I was happy to hear they've paid more attention to the quality of the audio on this one - that was the only real problem with the first one. A few days ago Lee posted about how much traffic that RSS video generated, and how many subscribers they picked up as a result. As I write this their Feedburner widget is showing 1,757 readers - looks to me like they're well on their way to 2K :-)
Two related posts from different universes: Lorcan Dempsy reporting on a D-Lib article in which the University of Washington is inserting links in Wikipedia to content they've digitized - "If Wikipedia is where many folks end up when they are looking for things, then it makes sense to have links there." And a post from Mashable.com describing how CBS is now partnering with sites like Ning and Meebo to allow their content to be distributed on these social networks. This is an attempt to combat YouTube, though for the life of me I can't see why they wouldn't allow their content to be distributed everywhere...
We're looking into placing library service-related ads in Facebook as an attempt to reach the students where they are. Surely there are other libraries doing this already?
Related to the above releases, Mashable.com is also reporting that Facebook will soon allow users to upload videos. The option's not live yet, and since libraries as entities aren't welcome on Facebook I'm not sure if this will be of professional interest to us, but it's all rattling around in my head as an example of meeting the users where they are. Got the rest of the day to think on this.
Hmmm, might have to consider subscribing to this Mashable.com site - first time I've heard of it, but it just popped up in a couple of other feeds. Mashable.com: Social Networking News.
I haven't gotten around to listening to the NPR segment referenced in this post, but Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing points out that Google has stated in writing that none of the contracts they have with libraries to scan their collections are exclusive, meaning the libraries are free to work with other partners and/or work on their own digitization projects. He does lament the fact that Google still won't release their scans of public domain works to the public domain:
"It just doesn't seem like Google, betting against the Internet's creativity and capacity to innovate. I know they've got a lot of smart people there, but I hope they understand that they don't have all the smart people. Google makes the bulk of its money by indexing the cool stuff other people make. Why restrict people from making more cool stuff?"
I'm increasingly frustrated by the crappy compression YouTube uses - that's what makes everything so fuzzy when you upload something. Since YouTube is so popular it seems unlikely to be unseated as The Place To Stick Your Videos any time soon, but it's neat to see who's out there trying to innovate.
Today I found Viddler.com, which offers free hosting along with the ability to embed videos on other websites (which YouTube does as well), but in addition, you can tag your videos, with different tags appearing at the appropriate part within the video. You can also reference specific sections of a clip, which is a really nice feature. It's got an intuitive, if somewhat busy, playback interface.
I like the fact that Viddler shows me how far along it is in the encoding process so I know when I'll be able to see the finished product after uploading it. YouTube just says to check back soon.
Here's a screencast I did a couple of weeks ago on how to create IM accounts and then tie them all together in Meebo. I did this in Camtasia Studio and it's supposed to have a menu on the left to allow you to jump to the relevant sections; that only works with the Studio-generated Flash file though. Like most of the sites, Viddler won't let you upload a Flash file, so that menu is lost. Except since I have the ability to tag sections, and reference specific sections of the video, it's not really lost, just transformed. Click on the tagged spots in the timeline to jump to that section.
The embedded video above is still scaled down, which is why it doesn't look very nice. You can hit the Play icon that appears in the upper right corner to "View video in full screen mode" to see it at the original resolution.
You can comment and tag other people's videos too. Still exploring the features of the site, but it looks pretty nifty.
Sarah at LibrarianInBlack points out that the new chat rooms launched by Meebo this week can in fact be used as a rudimentary shared browsing tool. I tried it and she's right - it's better than nothing.
What is nice is that it'll work when you're on Meebo and your patron's on a native client - they get a link to join the librarian-created room (password optional). When they click that link they'll be brought outside their client to a webpage containing the new Meebo room, and the chat will continue from there. Any URL that's typed in the chat session will immediately appear in a small window adjacent to the chat session so both (or all) participants can see the same tiny page. You can't interact with the page, but your patron can click on it to launch at their end and be on their way. Um, kinda like if you'd sent them the URL to click.
I've had each of these on my "to-try" pile for a week and haven't gotten around to it, but they each look promising and you might want to give them a go. Both offer web-based cross-platform (Mac, Windows, Linux) compatibility. Both appear to be free.
Easy as 1-2-3 (1) Click "Show My Screen" button. (2) Give the randomly generated number to your Party. (3) Ask your Party to enter the number into "See A Screen" box. Show anything, to anybody, anywhere in the world, instantly. WORKS ON ANY COMPUTER Works with any browser on any computer. ONE-CLICK Launches instantly from a single click. NO SOFTWARE NEEDED All you need is a web browser. SECURE You remain in control of your screen at all times.
With the high cost of travel and shrinking budgets, most
organizations today are already meeting virtually, or are considering
it. But not all web conferencing solutions are created equal.
We’d like to introduce you to an alternative way to communicate
-- one that makes it easy to meet with the people you need to, when you
need to -- all it takes is a web-enabled PC and something to say. You
can try WebHuddle right now or see a demo.
Designed
for ease of use, WebHuddle overcomes many of the common challenges
faced by other virtual meeting applications on the market -- such as
high-price to entry, compromised network security, large client
downloads, and unreliability -- resulting in a frustrated IT department
and less than satisfactory business results.
