OPAL Training

What's New 20 December 2011

2011-12-20T13:25:00.000+10:00

Now Mapping the Indoors – Google Maps is Going Inside Google Maps is great for getting from Point A to Point B, but what happens after you get to Point B? Retailers, airports and transit stations in the U.S. and Japan are currently partnered with Google on the project. When you’re inside an airport, shopping mall or retail store, a common way to figure out where you are is to look for a freestanding map directory or ask an employee for help. With the release of Google Maps 6.0 for Android, that directory is brought to the palm of your hands, helping you determine where you are, what floor you're on, and where to go indoors.

ALIA Training - Love 2 Read!
In support of the National Year of Reading 2012 campaign, the Love 2 Read online course aims to introduce participants to the wide range of literature in library collections and the ways libraries can promote its use to clients. This online course can be completed in 6 weeks (one topic per week) but as it is developed to be self paced, it can be finished earlier or later depending on your learning styles and needs. It runs from 21 February - 3 April 2012. Register by 7 Feb.

Library of Congress to receive entire Twitter archive
The Library of Congress and Twitter have signed an agreement that will see an archive of every public Tweet ever sent handed over to the library’s repository of historical documents. Every public tweet since Twitter’s inception in March 2006, will be archived digitally at the Library of Congress. The archives don’t contain tweets that users have protected, but everything else — billions and billions of tweets — are there.

Apple Updates iBooks with Night Mode & More, and Also Updates Cards
Apple updated two of its own apps – iBooks and Cards. With iBooks users can read eBooks and documents which they load on their iPhone. The update includes the ability to read in a night-time mode with white text on a black background. There’s also a new full-screen mode that lets you only see the text of your book or document. A new set of fonts made into the iBooks update. They include Athelas, Charter, Iowan and Seravek. Public domain books get new covers and text highlighting was improved as well. Apple introduced Cards with the latest version of iOS 5 and the iPhone 4S. The app lets you send snail mail cards using your iPhone photos. The app’s improvements include “improved verification of postal addresses,” text entry improvements and a better checkout process.

Funky Photo
Funky Photo creates 6 different image effects. Simply upload a photo and then edit the effect.

Roamz: find things to do around you
Be a local! Roamz is a location-based app that helps you find out what is happening around you. It shows you social content about places, events and activities that are relevant to you. It uses information from the networks you know and love - Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Twitter - and cuts through the noise to deliver you personalized and intelligent suggestions. It’s like having your best friend in your pocket, showing you things that you are actually interested in. The best part is, the more you use Roamz the smarter it gets, so no matter where you are you’ll always be a local. You can capture and share Roamz moments at places that you discover too, by connecting your Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare accounts.

National Broadband Network explained
NBN Co has released a series of short animated videos about the National Broadband Network project and the rollout process.
Watch the videos here:

What's New 30 November 2011

2011-12-01T12:45:00.001+10:00

Improve Your Google Search Skills

Don’t limit yourself to just plugging in simple search terms to Google; check out this infographic and learn a search string search or two. Here are some crucial tips for refining your Googling.

Get More Out of Google.

Updated Google Search for iPad - Side-by-Side Search and More

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djw6AJqHFOU&feature=player_embedded

If Google is your search engine of choice and you do some serious searching from your iPad, you’ll want to grab a free copy of Google’s radically updated iPad search app.

What’s new with Google iPad Search? This version of the app sports Google Instant, coverflow style image search, enhanced voice search, Google+ integration, and overall better integration with Google’s services. My favourite feature is the enhanced side-by-side search. You can pull up search results and simultaneously look at a page.

The Contra Costa County Library Snap and Go Project

The Tri Delta Transit bus company has partnered with the Contra Costa County Library to provide instant access to free audiobooks and library services on the bus. Choose from over 600 audio book titles! With "Snap & Go" mobile library, library users can wirelessly download audiobooks directly to their mobile phone.

All they have to do is scan the QR barcode with a camera phone and they’ll automatically be connected to library services including hundreds of audiobook files they can download to their mobile phone for free!

Smartphones replacing library cards and self check-out machine

You may have heard of apps like CardStar and Key Ring that allow you to input the numbers from all the club and rewards cards from your wallet and display the barcode on your mobile phone.

