September 7, 2010

My Last Paperback?

Filed under: blog — Tags: , , , , , , — jenny @ 8:59 pm

A couple of years ago, my brother bought me a first generation Kindle for my birthday. At first I used it quite a bit, but then in 2009 I started reading a series of books I knew I’d want to highlight the heck out of and physically share with others (Here Comes Everybody, Community, Groundswell, What Would Google Do, You Are Not a Gadget, Switch, etc.), so I switched to print reading.
It wasn’t as conscious a decision as that summary makes it sound. Both of us in the house wanted to read them, so buying for the Kindle just wasn’t practical. All of a sudden, months had gone by and I realized I hadn’t used the device in quite a while, so I pulled it back out. I was also feeling a pull to go back to using it because of Will Richardson’s post about kindle.amazon.com, explaining how I’d finally be able to get my highlighted text out of an ebook.
One thing that post made me realize is how print has become a barrier to my blogging about books I’m reading because I don’t have time to transcribe the passages I’d want to refer to in my writing. And like others, I was worried that buying a book in Kindle format meant I’d lose it if I ever stopped using that particular device. Luckily, though, Amazon finally figured out it needed to make its books software-based instead of hardware-dependent, so I feel like this is less of an issue now that Kindle books live on multiple platforms.

my highlighted text from "Hamlet's Blackberry"
I have 347 highlights from “Hamlet’s Blackberry” that have automatically been transcribed for me!

 
(Side note to publishers and bookstores: you still need to move to a universal format. This doesn’t let you off the hook for working this out.)
This left one major barrier to a complete conversion to ebooks, one I thought I was still struggling with – the sharing. But when I read Clay Shirky’s book Cognitive Surplus and realized I’d have to manually type all of those interesting quotes… well, that’s when my personal practicality started to tip the scale away from print towards electronic. In fact, my desire to share those passages widely has actually trumped my traditional love of sharing physical books locally.
This revelation astounded me. I knew my desire to share content was the prime driver of the format I was choosing, but I didn’t realize how quickly it was shifting in the opposite direction. I now want to share one-to-many, not one-to-one, and I just don’t have the time or resources to transcribe everything I want to share. It makes me sad to look at that long list of print books I’ve read over the past year that I likely won’t share here because I can’t copy and paste.
Around this same time, I realized I wanted to take a fiction break, and I knew exactly what I wanted to read – Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End – a book Eli Neiburger had recommended to me as the most realistic picture of libraries and information in the future (boy was he right, but that’s a discussion for another post). I’ve wanted to read it for quite a while, but I’ve been trying to move my fiction reading to ebooks, and this particular title isn’t available electronically.
I really needed that fiction break, though, so I broke down and bought the paperback. I get in most of my reading on the train to and from work, and while hardcovers aren’t exactly a convenient format, this paperback was even less so. It’s obviously been a while since I’ve read a paperback, because I found myself thinking the format was awkward and annoying. If it had been a different story, I might have even given up on it, but it made me realize this was likely my last such purchase. I might still buy a print book here and there for the pictures or for the trophy shelf, but I’m not sure what would make me buy a mass market paperback again. (Apparently I’m not alone in this opinion.)
So I’m back to using my Kindle, remembering what I loved so much about it at the beginning, to the point where I’ve even ordered a new third generation version because I love the focused nature of a dedicated ebook reader. That may change in the future, but for now I’m definitely a specialist, enjoying how the device lets me focus on reading without distractions. (That first generation Kindle can’t ever leave the family, because Cory Doctorow was kind enough to sign it two years ago, so I’ll be keeping it for pretty much ever.)
However, I’m also recognizing new benefits I hadn’t picked up on before. I’ve had a couple of serious bouts of insomnia in my life, which I finally cured by reading like crazy until I fell asleep. The unfortunate side effect of this solution was that I trained myself to fall asleep when reading books. The rhythm of the train doesn’t help either, and by the end of the week I’m so tired that I usually drift off on the train ride home, regardless of how much I enjoy the book itself.
Interestingly, though, I don’t fall asleep on the train quite as often with the Kindle, although it does still happen. Apparently a book is a print book is an ebook to my brain, but electronic ink seems to keep me awake a tiny bit better (but not too awake to be a problem at night). I just finished reading Hamlet’s Blackberry, and I found that I read more of it at a time because I stayed awake. I’m also reading faster on the Kindle than I was in print, which I don’t remember noticing before. Finally, I tend to highlight more, knowing that it will all be searchable in the end.
Of course, your mileage may vary, but I think I’ve finally crossed over to the ebook side. I’ll have to go to bookstores and the library just to touch new books for old time’s sake. Only time will tell if there’s a “feature” of print books that can draw me back. My reasons for converting are definitely an edge case, and I haven’t been a heavy user of print resources in libraries in quite some time, but I can’t help but wonder how this type of shift will affect libraries. I see more and more ereaders on my commute every day.

