Avatars & Second Life

This is my Tektek avatar...


And this is my DoppelMe avatar.

I think avatars are an interesting way to create an anonymous visual persona.

I've never gotten into virtual communities like Second Life because I'd rather spend my free time with my wife and kids and friends exploring and living real life.

Online Applications

I can see Googledocs, Zoho and similar web-based applications being very useful. I could see using the Share feature to collaborate with others, and I really like the idea of being able to access a document anytime, from anywhere.
I liked the simplicity of Googledocs and the easy composing and save features. Zoho is also pretty cool, and seems to have more options.

Search Engines

Comparisons of metasearch engines:
We worked on an Information Request this week trying to find specific facts about the Green Parrot Snake which lives in Central and South America. It took us a while to find exactly what the patron wanted, so I thought I'd do a simple search in these search engines.
Dogpile -
Seemed to bring just as many commercial sites selling green snake products as it did informational info.
Mamma -
Less commercial sites showed up in the results, but very little informational sites came up. Most of the results were sites which just provided photos.
Rollyo -
Had a few more informational sites than than the other two.

So in this case the best search was Rollyo.

However I would still use Google, since these 3 didn't give that many results, and I kept feeling like I was missing the really good stuff that Google and the other Google products find (Scholar, Books, etc.).

Podcasting

I listened to:
1) In Good Company - a booktalk podcast from Wadsworth Public Library
2) An Introduction to the WSU Owen Library Map Library
3) KPLU's BirdNote

I have never created a podcast nor really listened to one before, but I can see their usefulness in libraries. Booktalks and reading stories are good uses of this technology.

Online Image Generators

Interesting.

Overdrive

Spent 2+ hours trying to get Overdrive to work applying all the tricks and workarounds provided on the Comments page but was never successful. I actually had no problem downloading this product when we first got it a couple years ago, so I figure I've completed the assignment.

I was surprised by how many titles were checked out with waiting lists - this seems to be a very popular service. I also noticed all the old radio shows like the Shadow, which are pretty cool.

Tagging

I recently worked at STA and noticed that Rob or someone had setup a del.icio.us account of sites they used often for Reference. It was nice to have resources identified for questions that often came up. Plus, unlike Favorites, they were portable and easier to categorize and label.

I can definitely see this being a useful tool at the reference desk.

Wikis

I thought it was interesting that you can add videos, chat, calendars and other features easily to a wiki.

One major negative aspect is the fact that your work is never permanent, never safe.

I can see the advantage of libraries and librarians using wikis to collaborate on bibliographies, discussions and other projects.