Jott

http://jott.com/Default.aspx

Jott is a service that translates your voice into text. You call up Jott from your telephone and create a message. It will then translate your voice into text. It also keeps the original recording, so you can listen to that later, too. You can have it send your message as an email to you, someone else, or a group of email addresses. It can also post to a number of services such a Blogs, Twitter and Yahoo Groups.

Pidgin IM client

http://www.pidgin.im/

Pidgin is an open source multi protocol IM client - which means you can connect several of your IM accounts into one piece of software. There are several of these products out there, however, the reason this is espeically attractive to me is that it's the first free multi protocol IM client that also includes (again, for free) GroupWise Messenger - a product that our staff still use at our library.

VuFind & Fish4info

http://www.vufind.org/
http://fish4info.org

Yesterday, we had a great demo from Chris Harris of Genessee Valley BOCES on their fish4info.org site.
Fish4info (still in the early stages of production, but soon to be open source) and VuFind (open source, released this summer) are products that will allow libraries to essentially replace an ILS's poor user interface OPAC by displaying catalog data in an easier format for patrons to use that also integrates Web 2.0 features. While Fish4Info is tailored more towards K-12 school libraries, VuFind is more of a broad spectrum product. Our library has also been working on a similar grant project and if everything goes right *fingers crossed* will start creating an open source product in the coming months. Exciting stuff!

Rainmaker

http://www.aaa-clouds.com/rainmaker/rm/?page_id=3

Use Rainmaker to create a tag cloud based on any URL you type in. You can create a cloud using multiple URL's, add words or phrases and exclude words to create your cloud. It also allows you to modify the appearance of your cloud.

Here's a tag cloud that I made for this blog.

Cool tools around the 'net

These are several utility type sites that have come in handy from time to time.

ConvertTube
http://converttube.com/
This site will take a URL of a video and convert it to a file (you choose which file format - .mpg, .mov, etc.), which you can then download to your desktop.

GuerrillaMail
http://www.guerrillamail.com/
Sometimes you go to a web site to download a driver, or to sign up for a service to test something out and in order to do so, you need to enter your email address and then confirm that you're a real person by replying to the email or clicking on a link within the email. Even if you have that "junk" email account that you use, it's still a pain to see it load up with SPAM over time. GuerrillaMail will give you a temporary email address for 15 minutes - long enough to put in your email address, and confim it at the email end so you can continue using a web site.

Zamzar
http://www.zamzar.com/
This site will allow you to convert a file type. Usually you need to download and install software on your PC to do this. Have a Word Doc and want to make it a PDF? Zamzar can help! It will convert image, document, audio and video formats.

MediaFire
http://www.mediafire.com/
Sometimes you need to share a file with people, but it's too large to email and you don't have any servers to host the file on. MediaFire allows you to upload and share a file with your friends via a URL link that you share with them. And you don't need to register with the site to use it.

Fly Pentop computer

http://www.leapfrog.com/

We've had meetings with our library staff where we've gathered input on what future projects or technologies they'd like to see brought to the library. One thing that we heard several times was "I'd like it to be easier to type up meeting notes."

There are several products on the market that would help. Tablet PC's don't always work well and are bulky and expensive to carry around. The Logitech io2 Digital Pen retails for $150 and only got a so-so review from Consumer Reports.

The Fly Fusion Pentop from Leapfrog retails for $80. The paper you need to use it with costs $8 per notebook. It appears that you can do a lot more than just digital transcription with this pen. Becauase it's marketed towards teens, it also does things like provide a calculator, and plays mp3's and games. With a reletively low cost, this might be a fun tool to check out.

Bubblr by Pim Pam Pum

http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/

Pim Pam Pum is a company that's created several Flickr tools, one of which is Bubblr. With Bubblr, you take any flickr photo and make a comic strip by adding speech or thought bubbles. You can add additional photos if you want to.

This is the test I made: http://www.pimpampum.net/bubblr/?id=9847


While it's very simplistic and doesn't do too much, the great thing is that it's so easy to use that you could make several comics in just a few minutes. Imagine having a weekly library comic strip....or introducing staff on your web site.....or sharing some captioned photos from a library event.

PBWiki

http://pbwiki.com/

Want to try your hand at making and editing a wiki? Hop on over to PBWiki.com and create your own. They will host your wiki for you, and it's free for storage up to 10 Mb.

Twitterverse

http://www.twitterverse.com/

Check out Twitterverse -
It's a visual interface of tags from recent twitter updates.

Social Networking for Arachnids

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/30/spider.web.ap/index.html

I know this isn't technology related, but the term "social cobweb spiders" just tickled my funny bone too much not to share. Social networking - it's all the rage, even with spiders!

