Screencasting for all

by clw

Would you like to do screencasts but don't have the software necessary, boatloads of time to edit or feel you don't have the technical knowhow? While attending EDUCAUSE last week, I learned about the Jing Project.

Jing is sort of Camtasia Light. It's actually made by the same people, TechSmith. You can do short screencasts with audio on the fly, easily, for free. You can then upload onto your server, the Screencast.com (Jing's) server (you distribute the URL to whom you wish), share in blogs, IM, etc. The screencast is immediately available. The only thing is that your screencast cannot be longer than 5 minutes. But you can do quite a bit in 5 minutes; not to mention that it's a good lenght for the average viewer' attention span.

Palgrave, Nature Launch eBook platform

by spolanka

eBook collections and platforms are popping up faster than daisies these days.  New this month is the Palgrave Macmillan platform - Palgrave Connect.  This is a collaborative effort from Palgrave and Nature and will include eBooks in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and business areas.  About 4,000 eBooks are available with the launch

Serials Solutions now includes eBooks

by spolanka

From a marketing email I received from Serials Solutions:

Serials Solutions KnowledgeWorks now includes 800,000 eBooks

    With more budget resources being dedicated to the purchase of eBook databases and titles, a new challenge is to help patrons easily find these valuable resources and increase their usage.  sp

    Serials Solutions KnowledgeWorks, the authoritative e-resource knowledgebase, now integrates over 800,000 eBook holdings into Serials Solutions 360 e-resource access services to benefit your patrons.

        * Help patrons find eBooks in your OPAC using 360 MARC Updates OPAC updating service
        * Enable patrons to browse an A-to-Z title list of e-resources include eBooks using 360 Core
        * Provide access to eBooks from citations or a citation search form using 360 Link OpenURL link resolver
        * Help patrons discover eBooks through 360 Search federated search service

 Other vendors are also offering this service, like the Ebsco A to Z list. 

We have the Ebsco product at WSU and are electing to not display the ebooks at this time.  Our patrons use our A to Z list to locate electronic journals (which are also in our catalog), so I really don’t like to clutter the product with other formats, particularly since ebooks are a growing collection.  At some point the ebooks will outnumber the journals. 

Does anyone know if Serials Solutions categorizes these formats so that they can easily be searched by journal, ebook, or database?  Ebsco A to Z does not currently do that.  If they did, I might consider adding the ebooks since I could default to a journals search on the patron screen, but have the ebooks and databases search available.

Which Twitter-clone Should Your Company Consider?

by Marshall Kirkpatrick

Twitter. It's either the stupidest thing on the internet or it's an essential tool in your workday. Most people feel one way or the other about the service and the biggest indicator of which direction anyone goes is whether they've spent more or less than a full day learning how to use the service.

For the scores of people now convinced that a group micromessaging service like Twitter can be powerfully useful, there are few prospects as interesting as the use of such a tool at work - for work. There are lots of different software options, though, and it's hard to know which one to select. Enter a new report from Pistachio Consulting, topic area experts and providers of an excellent new report on the options.

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The report is titled "Enterprise Microsharing Tools Comparison: Nineteen Applications to Revolutionize Employee Effectiveness."

Pitsachio argues that these kinds of tools are good for everything from corporate intelligence to professional development, from bridging silos to reducing email clutter to harnessing loose ties in an organization. As serious "microsharing" users, we believe these benefits are intuitive, realistic and compelling.

The report includes a matrix comparison of nineteen different vendors, from the already commercialized Yammer to still-unlaunched mega app ESME. Data points on the matrix are: inside firewall, directory integration, twitter's functions, Groups, Location, Sharing, SMS, IM , Desktop Client, smartphone app, twitter integration, underlying software platform, API, twiter compatible API, largest company using, largest group and pricing.

Below is an embedded version of the matrix, read on for highlights.

Enterprise Micro Sharing Tools

Get your own at Scribd or explore others: US Federal Technology language data

Highlights

The report says that Twitter itself may soon offer an enterprise tool, based on statements by company CEO Evan Williams. That doesn't necessarily mean that it will be the best option, however. Benefits and reservations are listed for all the tools surveyed, though the ones specifically built by enterprises themselves are the least-reviewed. That's unfortunate.

Some lessons learned from three year-long deployments of these kinds of tools, from companies IBM, Guitar Center and HotTopic, are included in the report.

The Pistachio report is well written and enjoyable to read. It will answer many of your questions about this field and will help point you smartly toward some software options you likely didn't know about before.