August 13, 2010

It's, Like, So Confusing

Filed under: blog — Tags: , , , , , , — tsladmin @ 12:35 pm

Following up on last week’s post about how Facebook is changing the meaning of “like” online, I’ve been noticing more disconcerting behavior on Target’s Facebook page.
Until yesterday, Target hadn’t posted anything to its wall since July 26th. It wasn’t clear if they were building a strategy internally, but the new post makes it obvious that they’ve decided to ride out the storm by ignoring it and letting their customers duke it out on their wall. The new post links to specials for college students and makes absolutely no reference to the controversy. As of this morning, there are 303 comments on that post and 367 people “like” it.
Target clearly isn’t going to mention the issues, respond, or engage in a conversation on Facebook. Interesting strategy, and we’ll see how it plays out. But as I’m watching this case study develop, some themes are emerging and raising some problematic flags.
As one might expect after what seems like an eternity online, the commenters are no longer mostly people upset with Target’s actions. And predictably, as seems to happen with so many discussions about politics and homosexuality, the discussion is devolving pretty quickly. Some users are flagging each other for bad behavior, just because they disagree with the person’s opinions. Some are insulting other commenters, and the whole wall is becoming a referendum on a political issue. I haven’t read every comment, but I’m confident Godwin’s Law is proven there somewhere.
None of this is new behavior to be sure, but has this happened before on such a mainstream company’s page, especially while the company itself is ignoring it? The fact that it’s Target makes for some interesting issues.
For example, if you read a sample of the comments closely, you’ll find a potentially worrisome information literacy problem. If you go back to the beginning of the comments thread on the August 12 post, there are some users whose entire comment consists of, “If you don’t like Target, why do you ‘like’ this page?” or “If you don’t like Target, why did you become a fan of them?”
It’s unclear to me whether these folks realize that users have to like the page in order to comment or if they’re just being snarky about it. Even though these folks had to “like” the page themselves in order to leave their own questioning comments, I’m leaning towards believing that they truly don’t realize that “like” now means “comments enabled.” As David Lee King said on my previous post, “it looks like the ‘Like’ but­ton is really an entrance fee/ticket, or the ‘door’ to the event….” But there’s a large group of people out there that don’t realize that “like” now has subtext and is loaded with new meanings and requirements. I worry that they truly don’t understand that the boycotters have no choice but to “like” Target if they want to participate in the discussion.

"Why are you guys even a fan?"

Other commenters honestly can’t seem to understand why someone who is upset with Target would be posting on the company’s wall in the first place. It seems that there’s still a disconnect between “a company’s web presence” and an interactive, community.” Heck, this is true even for Target, which continues to ignore the community and treat its page as a one-way announcement channel. A lot of folks participating in this thread haven’t made the mental leap from “Just Target” to “Target + Others” as a new norm, even though they’re able to scratch their heads in the comments themselves.

"I just wanted to 'Like' a Target page...."

Close reading of the threads also makes it clear that quite a few Target fans didn’t know anything about the controversy until they visited the Facebook page and saw the comments. This further confirms the ongoing switch from a small number of “official,” mainstream news sources to personal news streams on social networking sites. More and more people are getting their news online from their networks, not from newscasters. (Incidentally, if you need to make a case for why your library should be on Facebook, this is a pretty good reason – in order to be part of your users news stream.)

"What did Target do?"

Overall, there’s a lot going on here, and I encourage you to keep tabs on Target’s page to see how it plays out. It can be difficult to dip into the emerging incivility and disrespect, but it’s educational, especially for any organization that has a Facebook presence. These types of cases are illustrating how the shift from us going out to find information to it coming to us, filtered through our networks, will have an impact on organizations. They also expose a whole host of other issues, from information literacy gaps to privacy concerns. For example, I was going to erase the names of the commenters in the screenshots, but technically it’s all public information, so why hide it? Do the people leaving rants and invectives on the Target post/wall truly understand that those comments are completely public?
On Facebook, 831 people “like” confusion, but I’m not sure anyone really likes it in the Target context.

August 3, 2010

When Like Doesn't Mean Like

Filed under: blog — Tags: , , , , , , — tsladmin @ 8:57 am

Subtitle: Or, Using Like to Target Target
If you’re watching the Target Facebook page right now, you’re seeing another social media disaster on par with Nestle’s debacle back in March. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, but it’s another great case study for us about what not to do online.
Hint: don’t set your page to show only your posts first and then abandon it when controversy arises. If you’re not familiar with the current controversy, you can go here to read about Target’s donation to a homophobic gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota. Be sure to click on “just others” on Target’s wall to see the angry, former customers and pornographic spam.

When Like Doesn't Mean Like

I’m sure they’ve spent the last few days bringing in consultants to come up with a strategy for how to deal with this, but it’s surprising that someone hasn’t already said, “We need to at least post *something* on our Facebook page and acknowledge what’s happening.” So far, Target doesn’t seem to be learning from others’ past mistakes, so don’t fall into the same trap if this ever happens to you.
I think that’s the biggest, immediate takeaway for libraries and nonprofits (well, for everyone, really), but personally I’m more fascinated right now by how people have been forced to give the term “like” different meanings in different contexts because of the box Facebook has forced them into, which this situation illustrates so well.
We first saw this type of attempt to subvert the term “is” in Facebook’s early years. Long-time users remember when your status update automatically included the word “is” so you were forced to use adjectives, present progressive tense, or future tense. Nothing could happen in your past unless you were creative in your use of language, which some people went out of their way to be. Others just started ignoring the “is” and writing whatever they wanted. You might also remember the petition many of us “signed” asking Facebook to remove the “is.” It all seems so quaint now, but those two letters went from being a new way to describe ourselves to being too restrictive pretty quickly.
Now we’re running into another limit that the Facebook one-size-fits-all box forces on us – “like.” We’ve all seen, and maybe even written, “dislike” on a friend’s status update when they say they have a cold or something bad has happened. And yet we still go ahead and click on “like” in order to signify some type of solidarity, even though the term is wholly inaccurate. Sometimes we specifically go out of our way to add a comment “I don’t really ‘like’ this” or “liking even though I don’t like.” But we don’t really have any other options, do we?

When Like Doesn't Mean Like

And even though Mark Zuckerberg has said Facebook might someday add a “dislike” button (which it won’t out of fear users’ “dislike” of companies will drive advertisers away), that wouldn’t really cover it, would it? My range of emotions doesn’t run the gamut from A to B, but instead includes a million shades of grey in between, just as I don’t always talk solely in the present progressive tense.
So when an issue like the Target controversy comes up and I want to leave a comment on Target’s wall saying I’m now boycotting them and why, I have to first “like” Target in order to leave that comment. Talk about cognitive dissonance. I can then add my thoughts and if I want to show support for other protesters, I can “like” their comments, which I do (some more than others), but “like” probably isn’t the word I would have chosen given my shades of grey.
The only satisfaction I can really get is when I leave my comment and then “unlike” Target, but *that* update doesn’t get posted to my wall – only the “like” does.