Library users can also use these apps for their library card numbers although some traditional scanners won't read barcodes off a smartphone screen. The scanners that can read barcodes on smartphones are called CCD scanners. These CCD scanners can be purchased for about $30 each.

And the next step…

The Cuyahoga County Public Library is calling itself the first public library in the U.S. to create a mobile smartphone application that will allow users to borrow library items using their mobile device. Users can also extend the lending period and manage their media with a mobile device.

The library created the app with the help of Boopsie, a mobile app-developing company specializing in public and academic libraries. Boopsie can deliver mobile applications that are compatible with all Web-enabled phones.

No more standing in line. Just download the free app from the app store on your smartphone and then scan your selection by taking a picture of the barcode on the item. Then you're free to leave the library.

App users will not have to worry about security sensors going off as they exit the library. The library’s security gates in their libraries are no longer in use.

Watch a video to see how it works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C_bvyqJVfU

Smart Books

Atria is publishing its first book to be equipped with a smart chip. Tapping the RFID-enabled sticker with an NFC-enabled smartphone will bring up a website with additional resources for the book. The debut smart book is The Impulse Economy: Understanding Mobile Shoppers and What Makes Them Buy by Gary Schwartz

The smart book allows the physical book to become interactive for both the book buyer and the book browser. The reader can tap to rich interactive content on their phone. The goal is to engage the consumer and start a permission-based two-way relationship that may lead to the sale of this book or further sales in this category of interest.

For a definitive list of NFC phones go to http://www.nfcworld.com/nfc-phones-list/#available.

5 iPad/iPhone Apps Library Staff Should Download

EasyBib

Cost: Free
Scan any book’s barcode or manually type in the title to create MLA, APA, and Chicago style citations instantly. EasyBib also lets you manage your works cited and email citations to yourself. You can also export your citations to EasyBib.com’s bibliography management service.

Twitterific
Cost: Free
This Twitter client is easy to use and full of features. Read and compose tweets, search Twitter.com, filter message types and much more.

Hootsuite
Cost: Free
HootSuite will let you post status updates/tweets to social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Foursquare at the same time. You can also schedule updates to post at future times, track statistics, and monitor keywords, #hashtags, and lists.

Star Walk
Cost: $4.99
This augmented reality app allows users to hold up their iPads/iPhones towards the sky and move it around while it displays information about exactly what stars, constellations, and satellites you are looking at in real-time. You can also see what the sky looked like at any point in the past…or in the future as well.

IMDb (Internet Movie Database)
Cost: Free
Access information about over 2 million movie and TV titles, as well as over 4 million celebrities, actors, actresses, directors and crew members with this iPad/iPhone app.

Free to use images

There are a number of websites that you can visit for public domain, free to use images. Here are two of my favourite.

Everystockphoto states "We are a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific. You can view a photo's license by clicking on the license icon, below and left of photos. Membership is free and allows you to rate, tag, collect and comment on photos." They provide access to over 12million free photos. The licensing is clear - public domain, attribution and so on. The search interface is simple, and you can limit by license, database source, tags, shapes, widths, and height.

Wikimedia Commons Its simple to use, returns good results and the copyright situation is clear for every image. There are over11million images available.

What's New 3 November 2011

2011-11-03T09:55:00.000+10:00

How to build a free desk statistics tracker in less than an hour using forms in Google docs

Are you still collecting daily usage statistics on a paper tally sheet, and then transferring them to a spreadsheet? The information is hard to analyse and you are using reams of paper.

Forms in Google Docs allows data to be entered into a spreadsheet from a form. The form can be accessed via the web or directly emailed to users.

The steps to creating a desk statistics tracking tool are simple:

1. Create a Google account (if needed)

2. Log into Google and open Google Docs

3. Open a new spreadsheet

4. Create a form

5. Add/format questions and customize form

6. Create an access point

7. Start recording

Read the full article on how the University of Minnesota Library did it.

Our Pad Brings Multiple Account Management to the iPad

iPad: You use your iPad, your spouse uses your iPad, so who gets the privilege of having the iPad remember their Facebook and Gmail info? With Our Pad, you both do.

