email to post to my blog later. The computer I'm using wouldn't let me get on to the Blogger dashboard - my ISP was sending a stream of automated traffic apparently and so Google said "We're sorry" via their apologetic Forbbiden 403 web page. Claire posted about the same problem on her blog so perhaps it was a network wide issue.

Topic 19: Online communities

I already have a Facebook account that I use at home so there isn't really anything I have to do for this topic. I'm not a fan as yet of TAFE SA libraries, will do that next time I'm on Facebook. The libraries' page is a good example of an organisation reaching out to users by promoting itself 'on their hometurf' and also assisting existing users of the library providing by catalogue links and contact info for all TAFE SA campus libraries.

Topic 18: Library Thing

I had a look at LibraryThing and like what I see. I currently use GoodReads via Facebook and have 150 books on that I've recalled reading or have read since joining Facebook a year ago. So I don't think I'll switch over - particularly as I use it to keep track of what I've read. LibraryThing seems to indicate you use it to catalogue books you own and I borrow a lot of books from my local public library. But it might be fun to use it for the books I actually own. I like the tagging and book recommendation functions which GoodReads doesn't have.

As for the task for this topic I found it very easy to add five books I own to LibraryThing. I have added a widget of my little library to my blog - see the right handside column under my Tags (To do the same, go to Dashboard - Layout - Page elements - Add a gadget - HTML/Java Script and copy and paste the embedded widget script from the Tools tab (clickMake a standard blog widget) of your LibraryThing page into the HTML/Java Script gadget box). Something like this would be great to use to publicise new books added to a library's collection. Perhaps a widget could be added to a student intranet page and a scrolling book image might catch a student's eye. The student could click on it and be shown the details of the book and which library has it.

Topic 17: Image generators

This was a fun topic. Through my experiments I think that image generators could be used as a fun addition to library displays.

ImageChef.com Flower Text

I created this flash animation at http://www.imagechef.com/ , following a link from The Generator Blog. I also used ImageChef for the star shape at the top right handside of my blog.

One final generated image - libraries, an unlikely graffiti subject:

Topic 16: Podcasts

I Googled "library podcasts" and came up with the Library Success Wiki, looked at previously in this course. They have a page on podcasting with a number of links to podcasting libraries. I found one link that seemed to be podcasting about libraries, rather than libraries offering podcast tours, which was what I was after. I subscribed to the podcasts of the Infopeople blog by clicking on a podcast subscription link and choosing Bloglines as my reader. I now have a page of podcasts which looks similar to a page of blog posts except for a play button at the end of each post.

Topic 15: YouTube and TeacherTube

After a few tries, success in embedding a video! I found I had to click on Edit HTML and then paste the html code from the YouTube page. The video showed as a white box with a red x in it, which usually means bad news. I thought I'd publish the post anyway to see if the video showed up after all, and it did! So just because you can't see your video in the Compose box where you are writing your text it doesn't mean it won't work.

I had trouble finding a post-worthy library related video on YouTube, but found one in the end. It's a clever library tour video that uses humour and manages not to be too "cringe-worthy".

I tried to look at http://www.dailymotion.com/ . I'm pretty sure when I first clicked on it when the topic was put up on Janison that it was accessible but maybe we were all too curious about that site last week because it is now blocked. Anyway, YouTube works as does TeacherTube. I looked at the two sites and found TeacherTube to be easier to operate with much less visual clutter. I can see the potential in these sites for libraries, such as library promotional videos (as already done by our Stephen Dunne), tours and how to use the catalogue (also already done).

Topic 14: Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

Here is a link to a resource about Library 2.0 that I found useful:

http://librariesinteract.info/2007/12/31/ten-library-20-resolutions-for-2008/

Library 2.0 theory is fine, but it's nice to have some examples of how to make one's library "2.0".

As for what I think Library 2.0 is? I think it is taking the best and most useful of what is available in the form of web 2.0 tools and using them for the benefit of library users, taking the "user-centric" perspective.

