Thing 31: Live Mocha

Learn a new language and make friends along the way!

Live Mocha is a language site+social networking site rolled into one. On Live Mocha you can pick a language you'd like to learn (they have tons of languages from Spanish, Thai, Hindi, ect) and select the level you'd like to begin with. But, what sets Live Mocha apart from other language learning sites is you can have your speaking and writing submissions reviewed by native speakers who will give you tips on how to improve. You can also connect with users on the same level as you and buddy up in the chatrooms or through video. This site is great for people who don't have time to take a language course but still want that "group" atmosphere and also for those who are brushing up their language skills. I'm currently taking a Spanish course on Live Mocha now and it will definitely come in handy when conversing with Spanish speaking library patrons.

Live Mocha just went live September 24th of this year and their still in beta mode. Right now all the language courses are free.

¡El mocha vivo es impresionante!


Discovery Exercise

1. Create an account on Live Mocha.
2. Select a language you're interested in and take a course.
3. Was there anything you liked or didn't like on Live Mocha? Comment about your experience.

Thing 30: Music to our ears

Not everyone likes the same music and sometimes we get tired of the same old stuff all the time. So let's look at a few online ways to open a few musical doors and find some new tunes. Most of our users have introduced us to Launchcast which functions somewhat like a traditional radio station or like a big online jukebox, playing most songs you request, if they can get the rights to it.

I've found us 2 services for expanding our musical horizons. Both are online radio stations but we influence the programing by telling them what we like. They are Pandora and LastFM. With both you can input your favorite music and listen to something like it but different. Depending on what you like you could find a lot of new tunes and artists or possibly none. Both also incorporate a social aspect so you could meet new friends who share your musical tastes.

Pandora - Really just an Internet Radio but with a slight twist. Uses a set of musical attributes, called the Music Genome Project, to pair your favorites with similar groups and tunes for your listening pleasure. Put in a musician or song title and they will build a station and start playing tunes, if you don't like a song tell them and they will offer something different. They will also track your ratings to fine tune your station. If you really like one you hear they provide links to Amazon or iTunes to go buy the Disc or just the song. Warning you could find yourself tempted to go buy a lot of new music. You will want to register so you can help them focus your station to your tastes. I could find a few bands but not a lot of new similar bands that I didn't already know however, but then I have kind of different taste in music from most. Pandora is very popular so it must work for many people quite well.

LastFM - LastFM is a bit more of a Web 2.0 product. They also have a much wider range of music available so people with a broader taste will find more. Again they give you a link to Amazon, though not iTunes, to buy the disc if you are interested. I really liked the fact I could embed a station I like in my web page. I also appreciate that it doesn't autoplay when someone visits the page. They can chose to check out my taste in music or not but they won't be driven away from visiting again if they don't share my musical taste. Another way to use this is that if you download their client it will share the titles and bands in your music library in something they call "Scrobbling". Basically, when you listen to something they count that toward the popularity of bands. Since I don't have much music on my computer I'm not a great candidate for Scrobbling but I was interested to see that some of the new bands I found are getting Scrobbled a lot. Don't confuse Scrobbling with sharing your music, here you only share the titles and artist names. If Last.fm has the tune they can easily hear them if not they might have a harder time hecking the tune out. Also you can find upcoming concerts in your area or where your favorite band is playing and when.

Here's one Last FM station I created for the band Lunasa, not my fav but not bad either. They are a traditional celtic group.





With both online stations you can find new bands, check out new tunes and tune into another kind of social network. You might even find someone who shares your taste in music. And you will certainly find some new music.

So this week's Discovery Exercise:

1. Go to either online station and plug in your favorite band, or song.

2. Listen and see if you find any new bands you might have not heard of but like the way they sound.

3. Comment about it.

Thing 29: Mini or Micro Blogging

I'm not really starting something new here but rather bringing a feature of our Ning Network into focus today.

What is Mini Blogging? Where can I set one up? Why would I?

Mini blogs are limited to short messages (frequently 140 characters), they began as cell phone text messages limited to a geographic region that could be used to find your friends, find out what's going on in the area that night, or to invite your friends to all go to the latest Harry Potter movie on opening night together. The original miniblog, Dodgeball, has all but disappeared. However, several others have appeared and brought it to the web, though they still have the option to send and receive the messages on your cell phone. I don't advise getting that unless you have unlimited text messages in your phone plan though.

