For anyone with similar RSS feeds to mine, you’ve probably seen a fair few of these tag clouds from Wordle recently. I thought I’d have a play myself and you can see my del.icio.us tags in the tag cloud below (click for larger image at Wordle):

Although Wordle appealed to me, I hadn’t really thought beyond the fact that it’s an interesting way to display del.icio.us tags or a block of text, but then I read Sarah Faye Cohen’s blog post with her thoughts about possible uses for Wordle and it got me thinking. Her idea of getting students to use Wordle to help them understand what an article is about is a very interesting concept, and I particularly like the idea of using text from a discussion to identify main themes. This could be really interesting as an extension to forum posts on a VLE. Over at the School Library Journal there are some other interesting ideas.

Then I began thinking about wider applications. Wouldn’t it be great if we could ask our users for feedback and combined it all into a huge tag cloud to see what they are saying about our services? We could display it on our webpages and on displays around the learning centres. Or we could use material we create about the services to get a snapshot of what we do. I’m sure that would be a very interesting (and quick!) way to show what we’re about to new students.

Anyone else any other ideas of how Wordle could be used?

For those of you who (like me) check Facebook on a daily basis, you probably noticed the new addition of the chat bar on the bottom of the screen yesterday.

I’d previously read blog posts about the Facebook chat feature and was looking forward to seeing what it would be like. Luckily I was able to have a play as a fellow Facebooker and librarian, Katharine Widdows was also online and wanting to give it a go. I have to say, I’m very pleasantly surprised. The instructions when you first log on are very clear, concise and easy to understand. By default, you are online as soon as you log on, but you can change this if you wish (I know some people found it disruptive). You can easily see who else is online by clicking on the Online Friends tab (see below), and start a conversation with them by clicking on their name.

At first I wasn’t aware when people had messaged me (I’m a terrible tab flicker and often leave tabs open even when I’m not using them). The chat bar does show when you have new messages and the tab header changes to say “New Message” so you can still tell if you’re on another tab but its not too disruptive if you leave it on unintentionally (no flashing pop ups or anything like that!). You can choose to open it in a separate window if you want to much like Meebo too, or add it to your sidebar in Firefox.

I think it’s great for quickly catching up with people and having short conversations. Katharine and I discussed how it could maybe be used as a library enquiry service, but this would only really work if users added the librarian as a personal friend, which many may wish not to do.

You can currently only have one to one conversations but I think Facebook may well continue to develop things like group conversations if it takes off. That sort of thing could be great for students doing group work (or staff working on a project) to discuss their progress or ideas.

I’m certainly impressed with Facebook’s initial developments into a chat tool, the main advantage being how quick and easy it is to use.

I’d heard of FriendFeed before today, but a Lifehacker post I read this morning encouraged me to give it a go.

If you haven’t heard of it before, FriendFeed is basically an aggregator of all your online social networks. It pulls together your updates from blogs, video services like YouTube, social bookmarking services like del.icio.us, picture sharing sites like Flickr and Picasa, wishlists like Amazon wishlist, etc etc! You can see in the screenshot the services is currently covers.

It only took a matter of minutes to register and add my feeds so I now have a nice aggregated feed that will give updates on all my different services.

I can imagine this sort of thing could be very useful for keeping up to date with what people are up to via just an RSS feed, although to be honest I don’t see myself using it very much. FriendFeed encourage you to find your friends on their website but to me that sort of defeats the object, I guess you would only have one website to visit then to see what friends are up to but you might as well add the feeds to your RSS reader (presuming you use RSS feeds).

Having said that, I’m having trouble adding my feed to my Bloglines account. It seems to work fine in Google Reader (I use this as a back-up reader), but Bloglines doesn’t recognise the feed.

Anyway, if you are interested in giving it a go please feel free to subscribe to my feed and let me know in the comments if you have a feed to share or any opinions about the service. I imagine more and more of these aggregators will be appearing to help people control their many online accounts so it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

Yes really, I was shocked too! Knowing what a headache synchronising can sometimes be I wanted to give a big thumbs up to my synchronisation experience today.

