Oxford Social Media Day

I'm very much looking forward to Bodleian Libraries' Oxford Social Media Day tomorrow! Two streams of events - one focussing on case studies and the theory behind use of 'Web 2.0' technologies in libraries, one where people get a chance to mess about with social media tools and get chance to ask people for advice on how to set them up etc.

http://23thingsoxford.blogspot.com/2011/08/oxford-social-media-2011-developments.html

I'm facilitating for blogs and facebook, and going to sessions on social media policy in public libraries and marketing academic libraries! Should be fun, if busy...

Completion confirmed

Hurrah, just got my completion confirmation email!

See you all at the prize giving...

And now, the end is here...

All good things (and all 23 things) must come to an end. It's been fun!

I've had a good time, chatted to some fun folks, and I look forward to putting some faces to names at the awards ceremony. It's been a good opportunity to explore some Web 2.0 things: some I've always meant to (like Flickr), some that I didn't think I ever would try (like iGoogle, Google Reader, Twitter and Delicious), and some old favourites (Wikis, Facebook, YouTube).

Hmm. How to summarise my views? I think mini reviews of the various Things makes sense, especially focussing on whether or not I'll keep using them and whether I'll use them for work... And then give my verdict on each- Yay, Meh or Nay?

Things 1 & 2, Google ID & iGoogle: I was initially wary of iGoogle, but soon came to see it as a great access point to all the Web 2.0 information I wanted - I'm now hugely keen on it, and use it as my homepage at work and at home! YAY!
Things 3 & 4, Blogger: I'd used Livejournal, so was hard to convince, but the ease of the gadgets is starting to win me over, and I'm considering starting a personal blog on it. I already blog for work, but on Wordpress not Blogger: http://oiloxford.wordpress.com/ YAY!
Things 5 & 6, Google Reader: A great way of keeping up to date on news and updates, which I'm planning on using more and more as it integrates everything into my iGoogle page. I'll use it for work, in that I'll keep watching Phil Bradley's blog... YAY!
Thing 7, Flickr: I've got a paid account and uploaded hundreds of photos- it's so much better than Facebook as you can share the original full-size pics. I've used it for work to share photos of things we're advertising to other OULS libraries. YAY!
Thing 8, Picnik: It's nice, but not as nice as a proper image manipulation program. I'll probably use it more at work than at home, as we can't install programs here. But I don't need to edit many things at work. Meh?
Things 9 & 10, Delicious: I love the idea of keeping all my bookmarks online, so that part of it won me over. But I don't like the community aspect, and I don't like the layout. So Google Bookmarks won me around instead. I've got lots of cataloguing bookmarks on my Google Bookmarks now, so yes I use it for work! Google Bookmarks gets a yay, Delicious gets a nay.
Thing 11, Podcasts: A neat idea, and I've used them a bit. Haven't used them as much as I should- maybe I'll revisit these in my own time later. They've certainly got the potential to be yay, but I haven't really connected to it so it gets a Meh?
Thing 12, YouTube: A great time-waster, but I doubt I'll ever really use it for work. Still, I love it for play so it gets a big Yay!
Thing 13, Facebook: I already run the work Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Oxford-United-Kingdom/Oriental-Institute-Library/137472003754, and I have my own Facebook page. Despite this, I'm getting a bit jaded with Facebook. It's great at tagging photos? That's about it, really. Meh.
Thing 14, LinkedIn: I put my CV on here, but never really intend to look at it again. Nay.
Things 15 & 16, Twitter: Radioteletweeting with the Bunnies was fun, but I don't really like Twitter and have removed the Widget from my iGoogle. Nay.
Thing 17, Wikis: Ace tools for collaborative projects, I use them for work and play. Yay!
Thing 18, Wikipedia: A huge and amazing resource. At work I use it for cataloguing- it enables you to get a brief overview of a subject, essential for making LoC Subject Headings. Yay!
Thing 19, Google Docs: Quite a fun way to work on documents together. Still, the Q drive is better for work. Meh.
Thing 20, ThinkFree Office: Whatever, I preferred Google Docs. Nay.
Things 21 & 22, Gadgets & Widgets: Lots of useful tools here, wonderful for customising your online experience. Yay!

