Social Media Revolution

Twitter in the Classroom

First: a video about it’s use @ UT Dallas:

Second: A PPT titled “25 Interesting Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom”

Twenty Five Interesting Ways To Use Twitter in the Classroom

View more OpenOffice presentations from Michael Sauers.

Via ReadWriteWeb

Try Google Voice

Having signed up for Grand Central many years ago I’d totally forgotten I had an account. Now that it’s been turned into Google Voice I was given the opportunity to “upgrade” my account to the new system. So, want to try it out? Just click the icon below and leave me a message.

Twitter: Ur Doin It Rong

I’ve been looking at a lot of different Twitter accounts lately while putting together some upcoming presentations and I’ve noticed a few things. Increasingly, I'm noticing Twitter accounts of those unclear on the concept of conversation; the thing that actually makes Twitter useful to people.

Exhibit A: Dr. Phil

As of this screenshot he’s got 1,639 followers. This is to be expected. So what’s the problem? He’s following exactly zero people back! Now, I don’t care whether this actually is Dr. Phil himself or someone on his staff but as I read this he’s willing to tell you things but he’s not willing to listen. Total FAIL!

Exhibit B: The Nebraska Attorney General

I’ve got no problem with people having private Twitter accounts. Mine’s public, but my FriendFeed account is private. However, if you’re going to have a private account don’t use your government title as your username. The moment you do that, you can’t have a private account, you need to continue to act as a public employee and be open. You want a private account, use your own name or a made-up name, not something that represents your office. (Note: I did send a follow request on Sunday and waited 72 hours with no response before listing this as a fail. Should he honor my request I will attempt to discuss this with him.)

UPDATE 8 April2009:
I’m not saying that I can claim any responsibility for this but the NebraskaAG account no longer exists.

2008 Travel Report

I use the social Web site Dopplr to schedule and log my travels and follow the travels of my online friends. This year Dopplr supplied a year-in-review report for all of its members. Here’s mine:

Thing #14: Delicious

I've been using Delicious for more than five years now (my first bookmarks were added on 20 August 2003!) and I can't live without it. Granted, I still use the bookmarks toolbar in my browsers for the sites I visit constantly, but I consider my Delicious account my archive. I also use my Delicious account in a somewhat unique way in that I use it to organize the links for all my workshops and presentations.

Pre-Delicious when someone attended one of my workshops they would get a floppy disk (yep, remember those) which always contained at least one file, a Web page with links to all the sites I presented in class. Although this worked, there were problems, the main one being that there was no way for me to keep those links up to date for those that had attended a previous class. (This was also back when sharing wasn't considered as important so part of the idea was to only give the links to those that took the class. I'm totally over that now.)

So, with Delicious I can just give attendees a single URL and tell them to go there and get all the links. For example, the links for my XHTML workshop can be found at http://delicious.com/travelinlibrarian/class-xhtml. This way as I change the class, and change the relevant links, the list is always relevant and up-to-date. And, because most of my bookmarks are public the attendees can explore beyond those bookmarks through to related ones via tags and the rest of my account through to the accounts of other Delicious users.

I also encourage the use of the Delicious tag clouds on library sites. So much so that the new version of the RVLS site (which I designed) has a Delicious tag cloud. The forthcoming redesigned Panhandle site will also include a Delicious tag cloud if everything goes to plan.

I could continue on for a whole book chapter on Delicious... wait, I already have! ;-)

(Bonus points for figuring out the relevance of the image in this post.)

R.I.P. Pownce

An e-mail from Pownce:

We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15, 2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new
pro accounts.    

To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.
Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.

Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownce

Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,

The Pownce Crew

Thing #11: Blog about Technology, or, where do I get the time?

When asked "where do you find the time to do all this online social stuff?" I always begin my answer with "well, I'm one of the luck ones. It's my job to do all this online social stuff." Granted, I also do it at home but unlike some of you, and I assume most all of you reading this as part of Nebraska Learns 2.0, I've expected to do this on work time. However I will quickly add that after "doing" then then have to "think", "analyze", "synthesize", "apply", and "present" on the "fun" I've been having to others to show them how they can make the most of these technologies with what little time they have. So yes, I do have fun at my job but it is work too.