When Like Doesn't Mean Like
“I do not think that word means what you think it means”

I recently read Jaron Lanier’s book You Are Not a Gadget, which for the most part I loved. I wrote a little about Lanier’s take on the future of authorship, but it also made me think about the way websites force our lifesize selves into one-size-fits-all templates. (Sorry I can’t quote a relevant piece, but I’ve lent my copy out, so I don’t have it handy – a blog post for another day.) At least software like WordPress lets bloggers choose from a variety of templates and even edit them, but it made me glad that I’ve personalized my own site to be truly unique, just like me.
However, Facebook now has 500 million users, most of whom don’t have their own websites as a unique presence for themselves online. Instead, we have hundreds of millions of average users who all look the same and conform to Facebook’s interface constraints as their major representation on the web. If it wasn’t for the picture, it would be difficult to tell one John Doe FB profile from another in Google’s search results.
The lowest common denominator used to be a yellow page listing, but now it’s become Facebook’s profiles. At least a Facebook user can personalize the text in her profile, but we’re all stuck with “like.” That word is taking on a lot more responsibility since we have to figure out ways to use it to convey other meanings. How do we indicate when “like” means don’t like, favorite, bookmark, agree, disagree, support, bummer, share, read this later, funny, and more?
Facebook eventually wised up and removed the “is,” but how will it route around advertisers to provide the spectrum beyond “like?” It’s boxing itself, as well as us, into a corner, which I definitely don’t like.

June 7, 2010

My foursquare "Aha" Moment

You remember your first time, right? The moment you realized email was more than just cool? Or the web, or blogging, or Facebook, or cellphones, or or or – take your pick. There’s always that moment where you realize that this shiny, new thing actually has value for you, and that’s when you really buy into integrating it into your life.
I’ve been using foursquare for a while and having fun with it, but my “aha” moment finally came last month on a trip to Washington D.C. Foursquare (and services like it) use GPS built-in to your smartphone to locate you. They show you venues nearby and let you “check in” at a specific one. Foursquare treats this like a game, and if you check in often enough at a specific location (and more often than anyone else), you become “the mayor” until someone else has more check-ins there than you do. Foursquare also allows businesses to offer “specials” to those checking in, such as discounts or free items. Other services, like Gowalla, BrightKite, and Loopt, mostly just show you where your friends are, which can be handy if you end up near each other and don’t know it. In general, you can also broadcast your location on Twitter or Facebook, and sometime this year Facebook is supposed to implement its own location-based check-in service.

I'm currently the Mayor of ALA

Sure, it was fun when I was the original mayor of MPOW, and I got a glimpse of how useful a location-based service could be during ALA’s Midwinter Meeting in Boston in January, when I could see friends checked in at the convention center or a nearby restaurant. But let’s face it – it wasn’t difficult to become the first mayor of ALA, and you expect to see specific types of checkins at a conference. It’s really the unexpected moments that result in a “whoa” or “aha.”
I had two of those on the D.C. trip. The first happened when I checked in at the National Building Museum and foursquare showed me that “Fiesta Asia Street Fair” was a nearby trending place. This piqued my interest, so I looked it up on the web and found out it was actually the National Asian Heritage Festival, which was happening just a few blocks away on Pennsylvania Avenue. I changed my plans, headed down there, and found music, food, vendors, and more. I had a great time, and I wouldn’t even have known about the Festival if I hadn’t checked in on foursquare at the right time in the right-ish place.
I caught another glimpse of the power of information plus location when we went to dinner that night. I checked in at Rosa Mexicano and got a little popup with historical information about where we were courtesy of The History Channel. I’d read about THC’s campaign using foursquare, but surprisingly I only ran into two factoids twice while in D.C. This first one noted we were at the spot where Samuel Morse opened the world’s first telegraph office.

History Channel factoid that popped up during dinner

The second one popped up when I checked in at the National Portrait Gallery. Unfortunately, we’re still at a point where “location” can be a little geographically-challenged, so even though I was precise about where I was checking in, the factoid that displayed was for the nearby International Spy Museum. It was also worded in a way that implied the information was about the Portrait Gallery, which is unfortunate. It’s a good heads up that if you end up writing these kinds of descriptions for a local history tour or other orientation to your town, be sure to be explicit in naming places in the description.

History Channel factoid about the International Spy Museum

Still, it was pretty cool to have information displayed to me based on my location with very little effort on my part. And while I’m calling this my “foursquare moment,” it’s really my location-based services one. It could have happened on any of them, although foursquare seems to have the most critical mass (I very rarely have to enter a venue anymore) and the “trending places” feature has been unique for me so far.
That said, I’m very interested in Gowalla’s trips feature, which lets you create a tour or itinerary for friends. I’m very intrigued by this, and I believe it could be a great opportunity for libraries to offer local information, but Gowalla didn’t click for me on this trip the way foursquare did. I did dual checkins to both services, and while I think I picked up a couple of random “items” on Gowalla, I also had to enter a couple of venues myself, a sign that it doesn’t have the same adoption rate. I had hoped to find some good D.C. “trips” to consider following, but unfortunately the Gowalla app doesn’t show nearby trips, which sorely limits the utility of the service. Every time I checked nearby trips, I got the same list of national ones, even though the Washington Post recently created one specifically for D.C., as did National Geographic.
I expect to see a lot more use of both services during ALA’s Annual Conference in a few weeks. If you’re attending, make a note of the Gowalla trips ahead of time, because you won’t find them serendipitously via the app. If you’re using foursquare, help us make the conference hotspots trending places. And if you have a smartphone and aren’t using either of these services, you might want to give them a try onsite to see if you have your own aha moment.