So that's 9 yays, 4 mehs and 3 nays. Apparently in total on this blog I've used the Yay tag 12 times, Meh 9 times and Nay 9 times. So 23 things was definitely a worthwhile program, and I learnt lots, and it's inspired me to the possibilities of Web 2.0. But not everything won me around!

Go Go Gadget Gadgets!

So, last week I was on holiday and missed playing around with gadgets and widgets. I'm catching up with them now!

They're useful. There are so many Web 2.0 tools, it's nice to have something that makes it possible to pull them all together- to put my flickr on my blog, or my bookmarks on my iGoogle, or my RSS reader on my iGoogle or whatever. The whole interplay of the different platforms is something I really like about Web 2.0. So yes, this was a good week.

First I put my Flickr photostream at the bottom of my blog, then changed my mind and put it on the sidebar. It's not a very interesting display at the moment (pictures of a card catalogue we were offering), but it should be better when I upload my Easter holiday snaps! I also changed the colour scheme for the blog, as I decided the black background was a bit irritating.

I didn't fancy having Google headlines on my blog, so didn't bother with that additional thing. Oh, how rebellious!

I don't like the delicious gadgets, and I don't really like delicious. So I fiddled with them a bit before abandoning them in favour of my trusty Google Bookmark widget. I took this chance to put in two new Google Bookmark widgets- this way all my links tagged "Cataloguing" will be in one widget, all my "House hunting" ones in another and all my "Re-enactment" ones in a third. Excellent!

But although the Delicious Widget is a Nay, Gadgets and Widgets in general are a big Yay!

Office 2.0

I've used Google Docs quite a lot already among my friends, so there weren't many huge surprises. But I hadn't used their forms before, and they're quite funky.

I decided to actually do something useful with my 23 Things for once, and made a LoC Cutter Number Generator as a Google Spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Anv66HmLQMiZdFlsTmJyb18zV3ZaSkZWMWNPa0JaRlE&hl=en

The main problem is when several people try to edit something at once. You get fights- "I want to type in this word! I want to type in this word!"
Also, I'm terrified someone's going to edit something important and it won't work any more. So I've got the formula stored in a Notepad file. Which means that I'm not storing all my information there, I'm not fully embracing the mindset of these things. Oh well.
I do like how many functions you can nest in their spreadsheets- Excel refused to run my formula as it's too long!

So I guess that's a meh. I'm not over-the-moon, but I can see it has uses.

Wasn't hugely impressed by ThinkFree Office? It's ok, I guess. But I'm used to Google Docs already, and I'm not convinced enough to switch. The verdict is nay!

Oh dear, I'm on holiday next week. I'm going to fall behind on my 23 things for the first time! Ah well, it's almost over...

Wikis

My work computer only has IE6. What's up with that?

Anyway, it's meant I can't edit the SocialOULS wiki. But I've done that before- I made this page for our library last year: http://socialouls.wetpaint.com/page/OIL That page does need to be Bodleian-ised tho, maybe I'll try to do it whilst on the front desk over lunch (the front desk has Firefox, thankfully!)

I've done lots of wiki editting in the past- Wikipedia, the Social OULS wiki, and most of all on a wiki for Viking Age Re-enactment I'm a member of.

I think wikis are great ways for people to pool knowledge. I love the way they get contributions from all sorts of people with all sorts of areas of specialist knowledge- it's the ultimate peer review. Obviously they're not perfect (containing a mixture of mistakes, deliberate misinformation, a general Western/American bias, and problems arising from the fact they're often written by enthusiastic amateurs not professions), but nothing is. And Wikipedia at least tries to acheive "Neutral Point Of View", even if that's a bit ridiculous and rather impossible.

The Wikipedia page about Wikipedia may not be the most unbiased source to find out about the problems with Wikipedia though!

Wikis get a big Yay from me!

RADIOTELETWITTER GOOD STOP

Having said I didn't like Twitter, I must admit I am hugely amused by Konnie Bunny's radioteletype-style updates from the shopfloor of RSL: http://twitter.com/KBOXF23

NNNN

Twittering

Twitter is like blogging on speed. And I don't like it, for the following reasons:

• It's like Facebook with just the status updates and none of the good features.
• The character limit irritates me.
• It doesn't seem to like apostophes. WTF?
• You can't edit tweets once you've posted them.
• I can't see a way to subscribe to a hashtag topic. You can save the search, but it doesn't then show up in your standard list of tweets you're following?