It’s one of the more glaring oversights in the iPad design. Unlike an iPhone that is usually only used by one person, multiple people often use the same iPad. A simple mechanism for switching user profiles would be enormously helpful but is conspicuously absent from the device.

Our Pad steps in to help fill the gap. It’s not a perfect solution but it does make it dead simple to switch between Facebook, GMail, MSN/Hotmail, Yahoo!, and Twitter accounts for multiple users.

Our Pad is free, iPad only.

Google Now Shows Your IP Address via Query

Thousands upon thousands of people would go to Google and type in “what is my IP” only to immediately click the first link to find out. Now Google offers the answer right along with your query results. Visit Google and enter a search query like “what is my ip”, “my ip”, or “ip address”, and Google displays your public IP address right below your search query–as seen in the screenshot above. It’s a handy way to find your IP address that saves you that extra click through to a third-party site.

How to Customize and Decorate Your QR Codes with Pictures

The colour of the QR code doesn’t matter, as long as it is readable by a QR code reader.. You can create a customized QR code online, but the level of customization will be limited. The second option is to generate a simple QR code, and then play with it in Photoshop, GIMP or your favourite image editing program to create a customized version. The only thing you need to keep in mind is that the integrity of the QR code remains intact, and it doesn’t lose the encoded information.

The simple method - If you just need a simple QR code with a bit of colour based style, go to Unitag [http://en.unitag.fr/qrcode].

The expert method – see the How-to-Geek blog for details http://www.howtogeek.com/96226/how-to-customize-and-decorate-your-qr-codes-with-pictures/

The Daring Librarian has created a great poster - How to Create a QR Code In 3 Easy Steps.

How to Change Your Browser's Default Search Engine

Sometimes addons, toolbars, etc. may be installed on your computer as part of or in addition to software you install on your computer. It can be an annoyance if it changes your browser's search engine to one you don’t like or you just don't want to use. With a few quick changes, you can restore it back to your normal search preferences.

Follow the instructions according to the internet browser you are using.

Firefox

Find the search query URL for your desired search engine (see below). The easiest way to find this is to visit your favourite search engine and make a search. Copy the URL address, remove the unnecessary bits (that aren't related to your search), so that the query will be the last thing added to the address (don't include the search terms, these are appended by Firefox). Copy this address.
1. For Google, http://www.google.com/search?q=
2. For Yahoo!, http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=
3. For Bing, http://www.bing.com/search?q=
4. For Ask.com, http://www.ask.com/web?q=
Navigate to Firefox's preferences editor. To do this, type "about:config" into the address bar and hit Enter. You will be warned about the cautions of editing Firefox settings manually. Continue by pressing "I'll be careful, I promise".
Search for "keyword.URL" in the search area. A single result should appear with this name.
Right click on the result. Then, click Modify. Paste your new address in the dialog that is shown, so that it replaces the previous one. Then, click OK. Your default search engine has changed; you can test it by typing something in the address bar and pressing Enter.
If you want to change the default search in the search engine textbox on the right, search for "browser.search.defaultenginename" in the search area. Change this to the search engine you want exactly as shown in the search menu (click the icon next to the search box to see the menu).

Google Chrome

Navigate to Google Chrome's Settings. You can access this by clicking the Wrench icon in the top right of the browser, then clicking "Options" in the menu.
Locate the Search section. From this area, you can quickly choose from a list of common search engines. To use any of these, you can just select it from the drop down box. To add a different search engine, continue with the steps.
Click "Manage Search Engines". You'll be presented with more search engines, those standard default search options and also more detected ones by Google Chrome. You should be able to find any you would like to use here, but if not, scroll down until you see the textbox for adding another search engine.
Fill in the form data. This includes the name of the search engine, the search URL, and a keyword. The search engine will then be added. Just click "Make default" while hovering over it to make it your default search engine.

Internet Explorer

Click the arrow right next to the search icon in the address bar. It will show a drop-down with icons in it. Click "Add". Internet Explorer will take you to its search engine gallery.
Choose a search engine from the gallery. To see more, just move your mouse to the right of the screen. Click on one you like.
Install the search engine addon. There is a "click to install" link on the page. After clicking it, you'll be presented with a dialog box prompting for confirmation to add the search engine. If you want this to be your default search engine, tick the "Make this my default search provider" box. Click Add. The search engine should now be changed.