April 30, 2010

April 24, 2010

How to Use Facebook and Still Be Completely Private

Filed under: blog — Tags: , , — tsladmin @ 12:28 pm

I’m one of the many people who doesn’t like some of the recent changes to Facebook’s default privacy settings, and I agree completely with Anil Dash that if those defaults aren’t good enough for Mark Zuckerberg, then maybe they should be changed.
However, I think I’ve discovered a way to participate on Facebook with my friends and still be completely hidden from the web, even more so than in the past, but I need your help to figure out what’s going on.

my public Facebook profile has disappeared

A couple of days ago, by pure chance I noticed that the public version of my Facebook profile had disappeared from Google’s search results completely. If you’d searched for me in the past, you would have gotten a link to my public profile, which displayed my name, picture, friends list, some groups I belong to, and (I think) some pages I’ve fanned.
After this week’s changes to Facebook’s defaults, however, that profile no longer comes up at all in a search on Google or Bing. In fact, if you’re not logged in to Facebook and you click on a link to my profile with my personal URL (which I assure you does still exist), you’ll get a “page not found” error.
I’ve confirmed this with others, even people who I’m friends with on Facebook. If you’re logged out, there’s no way to get to my profile. My theory is that one of two things is causing this to happen.

  1. I’ve always been wary of providing Facebook with too much information, so I never filled out any interests.
  2. A couple of days ago, I went to Facebook to read my feed and got a popup window asking me to link my profile to one of the pages for my high school, college, graduate school, and my city network. I didn’t want to do that, so I clicked on the “ask me later” button, which should mean I’m not part of any networks right now.

I’m sure Facebook thinks it’s punishing me for not participating in its new advertising system, but this is a pretty sweet spot for me to be in because my Facebook account is one of the very few that I truly keep private and where I’m only adding “friends” now (as opposed to anyone who friends me). I get to participate with my friends the way I always have and don’t have to deal with all of the new “like” crud and privacy issues. And I think any true friends can still find me, as I believe that anyone logged in to Facebook can still find my profile. In fact, I think I’m still showing up on other peoples’ “recommendations” sidebar, because I’m still getting friend requests from people I don’t really know.
This is great, and I’m very happy with this setup, inadvertent as I think Facebook meant it to be. I’m also not willing to change it to test what’s causing it, so this is where I need your help. I don’t want to add any interests or link my profile to a network in order to find out if that changes anything, because I may not be able to undo the change. So I’m asking for your help in answering the following questions so that we can all figure out what’s going on. Hopefully those of us who want to be private on Facebook can truly do that now. It would also be helpful to have this information so that we know if/when Facebook figures this out and changes it.
Please leave answers in the comments, and thanks for your help!

  1. If you’re logged out of Facebook, can you see my profile? http://facebook.com/shifted
  2. If you’re logged in to Facebook, can you see my profile?
  3. If you’re not friends with me in Facebook and you can see my profile, what do you see? Please be specific in listing which pieces (eg, name, picture, groups, etc.)
  4. Does your public profile display in search results?
  5. If your public profile displays, either when others click on it or in search results, do you have interests listed in your profile?
  6. Can you completely remove your interests from your profile?
  7. Have you seen the popup window asking you to link your profile to specific pages/networks?
  8. If your public profile displays, is your profile linked to any of these pages/networks?
  9. Can you remove your profile from being linked to any of these pages/networks?
  10. If you go through these steps of removing interests and links to pages/networks, does that remove your public profile altogether, the way it did mine?
  11. I’ve also unchecked the box to allow personalization in my privacy settings. If your public profile isn’t displaying, have you done that?

Addendum: I think Polly found the actual answer (noted in the comments below). There’s a setting in the privacy –> search settings that may finally remove your profile completely from public view.

"public search" setting in Facebook

Make sure you uncheck the “allow” box, and if you want even more privacy, change the “Facebook search results” setting to “friends only.” I should also note that I know for a fact this setting either wasn’t there or wasn’t working properly last month, as I had a debate with someone about privacy and looked at my public profile while not logged in, so something definitely changed recently to allow for this level of privacy. What I’m unsure of now is whether that “allow” box is checked by default or not (question #12?). I have to say that if that box is not checked by default, I’m pretty impressed with Facebook’s new stance.
And as Phil noted in his comment, make sure you change the pri­vacy –> pro­file infor­ma­tion set­tings to man­age what your friends can share about you. That’s a really impor­tant one.
The big deal: It looks like Facebook has indeed changed its stance on privacy and has defaulted the “allow” in the search settings to opt-in, rather than opt-out. I think this is new, and it’s very welcome in my opinion, especially since you can further narrow the “Facebook search results” setting. Has anyone seen that “allow” box checked by default?
If this is true, profiles have disappeared from Google, right? Is this a preemptive move on Facebook’s part to take over people search from Google? I don’t know, but it seems like something has changed.

March 30, 2010

Living in My Cloud

Filed under: blog — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — tsladmin @ 6:54 am

This weekend, I did something really cool (for me). I got to watch a March Madness game on my TV that CBS wasn’t showing in my local market on my TV, without paying the cable company. Life is full of short victories, and this is one of mine. More importantly, I realized I’m living in the heavenly jukebox I used to talk about in my presentations years ago.
I’ve been actively building my cloud for the last six months, but I’ve been building towards this for the last ten years. The caveat is that the way I’ve built this setup works for me, and one-size definitely doesn’t fit all. I’m lucky to have the resources to build my cloud, and I know most people won’t go to these lengths to get more media. It should all be easier and work better than it does in 2010, but there’s no one really great solution yet (that I know of).

Why a cloud?

It started last August when I decided it was time to investigate a centralized backup solution, a way to listen to our music collection from anywhere, and the ability to listen to different music in different rooms of the house. In my ideal world, I also wanted similar access for video, a way to easily watch internet video (eg, YouTube, Hulu) on my TV, and the ability to stream Netflix to my TV. The offsite storage is important to me (I used to backup to Mozy, but I also want to own my data, and the idea of replicating sensitive documents on servers owned by companies focused on the bottom line (Dropbox, Microsoft Live, etc.) wasn’t very appealing to me.

I did a lot of research and couldn’t find anything that let me do everything, but Windows Home Server software came close, so I purchased an HP Mediasmart EX485 server. As the name implies, the Mediasmart series is designed to give consumers access to their media from anywhere. It comes with Windows Home Server software pre-installed and out of the box, it’s supposed to do the following things:

  • Backup all of the computers on your network automatically on a schedule you set. This includes differential backups and restores.
  • Periodically grab media from all of those computers and copy it to the server.
  • Maintain your router and DNS settings so that your server is accessible from outside of your network.
  • Give you access to all of your documents, files, music, and video from anywhere.