Cool Tool of the day: StumbleUpon

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

StumbleUpon is a browser toolbar for Firefox or IE. It's almost like a cross between a social site, Digg, and Tivo. You specifiy what your interests are and click the StumbleUpon button and are presented with a random web site that it thinks you'll like. Like it? Click the thumbs up button. Hate it? Click the thumbs down button. It's that simple. Over time, you train the toolbar on what you like and don't like and it will gradually give you sites that you'll probably be interested in.
You can connect with friends, share sites with them, review sites, and recommend sites - and that's not all.
A time waster for sure, but a cool tool nonetheless.

Cool site of the day: Footnote.com

http://www.footnote.com/

Here's a neato site to share with our students - footnote.com. You'll find tons of original documents digitized as images. You can add notes to the image, scan and upload your own documents, add comments, etc. This could be another great resource for research!

Feedburner

http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/home

Feedburner lets you create a page where users can easily subscribe to your blog with a number of different RSS readers. It will also keep track of statistics for you - like how many folks have subscribed to your blog. Check out my feedburner page by clicking on the link over to the right under "Subscribe to this blog!"

Attensa RSS reader for Outlook

http://www.attensa.com/products/outlook/

This company has made an RSS reader that will integrate right into your Outlook client. It's pretty easy to download and set up and is perfect for people like me who have Outlook open all day long.

Cool site of the day: Flashcards

http://www.proprofs.com/flashcards/

OK, so this is geared more towards students, but I thought it was just too cool. This site has flashcards for a ton of different subjects and can help everyone from midddle school to the IT professional studying for their MCSE certification. Don't see something you like? You can create your own.

Seeing sites like these make me wonder - should we be sharing these tools with our students? Maybe have a place where we have the "Cool tool of the day" or "Cool site of the day"?
On our website?
On our public PC screensavers?
On a bulettin board or rolling TV screen?
Teach an optional class, open to anyone?

Zoho.com

http://zoho.com/

Zoho has a whole suite of cool online apps for coloborative sharing, viewing and more! Most are free. Project and Polls look especially interesting.

Use Zoho Viewer to upload documents and share the URL.

Use Zoho Projects for your project management software.

Use Zoho Meeting for online meetings and desktop sharing.

They also have Zoho Writer, Sheet and Show - which are online, coloborabitve office products similar to google docs (Word, Spreadsheet and Presentation).

And several more!

Bringin' it back old school.....

CafeScribe has a solution to the impersonal world of ebooks - scratch n' sniff smelly stickers that smell like old musty books.

According to CafeScribe, "In a survey of 600 college students 43% identified smell –- either new book smell or old -- as the thing they most love about books as physical objects. A majority (62%) also preferred purchasing used textbooks over new or electronic textbooks, despite the fact that e-textbooks are generally a third less expensive than used textbooks."

If only someone would make a scratch n' sniff sticker of old sweaty gym socks so I could pretend I'm exercising while I'm vacumming my house.

Ryerson University Library - 2.0 Tools

Check out some tools that Ryerson University Library has created for their patrons: http://www.ryerson.ca/library/library20/

They've got several tools they've created to connect library resources to outside services including Amazon, Firefox and Facebook. I wonder if we should be putting some energy into creating tools like these. Why not immerse ourselves into the services and sites students use on a regular basis? A quick check on their Facebook app shows that over 250 users have already installed the Ryerson App on their Facebook profile.

Mapanno

http://www.mapanno.com/

Mapanno.com is a free site where you can mashup your flickr or 23 photos with visual tags (kinda like virtual post-it notes) and then upload them to your website.

Check out my test mashup photo
here

BackTags

http://www.backtags.com/

There's a lot of social bookmarking sites out there....and there's even more tags. BackTags brings them all together for some interesting statistics including popularity rankings and top sites associated with tags...

Features of backtags.com according to their website:

• assess, analyze and rank the popularity of any website on leading social bookmarking sites
• identify tags used to describe websites
• rank websites according to tag/user popularity
• compare and rank competitors
• analyze user perception of websites

BlogLines.com

http://www.bloglines.com

Bloglines.com is a site where you can view and manage your RSS blog feeds in one central online location. You can search for different blogs, get recomendations based on your blogs, save individual posts to a clippings file and even create your own blog there and save other people's blog posts to it easily. If you're a blogger, you can get a bloglines subscribe button and if you're a browser, you can easily get a bookmarklet to easily subscribe to any blog you come across.

Blogs, Wiki's & Podcasting

Today, I'm attending an RRLC training class on blogs, wiki's and podcasting. So far, I've learned several tips and tricks that I can't wait to share with our staff!

Is this thing on?

This is a test and only a test.