But that doesn't actually answer the question does it. When I'm asked where does "Michael" find the time my guess is that the questioner really wants to know how are "they" going to find the time in their already busy schedule. Well folks, here's the hard truth: hard as you may look you might not find the time but that doesn't mean you can't get away with making the time.

Here's how B.L. Ochman put it in her recent blog post "The Secret to Finding Time For Social Media":

Here's the secret: Pick a couple of social networks -- mine are Twitter and LinkedIn -- and concentrate on those. You can't be everywhere and you don't need to be everywhere, unless you want to be like this dog chasing its tail.

The key to all this is "focus". (Man I'm using a lot of quotation marks in this post.) In the Nebraska Learns 2.0 program we're having you experiment with literally dozens of different online services and tools. No one on this end expects you to use all of them once the program is over. In fact, no one here expects you to even find all of them useful. (In fact, even we don't all agree on which ones are useful.)

But none of this means that you can get away with avoiding these technologies and still be considered, dare I say, relevant.

Libraries are facing tough times in this economic climate. Philadelphia is closing eleven branches to help alleviate a budget shortfall. Trouble is, studies show that as money gets tighter, people use the public library more. I'm not saying that your ability to blog will save your library from closing but if the specter comes calling, your blog will be yet another avenue to alert the faithful.

Twitter might seem both interesting and incomprehensible at first, but the more your participate the more it makes sense. I know some participants have searched the Twitter archives for the name of their town. What if you found a "I wonder what the population of [insert name of your town here] is?" How about using your Twitter account to send them an answer. I'd find it so cool to wonder out loud to to cyberspace and to have a librarian magically appear with the answer completely unbidden. (Did you know there are ways to find Tweets based on geography? Imagine following Twitter users that live in are visiting your town and then helping them when they need it.)

Is technology, or more specifically online social media, the solution to all our problems? Of course not. However they are tools that are available to us and we ignore them at our peril.

Image: badboy69

Kal Penn on the Power of the Youth Vote

An interesting comment on young voters and online services such as YouTube, MySpace and Facebook.

The Internet Overdose Song

Barack's VP: Be the First to Know

Dear Michael --

Barack Obama is about to make one of the most important decisions of this campaign -- choosing a running mate.

You have helped build this movement from the bottom up, and Barack wants you to be the first to know his choice.

Sign up today to be the first to know:

http://my.barackobama.com/vp

You will receive an email the moment Barack makes his decision, or you can text VP to 62262 to receive a text message on your mobile phone.

Once you've signed up, please forward this email to your friends, family, and coworkers to let them know about this special opportunity.

No other campaign has done this before. You can be part of this important moment.

Be the first to know who Barack selects as his running mate.

Thanks,
David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Paid for by Obama for America

The Gen-Y Guide to Web 2.0@Work

| View | Upload your own

Read the full article: Why Gen Y Is Going to Change the Web on ReadWriteWeb.

Addictomatic: Inhale the Web

I'm not typically a fan of meta-search engines but Addictomatic (sent in my my coworker Cathy) looks interesting. In a very 2.0-ish way it presents to you results from sites such as flickr, live.com, Google blog search, Digg, technorati, YouTube, and many others. Each box containing search results can be repositioned on the screen via drag-and-drop. Here's a few screenshots to give you an idea before you try it out.

What could have changed in 20 years?

See those two cute kids in the photo over there to the right? (Well, at least one of them is cute.) That's me and Kathy, my date to the Junior Prom back in 1987. (Note the big hair and gold.)  So, why am I posting this photo now? Well, it's all Facebook's fault.

Last week I received a friend invite from a "Kathy" who's last name I did not recognize. In the message she gave her maiden name and I instantly placed her despite having not spoken to her for more than 20 years. (Back at the prom she was currently dating my best friend who went to a different high school and she was a year behind me so I invited her to my prom.) How else could this have happened except through the current wonders of online social networking.

When I asked how she found me she said "your grad class". Here's where it starts to get weird. Having been a trainer for the past 14 years and having also taught in the University of Denver's grad school, I immediately became confused. "Through DU?" I asked. What she'd meant was my "graduating class". She has searched through Facebook's page for our high school and looked for folks she new who she might have gone to school with. And, there I was found.

Suddenly I find myself using Facebook for more than just playing Zombies and Scrabulous. We've been "e-maliing" back and forth for a week now still busily catching up. A lot has happened to the both of us in the past 20 years but I have quickly learned that Kathy is still the wonderful person that I remember.

Not to get too into what I think about my high school years but I've only regularly spoken to one person from back then. Most of that was intentional, some of it was not. That was true until this past week. I'm so happy that this giant heart and smile has come back into my life.

We Think

I'm so going to use this the next time I do a Social Web presentation!

Hey Monkeybrain!

The creators of Squidoo.com have just released HeyMonkeybrain.com a social way of arguing online. Want to check it out? I've started an argument titled "The Dewey Decimal System is not the problem". Got an opinion? Agree? Disagree? Log in an state your case.

Growing Up Online

Last night's episode of PBS' Frontline was all about kids and the Net.

In Growing Up Online, FRONTLINE takes viewers inside the very public private worlds that kids are creating online, raising important questions about how the Internet is transforming childhood. "The Internet and the digital world was something that belonged to adults, and now it's something that really is the province of teenagers, " says C.J. Pascoe, a postdoctoral scholar with the University of California, Berkeley's Digital Youth Research project.

I've only watched excerpts so far but the whole program is available online on Frontline Web site. The best quote from the show I believe is "We have to look at our kids less like victims and more like participants."

Doctorow on Facebook

Cory Doctorow's latest Information Week column is on Facebook specifically and social networking sites in general. Here's just a taste:

'Facebook has all the social graces of a nose-picking, hyperactive six-year-old, standing at the threshold of your attention and chanting, "I know something, I know something, I know something, won't tell you what it is!"'

Unintended Consequences of The Social Web

At the Nebraska Library Commission we have a flickr account to which we post photos of NE libraries, and NLC-related events. As we don't post daily, or even weekly some times, we're generally happy to find out that someone has added one of our photos to their favorites.

This morning one of our staff noticed that one of our library photos was added as a favorite by another flickr user. She clicked on the link for that user's photos and was presented with the "this account is not within your safe search settings, do you still wish to see the photos" page and she clicked ok. The photos were, as you may guess, rather pornographic. So, technically, there is a link on one of our pages in flickr to a page that would be considered rather inappropriate to many possibly even offensive.

In flickr one user can block another. By doing so, they can still see your photos but they are not allowed to add any of your photos as favorites thereby removing the link. We have since blocked this user but doing this raised some distinct and important issues in my mind. I asked that we discuss this and here's the two original responses I received from coworkers: (quoted with permission)

There is also the issue of people who don't understand the internet and don't understand that things like this can happen purely by accident, and that we (the NLC) did not have any control over this.  Some of these same people will simply see a state agency linking to a full-on porn site, and nothing else.  I'd hate to be the person who has to take that call.  Or who has to justify the expense to the auditors (NLC has paid for a pro account).

We all know that when people use the internet and tools like flickr, there is no guarantee that they won’t stumble on sites/pictures that are offensive.  But why would we leave a link in our NLC account that would directly lead viewers to something that most would probably agree to be inappropriate for a public forum?  If we want libraries to use Flickr and they see something like this and think it might happen to them and think there is no recourse, I am afraid they will be scared off. 
Social networking sites provide users with tools like privacy settings, blocking capabilities, etc.  so that they can use the services in a way that’s comfortable for them.  What’s wrong with using them?  If we don’t think that’s appropriate, why should we leave this link when there is something we can do about it.

Here is a list of my initial concerns and some additional questions that we're raised when we talked about it verbally:

• Since we're a government agency could this be considered censorship?
  
• If we block this one user, what's to stop up from blocking others and who gets to decide who's blocked and who isn't?
  
• Does allowing this link give any sort of validation to the content of the other user's account even if the system created the link and not us?
  
• Would a link to said content in a blog comment post be any different?
  
• In a Social Web world, do we need to allow for links that we wouldn't create ourselves? Should there be more latitude?
  
• Should these sorts of links be removed out of fear of those that control the money might react badly or should we take a chance and use it as a teaching opportunity?
  
• Does the appearance of the click-through warning page remove us from any perceived liability? Is the warning page irrelevant? What if the user following the link has turned off safe search in their account (as one co-worker had)? Does that change the situation?

Debate on my blog has been lively of late and I'd love to keep it going. So, library-land and other readers, what do you think? How would you handle this situation? Should we have handled it differently and not blocked the user. Please, let us know.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

The folks at CommonCraft have done it again!

Facebook Off

*This

Here's a list of the social networks I'm actively participating in:

• Flickr
• YouTube
• SlideShare
• LibraryThing
• Twitter
• Blog
• del.icio.us
• Jaiku
• Tumblr
• Facebook
• Yelp

Then there's the ones I have accounts in but don't use all that much:

• 43Things
• BlipTV
• Google Video
• MySpace

I'm sure I'm forgetting a few too. Add the fact that in some of these services (Flickr, YouTube, blogging) I have access to multiple accounts, one personal, one work. (Blip.tv is only work right now. I don't have a personal account there.)

Here's the problem: when I find something interesting online or have something to say, how should I share it?

I've got four bookmarklets set up; BlogThis, TwitThis, TumblThis, and TwitThis, along with the Share+ button on the Facebook toolbar, which makes posting to those sites a simple process. But each one has a different audience (if any audience at all) with different levels of immediacy. (For example, if I post it to my blog, only my subscribers will read it but maybe not for a few hours or days. If I post it to Facebook, only my Facebook friends will see it albeit a bit quicker. If I put it out to Twitter, only my Twitter followers will see it but within minutes.) Additionally, Twitter posts need to be kept to 140 characters, my Tumblog can contain more but I usually don't, del.icio.us is for stuff I want to go back to later or share with my classes, and my blog is for more extensive writing even though I post short stuff there too.

Well I could, and do sometimes, post the same content, or various versions of the same content, to multiple services. For example, I put a link to my blog review of my new keyboard on Twitter. Why didn't I also share it on Facebook? I have no idea. It just didn't occur to me until I wrote the previous sentence.

I have a pseudo-solution and that's my Jaiku account. Jaiku allows me to pull in content from all of my other accounts that are outputting feeds. So, if you visit my Jaiku page or subscribe to my Jaiku feed, you'll get all of the content from almost every other service I post to. (There's no way to pull in Facebook info that I can find so there's one notable exception.) The trouble is, there's no one in my extended circle of friends using Jaiku with two notable exceptions (planetneutral and jessamyn) and they don't seem to be doing much with it anyway. So, is a "solution" really a solution if no one uses it? I don't think so.

So, how do you handle it? Do you just pick a favorite and stick to it? Do you clearly delineate in your own mind what goes where and not worry about who's at the receiving end? I'd really like to know.

Facebook song

I think I need to work this into my upcoming Social Web presentations.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

del.icio.us RSS

It turns out that more than 50% of requests for data from the del.icio.us site are from RSS, not humans. Because of this the folks at del.icio.us are working to improve what gets delivered via their RSS feeds such as "offering the ability to save bookmarks straight from your feed reader" and "displaying an up-to-date count of saves, without making items appear new again in feed readers". More details on the del.icio.us blog.

This cartoon made me think of Twitter

via gapingvoid

Twittered out?

Just use AutoTwit. Write your posts, set a schedule, and forget it.

One-sided Twitter conversations

I'm being sucked in by Twitter. So much so that I complained to one friend that she never posts and she retorted with the fact that I'd not yet moved my Twitter widget to my sidebar. But that doesn't exactly address the title of this post...

Lat night I got to watch one side of several conversations. What was happening is one of my Twitter friends, person A, was obviously posting back and forth with one of their Twitter friends, person B. However person B isn't a friend of mine so I was unable to "hear" their side of the conversation. In this particular instance I was thinking that the conversation was more interesting this way but not knowing what the actual topic was, it just got me thinking.

A Basic Twitter Search Engine

Steve Rubel at the Micro Persuasion blog has used Google to create a basic Twitter search engine. Here's the results for searching library.

Another way to post to Twitter

Don't want to leave Firefox nor actually go to the Twitter site in order to post? Try the Twitter Firefox Search Plugin which allows you to "post updates to Twitter right from your Firefox Search Bar". I've tested it and it works. The only catch is that as a result you end up going to your Twitter page. I'd rather it didn't send me anywhere but it does save a few clicks in the posting process.

Vista Librarians

As an experiment I've set up a Ning social netowrk for the impatient librarians who are implementing, or attempting to implement, Windows Vista. Join Vista Librarians today.

Twitter

I'll eventually add this to the sidebar but in the mean time...

follow msauers at http://twitter.com