Subtext for iPad

Reading is a personal experience. But that doesn't mean it has to be lonely. People join book clubs! People go to author readings! People want to share. Subtext for iPad makes it easier to do all those things with your e-books. Subtext is a social community for e-book readers. You can link up your Subtext account with Facebook and Google and Subtext will hook you up with your friends and their community. Subtext offers a lot of extra information about the book too, like commentary from your friends or from the author of the book or from experts, and they're all within the pages of the book. So whenever you come across something interesting, there'll be more things to learn about in the margins. It's like interactive footnotes—comments, notes, questions, polls, links—that let you learn more than just what's on the page

JustBeamIt Makes Direct P2P File Transfers a Snap

You want to send a file but it’s too big for email, your recipient doesn’t know how to FTP, and they’re behind a restrictive firewall. JustBeamIt [http://justbeamit.com/] can help.Drag and drop the file and then send them the download link for a simple direct transfer. It’s that easy. Visit JustBeamIt, drag the file you want to transfer into the drop zone, and then email or IM the URL to the person who needs the file. The file will automatically transfer from your computer to theirs. There is no limit on the file size since JustBeamIt doesn’t host the file–the site simply negotiates the connection between you and the recipient. JustBeamIt is a free service and requires no registration.

Create interactive e-books

Moglue [http://www.moglue.com/ ] allows you to create interactive ebooks and publish them to Android and iOS devices. Ebooks created with Moglue can include videos, images, and audio files that you import from your computer. Moglue supports a wide variety of file formats for image and video content. When you have completed constructing your ebook you can publish it to the Moglue bookstore where it can be downloaded onto your Android or iOS device.

What's New 20 October 2011

2011-10-20T14:36:00.002+10:00

BookLikes

BookLikes http://booklikes.com/ is a book-based social network that recommends great books based on your reading preferences. It’s a complete website for book-lovers. BookLikes gives only individualized book recommendations, books that really define you. A new kind of social algorithm takes into consideration users’ reading preferences, general book information and category it belongs to as well as individual social experience. This is a place where people can search for books by author, title, category, etc and then review them.

QuickScreenShare

If you need to share your screen with a friend or peek in on their screen and you don’t want to deal with installing software, QuickScreenShare is a nearly instant and dead simple solution.

Simply visit QuickScreenShare http://quickscreenshare.com/, start a session, send your friend the link, and you’re ready to start screen sharing between any two browsers with Java installed. It’s that simple and it’s a free service. Check out this video to see it in action.

How to Use the Cameras on Your iPad 2

With the iPad 2, you can take photos and HD video using the tablet's dual cameras. This article shows you how to do just that, as well as how to share videos and photos, upload them to your computer, and trim videos. You’ll also learn how to use FaceTime, Apple's free video chat service. http://www.wikihow.com/Use-the-Cameras-on-Your-iPad-2

Need an app? Try this app search engine

If you're looking for apps on Android, iOS, Mac, Windows, Chrome, Firefox, Facebook, or web, Quixey has just become one of your very best friends. Type in what you're looking for, limit to the resource that you're interested in, read the little summary and then click on the link to go and get it. If you're into apps for your smart phone or iDevice, then you're going to be very happy indeed. It includes priced as well as free apps.

KeepRecipes a Recipe Manager for Food Lovers

http://keeprecipes.com/

Whether you’re a home cook looking to explore new dishes or a chef looking for a place to store all of the recipes you’re collecting for a cookbook, KeepRecipes is a new web service that gives you a way to enter your own recipe collection, or snip recipes from cooking sites around the web, similar to the way Instapaper or ReadItLater lets you save articles and news stories.

KeepRecipes is a combination web app and iPhone app. The web app lets you organise and enter recipes into categories so they’re easy to search and dig through later when you want to find something specific. You can also search other recipes members have added to their own accounts to see if there’s something you’d like to try that another user knows how to make.

Use the KeepRecipes bookmarklet (again, like Instapaper or ReadItLater) to automatically save recipes on sites like Food Network, the New York Times and other cooking sites to your account. The bookmarklet only saves ingredient lists and highlighted text at the moment-so if you want the instructions saved with the ingredients; make sure to highlight them before clicking the bookmarklet.

