Infoblog

Archive for December, 2006

Probably you’ve heard about Second Life, the 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents by now, but have you ever thought about what it would be like participating in a virtual presentation there?
In this blog entry Jeff Barr from Amazon Web Services describes his experience doing virtual presentations in Second Life. He was a guest speaker at a meeting of the Kuurian Expedition, a group of scientists and researchers sponsored by the Synthetic Worlds Initiative at Indiana University.

In its LifeEtc. section, the January & February 2007 issue of AARP Magazine featured Who’s Your Elvis?
Take a look and see if you agree with their pick for your age group’s musical demigod.
If you are… Your Elvis is…
90+ Rudy Vallee
80-89 Bing Crosby
70-79 Frank Sinatra
60-69 Elvis Presley
50-59 The Beatles
40-49 Led Zeppelin
30-39 Madonna
20-29 Kurt Cobain
10-19 Beyonce

Even if you aren’t a geek, techie or maker, you’ll find reading about and viewing photos of the first Ignite Seattle! event fascinating. The idea of combining an event such as a popsicle bridge building contest with talks by techies could be easily adapted for library programs.
From the about page of Ignite Seattle.
Ignite is a series of geek nights in Seattle. It is hosted by Brady Forrest of O’Reilly Radar and Bre Pettis of Make. The nights combine a Make contest (like a popsicle bridge-building contest) and a series of fast-paced, short-form tech talks. The first Ignite was a great success with 17 bridge-building teams, 25 speakers, and 250+ attendees.

It’s the holiday season, and hopefully everyone is gearing up for some time off. To help put you in the spirit I offer you the Elfamorphosis, from OfficeMax of all places. You can upload a picture of yourself or someone you know (or just someone you want to turn into an elf), and a minute or two later you have an elfamorphosis. You can also call a toll free number and record a brief greeting that your elf sself will say as it does the happy elf dance. Here’s my elfamorphosis. There’s a bunch more time sink fun to be had here. The site can be a bit slow, so be patient.
Happy holidays from all of us here at Peep Central to all of you and yours. May your days be merry and bright!

Intrerested in trying out a new tool to gather stats about your website traffic? Check out the beta release of Quantcast. Signing up is free, and then all you do is place a snippet of javascript code into pages for which you want to gather stats. What kinds of stats?

We observe anonymous records of visits to internet destinations. For a portion of these observations, we have certain information, such as the age, gender or income level of the internet visitor and/or their household. This group is called a panel and forms one aspect of our analysis and reporting methodology.
We also analyze internet log records which include information such as the page viewed and the IP (internet protocol) address used to access the page.

You can read their privacy policy here.

In his latest podcast, Infopeople’s resident booktalker, Michael Cart, discusses the best books of 2006 for adults and young adults, focusing on his own quirky favorites as well as the selections of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Be prepared for some surprises!

If you aren’t yet familiar with online productivity tools that rival Microsoft Office, first read an overview article to see a comparison of features.
Then at least take a look at the one getting the most buzz, ThinkFree.
To compare with the others, check out Zoho and Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

State Librarian Susan Hildreth discusses what’s happening at the California State Library in this podcast of her Dec 12, 2006 webcast.
Topics she touches on include: her recent trip to Washington D.C. to attend ALA’s National Library Agenda Summit, additional LSTA funds for 2006/07, plans for a new Infopeople workshop series called “Moving Libraries Forward to Web 2.0,” and the California State Library blog.
You can download the slides that accompanied her talk here. You can also view the archive of the original webcast from this page.
The podcast is 44 minutes long. It’s also available on Infopeople’s iTunes channel (see the sidebar link on the right, or just search the iTunes Store for “infopeople”).

Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki was created by Meredith Farkas, a Distance Learning Librarian at Norwich University (VT) “to be a one-stop-shop for great ideas and information for all types of librarians.”
Be sure to check out the Library Website Hall of Fame
Of the 20 academic library websites listed in the Library Website Hall of Fame, those in California are: CSU San Marcos, UCLA and USC
Of the 23 public library websites listed in the Library Website Hall of Fame, those in California are: Contra Costa, Marin County and Stockton-San Joaquin County.
The only special library listed is NASA Headquarters.
I especially liked these website features:
Arlington Heights (IL) Memorial Library vlogs
Boston (MA) Public Library SchoolRooms Portal
Central Rappahannock (VA) Regional Library’s AnswerPoint
Christchurch City (New Zealand) Libraries Best Reads

This is a neat tool for all you iTunes fans. Let your friends know what you’re listening to (and give them a chance to get their own copy) by using iLike. It’s a free download for iTunes (you can also use the web page as a stand alone tool). You get a web page (here’s mine), and/or you can add a link to your MySpace page (here’s mine). Folks can see what you’re listening to, and then can click on a link to buy it at the iTunes Store (and you can do the same with them). Pretty cool!
And speaking of MySpace pages, the American Library Association has one! Become their friend today!