I say “supposedly,” because I’ve never been able to get the media collector to work consistently, and the interface to the music collection is under-described by the term “sucks.” I had to rip most of my CDs for the first time at a higher bitrate, so I just ended up copying files to the server manually in big chunks. I’m also the main person in the house who purchases music, so I can maintain that routine pretty easily.

My Jukebox in the Cloud (so named by Deanna)

The interface problems and lack of functionality were bigger issues, though. For example, there’s no way to get details about songs, rate them, or create playlists, all of which is pretty unforgivable in a product designed specifically for consumers. After further research, I installed Orb, which is some pretty cool, free software that does a big piece of what Windows Home Server does. It gives you remote access to files, music, pictures, and video on the computer where it’s installed, plus you can manage internet radio stations, favorite songs, rate songs, create playlists, and create a dashboard view. Did I mention it’s free? If you have a computer you always leave on, you can emulate some of my setup for free using this software.


My music library in Orb

Where Windows Home Server beats Orb is in its ability to update port forwarding on the router automatically, backup all of the computers on your network, and offer a RAID solution for that storage. I have 400GB+ of files, music, pictures, and video on one 750GB drive, but I was able to drop in a second drive, and the software automatically started mirroring files to it for redundancy. That part was pretty amazing, and I can access all of those files remotely, whether that means at work or in different rooms in the house. Pretty sweet.

Connecting the server to the home system

That was all well and good, but I also wanted to play music without having to queue it up on a laptop first, which meant we needed a way to get the server content to play through the home theater system. Plus, we wanted to start streaming Netflix videos to watch on the TV, as opposed to our computers. I again started doing research, which led me to the discovery that the Xbox 360 that was just sitting on the shelf (we play more Wii than Xbox) was actually a solution waiting for us to recognize it.
Because the server and Xbox are both Microsoft products, they talk to each other pretty easily. This opened up a whole new world for us, because now we could show any picture and play any music or video from the server on the big HDTV and the sound through the audio receiver and 5.1 surround-sound system without the need for a computer in between. In addition, the Xbox gives us that desired access to Netflix, Pandora, and even Last.FM through the existing system. I can also create my playlists in Orb via a web browser and play them through the Xbox. More sweetness.


Watching “Battlestar Galactica” via Netflix’s streaming service through the Xbox on the HDTV

My biggest complaint about this setup is that the Xbox isn’t designed to be a media center, even though it has all of that functionality built into it. This means the interface isn’t very good here, either (no playlists, incomplete display of metadata, long lists to scroll through), but I didn’t have to buy any additional equipment, so that was a big plus. If Microsoft ever decides to spend time working on interfaces, it would have some killer products for the consumer market.

More video

This setup does almost everything on my original list, but I still wanted to be able to watch Hulu through the existing system, and I didn’t want to have to manually download YouTube videos to watch them on the TV. Looking around, I came across the amazing PlayOn software ($40), which was the final piece of our puzzle. By loading this software on the server, we gained the ability to watch Hulu, YouTube, and some custom PlayOn channels for The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and NCAA March Madness games on demand. Really sweet! This piece was a little bit more difficult, but it all works if you follow the instructions.


Picking an episode of “Modern Family” to watch from Hulu via PlayOn through the Xbox to the HDTV

Making it all easier to use

I then tied everything together with a hand-me-down Logitech Harmony remote to make it easy to manage all of the various pieces. The “watch TV” button turns on the TV to the right input, the audio receiver to the right input, and controls the cable box. The “watch a movie” button turns everything on with the right settings to watch a DVD, but pretty much everything else except the Wii runs through the “listen to music” button, because that’s what starts up the Xbox. This is especially helpful because without the universal remote, I’d probably be the only one in the house who’d be able to turn things on and off for different activities. Another big plus is that we can control the Xbox with easy-to-understand buttons, rather the game controller that came with the console. I can’t recommend a Logitech univeral remote highly enough.

Conclusion

For the most part, this is all working very well for us. We listen to our music a lot more, including at work, and sometimes the internet video piece really comes in handy (like during March Madness). We especially like streaming Netflix (which can also be done through the PlayOn software if you don’t have an Xbox). At this point, the biggest issue is that I still need a way to backup the server offsite, but I can’t find a reasonably priced service for this (most companies charge business-level prices because they haven’t yet recognized there’s a growing consumer market). Someone’s going to make a killing offering a consumer backup service for media, but that day hasn’t arrived yet. I’m looking at other workarounds right now, but I haven’t found an ideal solution. (Have you? Leave a comment!)
It’s been a long road to get to this point, but it’s exciting to have all of this geeky functionality working. In the future, I hope to get rid of a lot of paper by scanning it to the server, and I may investigate adding a TV tuner to record programs directly to the server and setting up printing over the internet to our home printer.

How you can do some of this

This is pretty geeky stuff, although most of the process was easier than I thought it would be. It’s also a Microsoft-centric approach, somewhat by accident. I still think Microsoft needs to do a better job with its interfaces before its home server/media center products could go mainstream. However, there are ways to do pieces of all of this easily, without Microsoft products, and sometimes even for free.

