Tag Archives: Google Reader

Tech Sharecase, 30 October 2009

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Stephen Francoeur

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Joseph Hartnett, Randy Hensley, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Ryan Phillips

Google Discover Music
Talked about new Google Discover Music service in which search results are more socially based and about October 23, 2009, radio story from On the Media, “Charting the Charts,” which noted how Billboard is waning in influence and new services are appearing that measure music success differently. One such services is Band Metrics that ranks popularity not by sales but by an aggregation of metrics, including social ones. Search is changing the economic model for music rankings. Big Champagne offers another service that measures rankings using social aspects. What is a credible or reliable metric is shifting from authorities like SoundScan or Billboard to services that look at social use of media.

Google Social Search
This experiment from Google looks at who is in your social graph (your collection of online friends) so that it can present you with search results that are refined by content that your friends have posted online.

Google Reader
We looked at the way that people who use Google Reader can friend others who use the service and share notable feed items with each other.

Google Site Search Tool
The Baruch College website today unveiled its new site search engine powered by Google. The library website will be changing its search site software to Google soon as well.

2D Barcodes
Following up on Arthur’s comments on an earlier blog post here, We talked about 2D barcodes, QR codes, and their potential uses by colleges and libraries. We looked at the barcode service from ScanLife and the video about how Case Western Reserve University used ScanLife codes.

Mobile Websites for Libraries
We talked about various strategies for creating library websites that would render well on browsers in mobile phones.

Amazon Kindle vs. Barnes & Noble Nook
While talking about basic differences between new Nook reader coming out in November, we also discussed the Kindle loan program at North Carolina State University and how the service also offers patron-driven acquisitions (hear all the details about this on the Library 2.0 Gang podcast from September 2009 in which Orion Pozo from NCSU was interviewed).

TinyURL vs. HugeURL
TinyURL is a well-known service that will shrink a long URL with a brief one that redirects you to the original site. HugeURL is a funny spoof that turns short URLs into obscenely long ones.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tech Sharecase, 30 October 2009

Tech Sharecase, 4 September 2009

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Ryan Phillips
Attendees
Ryan Phillips, Louise Klusek, Stephen Francoeur, Jin Ma, Arthur Downing, Randy Hensley.

We started this Friday’s Tech Sharecase with a discussion of the recent news that Amazon, Microsoft & Yahoo will join the alliance opposing the Google Book Settlement. The Guardian interviewed Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive, who heads The Open Book Alliance’s opposition.
See the Searchengineland post about these developments with links to the Wall Street Journal & New York Times articles.

Blog Posts: Reading & Written Language
Next we discussed a couple posts at the Newman Library blogs from the past week. First, we discussed Stephen’s post on Groups/Tribes with no Written Language at Reference at Newman Library and David Broderson’s response. The impetus for the post was a class assignment that was driving several students to the reference desk. I brought up an example I’ve seen illustrating the difference between the interpretation of an illiterate vs a literate seeing the FedEx logo. A literate person fails to see the arrow in the FedEx logo between the ‘E’ &’ x’ while this is the first thing an illterate person sees.
We then discussed the Newman Library Idea Lab post about Maryanne Wolf and the current state of reading. Louise mentioned the Sunday New York Times article on the future of reading. The article discusses giving students the ability to choose the titles in their reading curriculum. Instead of adhering to the standard, required classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “The Great Gatsby” the article highlights one teacher’s effort to engage students interest in reading by allowing them to choose what they read.

Feed Readers

We revisited Feed Readers as a topic given a few of us have changed or are considering a change in our preferred reader. Stephen offered Feedly, a Firefox extension, as an alternative to the Google Reader format.

New EtherPad Feature

EtherPad recently introduced a new Time Slider feature that displays the complete history of a document’s alterations. To demonstrate, the following link allows you to view Stephen and I taking notes for this week’s Tech Sharecase.
Google Books Metadata Trainwreck article
Stephen discussed the Language Log post concerning the multitude of metatdata errors found the the book records in Google Books. The Language Log post discussed the origin of the errors and also, featured in the comment section, has a response from an individual at Google Books.
The blog post was filed by Geoffrey Nunberg who also authored an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the topic.
Screenjelly
Stephen gave a quick tour and tutorial for Screenjelly which he’s used to build tutorials for “How to Look up Books on Reserve” and to display an online tours of the New Reference Wiki and New Reference Blog
View Stephen’s hands-on example from this Friday’s Sharecase.
Text Messaging Reference Service
The last topic of the day was SMS text messaging as a reference service. We discussed getting a smart phone for the library equipped with a QWERTY keyboard. The idea is similar to NY’s service where a phone is shared among the librarians with each scheduled a time to cover the service. We discussed the benefits of adding this service. If this extended service was still within the regular operating hours of reference service, might this be best wedded to the deskstop?

Stephen mentioned MyInfoQuest, cooperative service designed to meet the need for text message reference. To demonstrate the need, a survey of library services desired by patrons via cell phone/mobile device was conducted at Ryerson College. The results are below.
Meanwhile, Questionpoint is integrating SMS text service through twitter feeds into their system in order to accept and push out answers to patrons via text.
Another service mentioned at the Sharecase was Text a Librarian, powered by Mosio.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments