To tweet or not to tweet - CPL 2.0

My first reacton to the Twitterverse was "what a waste of time" and I still subscribe to this view for the most part. Mostly because I don't get a warm and cosy feeling from "following" and being "followed". Also, I don't live my life in 140-character long tweets. But, if you want to know EXACTLY where the Halal Cart is in NYC this afternoon, Twitter is the only way to find out. Ditto for anything else that is happening right now that you need to track. There is an element of genius to Twitter and this is it: its immediacy, its tapping into what's going on right now. This is very powerful as it opens up the whole world for viewing and scrutiny. Political uprising, war, accidents, natural disasters, elections, you can track all this on Twitter. Incredibly democratic, giving everyone a voice. I don't really like it for my own personal use but recognize its potential as a communication tool on a larger scale. Just heard a talk show on CBC radio on overtweeting and this is the downfall of this application. Do I need to know what you are eating for lunch? So, the range of tweets is from the mundane to the important and it is up to each of us to tweet meaningfully.

Laura

LibraryThing for CPL 2.0 - Really useful!

I love LibraryThing! It is the first product posted for our review that I didn't know about, so this is a fabulous find for me. I took the tour and love all the book stuff available, especially the free books you can win in exchange for writing a review. I also find the recommendations extremely helpful and accurate. I ran a little test to see what results I would get by selecting a favourite book I have loved and then checking the recommendations that accompany this choice. The results were surprisingly bang on, with many other titles I have also loved. This is even better than If-You-Like lists. Some of the reader reviews are rather pedestrian and uninteresting. I will continue to explore this fun tool and definitely use it here at work for recommendations. I am not yet feeling fully comfortable with how to structure my library into categories, but will experiment some more. I want to create a To Read list as well. This is a tool I will tell my friends, my book club and my library customers about.

Laura

Google Docs for CPL 2.0

Love this product!! The templates make life easy and are very slick. So many to choose from too. I love the portability factor for editing, allowing you to create, edit and share your docs from anywhere. Fabulous for study groups who want to edit a presentation and chat about it. You can also post docs to a blog very easily. This product has been well thought out and I would use it over Word because of all the interactive qualities it offers. And no need for disks and storage. Google takes care of that for you. Wish I had this when I was in university!
Laura

RSS Feeds - Blogline for CPL 2.0

I just finished exploring Bloglines and like the concept of one-stop shopping for RSS feeds, one site to visit to see all the customized news items I want to know about. I was able to create an account easily and then looked at some recommended feeds, keeping some and deleting others. The product is easy to use and offers the convenience of allowing me to view my feeds from any computer station with the Internet. It is useful also to know about which RSS feeds are the most popular, allowing me to tap into information that many other people have access to.

Laura

Google Street Views CPL 2.0

My favourite newish product from Google is part of Maps and is called Google Street. It is absolutely the coolest tool imaginable. You can literally take a walk down a street and see what's going on. I sometimes just plunk the little moving man icon randomly down somewhere on the globe and see what images come up. You can look up your street of your childhood home and see how things look (bad?!). I recently Google Streeted a dance studio in downtown Phoenix because I had never been to this neighbourhood and was a little nervous about how sketchy it was (it was!). Seeing it on Google Street confirmed for me that I didn't want to go there alone, so my husband accompanied me. I see great partnerships in the future between Google Street and realtors, as clients can "walk" down streets and potentially click on homes for sale, which could then lead you to virtual tours of interiors of homes. If you are travelling and need to learn about hotel locations or wherabouts of sights you are visiting, go to Google Street and take a walk. For my upcoming New York trip this fall, I can look at specific streets and see whether or not they offer what I am looking for, for I want to pack in the most fun in the time I will have.

Not every street on earth has been catalogued, but no doubt this is in the works. You will be amazed at what you can see. Once you land on a street of interest you can walk up and down, and turn completely around for a 360 degree experience. Google Street is the way of the future and I look forward to seeing more images for more locations as well as more current footage. I recommend this tool for the traveller or the merely curious.

Flickr and YouTube CPL 2.0

Flickr and YouTube are two electronic tools that help connect me to the larger world out there. Flickr is fun for sharing photos with our family members who live far away. After a trip abroad I love to post my pics for my parents to drool over and they do the same, recently posting exotically intoxicating images from their trip to Morocco.

Searching Flickr for photos from strangers is another matter altogether. Results vary enormously in quality. I am not very interested in this use. However, here is a little story about what happened to me when a stranger responded to a photo I posted after my trip to Italy:

My husband and I travelled to the tiny little village in Italy where my in-laws were born. The town is called Campolieto and is remote, ancient, quaint, untouched by tourism. I walked the narrow, stone streets capturing images of homes, masonry, views, the church, the cemetary, the main street, alleys, flowers, window sills. After posting these on Flickr someone living in Argentina wrote to me saying that his father was from Campolieto and with my photos he was able to remember his life. His exact words are here: "I am from Argentina and my fathers are from Campolieto, Via Roma, 16.I lived there in 1966 when i was six years old.I remembered with your photos my lifeThank you". This touched me very deeply, as I was instrumental in crystalizing someone's oldest memories.

Now, I must confess to a YouTube addiction. I am a keen folk dancer and teacher and I attend workshops and classes in International and Israeli folk dancing wherever I go. YouTube is filled with instructional videos of folk dances demonstrated by some of the leading teachers in the world. With just a small group of dancers in my two Calgary groups, YouTube helps me feel connected to the folk dance communities in other cities. The Israeli folk dance world is almost an industry, where new, hot dances are the rage. The best way for me to experience these gems is through YouTube. Now, when I travel to Montreal, Toronto, Scottsdale and New York and go to folk dance clubs, I know the same dances as everyone else!! For me, YouTube is the gateway to staying in touch with what's going on in the folk dance world. Saying it is useful is an understatement! It is essential to my happiness!

I love Facebook! CPL 2.0

Facebook is my lifeline. It connects me to people who are far away. It is fabulous for sharing photos and the minutae of everyday life. And yes, it can be a waste of time too! You can get lost snooping in on other people's lives. I find that a lot of thought has gone into FB's software design, allowing countless easy opportunities to connect with people. In some ways this can be annoying, being prompted to send someone a message or suggest friends for them. I am using Facebook to connect with folk dance groups in New York City for my upcoming visit, so that I receive updates about when they meet and what is on their itinerary. It is cool that CPL has a Facebook page. I joined it, of course!

I received a Facebook message over the weekend from someone I went to elementary school with, a shy boy who I wasn't really friends with. He was quite emotional about finding me on FB, saying he had suffered terribly from bullying and I was one person he remembers as always being nice to him. He said he had had a big crush on me for many years. I had never known this and was really touched to hear this.

Laura