Topic 13: iGoogle

I've added a couple of items to my iGoogle page. I found it very easy to do. Simply click on "Add stuff", search eg "Google documents", "Google reader", click "Add it now". I have a clock and weather gadgets apart from Google documents and Google reader. I think it is useful to have these things in one place for at a glance viewing. A version for students would be a good idea, and one of the 'compulsory' boxes could be a search box linked to our library catalogue. An overdue items reminder could be included "You have 1 book due this week", but that depends on a compliant library management system.

Topic 12: Tagging

De.li.cious looks like a useful tool for being able to access your bookmarks anywhere and share them with others. The number at the end of the link shows how popular a link is - the people who have bookmarked that link has the more popular, and perhaps more useful it is. That can help save time, as a usual internet search brings up links of varying quality but you don't know how good they might be until you click on them. Regarding how this tool could be used in our work, if our library network had an account it could be a one stop shop for interesting links. It could be used in tandem with Networking blog. Instead of looking through previous posts trying to find that interesting link someone posted about, one could check the De.li.cious links page that has a list of all links posted in Networking.

Topic 11: More Flickr fun

The variety of "mashups" with Flickr out there is amazing. I looked a site called http://www.dumpr.net/ and it has a variety of effects that can be used with flickr photos, some serious, some novelty. A serious effect I liked was Lomo:

Before:

After:

Photo taken by alphageek.

Another mashup site is http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/. Apart from purely digital creations, you can make a photo cube. Something like this would be fun to use for library displays - put in a length of fishing line before folding it up and you could hang it up. Looking at the instructions (I haven't made one, might try it at home!) it seems a rather small cube but I think the template could be enlarged on a photocopier for a bigger cube more suitable for a display.

Topic 10: Flickr

Topic 10 asks us to upload a photo from Flickr that we like to our blogs. I went to http://www.flickr.com/ and there on the homepage was a fabulous picture I wanted to post to my blog. Too easy!



Click on the picture to go to the page this photo belongs to. The photographer's photostream has many other amazing pictures.

Topic 8, Topic 9: Wikis

I've delved into the world of wikis so it's time to write about my experiences adding to a wiki. I joined the LEARN Network Wikispace and added an entry to the LEARN Network Jargon Busters Glossarwiki (about Avatars). Then I went to play in the 'sandbox' page and added some favourites. When I added my favourites I tried to change the font of what I had typed to distinguish it from the other entries but it changed the font for the entire page. Same if I tried to change the colour. I highlighted my text, chose the font and then everything changed, rather than just my highlighted selection. So in the end I stuck with the status quo. I looked at the Help section and it advised to do exactly as I had done so who knows what I did wrong. Luckily I could fix up my accidental changes by clicking Cancel - I wish there was a handy Undo button! When I went back in to Edit the page again there was a message where I had to click "Discard previous draft" to cancel it completely. So a few problems there but that was my first try. It's a good thing that a sandpit is a place to play and often make a mess, so that fits the idea of a Sandbox wiki perfectly, at least for me!

Wiki wanderings

At the moment I am exploring wikis ahead of answering this week's topic questions about wikis and the value of wikis to library services. I found the following pictures through a link at a wiki page about weeding (scroll down to "Ideas for Disposing of Weeded Books and/or Used Books"), and thought I'd share them here for a bit of literary levity (read the titles from top to bottom):



You can see more "sorted books" here. Clever idea, isn't it?

Feed me!

I've just been exploring a bit more with finding feeds. Topix.net looked very overwhelming. I tried searching "libraries" but it did not seem to come up with much. I tried "ancient Rome" and it listed seemingly almost everything published by newspapers about events taking place in various Romes in the US. I think there was about 20 towns (at least) called Rome in the US at first glance! I didn't spend any more time refining my search technique (I'm sure there was an advanced search somewhere). I moved on to look at Syndic8.com and that was easier to navigate. I looked at a librarian community blog which incidentally had a post from someone asking for library blogs to add to her RSS feed. One suggestion was Tame the Web. I visited this blog and decided to add the feed to Bloglines. However I could not find a feed reference anywhere except for right at the bottom of the page. I clicked on it and found it was blocked and deemed a "malicious" site. It looks like feedburner.com, which appears to host the RSS feed for the blog, is banned like Technorati, which is mentioned in the Finding feeds topic information. So Page 2RSS came to the rescue and I now have a feed for that page.