The service also offers a mobile app for iOS that lets you view ingredients and search your recipes while you’re out shopping, view photos, see what’s new on the site, and use as a kitchen companion while you’re cooking. Both the iOS app and the web site are completely free.

Open Library

http://openlibrary.org/

Open Library is an open, editable library catalogue, building towards a web page for every book ever published. Just like Wikipedia, you can contribute new information or corrections to the catalogue. Whether you fix a typo, add a book, or write a widget--it's all welcome. You can browse by subject, author or lists members have created. Open Library also has a Lending library – consisting of thousands of eBooks available to anyone to borrow, 1 copy at a time, for 2 weeks. Why not register your library?

ABCya

http://www.abcya.com/

ABCya is one of the best free websites of educational kids computer games and activities. All children's educational computer activities have been created or approved by certified school teachers. All educational games are modelled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way for children to learn. Grade level lessons incorporate areas such as maths and language arts while introducing basic computer skills. Many of the kindergarten and first grade activities are equipped with sound to enhance understanding. Fun children's holiday activities are available in grade level sections.

What's New 7 October 2011

2011-10-07T12:23:00.004+10:00

Fill PDF forms on-line

PDFfiller [http://www.pdffiller.com/] lets you Fill PDF Forms on-line free. The PDF typewriter works by converting PDF forms into images and allowing the user to type right on top of the images. When the user is ready to print, the image and the text are combined into a single image. This is printed and the result is a professionally filled form.

· Upload your Form.

· Click anywhere and start typing. Sign your form.

· Print, Email, Fax, or Export your Form.

HearWho
HearWho [http://www.hearwho.com/] converts your text to speech and saves it as an MP3 file so that you can listen to it on any device capable of playing MP3 files, such as iPods, PDAs, mobile phones, MP3 players. There is no software to download. You simply type or paste your text into the text area, then click "MAKE MP3 FILE".

HearWho.com uses lifelike, natural sounding voices that come in a variety of languages.

Listen while doing. It saves time...

Make studying easy. Listen to it.
Commuting
at the gym
Running / walking / cycling

Listen instead of reading.

Ziggity Zoom

At Ziggity Zoom [http://www.ziggityzoom.com]you can play kids online games, colour pictures, read and listen to kids books online about many different characters, watch kids videos or explore Play Worlds and other kids arts and crafts. This site is designed for kids and their parents to encourage creativity, reading and to really let your imagination soar. Our mission is to encourage kids to learn, be creative, be active, and to help parents by providing worksheets, tools, and articles that promote positive values and healthy living. We are a Top Kids Web site for education, crafts, home schoolers and recipes.

Game Classroom

Game Classroom [http://www.gameclassroom.com/] scoured the web for the best and most trustworthy educational games for grades K-6 with the single goal of providing students, parents and teachers with an interactive homework help site! These games are arranged by subject (maths or language arts) and grade level. Educators can also find other excellent resources such as: videos, worksheets and lesson plans.

Deliver your own Food Tales event

Holding events at the library is one of the best ways to activate the space, encouraging people who may not otherwise use the library to come in, and showcase what your local library has to offer the community. Find out how you can deliver your own Food Tales event with the State Library of Queensland’s Hosting an Event: a guide to hosting your own Food Tales event in your library.

How to Personalize the Settings on Your iPad 2

There are many different ways to customize the settings on your iPad. Among the most important are Notification settings, location services, and carrier data. This article also discusses how to personalize the video settings. http://www.wikihow.com/Personalize-the-Settings-on-Your-iPad-2

Google Analytics Introduces Real-time Stats

The new real-time feature of Google Analytics helps you to see what’s going on in your site at this very moment. It’s a part of the new version of analytics so you need to first click the New Version link at the top of your analytics dashboard.

There’s a big Right Now button that shows visitors currently on your site, both new and returning. There’s also the top referrals and top active pages to help you understand where the traffic is aggregated on the site.

The feature is being rolled out and will take sometime before it is there for everyone. You’ll see it under the Dashboards tab in the new version. However, if you hate to wait, you could sign up for an early access using this form. Again, it only works in the new version so you need to enable that first.