  • If you have a computer that you leave on all the time, you can stream music and video or access files from it for free by installing Orb. You can even hook up an external drive to that computer if you need more storage. (It works on Macs, too.)
  • If you have an old computer lying around or can pick one up cheap, you can purchase Windows Home Server for $99 and convert that machine into a home server. I only paid the $500 for the HP Mediasmart server for the convenience factor of having it pre-installed with the software and a 750GB hard drive. If I’d had more time, I might have built it myself.
  • You don’t need an Xbox to get content from the server to the TV/home theater system. Internet TVs and DVD players are on the market (everything will have access to the internet built-in eventually), and there’s middleware like the Roku. Because I was able to get the Xbox working in about 10 minutes, I didn’t investigate which of the other options might be best. Interestingly, TiVO is entering this market with its new TiVO Premiere box, but it’ll still require a monthly fee, which I wasn’t willing to pay. I don’t think it provides access to the user’s collection, although it does bring in all of that internet content.
  • There are also other ways to stream sites like Hulu and Netflix to your TV. You can install the PlayOn software on a regular computer (as opposed to a server) to watch those channels, but you’ll still need the middleware to get the stream to the TV. Of course, you can also just install PlayOn on a computer and watch the channels on that computer, or hook it up to a TV using an A/V cable. That’s what I used to do, but I wanted to be able to use my laptop while watching “TV.” Note that PlayOn will also work with a Nintendo Wii or Playstation 3.
  • Jason Griffey has written about using the Drobo system for backups. I probably would have gone this route if I didn’t also want the remote access to my media files. However, if you’re looking strictly for a backup solution or if you aren’t backup up your data, this is an excellent option.

What else have you tried? How are you building your cloud?

March 5, 2010

Games and Libraries – Wendy Leseman (akla10)

Filed under: blog — Tags: , , , , — tsladmin @ 3:59 pm

started out playing “Just Dance” on the Wii (whoo-hoo!)
Wii is a great place to start
when you’re ready to learn how to use a Wii, send your 12-year old out of the house because they show you too quickly 😉
you can teach yourself to do this (really, you can)
why gaming?
– connect with patrons who are gamers; they love it when you show an interest in something that’s important to them; it’s good to know about gaming regardless of what type of library you’re in
– promote multiple types of literacy
– increase traffic
– it’s fun
applied for ALA’s Gaming, Learning, and Literacy grant with the Verizon Foundation
got $5000, $4000 of which was spent on Wiis & DDR for each library in the school district
had a few logistical problems but money from the Verizon Foundation was slow in coming, which forced some changes
she also loans her equipment out to teachers
also exploring having kids create games using Scratch
$1000 for gaming at her school – computers, console, and board games
kids have become the experts and help each other
they do a family fun night at least once a year
Wendy sets up DDR and Guitar Hero + Band Hero
PS2s aren’t as versatile as the Wii but can still be good to get you started, especially with DDR
had trouble finding games that would run on their old computers
– used Civilization, a vet game, Star Wars (which is the most popular and is her only T game)
gets shy and non-sports kids involved
it’s fun to watch them socialize and help each other
now we’re playing group Backseat Drawing – awesome!
showed some books with game themes
they also read a lot of guides and cheats – they do a ton of reading around gaming
mentioned “Libraries Got Game” by Brian Mayer and Chris Harris and their alignment of board games with AASL’s standards (much love in the room for this)
Wendy was supposed to defend the grant to the school board because they weren’t sure they wanted to accept “gaming” money, but they had already accepted it by the time she got there
examples of computer strategy games – Spore (although her older computers won’t run it), Civilization
showed ALA’s Online Toolkit for librarians
free online games, which often have a cause-related theme (hunger, justice, etc.)
in her district, anything that has “game” in it is automatically blocked, so she works with them to let certain ones through
Games for Change
Genesee Valley’s database of games let you search by game time and ROI

The Mind of the Researcher – Daniel Russell (akla10)