Yeah, I doubt I'll be sticking around on Twitter. As I said last week, there are too many social networking sites already. I won't be keeping up with linkedin, I won't be keeping up with Twitter. Although I have added a Twitter gadget to iGoogle to give it a go- I've subscribed to Weird Al, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Fucking Palmer.

And Konnie Bunny's twitter, because that's hilarious.

Social Networking

Social Networking is fascinating, and the different feel of the various sites always interests me. http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/16/study-ages-of-social-network-users/ talks about the ages of people using different social networking sites, whilst http://royal.pingdom.com/2009/11/27/study-males-vs-females-in-social-networks/ talks about the male vs female ratios. I must admit, the sheer number of social networking sites is rather overwhelming! I hadn't even heard of some of them...

Anyway. How can Facebook be used by libraries?

I run the Oriental Institute Library fan page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Oxford-United-Kingdom/Oriental-Institute-Library/137472003754
In theory it's a great extra way to get in touch with readers, to keep them informed about on-going projects, and so on. In pratice, the big issue is getting enough readers signed up to your Facebook page. If you don't get enough then there's really no point, it's like giving a lecture to an empty room. So I think Facebook can be great, but it needs lots and lots of advertising.
Still, my Mum regularly reads the blog posts there to catch up on how my job's going- so maybe it is useful after all. Even if only for her.

Also, I've joined Linked In. Even if I'm over 17 years younger than the average age for it... http://uk.linkedin.com/in/jamesnfishwick is my profile, with lots of copy-and-pasting from my CV! Excitingly, I put my employer down as "Bodleian Libraries" and was the first person to do so-although I then realised Laura had said she worked at "Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford" so I changed to that instead. Doubt I'll ever visit Linked In again.

The big problem with Social Networking, in my view, is information overload. With Facebook, LiveJournal and now LinkedIn all clamouring for my attention on a daily basis, I generally find it easier to just ignore them all!
I guess Facebook gets a Meh, and LinkedIn gets a Nay?

We're half way there...

So, thought I'd do a bit of a review. Which of the 23 Things have been useful and which do I think I will I keep up?

I was initially anti-iGoogle, not seeing the need for it and disliking it's clutter. But, having set it up so it just showed me things I'm really interested in, it's now proving invaluable and is my homepage both at work and at home. I've also embraced (because they work so well inside iGoogle) Google Reader for getting RSS feeds of blogs & podcasts and Google Bookmarks so I can access all my bookmarks wherever I go. If only there was a good Livejournal gadget!
I'm also a big fan of Flickr- being able to upload higher resolution versions of pictures is excellent, I've always hated Facebook for it's compression.

Picnik was fun, but I'd rather use Picture Publisher. Guess I may use it if I'm at a PC that doesn't have an image manipulation program? I didn't like Delicious for personal use- my bookmarks are for my personal reference, not for everyone else, and Google Bookmarks sits better in Google Reader. But still, I can see Delicious could be good for libraries to advertise online resources and so on.

So yes. Despite my initial cynicism and belief I'd already seen every Web 2.0 tool that mattered I've now become addicted to a whole bunch more. I'm not sure this is neccessarily a good thing, but oh well! There's another 6 weeks to go, and I dread to think what I'm going to get hooked on next...

Podcasting & YouTube

Podcasts seem good! I've subscribed to BBC Radio 4's History of the World in 100 Objects. I've heard one or two on the radio, and been very impressed by them. They take an object (often in the British Museum?), and examine what the object tells us about some aspect of world history. And they get top-class academics on to do the discussion.

As an example, here's Oxford's Barry Cunliffe using some bronze flagons to discuss the Celts and drinking: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/ahow/ahow_20100224-1000a.mp3

Now the show is in my Google Reader I can listen to all of the episodes and not miss any- hurrah! I can definitely see the use of this, I love Radio 4 but only normally listen to it in my car. Will be adding more programs, I think.

I've been using YouTube for aaaaages. Didn't know the stuff about channels before though, so that's a neat discovery. Also didn't know there was so much education-related stuff. So yes, very interesting task.

