August 23, 2009

Stream

flickr (feed #5)
twitter (feed #3)
jfyi, I moved things around a lit­tle on my site. now the blog posts are @ http://ow.ly/l3Se & the feed for just posts is @ http://ow.ly/l3Sm [#]
twitter (feed #3)
sorry for the con­fu­sion — these will be per­ma­nent now and shouldn’t get moved again. thanks for your patience while I exper­i­ment [#]
twitter (feed #3)
new post: The Blog and Just the Blog, Ma’am http://bit.ly/3tesnj [#]
twitter (feed #3)
new post: Stream http://bit.ly/wI1ep [#]
twitter (feed #3)
new post: The Blog and Just the Blog, Maam http://bit.ly/busap [#]

11:00 pm Comments (2)

The Blog and Just the Blog, Ma’am

I just wanted to note that I’ve tied up some of the loose ends of con­vert­ing the TSL home page to dis­play my lifestream. If you’re not inter­ested in my lifestream, I won’t be offended, and you can just skip it alto­gether and go directly to the “blog” cat­e­gory, as that’s essen­tially my blog now.

You can also sub­scribe to just the blog posts via RSS if that’s your pre­ferred method. If you’re sub­scribed via email, you should only be see­ing the blog posts, so please let me know if you’re get­ting a daily “stream” update.

The last thing I’ve done is remove the cal­en­dar on the site, since now some­thing will get posted pretty much every day. Obvi­ously I’ll still leave the link to the archives, though.

At some point, I want to write about the library lifestream and how the Word­Press plu­gin I’ve installed can be used to eas­ily aggre­gate that, but it’s a topic that will have to wait for another day.


9:09 pm Comments (0)

August 22, 2009

Stream

twitter (feed #3)
@ao5357 I know, & I’m actu­ally inter­ested in feed­back so this helps. u can always go straight to http://ow.ly/kXkD for just the blog posts [#]
twitter (feed #3)
@ao5357 and I hope to have RSS feeds for cat­e­gories set up soon, so you’ll be able to sub­scribe to just the blog posts. hth [#]
generic (feed #10)
twitter (feed #3)
@davidleeking because the dru­pal mod­ule doesn’t offer that func­tion­al­ity. we hope to add it at some point if the the module’s author doesn’t [#]
delicious (feed #4)

– thanks for the link to this, Polly!

generic (feed #10)
twitter (feed #3)
@ao5357 thanks for the nudge. you can sub­scribe to just blog posts at http://ow.ly/kXZW and read just those on the site at http://ow.ly/kY05 [#]
flickr (feed #5)
Shared 4 photos.

11:00 pm Comments (0)

August 21, 2009

Stream

twitter (feed #3)
@catagator pub/priv is based on the item itself so you have to edit each one & check the “pub­lic” box at the bot­tom. sorry no blan­ket method [#]
twitter (feed #3)
@wickedlibrarian I started a test of that for ALA a few days ago. didn’t get far yet but also plan to add to my own WP instal­la­tion :) [#]
generic (feed #10)
flickr (feed #5)
generic (feed #10)
twitter (feed #3)
work­ing on pre­sos for next week’s LibraryCamp @ Allen County PL. be there or be square or par­tic­i­pate online #acplib­camp http://ow.ly/kNLU [#]
twitter (feed #3)
@infowidget good luck get­ting home! let us know if, heaven for­bid, you need any­thing [#]
twitter (feed #3)
@infowidget and thanks for lunch! you rock :-) [#]
twitter (feed #3)
@ao5357 well, it wasn’t out of nowhere & I explained it in a blog post. sorry it’s not what you’re look­ing for but it *is* my site ;-) [#]

11:00 pm Comments (0)

Another Reason for Libraries to Make Their Sites Social

Now that I’m on a smart­phone that has a real web browser and is capa­ble of mul­ti­task­ing (the Palm Pre), In fact, I find myself expect­ing it to act like my lap­top. I’ve stopped car­ry­ing my lap­top or my net­book to work each day because I can do so much on my phone, but I’m still notic­ing where deci­sions made by web design­ers make my mobile life easier.

So here’s mobile devel­oper tip #1, my two cents: use plu­g­ins and wid­gets that let users auto­mat­i­cally share your con­tent on sites like Twit­ter, Deli­cious, Face­book, etc., because you’ll make the user’s life eas­ier. Granted, not all phones sup­port the Javascript that pow­ers this type of ser­vice on a web page, but more and more will, so con­sider get­ting ahead of the curve and adding it now.

The alter­na­tive for me as the reader (acknowl­edg­ing each person’s sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent) is to:

  1. Leave the site up in a card until I get home in the evening and can man­u­ally book­mark it on my lap­top. This works about 50% of the time.
  2. Email the site to myself so I can book­mark it later on my lap­top. This works about 80% of the time but is annoying.
  3. Try remem­ber­ing to revisit the site later on my lap­top to book­mark it. This works 0% of the time.

As a result, I’m find­ing that I’m far more likely to book­mark some­thing if there’s a direct link to post it to Deli­cious, and that work­flow will con­tinue for me until there’s a Pre app that makes this eas­ier, which means I really appre­ci­ate sites that offer this. Even bet­ter is if you can add it so that it appears in your RSS feed so that it shows up in places like Google Reader and Blog­lines, too.

Here are some options to con­sider for adding this func­tion­al­ity to your site.

  • For Word­Press blogs, you can use the Socia­ble plu­gin (I’m sure there are oth­ers, but this is what I use so I know it works). I have another blog post brew­ing on this topic, but this is yet another rea­son I encour­age libraries to make their “what’s new” page a blog — you can then use the wealth of plu­g­ins out there to improve the user’s experience.

    Sociable WordPress plugin

  • For Dru­pal sites, you can use some­thing like the Share mod­ule (I’m going to look into this for ALA Con­nect. If you’re using a dif­fer­ent CMS, check to see if there’s a sim­i­lar mod­ule for it.
  • Fail­ing that, or even for use on gen­eral web pages, check out some­thing like the Add This wid­get, although I have to admit I’m not sure how acces­si­ble it is.

Regard­less, this can be a rel­a­tively easy way to help meet the needs of your mobile users, a group that’s just going to grow in the future. Food for thought. Nom nom nom.


11:17 am Comments (6)

August 20, 2009

Stream

googlereader (feed #6)
googlereader (feed #6)
googlereader (feed #6)
googlereader (feed #6)
twitter (feed #3)
@twfeed where does twit­ter­feed look for a key­word in a blog post for fil­ter­ing? should it work if the key­word is a tag? TIA [#]
generic (feed #10)
twitter (feed #3)
new post: You Can Still Help LFPL http://bit.ly/XOekv [#]

11:00 pm Comments (0)

You Can Still Help LFPL

The Louisville Free Pub­lic Library might no longer be flooded, but it can still use your help. Steve Law­son began this effort with a goal of rais­ing $5,000 for LFPL, and he’s more than halfway there. Please con­sider donat­ing if you can.


9:11 pm Comments (1)

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