Week 8 Privacy

I thought the variety in the blog entries related to privacy was really interesting. Of course, they ran the gamit from the privacy habits and feelings of different generations and groups to the practices of individual libraries to how we all forget or rather ignore that facilities like Google are harvesting information on us and use them anyway. But not only the focus, but manner in which items were discussed was all over the board--short informational pieces, long diatribes that took forever to get to the point. I was especially struck at the level of sarcasm that was in the posts I saw.

Week 8 MashUps and API

While I find MashUps visually interesting, I must admit that I see less use for them as a tool for our library than any of the other Web 2.0 technologies that we have looked at. The mashups that I found most interesting were those that provided information, usually with a geographic interface. B & B's in a particular location. Types of a certain store in a geographic area. Some of the marketing peices were interesting--like Dolly and Elvis in the car. But there is a good interface to Medline, why another? I did however see this as an additional source for reference questions.

Week 7 - Podcasting and Online Hosted Video

It seems that there are slicker and more professional looking ways of doing web instruction than online audio only files or online video through something like YouTube. Even PowerPoint with embedded audio and using something like Camtasia is a bit better. But I think that the really exciting use of things like YouTube is for marketing. People are out there searching and looking to see what exists and coming across things. That I see as an exciting way of drumming up new business. We don't have a limited user group and serve anyone.

Online Photo Sharing - Week 6

As the instructors mentioned, this week was pretty easy. It seemed very easy to add photos from flickr to my blog. It was also very easy to add photos to Facebook from my computer. I'm not sure yet about the pros and cons of using flickr over another way of managing photos. Guess the differences would be more from the sharing end than the organizing end. The question about how to use in the library is harder. Other than an occassional request for a historic photo, we really don't get that type of question. We'd have to see how it could fit some sort of need.

ppinkowski

ppinkowski
Originally uploaded by patpinkowski

This post is part of an optional excercise to see if I can create a document in Google Docs and post it to my blog. Let's see if it works.

Web Office Tools - Week 5

Is this the future of all office products? I really wonder. Right now, no, because there are functionalities in the non-Web versions that still make them more attractive for some purposes. But I can see a real niche for these web based products. Easy access is at the top of the list for those who travel or multiple people working from different cities/countries. Lots of the products that we used to get on CD have moved to Web-based only. Unfortunately with a loss of function in many cases. So I wouldn't be surprised if many/most/all office products moved. Would certainly save tons of staff hours updating versions of software, etc. But I would think many would be concerned with security issues.