The new mini-blogs are:
Twitter - your posts are called Tweets



Jaiku - allows you to set up groups and has easy search




Hictu - mostly popular in France, Italy, and England
Frazr - French and German
Pownce - allows the biggest posts and also can be used for file transfer (up to 10MB in the free version, sounds more like email) since an invite is required I can't find out much more about it.



Jaiku is perhaps my favorite as I find it easier to find people I'd like to follow. Twitter doesn't have a built in search but refers you to another site to find people. I found the people I follow by going to Jaiku and following them back to Twitter, which is kind of backwards. When you set up an account you will then want to find your Friends and "follow" what they are doing or saying. As time goes on you will find other people are following you much like we have people from all over the world following this Learning 2.1 blog and the Ning Network. There are still people using their mini-blog to arrange meetings at restaurants or movies but there really isn't a limit to how you use it. It has been used for mini-emails between colleagues, as Jamie did to share a quote a day, or to put out a call for info for a news article. Twitter does have a few good features mostly due to being open for people to modify it however they would like. Both allow you to create "badges" so you can have your feed from Twitter and/or Jaiku show up in your blog or social network page on Ning, MySpace, or other websites. You can even set them up to show up on each other. This is another example of the interconnectedness of Web 2.0 services that we've seen over the last year with many of the "Things" we have explored.

So this week go to either Twitter or Jaiku and set up an account. Post a message, find a few friends to "follow." If you have unlimited text messaging you can go that route but be warned you could find yourself having your phone ring all day long.

Thing 28: Online File Storage with Omnidrive

Online file storage sites are not new. However, some of the services have added features that make them hard to resist. I've discovered two that I particularly like: Box.net and Omnidrive. Both allow you 1 gigabyte of storage space, and both are absolutely free (and I REALLY like free). In addition, they both allow you to share your files with others which makes for an optimum opportunity for people to collaborate from different locations. Hmmm ... I can think of a lot of PLCMC teams that might need to collaborate from different locations.

I really love Omnidrive. They have combined forces with Zoho so that you can create new documents or edit ones you've uploaded using Zoho Writer or Zoho Sheet - all right from inside your account. In fact, I created this blog from inside Omnidrive using Zoho Writer.

Maybe I'm easy to impress, but I'm impressed. In the first place, I really like the idea of having a web-based storage site. I often find that I'm at home and want to see a file stored on my computer at work. I can just upload those files, then whether I'm at home or on my next trip to Paris, Rome or London (oh, how I wish), I can view them wherever and whenever I choose.

Then there's the sharing feature of Omnidrive. Want to collaborate on a file? If so Omnidrive sends an email to the people you want to share the file with. You determine the level of access. Files can be read-only or editable by the people you share them with.

Photos are another reason to use Omnidrive. SnipShot is another one of their affiliates. You can upload images, then edit them in SnipShot. You can crop, resize, adjust for brightness/contrast and rotate - in short do most of the things you'd ever want to do to an image and all from inside. There's even a option to view your images as a slideshow. Clever.

Another nice feature of Omnidrive is that they let you create a 'Live Folder' that will fill up with files from an RSS feed of your choice.



Discovery Exercise

1. Open an account at Omnidrive.
2. Upload a text document, then edit it online using Zoho Writer.
3. Upload an image, then edit it online using SnipShot
4. Blog about your experiences using Omnidrive.

Thing 27: Get Organized with Plaxo

There are a number of websites that allow users to set up organizational calendars and task lists for free. Among these are Remember the Milk, Jotlet, and Plaxo.

My personal favorite is Plaxo, which seems to have all of the best components of the others with its own special features. For starters, it can sync data with other programs such as Outlook, AOL, and various Web based email services including Yahoo, Hotmail and Gmail. It will automatically pull your contacts and events from any of the programs that you choose, which definitely saves a lot of time and trouble. You can add feeds from Flickr, blogs, and Amazon, which automatically update. You can also subscribe to schedules for sports teams, bands, television shows, etc. using iCal. A great thing about Plaxo is that you can share all or part of your calendar with your contacts, or you can publish it and make it public. Then, of course, there's always the option of just leaving it private and allowing no one else access.