I’ve been moving more towards working online and trying to do things through the web thus giving me access no matter where I am or what device I’m using. This is all well and good but at work we have Microsoft Exchange and we use Outlook for our mail and our calendars. I use Outlook Web Access when I’m not at my work PC and also have my mail account set up in my iPod Touch so receive my mail through that - great stuff.

As my last blog post showed however, I’ve been using Google for my calendar due to its ease of use and some of the added functionality such as sharing calendars over the web, adding multiple calendars to one screen, easy to create calendar widgets for websites, etc, etc. We are supposed to use our Outlook calendars so that others can view our availability. This was becoming a bit of a headache for me as I had my Google calendar, my iPod calendar, my Filofax (which I do still occasionally use), my Outlook calendar, and the paper diary at work so that others in the office know when I will be out.

But earlier today I noticed that Google Calendar now has the ability to synchronise with Outlook:

After configuring Outlook 2003 with my Exchange account (surprisingly problem-free), I downloaded the Synchronisation application, logged in, chose to sync both ways (there is also the option to use one as a main calendar and simply use the sync one way, see screenshot below), decide how often you want it to sync and hey presto. It works really well and makes it so much easier to have your calendar in two different places.

Now I just have to overcome the problem that I can’t do this on my work PC as we have locked desktops and therefore can’t download the sync application! Never mind, it looks like I may at least be able to synchronise with my iPod Touch once Apple release the next software upgrade which includes special support for Microsoft Exchange.

Amazon Kindles are all well and good but it’s just not the same as a real book is it? (Plus I can’t help but image a Kinder Egg whenever I hear mention of the Kindle - is that just me?!). So many people are against e-books and e-book readers due to the loss of the emotion attached with reading a real book and I can certainly sympathise with that view.

So the discovery of the LIVRE (via Engadget) was an exciting moment (well, as exciting as you get with regards to e-book readers!). It’s currently a concept produced by a student from Monash University but I really think this is the way readers have to go if they want a serious marketshare over paper books. I personally like using e-books for studying with the massive advantages that they’re always available from wherever you are (particularly useful for distance learners like myself), but I still love to settle down and read a good book. I really can’t imagine myself being converted to an e-book for leisure reading but this is definitely a step in the right direction for e-book readers.

I recently came across Google Calendar almost by accident, I was aware of it before but had never used it as we have Outlook Exchange at work and I have my trusty FiloFax as well as my iPod touch for my own scheduling.

I was trying to publicise some drop-in information skills sessions we hold and spent ages constructing a suitable table in HTML, then inputting all the basic details which linked to a booking form for sessions where we have limited places. I then tried to find a way to give more details on the workshops and investigated using JavaScript popups, which looked great but manually coding it all was a nightmare on our restrictive CMS, especially when you need to edit or add more workshops at a later date.

At around the same time I read a blog post about Google Calendar so had a proper look at it. On the surface it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a calendar but when you utilise the ability to share calendars and produce embeddable widgets it really is a great tool.

It took only a matter of minutes to create a new calendar for our information skills sessions, schedule them and add in details including a brief description of the session and a link to the booking form where necessary.

I created a widget for the calendar, customized it to suit our needs (all done using Google’s widget creator) and added to our webpages (see screenshot above). Now users can find all the information they need in an easy to use table (which they can view in a list which I’ve chosen as the default or as a weekly or monthly view). Clicking on the title of a workshop causes the table to expand to give more details. If they currently use Google calendar they can also add the schedule to their calendar or individual sessions they wish to attend. I’m not sure if anyone will use this in our case but it would certainly be useful for instantly adding a series of shared meetings or a lecture timetable.

I’ve started using Google calendar as a personal calendar also, although I still have to use Outlook for work purposes (I am able to export and import between the two which is handy). I particularly like intelligent adding of events such as “Team meeting tomorrow 10-11″ rather than having to complete numerous fields for every event. I’ve also been able to add my to do list to Google calendar using ToodleDo, a web based to do list.

All in all I think Google calendar is a great tool, particularly for shared calendars and it’s still in Beta so new developments are still being added. I can see tools like this being used more and more in organisations.

Has anyone else any positive/negative experiences of Google calendar or of any other useful calendar tools?

I’ve already briefly discussed the iPod Touch in an earlier post but now that I’ve had one for over a month I thought it was about time for a blog post about my thoughts on it.

