Daily Archives: September 12, 2005

5 posts

Lost in a Tag Cloud

(What can you learn about folks by their Tag Cloud?”) Anne down in Australia turned me on to this term while we were preparing for my talk with Skype and Jybe. ! I love it. Have you gotten lost in tags yet? Now there clusters too!! Tag Cloud: A tag cloud is a visual depiction of content tags used on a website. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag. Try these: […]

Trainers: Have you updated your Tech classes lately?

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/161/report_display.asp I meant to blog this a few weeks ago, but here it is…still timely in my book. “The average American internet user is not sure what podcasting is, what an RSS feed does, or what the term “phishing” means…” Pew lists eight techie terms in the report and I kid you not, your public/student/employee technology/internet classes should define and discuss everyone of them! These did ok: Spam Firewall Spyware Internet Cookies Adware These didn’t: Phishing Podcasting RSS Feeds (I’d add blogging and image sites too!) This is important knowledge… every librarian on your staff should be able to define […]

A Confession of Supreme Technolust

I’m weak! Weak I tell you! In the last few days I’ve lusted for some HOT new tech items: an iPod nano, the iTunes phone, a new Powerbook (hopefully announced in a couple of weeks)… what to do?? What I would tell a library or a workshop filled with tech-planning librarians is to give it some time, read some reviews and talk to some early adopters. Find out what their experience has been, etc. What are folks saying about the nano or the phone? Look at the big picture of what needs and services such tech might improve or replace… […]

Admissions Podcast – What could libraries do?

Ken finds a podcast at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley Web site. http://www.mchron.net/site/edublog.php?id=P3282 ” On a hunch I searched for the RSS feed of the web site of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and I found a very professional, welcoming, and informative single podcast (linked here) from the admissions office about how they consider applications to the MBA program. You can see the impulse — the admissions office must have had to answer questions about how they screen applicants hundreds of time each season, so this podcast might save them time repeating this information. […]

Is the World Flat?

LISDOM ponders it…This makes for an intriguing discussion: in some instances, like tomorrow when I give a presentation to librarians in Australia, the world seems amazingly flat. In others, there is a great disparity. http://lisdom.blogspot.com/2005/08/world-is-not-flat.html Friedman, toward the end of the book, concedes that the world is not truly “flat” but advances and shifts in the global economy are certainly making it seem that way.