Discovery Exercise

1. Sign up for Plaxo Basic (or if you're willing to spend the money, Plaxo Premium).
2. Add a couple of events to your calendar and be sure to mark recurring events.
3. Try creating separate categories for your calendar (such as home and work), and edit your events into these categories. Make sure you're able to view calendars for each category separately and that you can overlay them onto one another.
4. Make a countdown of important birthdates and anniversaries.
5. Create a task list, and be sure to check things off as you complete them.
6. And finally, be sure to create a blog post about your discovery experience. While you're at it, think of ways you and your coworkers could use Plaxo (or Jotlet or Remember the Milk) during library hours.

Thing 26: Photobucket

In Learning 2.0, we looked at Flickr, an excellent resource for finding photographs of places and things, and an excellent place to post your own photography.

Photobucket competes with Flickr, although they have slightly different target audiences. Like Flickr, Photobucket is a photo sharing website, but it also lets you share other kinds of images (including animations) and video clips. Photobucket dominates the photosharing website game with 40% of the market in April of this year. (No other site has more than 6% of the market; only Yahoo! Photos has over 5%, and Yahoo! Photos is set to be discontinued in favor of Flickr, also a Yahoo!-owned website, before the end of the year.)

In addition to photo and video storage and sharing, Photobucket also lets you save animated clips, create slideshows of images, "remix" videos and create avatars. Oh, and they have lots of pictures of celebs and other newsworthy items. (By the way, Photobucket is being purchased by Fox Interactive Media, the company that owns MySpace. FIM is, in turn, part of NewsCorp.)

You may have noticed a few "things" ago at LetterPop that you could import your images directly from Flickr, without downloading and uploading them to and from your PC as an intervening step; Photobucket has a similar arrangement with many, many websites, notably social networking site MySpace and others. One big difference is that from Flickr you can only use photos you have posted; at Photobucket, add any image or video you like to your album (or further organize your choices into sub-albums), and you can use it, no matter who originally posted it. In other words, anything you add to a public account at Photobucket is fair game for any other Photobucket user to see and use on a blog or profile at any website (as long as it's not for commercial purposes).

Discovery Exercise:

1. Create a Photobucket account.
2. Use the "Find stuff" tab to browse for items (instead of searching).
   
3. Be sure to click the "My album" tab - that's where you'll add your own photos, create slide shows and avatars or remix videos.
4. Comment about your experience.

Thing 25: Newsletters in a Pop!

To create great looking newsletters you no longer need a graphic artist's degree (or even access to MS Publisher templates). Thanks to LetterPop.com, newsletters are now a breeze pop!

LetterPop is a nifty free online website that lets you create great looking newsletters and announcements with a few clicks and drags of your mouse. The site itself is built upon an ajax platform -- I know, this is more info then you needed. But hey, it good to drop a new term into the mix every once in awhile -- that lets you freely drop and drag elements on the screen wherever you want and with over 90 templates (be sure to check out the multiple page layouts available with each template) there’s so much you can do.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Play around with LetterPop.com and mock up a newsletter or announcement of your own.
   
2. Comment on this blog and share your creation and discoveries with others.

PS: Here’s a LetterPop creation that was actually created by a group of participants.

Here's a link to one I created for this training.

What a neat way to say thanks and a useful tool to share with patrons. Try it yourself and see if you don't agree that creating great looking newsletters with this tool is a ... POP!

Thing 24: Got file conversion issues?

It happens in every library... a user approaches the service desk with a problem -- the PC won't read their file.

File conversion issues have always been around. But until lately, the only solutions available were the those that were locally installed on PCs. But enter Zamzar.com (my new best friend). This website offers on-the-fly conversion of text, image, audio and video file formats without ever installing a download. The best thing about the site is that you don't even need a login to convert. Simply browse for your file, select the new format type and it does the magic and even emails the results to you. A big bonus is the pdf converter- which is one I know I'll use a lot. PDF stands for "portable document format" and is a file type that maintains a document's original look format outside of the program it was created in.

Discovery Exercise:

• Take any document you've created in a word-processing program (Word, Open Office, WordPad) and try steps 1 through 4 at Zamzar.com to convert the file to pdf.
  
• You'll need to check your email once it's done for the final product.
  
• Comment about how this service might be of use to yourself or your library.

Note: Personally I love the option that allows me to convert YouTube videos to mpg. This is especially helpful for including video in PowerPoint presentations when you don't have access to the Internet.