What's New 22 September 2011

2011-09-22T13:01:00.000+10:00

WhatWasHere Creates Historical Maps Using Crowd Sourced Photographs

WhatWasHere [http://whatwashere.com] is a project that uploads historic photographs to Google Maps so you can see what a location looked like in the past. Photos can be uploaded through the WhatWasHere website or via an iPhone app. The success of this online project depends on people's willingness to prepare and upload photos. The site tries to make it easy by requiring people to enter in only the location and the year of the photograph. But it will need a lot of participants and a lot of photographs to make it work. If you have a few boxes of old photos sitting around your library or council, why not do your part and start scanning and uploading.

Think Tutorial

Think Tutorial [http://thinktutorial.com] is a database of simple, easy to follow tutorials covering all aspects of popular computing. Think Tutorial is a site for free computer tutorials on any number of subjects divided into categories including communication tools, browsers, Microsoft Office, iWorks, smart phones and social media. These tutorials are text based with pictures, which is nice for those who don't want to sit through watching a video.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Explained by Common Craft

If you’re the owner of a website, you know the power of search engines. If your website shows up high in the results, it means more visitors to your website. There are tactics you can use that help your website look more attractive to the search engines. These tactics are called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. This video provides a review of the basics of SEO. Watch it now [http://www.commoncraft.com/video/search-engine-optimization-seo].

Tonara – iPad app

With Tonara [http://tonara.com/], turning pages is a thing of the past! Tonara listens to you and knows when to turn the page on its own, based on what the musician is playing. It can even work with multiple instruments playing at the same time. Although the app is free, each piece of music costs between $1 and $4 depending on its length and complexity. Classical music, whose practitioners typically carry around heavy musical scores, are an obvious target audience for an app like this. However, Levy said pop music could soon find its way into the app too.

Introducing the world’s first interactive sheet music app

· Download and view sheet music on your iPad

· See your exact position on the score as you play

· Pages are turned automatically for you, just in time

· Best of all it’s free.

Montage

I don't have much artistic or design skills so I like playing with tools that help mask this lack of skill. The following is a tool that allows me to create more flashy presentations, visualizations and mashups without much skill or effort.

Montage is a flexible web-based service that makes it fun and easy to create and share a visual album of the web on the topics you care about. You can design your Montage around any topic you can imagine by adding content that pulls information from a variety of sources, including RSS feeds, Twitter, Bing News, and YouTube.

Blogger iPhone app

Google has released an iPhone app for Blogger. Great for posting while on the go. It includes upload of images and location services.

Organize Your Ebook Collection with Calibre

Calibre is a free and open source e-book library management application developed by users of e-books for users of e-books. It has a cornucopia of features divided into the following main categories:

· Library Management

· E-book conversion

· Syncing to e-book reader devices

· Downloading news from the web and converting it into e-book form

· Comprehensive e-book viewer

· Content server for online access to your book collection

· Calibre supports 22 ebook formats including MOBI, EPUB, LIT, PDF, and more. It can accept those 22 formats and convert them to 16 formats, with customized output for dozens of specific ebook readers including the Kindle, Nook, Sony Readers, and more. The interface is polished, easy to use, and makes managing your ebook collection like managing a media collection through popular media management applications such as iTunes. You’ll be able to easily download covers, metadata, and tags from online databases and browse your collection using that information.

· To get started you need a copy of Calibre [http://calibre-ebook.com/download] for your operating system.

Watch a demo here [http://calibre-ebook.com/demo]. Step by step instructions are available at How-to Geek.

JPEGmini - ReduceYour Photo Size and Lose Your Spare Kilobytes Now

JPEGmini reduces the file size of your photos by up to 5x, while keeping their original quality and JPEG format. JPEGmini has introduced a new photo compression technology for JPEG photos which reduces the overall file size (by up to 5 times), while preserving the photo’s quality and resolution. With JPEGmini, photos can be uploaded, emailed and shared faster, while saving on storage and bandwidth costs. http://www.jpegmini.com/main/shrink_photo

What's New 7 September 2011

2011-09-07T13:04:00.000+10:00

Getting Started Series: Free Self-paced Instruction

This site offers clear explanations of popular software and web applications, addressing the fundamentals without over-simplifying all in a series of six downloadable self-guided tutorials in PowerPoint format:

· Microsoft Office 2010 covers the basics of Excel, PowerPoint and Word in the latest release of the standard Microsoft office tools.

