"Another bubbling intra-generational gap, as any modern parent knows, is that younger children tend to be ever more artful multitaskers. Studies performed by Dr. Rosen at Cal State show that 16- to 18-year-olds perform seven tasks, on average, in their free time — like texting on the phone, sending instant messages and checking Facebook while sitting in front of the television.
People in their early 20s can handle only six, Dr. Rosen found, and those in their 30s perform about five and a half.
That versatility is great when they’re killing time, but will a younger generation be as focused at school and work as their forebears? "

"Stats published by Nielsen show that social media usage has increased by 82% in the last year, an astronomical rise. Facebook (Facebook), Twitter (Twitter), YouTube, blogs, and social interaction are becoming the focus of our online interactions, even more than search.
We’re social creatures, so it was only a matter of time until we figured out how to make the web an efficient medium for communication, sharing, and forging friendships. Now that we’re finally implementing the social layer though, it’s tough to find a scenario where the rise of social media doesn’t continue.
In ten years, when you access the web, most of the time you spend will be to connect with your friends. Almost all of that will be on social networks and through social media. It will be the #1 reason why we ever pull out our phones, tablets, or computers."

"To add to that idea, something like #ALAQnA would be great. The #edchat model is a terrific one to follow: a few nights at a week, at a set time, all of the #edchat twitterers respond-to/converse-about topics like “How can educators effectively assess students in the 21st century?”. The conversations are amazing if you follow the chats live, and they stay on twitter for the conversation to continue in the days (and sometimes weeks) to follow."

"I’ve recently been looking for sets of icons for all of the social websites that I belong to for my website, blog, and also print handouts. In the course of my research I’ve come across some excellent icon sets that designers are giving away for free. If you have a need for social media icons for your library website, personal website, or blog, here are a few resources that I found helpful." – via @ellyssa

"In this article we will show you how you can create a contributors page which will display a list of authors with avatars or userphoto and any other information that you like. This tutorial is an intermediate level tutorial."

"In this tutorial, we will be using WordPress and Feedburner with a few plugins to create a simple Email Newsletter Service for your WordPress blog. You can track the performance of your newsletter by checking how many subscribers you have, how many clicks each link gets and much more."

Every year, we throw a big, game party to ring in the new year. This year (2010) is our houses 100-year birthday, so we celebrated with cupcakes…
…and the cupcakes were a game.
Here they are in random order – see how many you can guess! Mouse over the question mark to reveal the answer." – via Iris (circulating)

"Well 2010 is here, a.k.a. the International Year of Biodiversity, and to us at the SCQ, it means that were finally ready to go ahead with our long awaited phylomon project. “What is this?” you ask? Well, its an online initiative aimed at creating a Pokemon card type resource but with real creatures on display in full “character design” wonder. Not only that – but we plan to have the scientific community weigh in to determine the content on such cards (note that the cards above are only a mock-up of what that content might be), as well as folks who love gaming to try and design interesting ways to use the cards. Then to top it all off, members of the teacher community will participate to see whether these cards have educational merit. Best of all, the hope is that this will all occur in a non-commercial-open-access-open-source-because-basically-this-is-good-for-you-your-children-and-your-planet sort of way." – via @walkingpaper

"find the best camera for you"

"For this semi-scientific analysis I looked at 18 library membership organizations, including state and national organizations. I did not include individual libraries or state libraries. I did include sub-groups and divisions. The list of organizations was chosen more or less at random and is biased towards organizations that support New England libraries. It is by no measure a complete list, so feel free to suggest one’s that I missed.
I utilized seven elements to compare the organizations. For each element, the organization received one point if the information met the criteria outlined below, and zero points if it did not. A higher rating is equated with a higher score. You can use this method for a quick check of your organization’s Twitter presence."

"Here they are to save the day—or at least the research project. Rochester librarians call on their inner superheroes as part of a new effort to let students know how to find help."

"I found that this only happened if I had both the Start Orb when Windows starts (on by default) and Run Orb when Im not logged in (off by default) checkboxes ticked in Configuration -> Advanced.
Start Orb when windows starts appears to run the program when you login under a user account. Run orb even when Im not logged in creates a Windows Service. Since the service will start up first, it should successfully serve media in the background. When you login, a second instance of the program runs in your user session and will therefore show the grey arrows icon as you cant have two instances running simultaneously."

"map it" functionality in the catalog