Find the full report at the Pistachio website.

Google, If Built By Librarians

by Sarah Perez

What would Google look like if it was built by librarians? We're about to find out. A project called "Reference Extract," has a goal of building a web search engine where the weight of the search results aren't determined by any sort of algorithm like PageRank, but rather by the expertise and creditability judgments from librarians around the world. In other words, it's smart people-powered search.

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The Reference Extract project is being developed by the Online Computer Library Center and the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington. According to Wired Campus, OCLC is an international cooperative that shares resources among more than 69,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories. A $100,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is covering planning costs.

In response to one of the questions posed on the homepage, project partner R. David Lankesexplained the difference between this and an online directory like DMOZ.org. Instead of building out a directory of sites, the Reference Extract project will instead focus on answering "real questions around the world." By answering a lot of questions, the service scales up and generates a lot of "semantic richness" with which a search engine and other services can be built, says Lankes.

He also notes that the engine isn't really trying to compete directly with Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo as an everyday search tool. Although some people might begin searches directly from the Reference Extract homepage, the other search engines will end up returning results from the project and thus leading new users to click through for the answers they need.

That last bit sounds a lot like the model Wikipedia uses. Sure, you can search Wikipedia from its homepage, but you're more likely to Google something and end up on a Wikipedia page that appeared at the top of the search results.

However, unlike Wikipedia, Reference Extract won't simply focus on basic facts about people, places, or things, but will answer questions on a wide range of topics, just as librarians do today. In the end, the project may not out-Google Google, but it will lend something to search results that we've never had before: credibility.

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Cartoon: The President's Blackberry

by Rob Cottingham

The news that Barack Obama will probably have to surrender his Blackberry during his time in office seems incongruous. With a torrent of suggestions flying for how the new U.S. president can use the Internet to govern, and given the role the Internet played in Obama's election, it's ironic that he may be spending much of his time disconnected from the hive mind.

Too bad. I'd dreamed he'd be using Twitterberry to share tidbits from NSA briefings ("OMFG @Biden - can you believe Libya is at it AGAIN?!"). At the very least, I was hoping he could liveblog his own inauguration: "12:03 pm - Putting my left hand on the Bible, raising my right. Then bringing both hands over to the keyboard to type this. Roberts is starting to look impatient."

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I mean, geez... this could have been downright historic.

Scared Of Technology? You're Old!

by Sarah Perez

Apparently, growing up digital doesn't just mean being used to technology - it means not being scared of it when things go wrong, either.

Do crashing computers and busted Blackberries completely freak you out? Does a cryptic error message on your screen leave you feeling defeated or discouraged? According to a new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, your age might have something to do with your attitudes and emotions surrounding technology.

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The study, based on a survey of over 2000 U.S. adults, took an in-depth look at how people felt and reacted to problems with technology whether that meant a down internet connection or a broken gadget.

Researcher John B. Horrigan points out: electricity was once new too. But now we flip on light switches without a second thought. And when the telephone was taking off in the early 1900's, people were given specific instructions on how to make a phone call - something we now do every day. Over the passage of time, each new generation of users becomes more savvy and more adept at using the new technology until it no longer exists as some odd new-fangled invention, but simply part of the world as we know it.

The same holds true for our computers, our internet connections, our gadgets and our cell phones. When these things fail, it's the younger users that are generally much more optimistic about the situation. Although young adults age 18-29 years old are no more likely to be able fix devices on their own, they were significantly more likely to be confident that they were on the right path to fixing it, and they were significantly less likely than older adults to feel discouraged or confused about fixing devices, says the study.

In fact, 85% of 18-29 year olds reported being confident about solving their device problem, while only about a third of them said they were discouraged or confused. Meanwhile, over half (52%) of adults age 30 and older reported being discouraged, 44% said they were confused, and about two out of three (67%) said they were confident. Adults age 30-49 were somewhat less likely than older adults to be confused, as just 39% said they were.

There was some variation among gender lines, too, with men being more likely than women to be confident about problem solving (76% vs. 68%), but they were just as confused, discouraged or impatient during the course of trying to solve the problem.

What this means is that, given time, our idea of a "mainstream user" will have to change. No longer will they be the slightly fearful, easily frustrated, computer novices. Instead, they will be much more at ease with technology. They may never be as tech-obsessed as we are, but they will have no problem adopting a new technology if it delivers value.

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