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!]

Week 11 – Social Bookmarking

Hi, all! We've now moved into the 2nd half of our 21 things exploration. I hope that you've been enjoying our journey so far...

Bookmarks, or Favorite lists, have come a long way since the early days of the Internet. One of the more interesting tools to help manage them is http://delicious.com – the most common site for "Social Bookmarking". Delicious manages three primary, and useful, activities – and all three can be used in conjunction, or individually.

The one that I started using allows you to save your bookmarks to an online location, so that you can use them on any Internet connected machine [and you probably won’t be doing a lot of browsing if you’re not connected to the Internet!]. To do this, all you have to do is go to: http://delicious.com and create an account. When you do that, one of the options you’ll have is to upload your local bookmark file to delicious. Then, when you’re logged in, you can use them, add to them, and etc. If you keep it updated, you can always have access to your bookmark file wherever you might be. I find this to be useful, and particularly if there are reference type sites that you want to have access to, but can’t always remember.

A second use of http://delicious.com is the ability to discover new sites and share them with others, or see what others have shared. One example: let’s say that you’re interested in modern art – you can do a search of popular bookmarks within Delicious that have been marked as being about modern art – that means that the most popular bookmarks in everyone’s collections will show up at the top. They won’t always be what you’re looking for, but it’s a great way to discover new sites that relate to your interests.

The third major use of Delicious is in sharing. I haven’t done any of this yet, but as we work through this week, we might find that it’s an interesting exercise. Briefly, you can choose to share your bookmark sets with other Delicious users, and they can share their sets with you. In library terms, it means that we could put together a delicious site that is a collection of our best and most useful Library related or Reference sites.

So, for this week, head on over to http://delicious.com if you haven’t tried it already, and create an account. Upload your own bookmarks, or choose to start from scratch. Add a few, delete a few, organize a few and give them tags if you’d like. In general, just look around and see if this would be a tool that is useful for you, or even for the Library.

Explore the Tags, and look into the popular section, to see if there are things in your areas of interest that you’ve been missing. One of the other things you can take a shot at is to go to the popular bookmarks section, and then choose to look at a randomly bookmarks site from the popular list. By selecting “Jump to a Random Bookmark” – but beware… not everything will be academic in nature…

Once you’ve spent a little time with http://delicious.com write a blog post in your own bogs about what you’ve found, what you liked [or didn’t] and if you think that this might have some work application.

See what you can discover!

jjs