Thing 20 –

We’re nearing the end of our initial 21 things, though I’ll admit that the last few have been a bit of a struggle, since the earlier ‘things’ were easier to figure out, and have broader applications. For this thing, we need to talk briefly about communications, and how best to keep the library blog site updated over the course of the summer.

http://blogs.northcentralcollege.edu/library/

While some postings are pretty obvious, like changes in hours for holiday weekends, it continues to be important to keep the blog postings updated with things that are current and that are of some interest to our patrons.

To that end, I hope that everyone will find something to contribute to the library blog over the course of the summer, even if it is a bit of a stretch to get something broadly interesting out of your specific area in the library. Let’s do what we can to be creative, while not inundating Aimee with things in the next few days. I think that we can do all sorts of things that may be a bit different from what we’d otherwise do during a term – everything from finding an unusual resource and writing a brief review of it to explaining the latest bulletin board to having Tom come up with something about one of the classrooms he’s working on. I suspect some of the green initiatives in Tech. Services could carry us through a few postings as well… Helicopter flights in Giere, however, are probably not a particularly good topic………

So, have at it, have fun - if you can - and be creative.
Send proposed posting to Aimee, and she’ll get them onto the site itself.

Thanks,
jjs

GoogleBing. BingGoogle?

I knew that there would be something along these lines, though I couldn't find it yesterday:
http://www.blackdog.ie/google-bing/search.php
It's a split screen that allows you to input your search at the top of the page and see the results from both Google and Bing in twin panes lower down on the page. It's kind of interesting, and the more complicated your search is, the more you can make the results diverge...

Thing 19 - When to Bing. When to Wolf. When to Google.

All,
Welcome to the 19th thing -
In the last couple of weeks,
Wolfram|Alpha
has come online, and Microsoft Live Search has morphed into
Bing
.
Bing?
Yes. Bing. No one seems to know why. I'll admit, Wolfram|Alpha isn't really a great name, either... but... Bing? Google it. OK. It took a a while for that phrase to take hold, but can you imagine using the phrase, "Bing it"? Time will tell, I suppose, though I've no memory of anyone ever saying "Yahoo it", either.
The question for the day is, when to use these three, and what kinds of things differentiate them? Google is a known, though as we've all seen in many of the recent postings of 21 Things, it's more than just the search function, more than just the maps. Google is becoming a complicated set of interconnected tools. Bing is a variant of the older Live Search tool, a site that got relatively little use and even less respect in a world composed of Yahoo and Google. Bing appears to be a bit different, and is actually a pretty good general purpose search engine. Pick out a couple of interesting search term variations and try them in both Bing and Google and see if the differences are very great. If your search is fairly complex, the odds are that they'll return pretty similar kinds of sites and pages.
If your search is very simple, you're likely to see a bit more diversity of results. This is generally thought to be the difference between the two search algorithms, and is actually to be expected. For the most part, the two are similar enough that you're likely to get results from either tool, though the Google Advanced interface is still my default search tool, and Bing doesn't yet appear to have an equivalent.
Alpha, on the other hand, is trying to do something pointedly different, and to me that makes it a good deal more interesting - while it does do some level of general web searching, it really is designed to be a "Computational Knowledge Engine". The main page of examples give such things as: beta distribution, European Union, and Archimedean Solids. Fascinating, right? Well, when you're looking for numerical information, sure - Alpha is a great place to look for population stats, currency information, statistical information of any sort. A quick search on North Central College will give you an indication of the way the designers of Alpha view the world [for an interesting test, input stephen wolfram into all three search engines, and compare the results].
These are three interesting options, and while it's always good to HAVE these options, if you're really curious to learn more about either Bing or Wolfram|Alpha ---- I suggest you Google it.
For now, at least.

jjs

Post 18 - 3 things left!

This week, we have a guest poster. Aimee has done a write up on Facebook.
I'll admit that, though I have tried, I can't seem to figure out what to DO with Facebook. I see the utility of the site for the Library, and occasionally check in to see what it is doing, but I just don't have the urge to connect with individuals in this way -
What am I missing?

----------------------------
Facebook is a social networking site that was originally designed as a place for college students to network among each other. I know that many of the library staff have already created a Facebook account either to become involved in the phenomena that is Facebook or to try and figure out what all the fuss is about. So here's a little bit of background information mixed in with some personal experience.

Facebook is the brain-child of Harvard drop-out Mark Zuckerberg. While a student at Harvard Zuckerberg created Facebook for his Harvard classmates as a sort of get-to-know-your-fellow-classmates website. The idea, launched in February 2004, stemmed from a paper version of a facebook that was passed around his high school for the same purpose. Due to popular demand, within four months it had grown to include 30 colleges and universities. As of September 2006 Facebook opened itself up to to anyone with an email address and is no longer considered a place just for those associated with colleges and universities.

Now, here are some interesting Facebook facts. Facebook has remained a private company despite some extremely generous offers and is now estimated to be worth over $15 billion (yes, I said billion). In the Fall of 2007 Facebook was signing-up an average of more than 1 million new users every week, which works out to over 200,000 new users every day! Users spend an average of 19 minutes everyday on Facebook (based on my experience that number is probably much higher here at NCC!). You can find more interesting information able Facebook at CrunchBase or through our Lexis-Nexis Company Dossier.

