Social networking hits the catalog

Here's another non-class-related post but newsworthy nonetheless. It's also a nice illustration of the power of the blogosphere at work.

Flabbergasted!

That's what I am after reading about John Blyberg's launch of the so-called "SOPAC" or Social OPAC at Ann Arbor District Library. You might remember that I mentioned them previously for their radical use of blogs throughout their library web site.

The SOPAC basically takes some of the best features in social networking and applies them to the library catalog. Reviewing and tagging items in the catalog, searching across tags, users, and ratings...very, very cool.

I can't do justice to the product, so here's Blyberg's blog post about his creation (beware of that screencast...the file is big!).

And of course, I came across the whole thing from Librarian in Black's blog. She calls attention to what I would call the open-source smackdown of Innovative's new Encore product.

I sense that the library world will feel the ripples out of Michigan for a time to come. Will the world ever be the same again? Or am I simply being over-dramatic? Time will tell...

the king lives!

Thank you very much.

interesting stats

Technorati's October 2006 State of the Blogosphere report yields some fascinating statistics.

I have yet to crunch all the numbers but I'll drop some in the class.

Which is only a few hours away! Yikes!!!

Back to the drawing board...on to mobile blogger

Well, my last test post didn't work. Rather, it didn't work completely as I expected. Apparently an email from my Verizon phone to my Mail-to-Blogger address allows the text to post but not my PIX. Which I would've known if I had read the instructions.


Duh.

From the desk of...

This is a test post from my cell. My desk is a little cluttered right now.

This message was sent using PIX-FLIX Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!
To learn how you can snap pictures with your wireless phone visit

www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getpix.

To learn how you can record videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/getitnow/getflix.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime® 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime® Player. Note: During the download
process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

platforms a'plenty

I'm compiling my lists of tools which I'll probably make a takeaway during the class. Blog platforms are the bread and butter of a blog: the code that makes a blog run. Choosing a blog platform is the first technical step in creating a new blog. Here are a few that I'm investigating/planning on including now:

Blogger - one of the originals, one of the biggest, now with Google muscle, and fresh out of beta (although I'm finding some of the features are still a little rickety)
WordPress - I'm actually debating switching over because their features (integrated stats!) seem so clean and straightforward, perhaps even to test out the import/export feature
LiveJournal - SixApart's old free platform
Vox - SixApart's new free platform
Xanga - old school, but they've always called themselves The Weblog Community, that deserves a mention
Drupal - learned about this one today when I found out through the grapevine that this open source platform is what Ann Arbor District Library is using for their great site I mentioned previously

I'll probably mention TypePad and Movable Type as well, even though they are pay platforms, because they do have some outstanding features, especially in a business or professional setting.