Topic 7: Finding feeds

I've just completed the main exercise in Topic 7, which is using Page 2RSS. I was not able to drag the link to my toolbar. Instead I added it to my Favourites list. I decided to navigate to Panorama's Resources page and create a feed for that. This way, if an update to that page is made that I have requested eg a new version of a guide to be added to the page, I will see that it has been done. So I went to the Resources page then opened my favourites list and clicked on the "Add to Page 2RSS" link. This brought me to a page where I could click on the "Bloglines" link which added the feed to my Bloglines page. I will be back to edit this post once I have done some searches for new feeds in order to comment on some of the questions for Topic 7.

Topic 6: RSS feeds

I decided to use Bloglines at my RSS aggregator. I found the instructions in the handout created by Gilles Plains really useful in helping me create an account and sign up to some websites suggested in the topic outline. These instructions look quite comprehensive and deal with subscribing to feeds other than blogs, such as Flickr and podcasts. It occurs to me that by "following" other Blogger.com blogs I have subscribed to an RSS feed of sorts. When I am at the Blogger Dashboard I can see summaries of any new posts posted by anyone with a blog in the 23 Things pilot group. Subscribing to RSS feeds saves a lot of time visiting sites individually for updates. Visiting one website (Bloglines) instead of many is a definite time saver. I think it took me about 15 minutes to sign up to Bloglines and add some feeds.

Topic 5: registering my blog

I thought I'd mention Topic 5 quickly before writing about Topic 6. Topic 5 was simply registering my blog on the Progress Log. I have not used Google Documents before and it seems like a easy way to collaborate on a document. It's certainly useful for 23 things where people from different networks can contribute to a document (impossible using individual network shared drives). I like to check it regularly to see if anyone else has created their blog so I can "follow" them.

Topic 3: Movi

I tried Movi with Louise on Monday and it was not completely successful. I was able to join Louise's conference without trouble. The webcam worked beautifully but she could not hear me and I could not hear her (We used the phone instead). My PC audio settings were adjusted for the headset and I went through the audio tuning wizard which successfully completed. So all signs pointed to it working for the conference but it did not when it came to the crunch. I have had a taste of the Movi experience at least and I will fiddle with the headphones again later - I have not had a chance to yet this week, it's been so hectic. In terms of task duration, I would say it took an hour altogether for equipment installation, movi-ing and troubleshooting.

Topic 2: See and Share

I joined my Panorama colleague Louise's See and Share conference this morning - me at my desk, and Louise in the managers' office at the other end of the building. We shared each other's desktops and tried out various functions. It looks like it is a useful tool for reviewing documents and making changes on the spot rather than emailing attachments back and forth with comments. A change to a document can be decided instantly without having to wait for a turn around time. In terms of task duration once Louise's email invitation appeared in my inbox it was very easy to open the program from my desktop and put in the password and get started, a matter of moments really. I did find a lag time between the desktop sharer's action and seeing the result on the screen. For example, I could see Louise's mouse arrow clicking on a folder but had to wait a second or two for it to show the opened folder. I'd imagine opening the folder occurred much faster than that. So things don't always happen instantaneously for the person viewing the desktop of the other user which should be kept in mind by the person controlling the desktop at the time.

Topic 4: Blogging

I've decided each post will have a title referring to which "Thing" of the 23 I'm currently working on. In this case it is the topic about starting a blog (I've yet to complete Topics 2 and 3 (See and Share, Movi) ). This task took me about 20 mins. A third of that time was trying to create my Blogger account. The verification words are hard to decipher. Even when I thought I correctly identified an 'a' and an 'i' were separate and were not in fact just an 'a', it still rejected it. I had to repeat log in details and hope to get a word that was easier to identify. I had the same trouble with Google accounts - it took me four times before I got the word correct. This process may be successful in keeping away spambots creating bogus accounts etc, but it might also be successful in keeping away legitimate users. Once past the account creation stage, it was easy to get started and post a message.

Introduction

Hello...(taps microphone, clears throat)...Welcome to my blog. This blog will cover my experience with the 23 Things course. I'm looking forward to playing with 2.0 technologies and hopefully learning something along the way.