Now if you're trying to figure out a reason for all of this hoopla, I'm afraid to tell you I have still yet to figure one out. When comes down to it Facebook is really just a "place" to keep up with people you may not have time to call or email regularly. Another fairly new feature is the ability to group your friends into categories that have different levels of access to see information in your profile, which is a great way to control who gets to see your personal information and maintain some level of privacy in this voyeuristic culture we have become! So if you're leery about Facebook feel free to create a profile and keep it private until you've had some time to explore and determine if it's something you're interested in becoming involved with.

Another interesting aspect of Facebook are the fan pages. Anyone can create a fan page, but creators are most often attempting to market something. "Fans" of something on Facebook can find out information about and discuss that something within the realm of the fan page. Fan pages can also send regular updates to all of their fans regarding new information. For example, I am a fan of ACRL on Facebook. So just recently I received an update through Facebook about the recent ACRL election results. I can also go on to the ACRL fan page and discuss ACRL or issues in the library world with other fans of ACRL (who would most likely be librarians).

The library developed a fan page back in the Spring '08 to launch with the website. Unfortunately that page had been fairly neglected for some time. With Jane's help, I am currently working to restore activity to the Oesterle Library Facebook page. Feel free to check it out! You might even see yourself on there! :-)

Week 17 - Depending on how you count -

Perhaps Post 17 is a better way of putting it?

We're going to try and finish the 21 things in the near future, with some Facebook material and a few more interesting things. There will probably be a recap before we're done, too!

This time around, there are a pair of interesting things, though nothing earth shattering or ground breaking. Item one is a current events posting, dealing with Flu Pandemics past and present. It's an interesting way of looking at the situation, and may well come in handy for those working at the ISD, because I suspect that people may well be looking for statistics on the subejct before the term is over. The image itself is located at: http://www.interbent.com/images/flu-pandemics.png though with this sort of resource, it's often hard to tell how long it might be available, or if it will be updated in the near term, as well, so you may wish to take a quick look at it.

The second element for this posting is a bit more fun, and I know that we have some animal lovers around. There is a site that tracks Library Pets worldwide - http://www.ironfrog.com/catsmap.html primarily cats... I wonder, since they list at least one ghost cat, and some stuffed tigers and cheetahs, are our dragon heads close enough to cats, or to pets to try and get them listed in this? Probably not, I suppose, though it does seem like an amusing idea.

jjs

Searching in a new way?

All,
Before much longer, we may have the opportunity to search for information, and particularly data, in a whole new way - Wolfram Alpha will debut sometime in May, and sounds interesting. Here is a quick overview, taken from: http://www.hplusmagazine.com/articles/ai/wolframalpha-searching-truth

Let me give three random examples. If you enter the query, “3/26/2009 + 90 days” you’ll get a page that gives a date ninety days later than the first date. If you enter “mt. everest height length of golden gate” you’ll get a page expressing the height of Mount Everest as a multiple of the length of the Golden Gate Bridge. If you enter “temperature in los gatos,” you’ll get something like the current temperature, a graph of the temperatures over the last week with projections for the next few days, and a graph of the temperatures over the last year.

While I'm not sure how often we might need to know how many Golden Gates equal Mt. Everest, I can think of some imaginative things to search this way, and if it's as good as doing this type of thing as I hope... It is the kind of tool that could turn out to be really useful over time.

For those of you that hacven't come across Wolfram in the past, his bio is commonly available - http://www.stephenwolfram.com/about-sw/ - and contains such things as: Born in London in 1959, Wolfram was educated at Eton, Oxford, and Caltech. He published his first scientific paper at the age of 15, and had received his PhD in theoretical physics from Caltech by the age of 20.

Once the site goes live, we'll take it for a test driev, and see what uses we might be able to make of it -

In the meantime, here is an interesting site to play around with:
http://www.papervision3d.org/demos/panorama/

More soon,
jjs

Blog Following, Redux - Week 15

Very early on, in Week 3, as a matter of fact we took a look at blog aggregators, Bloglines and Google Reader - That seems to have been quite a long time ago and it occurred to me, as I was getting ready for this week's posting, that it might be a good idea to return to the idea again - we're now fairly regularly communicating things via Belinda's ISD blog and using an aggregator regularly can make that a whole lot easier.

Assuming that you've created an account with one of them, and most likely Google, log in and see what blogs you read with the most frequency - there are many that will be interesting, either personally or professionally. Since starting this process, my own blog reading habits have changed pretty radically. I dropped Bloglines for Google Reader, I tend to scan more blogs, but only once a day, as opposed to checking in a few times and reading parts of the updated postings each time.

For this week, let's try going back to updating our own blogs, since some of them have been languishing a little bit. Take a look at the blogs you've read in the past, or are reading now, and create a simple post on your own blog that tells us of a newer blog that you've been following, or that you'd like to follow, if it's been a while since you added one, and give us an idea of why you chose that one?