Have a video of the "March of the Librarians":

Om-nom-nom-nom... Mmm, Delicious

I often move around computers. There are several I use at work, I've got one in my flat, I use my girlfriend's computer and sometimes my mum's computer. So loosing track of where I saved which bookmarks is a constant problem. But no longer! Apparently.

On the surface, Delicious seems great. But there's two big problems with it:

• It's just not as easy as my favourites on IE or whatever. Those are available from a sidebox, a toolbar *and* a menu. Whilst I need to go to a whole new website to see Delicious. And to get to that website, I need to use my favourites anyway! If there was a good iGoogle gadget I could forgive it, but there isn't.
  
• Also, it won't let me organise all my links into folders. I like hierarchical structures as well as unstructured systems. So yes, I just like having folders as well as tags, sorry.
  

Delicious definitely isn't useless. The idea of having a tool that lets you share your bookmarks is cool, and the Networks feature that lets you see other people's bookmarks is a good one. But it's not going to change my life and I won't be using it regularly.

So Delicious gets a meh from me, I'm afraid.

I may well be converted by Google Bookmarks, on the other hand. Having all my bookmarks nice and simply in my iGoogle page is great. I know it's Bookmarking not Social Bookmarking, but I've always seen Bookmarking as quite personal anyway. So Google Bookmarks it is!

On the other hand, I think Tags are awesome, I love opening up classification and making it so gloriously post-co-ordinate and unstructured. I've always been a big fan of tags, and I use them excessively in my Googlemail. As I said above, they don't work for everything and I do like having structured nested folders as well, but they are great.

Tags get a big yay!

Over the past week I've also revisited iGoogle, and I must say I'm converted. It means my Googlemail and my Google Reader are in the same window. That's brilliant. It's rapidly becoming essential for me. Especially as I've trimmed it down to just a few gadgets, thus avoiding information overload- BBC Oxford weather, Googlemail, Google Reader and a satirical news site. Yeah, I'm totally revising my opinion of it to a yay.
I just wish more sites had good iGoogle gadgets. Livejournal, for example. There is a gadget that uses the mobile phone Livejournal platform (cunning!), but you have to log into it each time rather than it remembering your details- very irritating.

Buzz off!

Yeah, Buzz's privacy settings really weren't good. And the way it kept sending my Buzz conversations to my Googlemail inbox was infuriating. So I've turned it off (at least that's nice and simple- it's a tiny little link right at the bottom of your gmail page).

Article about Buzz: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31322_3-10451428-256.html

If Buzz had just been an extra link below my Inbox (and not being squirting information at me constantly) I would have kept it. Similarly, if there was a way to put a link from that sidebar to my Google Reader or my Blogger dashboard or my Livejournal friendslist I'd be overjoyed.

Hmm. Perhaps it's time to re-visit iGoogle? Perhaps it could be the solution to my problems?

What's the Buzz?

So, yet another Web 2.0 tool is released. This one, Google Buzz, seems to be a mix of Twitter and Facebook. I like the way it can pull in data from other sources - it'll tell everyone if I update Flickr, or share items in Google Reader, or if I update a blog. And it's nicely integrated with Googlemail.

Yeah, not a bad platform.

I must admit, I'm increasingly considering returning to blogging properly. I used to do it on Livejournal and stopped a few years ago, but this 23 Things has reminded me about it. It would be a good way to re-establish contact with old mates...

Picnik

My first thought was that it's a very busy page, I don't like it! I'm sure you guys know by now that on the web I don't like clutter, I like my pages minimalist.

Anyway. Had a play with picnik. It's ok, and it's nice to have a free image manipulator like that, but I'll stick to my trusty old picture editor. I've been using Micrografx Picture Publisher for more than 10 years, and it still does everything I need and more.

I can see why people would like picnik, it's simple and free, but I'm just not a fan.

I do like the cute little animated cogwheels tho!

Flickr

Well, it was fairly simple to sign up to Flickr. So that was good.

Uploading was relatively quick and simple, and then all the pictures showed up in a nice list. I liked the functions to batch add them to a set or to add tags to all of them, very neat.