Filed under: blog — Tags: , , , , — tsladmin @ 1:23 pm

Daniel Russell, Google Search Quality & User Happiness
2010 Alaska Library Association Conference, opening keynote speaker
Lewis & Clark left without a decent map
it’s a complicated world out there and you don’t want to end up like the Donner Party (hey, go that way; it looks good)
what does the current information map look like?
let’s be adventurers but keep our eyes and minds open
did a demo of Google Earth
cost to put the flyover together = $0 and four minutes of time
Google will crawl it within 48 hours
when Lewis & Clark published about their trip, it took 10 years
we see the world differently, and the library isn’t what it used to be
stacks are no longer a core competence – the information landscape has radically changed
1200 exabytes of new content are generated each year (1.2 yottabytes if that helps or 1.2 billion terrabytes)
3.6 zetabytes per person per year (mostly music and video)
libraries don’t have to curate and manage that – it stream to you
text words per pseron per year = .1% of that total
the good news is that the amount of reading per person per year has gone up by 3X since 1980 (primarily due to internet access); happening online, not print
so need to develop new skills and new literacies
showed Google Books
can click on the places in a book and travel to all of them
can actually recapitulate Huck Finn’s journey down the river
LoC has 10 terabytes of text data or .01 petabytes
he has 2 LoCs at home
an exabyte = 50,000 years of DVD or 10 billion copies of The Economist (there aren’t enough trees in Alaska to print them all)
we’re supporting this renaissance of access to print culture at the same time we’re expanding online content
1.5 million out of copyright books that can be printed for $8 each
do you care about all of this as long as you can get to the stuff that you care about?
what Google is trying to figure out is how can I read your mind from the couple of words you gave me – which pages you want to see of theirs out of all of those exabytes of data?
it’s not just text anymore
mentioned Hans Rosling’s TED talk about visualizing statistics
mentioned Baby Names Voyager
Google bought software to add visual statistics to Google Docs
the cool part is I can type my name and see when my name peaked
is this a book? no. is it a visualization? yes. but it’s also interactive. where/how do I catalog this?
these kinds of interactive documents allow you to understand in ways that were not possible before
showed what happened to names that begin with vowels during the 40s and 50s – “the valley of the vowels”
the answer to what happened is in the hard consonants
no one knew this until they could see it in this visualization
our notion of what constitutes information and librarianship is changing
how do people search now?
suppose you’re Google and you get the query “jaguar” – what do they want?
one of the differences about being Google though is that you’re at a reference desk where a billion people a day ask the question
what about “iraq?” today, it’s the way; 15 years ago, it was probably antiquities
Google sees queries shifting a lot
“latest release Thinkpad drivers touchpad” = I know exactly what they want
“ebay” = in the top 10 most popular queries in English per day
“google” is also in the top 10 queries per day – why?? are they trying to cause the recursive meltdown of Google’s servers?
there are 20,000 ways to mis-spell “Britany Spears” (and they all want pictures of her)
one of the interesting things they do is use machine-generated algorithms
they don’t have to mis-spell a new celebrities name 20,000 times – their users will do that for them
that’s how informaiton works now
he goes to peoples’ homes a lot to talk to them and watch their behavior
showed a video clip of someone searching at home for which celebrity has won the most Oscars
(she was pretty confused with the results she was getting – didn’t realize she had moved into the “Google News” section)
she has a graduate degree, runs her own website, and has her own tv show
the equivalent of watching someone looking at a textbook in the library and wondering why she’s suddenly looking at the news
this is why he has a job 😉
he sees problems in the world and tries to fix them
weekly statistics:
3.9 visits per user
9.4 searches per user
11.2 search clicks per user
4 minutes duration
29% query refinement rate
they’re not spending a lot of time in “the stacks”
66% of their users have less than one query per day
average query length is less than 3 words
the “very confident” people in a Pew study search multiple times per day (34%)
success makes them search more often
92% feel confident in their searching ability
you don’t get good doing anything less than once per day (for four minutes, no less)
55% call themselves an “expert searcher” (despite how little I use the system)
they’re happy when they get a result from a search
people think of expertise as being socially-normed
“all of my friends say I’m the best searcher” – you want to say you’re good
people like to take on tasks they can succeed at
showed an example where the difference in the question was “ghost town” vs “abandoned city”
the “ghost town” people didn’t do well searching and were unhappy – took them a lot longer to find the information
librarians are synonym professionals
“functional fixed-ness” – being stuck on a search term, not being able to think of a synonym
Google is trying to convert people from the “ghost town” group to the “abandoned city” group
they can see improvement over time
but the information landscape is so complex
Google launches about 10 products per week, although more are invisible (tweaks to the algorithm, etc.)
but so far this year (and it’s only March 5), they’ve launched:
a really long list of things
these are all things that happened to our information landscape in the last two months
new kinds of content are coming online all the time
3D models in SketchUp
“what’s a flying buttress? let me show” vs a 2D picture in a Time-Life book
new kinds of querying information
eg, Google Goggle – “Google, what’s that?”
“your cellphone – it’s not just for typing anymore”
“wait – when did cellphones become standard for typing?”
taking a picture of a book gives you the metadata about it (same for a bottle of wine, etc.)
you don’t have to type as much anymore
the way you interact with Google is changing
with Google Earth, if you fly to the Prado in Madrid, you can fly into the building and even into one of the pictures; they’ll throw you out of the building if you try that in Spain
get a level of detail you can’t see if you go there
Google Flu Trends
can tell when flu outbreaks are happening around the world by watching for where queries are being made from
showed chart that illustrates Alaska got it worse than other places and the outbreak peaked in October
anyone can run queries in Google Trends
how do you find Google Translation Services? it’s not a book on a shelf
“when in doubt, search it out”
they’re working radically fast to change our world
Quantam ESP experiment
showed the old “psychic rabbit” trick with playing cards
the point is that everything changes
you can’t pay attention to everything
you’re smart – why didn’t you remember all of the cards? because he told you to focus on one
there’s lots of stuff going on with your perception and what you’re paying attention to
what have you noticed? what have you not noticed?
no one notices things like the little arrow that expands the map or lets you pan around the map and the “more” link
nobody sees these things – he has the logs to prove it
they’re focusing on what they’re trying to do
“perceptual or change blindness”
showed the difference between a Google Map from 5 years ago versus today
nobody noticed the results moved from the right side to the left
they change things all the time and nobody notices
how do we learn? how do we help our patrons learn?
it’s not like they’re shipping a new version of an OS – they’re changing everything all the time, every day
and it’s not all nicely curated or indexed
that’s the growth rate we have to be thinking about
“how do we help our patrons”
of the 4 Rs, the fourth one is really “research”
in order to write comprehensively and deeply, you need to do deep research
it’s not just looking up a call number – that’s just the beginning
this is no longer optional – now the whole culture has to understand this, not just librarians
analysis from 40 interviews:
everybody knows what a query is, what a result is
but no one knows what “search on page” and “search in results” mean
it’s not helped by clickbombs like the “miserable failure” search results
if you’re not on the inside with a mechanism to understand how this stuff works, you think Google is monkeying with the system, even though they aren’t; someone else is
most people don’t understand “classic search engine optimization”
makes it impossible to have a coherent mental model for how the web works
without a detailed model, we’re “cargo cultists” (New Guinea)
when someone tells you to reboot the router to get wireless back, you’re a cargo cultist
“never click up there”
“I dunno how it works. I just type words, and answers come back to me… about anything… anything at all…” – student
within his realm, he was a good searcher
developed vocabulary and domain knowledge around expensive watches but can’t find the capital of Alaska
when you’re in WestLaw, you have to know how to make the operators work
in Google, you have to know how to come up with good search terms
6 kinds of knowledge & skills needed to search:
– pure engine technique (choosing good terms, double quotes, etc.)
– information mapping (reverse dictionary, contents of domains, Wikipedia, etc.)
– domain knowledge (medical knowledge, plumbing knowledge, etc.)
– search strategy (knowing when to shift strategies, move from wide to narrow, preserving state, etc.)
– assessment (how do you assess the credibility of a resource? a lot of this is tied up in domain knowledge, which 16-year olds don’t have)
– site-specific knowledge (knowing how a site works, is laid out, etc.)
basic skills:
– Control-F to find
– tabs (how to use effectively to organize search)
– keyword query choice (effective choices; low/high frequencies terms)
– tactics (when to focus on particular resource)
– strategies (how long to pursue a tactic; when to switch; how to discover)
– understanding what you find (reading for understanding SERPs; not “overreading”)
teaching research skills
– want people to understand the world and do research so they understand the world
– not just web search skills
– authority assessment
– crap detection
– staying on task
– discovery
– notetaking
– data integration
– representation construction
findings:
1 – very uneven individual level of search skill (everyone showed at least one “deep” skill; everyone showed at least one mistaken understanding; 90% wished they knew how to search better, but only 10% will take a class)
search behavior patterns
users don’t know the names of parts or recognize them (including URL, site, query; it’s hard to search for things you can’t name; don’t want to click on that because it might bring up porn)
2 – comfort level is VERY important
users choose familiar over scary
people tend not to explore things they dn’t know
they worry about finding porn
they worry about having unkonwn things happen when they click on strange links
– education is accidental
– people are not good reporters of their own behavior (“I don’t have a toolbar; I don’t do image search”)
3 – people don’t know much about Google as a whole (an opportunity for librarians)
they don’t know what’s possible
a CTO who didn’t know how to find Google Maps to find a pub in Palo Alto
a PhD cognitive psychologist didn’t know about Google Scholar
– target site knowledge is critical
where do we go next?
– there is a big, big, big need for help – it’s not all intuitive; they can’t yet do mind-reading
– huge range of mental models among users
– users, for the most part, have little idea what’s possible in web search or how to use it effectively
they’re learning accidentally from peers or from librarians
we’re looking at an information-illiterate population
no one else is showing them
– show them the shape of the information landscape
– teach your patrons
– make time to continually educate yourself (you’re now enrolled in a permanent education process; if you miss it for a couple of years, good luck catching up)
everything is shifting and moving faster, so make time for continual self-improvement
“be the Lewis, be the Clark” – communicate this stuff to our patrons
be the core of discovery for patrons