Second, how about giving us a hand and suggesting something interesting for the Oesterle Library blog to cover? We've had a series of really good posts in that forum lately, so if there is something you'd like to suggest, post it to your blog, and we'll see what we can do!

Also, note the new survey in the upper right hand corner!

Next Week - a few new, fun tools to try -

jjs

A Google Earth Update -

"Once obscured by pixilation, Google Earth's aerial image of the vice presidential residence on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington is now nearly as clear as its view of the White House."
read all about it at the L. A. Times

jjs

Google Earth!

Hi all:
Last week we took a look at MapQuest and Google Maps, two tools that have interesting daily uses. This week, we'll take a look at something that is perhaps less useful and more entertaining, Google Earth. Earth is a tool that has to be downloaded from Google and then installed, as opposed to running within a browser window, but it is all the more powerful for that. You can get a copy of the program itself at: http://earth.google.com/ and then download and install it. [If you have any questions about this process or want some help, send me an IM and I'll drop by to take this step for you].
Google Earth is particularly interesting because it allows you to look at nearly anywhere on the planet, and to 'fly' from location to location. Once you have it installed, and start the program, there is a "Fly To:" search box that shows up in the left hand pane, and you can input your initial destination there. Naperville, for example, or virtually anyplace you can think of. It's worth noting that sometimes you have to try a couple of different spelling options to find the right place, but most work pretty simply.
There are, of course, some locations that have less detail than others. A close up of the middle of the Pacific Ocean offers little detail, and there are relatively well known instances of geographical locations that have little to no detail - The US Naval Observatory, for one, and that place known as Area 51 for another, as well as some locations in China. {http://www.ogleearth.com/2008/09/google_and_cens.html}
A bit further down in that left hand pane, there is a section called "Places" and this area has a built in sightseeing tour - if you click on 'sightseeing' and then press the "Play" button [looks like a triangle facing to the right] just below that pane, it'll 'fly' you through the whole tour, starting in the grand canyon.
There are a whole series of websites, like: http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php/Cat/0 that are dedicated to explaining the expanding the use of Google Earth, though most casual users simply find sightseeing fun, and I suppose that there is a library application that would be useful, as well. There are also lots of sites that give the coordinates of... interesting things.
Copy and paste the following lat/long numbers into Earth's Fly to: box and then hit enter...

30 30'38.82"S 115 22'56.14"E

37°41'27.13"N 121° 4'29.99"W

and many other possible locations that you'll have to discover for yourselves!

Once last idea - type in point lobos state reserve and hit enter, and it'll take you to the Northern Calif. coastline. Once you're there, you can use the wheel on your mouse to zoom in and out a little bit. Set up a nice view and the hold your left mouse button down on the map itself and gently 'flick' it down, letting go of the mouse in the same motion. What will happen [and it might take a few tries to get it right] is that the map will scroll to the south, past Big Sur, following the path of Highway 1 [though you may well have to readjust the path of the map scrolling by grabbing it with the mouse and moving it one direction or the other. Once you get a feel for it, you can choose a path and watch the earth rotate as you go...

What else have you found? What part of Earth seem most interesting, and do you see a library application for this, or is it just fun?
Write a Blog post about it, and let us all know!

jjs

Week 12 - Maps

Hi all,
and welcome to Week 12. This week, we'll take a look at two map utilities to see what the differences are, and also to see how they're similar.

For quite a while, MapQuest was the dominant Internet-based map and direction creation tool. It is still very useful, and a lot of people prefer the interface and some of the options that are available. One of my favorite options within MapQuest is the ability to create directions in varied ways. The fastest route versus the shortest route can often give alternatives that are worth looking into. Another option that is very useful when moving about the Chicago area is the ability to choose to avoid tollways.

As is nearly always the case these days, a successful sites like MapQuest has spurred Google to create it's own variant of a mapping and direction generating site. Google Maps offers many of the same features that MapQuest does, and some prefer the interface. For my part, I tend to prefer Google Maps, because it acts in a way that I am used to - for instance, the scroll wheel in Google Maps zooms the view in or out, and I use that feature all the time. Google Maps also has an interesting "street view" option {like this one} for some areas that allows you to look at things from street level.

One of my favorite tools, though, is the ability to get directions for public transportation from Google Maps, in addition to walking directions. That makes a difference, and is rather a unique view, I think.

How about you? Try both interfaces out, look up your house, the campus, perhaps someplace that you'd like to visit or have enjoyed in the past? Create a blog post in your own blog about what you found, and about which tool you prefer -

There is also the interesting idea of the Google Maps Mash Up, where the maps interface if used by individuals or companies to create new maps of types that might not have been thought of. Here is a link to a large collection of these things - http://mashable.com/2009/01/08/google-maps-mashups-tools/ I think you'll find that some are rather interesting, others are just odd.
One example of both is Tall Eye - the flag represents where the hole would come out if we began excavating a hole in Oesterle Library's basement, and dug straight down.
Perhaps a project for Spring Break?

jjs - [next week - Google Earth!]