Another in a long line of shorties but goodies, Educause recently released 7 Things You Should Know About RSS. Useful for explaining how RSS is used especially in higher education, I learned about a new-to-me resource maintained by Peterson's: College and University Feed Directory. It has, amongst the other categories, links for Libraries - General, and Libraries - New Acquisitions. You can add information to the directory yourself.
Researchers at UNC Chapel Hill are conducting a survey on blogger's perceptions on digital preservation - specifically of blogs and their content and layout. Took about 12 minutes for me to fill out the survey, and I found some of the questions quite interesting. I think there's a potential business opportunity here depending on how the answers shake out. How much would you be willing to spend to make sure your blog's content was preserved? How much would you be willing to chip in to ensure everyone else's content was preserved? ;-)
What is the purpose of this study? Since first emerging in the mid-1990s, weblogs, or blogs, have emerged as valuable records of current social and political events. This research study grew out of calls in the literature of information and library science to regard these new vehicles for communication and information dissemination as valuable additions to the human record. The purpose of this research is to survey bloggers’ own perceptions on digital preservation. It is hoped that the results of this study will inform development of recommendations for impacting stewardship of weblogs at the level of creation, and the development of strategies for capturing the content of blogs for perpetuity.
Just a quick note that there was a glitch preventing comments from being left on my Commercial Librarian post from last Friday - it's been resolved. Thanks for letting me know David!
A colleague working on the ANTS project pointed me to the slick introduction to the Encyclopedia of Life on their homepage. It's mostly a screencast, but in addition to being informational, it's also inspirational. They don't intend to show step by step how to use their site, but they do show off some of the impressive features that you otherwise might not have found, and instead of narration they rely on text and inspirational music.
I'm going to coin the term Screencastvertising to describe this: using a screencast to sell or promote your site or web-based product. Informational and inspirational. I like it.
I have an interesting conundrum on this, the third anniversary of the birth of this blog. For the first and second times ever, this past week I have received inquiries about placing advertisements on specific posts on my blog. The ads would be for products or websites that relate to posts I already made that must be ranking highly enough that the advertisers think they'll generate some traffic.
For just over a year I've been running Google ads on this blog, and as I'd hoped the revenue just covers the costs I incur with TypePad (my blogging and hosting service). My logic was that a majority of my readers get my content via RSS and thus wouldn't be bothered by the ads (nor contribute in any way to the revenue as it's only generated by page-views or click-throughs), but anybody finding my site on a one-shot deal via a search engine would hopefully find something useful, and leave me a penny via AdSense in return. So far so good.
A couple of weeks ago I signed a contract with Newstex to include the feed from this blog in their partner's products, including EBSCO. You may recall I wrote about this arrangement in March. It's a non-exclusive contract, and I honestly expect I won't earn more than a couple of dollars per year. Really. Why bother? 'Cause maybe I'm wrong and it will actually prove lucrative. :-) I'm not the first Information Science blogger to sign up.
So back to the two requests for advertising. I think I'm gonna accept, but wanted to lay out some terms, AND to run them by you, my readers. I'm going to put a link on the right, under the About Me header, that includes information about advertising. I'm going to set it arbitrarily at $40 US per month per ad that appears on a specific post. For an ad that appears on every page the cost will be $200 US per month. Each ad will be clearly labeled as an advertisement; I won't advertise a product as a post. I will retain complete editorial control. I suspect these folks won't go for it, but at least I will have had a chance to present advertising terms I was comfortable with rather than accept whatever was offered...
What do y'all think of this? Would you still trust what I wrote if I accepted ads? Am I missing anything obvious? Thanks for the feedback!
Table of Contents 1 Introduction Structure of this Guide Defining Blended Learning Advantages Challenges Making the Case for Blended Learning Tips to Get Started Designing Implementation 4 Blended Learning Modes Discussion Boards Online Instant Messaging/ Chat Sessions Podcasting Rapid E-learning Software Tools Web Conferencing Blended Learning Modes Summary Chart 19 Blended Learning Case Studies Illinois State LibraryU Online Training Center State Library of Iowa Maryland State Department of Education, Division of Library Development and Services Public Libraries of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County Learning 2.0 University of North Texas LE@D Washington State Virtual Reference Project WebJunction Spanish Language Outreach Program 33 Conclusion 35 Appendix A: Blended Learning Getting Started Worksheet 37 Appendix B: Resources and Additional Information
Lots of additional resources and links to tools in each of the relevant sections - this looks like a really good overview of the tools used in Blended Learning - well worth a download.
Via my library's Collections and Acquisitions blog, Ex Libris announces an e-book focus group. Follow the link for more information, but "the ultimate goal of this effort is to provide the academic and research library market a set of solutions to the challenges presented by e-books."
Good post at the American Historical Association blog called Google Books: What's Not to Like? In it, a historian points out three big things not to like: Poor Scan Quality, Faulty Metadata, and Truncated Public Domain. Well-supported with examples, it gets even more interesting in the comments where people point out that crappy though it may be, it's better than nothing, it's meant to help people discover print books, not to present them with high-quality copies, etc. Worth a read and consideration. I personally haven't used GBS in several months and am feeling wishy-washy after reading the post and comments.
No promises, but if you can fill out their 25-question survey by Thursday May 3rd (hopefully the end of the day) you've got a chance at being a beta tester for Adobe's Screencasting product.
A couple of years ago Meredith Farkas posted about how impressed she was with all that she saw going on online in Canadian academic institutions: Oh Canada! Everywhere I turn I keep seeing reminders that I think I want to work at Georgia Tech!