February 24, 2010

Library 2.0: Not Just for Users

Filed under: blog — Tags: , — tsladmin @ 8:53 am

The concept of “Library 2.0” has been around long enough now that we’ve gone through all the stages and argued it to death, as noticed by Andy Woodworth in a post titled Deconstructing Library 2.0. That’s a good thing, and you should go read his thoughts on the subject.
No matter which side you of the debate you come down on, you can probably prove your case. Me? I agree with Andrew Burkhardt when he notes, “The time has come for libraries to be social on the web. Social is the new normal. It has become mainstream and people expect it. Library 2.0 is not dead, it has just become boring and commonplace. And to quote Clay Shirky, ‘Tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.’ ”
In his paper Participatory Networks: The Library As Conversation, Dave Lankes said that “libraries should focus on the phenomena made possible by the technology,” not the technology itself, which I think is a pretty good way of thinking about “Library 2.0.” Maybe that’s where we are now, which would be a great way to continue the discussion, hopefully without the moniker. I think several of us thought that’s what we were doing, but it didn’t come across that way.
The hard part, though, is that Library 2.0 doesn’t really replace anything. Like so many library services, the opportunities these new tools afford us are in addition to everything we’re already doing, which causes problems, because we don’t get additional resources to implement them. To serve as many of your users as possible, you have to be in as many of the places where they are as possible. That principle has been the philosophy behind this site from day one, eight years ago. That means being out in your community physically and digitally, and that’s one of the pieces of L2 that I think was never adequately explained.
We’re already pretty good at getting out from behind the physical reference desk. We know how to do it, and we know how we could do it better given more resources. I worry that this is less true in the online world, and that’s where I always hoped L2 would help. As much as I support, love, and advocate for user-centered planning and design, my big regret about the whole “movement” is that it hasn’t focused more on how L2 helps staff.
So that’s what I tend to concentrate my own presentations on – the practical ways in which these new tools can help you. I’ve been a big promoter of RSS since 2002, and I still don’t understand why libraries don’t use it more. Yes, one of the benefits of syndicating content is that your users can subscribe to it, but equally important for me is that it allows me as an organization to get my content off my website so that it’s more visible where my users are. Most importantly, it automates that process so that I don’t have to spend precious resources manually updating a multitude of sites, inevitably forgetting about one of them. The fact that I can syndicate lists of new materials from my OPAC anywhere without human intervention? Priceless.
Why should your library have a blog? There are many benefits, but my biggest reason is because it gets your current news and announcements in a syndicated format, the display of which you can automate anywhere. You can easily recycle your content to Twitter, Facebook, elsewhere on your website, and more. Talk about a great way to get out into your community – how about displaying your current news on the village, park district, school, or a department website without any ongoing effort on your part? That’s a huge win-win in my book. And as someone who manually generated archives for daily posts before there were “blogs,” let me just sing the praises of automatic archiving for a moment. If you’re not using a blog for press release-like information, do not pass go. There’s a better way that makes you more efficient and has all of these ancillary benefits with cherries on top.
Being able to offer inexpensive options for chat reference so that you can concentrate on implementation rather than budget? Win. Being able to embed that chat window on your website, in databases, on Facebook, etc., without a huge effort? Win times one million. Putting immediate, synchronous access to a librarian back into the catalog by embedding a chat window there? Win times infinity.
Having easy-to-use alternate announcement channels where you can also talk with and hear from your users (eg, Twitter)? Full of win. Same thing with social bookmarking (delicious – all of your library’s bookmarks in one place, searchable, embeddable), social pictures (Flickr, where you no longer have to worry about resizing images), wikis (cheap intranet possibilities), embeddable subject guides with syndication (LibGuides), and more. They all have the potential to make your job easier. How often does that happen?
So, Andy is right to ask questions about Library 2.0 and reflect about its impact, as are the commenters on his post. For me, though, one place L2 has failed is in making staff understand that these tools can offer big benefits for them, not just library users. If we’re adopting tools to make ourselves more efficient (which I think is the best way to evaluate implementation for staff), then that counts as success in my view. If it reaches new users, offers new services for existing members, or makes things better in general for users at the same time, then we’re really doing something right. That piece is more difficult to measure, which makes the L2 debate somewhat moot, since no one can really prove or disprove it. But when done well, Library 2.0 should help you in your job, too.
I hope we see more articles and presentations about that, instead of rehashing pointless and divisive debates about names, generations, and “sides.”

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