I very soon hit the monthly limit of uploads. Which is annoying, now I have to either wait 3 weeks or pay them money before adding more pictures... At least Feb is a nice short month!

Joining the 23 Things flickr group was also easy, and they responded very quickly (thank you!)

The Creative Commons and Map View features are nice. I've changed my settings so all photos uploaded now have a very open Creative Commons license- changing them individually was a bit of a slog.

So... Overall thoughts? I like Flickr. It seems better than Facebook for some types of photosharing- it's more public and people can see photos at larger sizes. Facebook is probably still best for photos of parties with friends, but Flickr seems to be the place to share pretty images. Oxford in the snow, cute kittens, impressive sight-seeing, all those sorts of pictures would probably be best put in Flickr not Facebook. It seems I've been guilty of the Cardinal Sin of Web 2.0, using the Wrong Tool For The Task.

Yep, I'm converted! But I'm wavering between voting "yay!" and "meh?" because I do still have a major niggle with the monthly limit. Sooooo... Is it worth paying the $24.95 for the 1 year pro account?

Google Reader Poll

In last week's poll, 5/5 votes for Google Reader were Yay - making it the most popular Web 2.0 feature yet in our 23 Polls.

This week's Flickr poll is now up. Can it beat Google Reader in popularity?

Polls

The poll results for last week are in:
Google got an overwhelming positive result, 3/3 people say Yay.
iGoogle was much less popular- 2/4 people said Meh and 2/4 people said Nay.
Blogs were looking good, with 4/5 people saying Yay and only me saying Meh.

I'm interested to see how the votes for Google Reader pan out this week...

Google Reader

Google Reader is excellent!

It's certainly solving a lot of the issues I had with blogs in last week's post- finally I can see when blogs are updated and just read those bits, not all the posts on a blog.

I've subscribed to a big pile of other 23 Things blogs, so I look forward to reading other people's opinions nice and easily. It was very cool the way Google saw all my Blogspot subscriptions and copied them straight into the Reader, made this week's task much easier!

I still prefer Livejournal as my blogging & rss platform, as I think the Livejournal communities are such a good feature, but I can definitely see advantages to the Google & Blogspot combination.

Blogs

Now I have to write my thoughts about blogs, apparently.

I got my first blog (on Livejournal) whilst at university. My second is the official OIL one, mainly used to update our news on Facebook via RSS. And then there's this one.

My overwhelming thought about blogs is: they're not really that great. There are a lot of problems with them, really. I especially dislike the way things are ordered chronologically starting with the most recent- it's like reading a book starting with reading the last chapter, then the penultimate, and so on. Or like watching Memento.
Of course, you can always start at the bottom, but that's a bit like reading a book by always starting at the beginning. It's fine, as long as you're reading the book in one sitting. But what about if you've already read half the book? Blogs just don't have a convenient way of putting a bookmark in. And for something that has new content added all the time, that's a huge problem.
So yes, in many ways I prefer forums or emails- the way they combine chronological ordering whilst automatically and easily showing you which are "unread posts" appeals to me.

On the other hand, blogs do have uses. On Livejournal I *love* the Friends Page. On one page I can have all the blog posts from all my friends, plus any RSS feeds I want (Unshelved comics alongside the latest news), plus any posts made to Livejournal Communities I'm a member of. Ideal. An excellent one-stop place to keep informed of the wider world- it's like a better version of Blogger's Reading List of Blogs I'm Following. Although, of course, it does still suffer the sorting-posts-chronologically problem.

I also really like blogs for short informative things, like the OIL blog. It tells readers what the current big projects are, changes to our opening hours, that sort of thing. It's useful! And most posts are self-contained, which means the chronological problem isn't an issue.

Finally, I love the newer developments in blogs- things like trackbacks, where you can see places that have linked to a post. That's neat. Or the RSS feeds can then be fed into Facebook or Livejournal or wherever. And tagging interests me, as a cataloguer.

So yes. I'm torn on the issue of blogs. I think they're overused and there are times that other tools (like forums) would be better. And the ordering of posts annoys me deeply. And yet I still keep several blogs, and watch a whole bunch by checking my Livejournal Friends regularly.

Blogs get a resounding "Meh" from me. I'm too torn to go one way or the other.