I guess strictly speaking this is not directly related to libraries, but I imagine the implications of mobile technologies and particularly mobile web browsing will effect libraries and services of the future, it’s certainly made me think more about interoperability of our web pages and catalogues for users accessing them on different devices.

I’ve been using my iPod Touch on an almost daily basis since getting it at the end of December (much to the annoyance of my partner who doesn’t like the attention it’s getting!). I love having a mobile browser and have got it working on the WiFi at both home and work. It’s great for all those “Oh I forgot to look up…”, “That sounds interesting, tell me more” moments (I don’t know about you but I have many of these!).

Since the update following MacWorld last month (which by the way, I paid the £12.99 for and personally think it was worth every penny despite the hoo-ha) I’ve been checking my e-mail using the e-mail application which really is excellent. The Google Maps application is also great and I particularly like the feature of adding a pin and linking it to your contacts for people’s addresses. I’m finding out about more and more web apps on an almost daily basis and can’t wait for the SDK release hopefully later this month which should mean more applications for both the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Earlier today larger capacity models have been released (32GB for the iPod, 16GB for the iPhone) which I imagine will help improve sales of the Touch for some who feel 16GB isn’t enough storage for their music and movies.

I think these developments with hardware and software are really exciting and have nerdily been getting more and more excited by Apple developments as well as widgets and apps which are getting better and better and allowing so much more flexibility with the way we work.

Anyone else as excited as me about future technological developments or am I turning into a complete sad case?!

Firstly, I hope those who celebrate had an enjoyable Christmas.

I’ve always been a bit of a gadget freak so I particularly enjoyed playing with a new toy at my boyfriend’s parents - the iPod Touch. I’ve had a play with the iPhone in O2 shops and although I think it is great, I really don’t think it justifies such a hefty upfront cost on top of an expensive contract so once I found out the cost it was never really an option for me. I do love some of the new features though and it really is intuitive. I hadn’t really realised just how similar to the iPhone the latest iPod was. OK, so it doesn’t have the ability to phone or text but my regular phone which I’ve had for 2 and a half years does all that sort of stuff fine. What it does have however is the same web browser capability as the iPhone.

I had a quick play on it last night and I’ve fallen in love - I know it sounds dramatic but it was brilliant. I checked my blog on there which worked fine in both portrait and landscape (good little test in case anyone ever views this on an iPhone!), then decided to check Facebook. It automatically detected I was using an iPod and took me directly to the iPhone friendly Facebook page, very neat. Many Web 2.0 type sites have developed (or are in the process of doing so) iPhone friendly sites so I imagine this will become more popular as long as iPhones stay at the forefront. The ease of use was incredible, at first I found it a little confusing but within just a few minutes I was automatically turning it for best view and zooming in using my fingers to read smaller print. You can also open multiple windows which I didn’t realise beforehand, another great feature.

I’m now in turmoil as I really want one but don’t know if I can justify the cost (especially with me having to fork out more for my University fees this year). I’ll have to see if I can find a good deal. The only slight drawback for me is that obviously you need to gain access to wifi - this is no problem at home but for example, I wouldn’t be able to browse the internet on the bus on the way home whereas with the iPhone I could. I just hope we see more free wifi hotspots and wifi on public transport becoming the norm!

Now that I’ve experienced it myself I can really see why Apple are doing so well in this market and I can really see this sort of thing becoming the future for browsing the net wherever people are. Who knows, maybe we’ll see developments for iPhone friendly library OPACs and online databases soon!

One of my Christmas gifts is a gadget too - a 4 GB USB drive with U3 capability. I’m currently using Firefox from the USB and it seems to work well, I did have problems when using it on another PC though, hopefully it’s just teething problems. It also has the ability to automatically synchronise files and password protect them too, although I’m still learning how to do that!

Other Christmas gadgets I was impressed by included my sister’s new Kodak EasyShare camera with printer which meant I walked away with copies of instant photos from the day. OK so Polaroid has been doing this for years but the advantage of being able to see the pictures on the camera beforehand and print full sized photos so quickly without a PC is really great.

Did anyone else get any cool gadgets?

EDIT: I couldn’t resist any longer, I am now the proud owner of a 16GB iPod Touch.