Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Thing #20 - YouTube

I think YouTube is a great service and it has become extremely popular. The piece that would be most useful to libraries is the method they use for streaming videos allows you to watch the video very quickly across the internet. I also like the comments feature as well as how easy it is to share the video. I discovered this video on YouTube and I think it is amazing! It is a bit long, but try watching the whole thing.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Thing #19 - Web 2.0 Awards

The site I picked to take a look at from the Web 2.0 Awards site was a site called CSS Beauty. I enjoyed taking a look at this site and seeing some creative ideas on how other web designers are developing eye catching web sites.

Thing #18 - Online Productivity Tools

Wow! I am simple amazed by these tools. As a programmer I truly understand how hard it is to make the web interactive, and these tools such as Google Docs are simply amazing. They have been able to really change the web into interactive environment allow a multitude of possibilities.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Thing #17 - Add a Wiki Entry

I've added a Wiki entry and I enjoyed how easy it was using the WYSIWYG editor.

Monday, October 15, 2007

Javascript Compressor

I stumbled across this site today which may be very useful for the new web site.

http://www.dev411.com/dojo/javascript_compressor/

It will help keep a fast load time on the new site even with the increased javascript usage.

Something else to take a look at:

http://rakaz.nl/item/make_your_pages_load_faster_by_combining_and_compressing_javascript_and_css_files

Friday, October 12, 2007

Thing #16 - Wikis

Wikis are a great tool to use for developing a collaborative knowledge base. A large scale example like Wikipedia is a great use of the wiki because a knowledge base of that size would take even a team of 100 people years to write. The problem with smaller scale wikis is that it makes it very easy for one user to accidentally delete something or post something incorrectly. In a large scale example you have tons of people constantly checking, verifying, and updating information, and small mistakes are quickly corrected.

An example that might work well in a library, is having a knowledge base of customer questions and answers. As long as there are a few people to oversee the wiki and can monitor the different wiki articles, I think this would be a great tool to allow staff to quickly and accurately help customers.

Thing #15 - Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

I definitely believe that Web 2.0 will continue to grow and be incorporated into more and more aspects of our web experience. There are certainly some sites that are fads, such as, sites like twitter and even myspace, but the overall concept of social networking is a good one. As new and improved technology comes along Web 2.0 sites will only improve and find new ways to allow their users to interact. People are not satisfied anymore with just being presented with information, they want to interact with it, give their own opinion, and read the thoughts and feelings of other "real people".