· Getting Started with Blogging and Blog Writing Workshop for Librarians provide an overview of blogging and “no panic” methods for generating ideas and becoming a successful blogging librarian.

· Getting Started with Facebook walks through creating an account and untangles the labyrinth of privacy settings and how to manage them.

Try them now.

Top 10 iPad Tips & Tricks

http://www.techlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=67&EntryId=3001

Reset - Probably the first thing a new user to an iPad is going want to do is learn how to reset their iPad without having to turn it all the way off and on again. To do this, just hold down the power button and home button for a few seconds and the iPad will reset.
Force Quit - This is really simple to do. If a program gets frozen or you want to exit right away, just click on the home button to return to the main screen.
Screen Shot - Something I do on a daily basis as an educator is taking a screen shot on my mac for tutorials and professional development. This can also be done on an iPad by holding down the power button and home button for a second and then releasing. A camera sound will go off as the screen turns white. The screen shot will be stored in photos.
File Transfers - Probably the easiest way to transfer a file from the iPad is simply to click the share button in the upper right and then email the file as an attachment.
Copy and Paste - Just tap and hold down on the text and select copy; go to a new app and then tap and hold down and click paste. To copy a whole paragraph, tap and hold down on a paragraph 4 times to select it all.

Other tips include: Web Scrolling, Wireless Keyboard Deleting and Copying and pasting.

Customize Clip Art to Meet Your Needs

Even though it looks like a single image, a piece of clip art is made up of a number of layers—the background, the foreground, text, etc.—that are drawn on top of each other. When you insert a clip into Word, you can work on and change each layer separately, which means you can customize the clip art that you get from the Clip Art and Media site to fit the look and feel of your project.

Separating a piece of clip art into layers is called "ungrouping" it.

Consider this clip art of the baseball player. There are many layers to this piece—for example, the black border around the green background, the green background, and the batter himself: his cap, his shirt. What if you don't like the colour of his cap, the location of his bat, or the green in the background? Change them.

The first step in making these elements of the picture fit your needs is to separate them.

Note Although this tip uses Microsoft Office Word, this general task can also be performed in Microsoft Office Excel and Microsoft Office PowerPoint.

How to ungroup clip art

Ungroup clip art

Copy the clip you want to work on into a Microsoft Office Word document.
Click on the clip. A box appears around the clip. Now you can edit it.
Right-click on the clip and select Edit Picture.
Select the clip, and then right-click on it. Point to Grouping, and then select Ungroup.

After you've ungrouped the clip, you can change any part of it separately with whichever graphics editing software you choose.
Note Only vector art can be separated into layers. Clip art is vector art. Photos, for example, are not.

Here are some examples:

As you can see, you can ungroup the clip art to pull out characters or props, modify the people, and create custom backgrounds.

Create Silhouettes

Silhouettes are the hot thing. You see them all the time in advertising. They work great for elearning because they represent objects without any detail. It’s easy enough to take photos in-house and then convert them to silhouettes. This way you can make up for fading fashion styles, bad lighting, or blurry images.

You can also create silhouettes out of clip art, which is another way to get more life out of something many people find old and overused.

Find your clip art.
Ungroup it.
Select the clip art character and fill with black (in the demo above, I left the notebook white).
Regroup the character.

Tip: You’re not limited to black. And you can make use of some of the graphic effects in PowerPoint to add variety. You can also right click and save the silhouette as its own image rather than keep it a PowerPoint object.

QR Codes Explained by Common Craft

You may have seen these little codes around. They're in newspapers, on storefronts and products. They're called Quick Response (QR) Codes and they're meant to be used with your smartphone. They could be a very big deal in the future. Watch the video here.

Just for fun - Geek + Fashion = How to Organize Your Wardrobe Using Picasa

Would you be keen to find a way to easily keep track of everything in your wardrobe, mix and match all your clothes, and create outfits using technology? Creating a closet or wardrobe database, like Cher's in 'Clueless', is a fantastic way to help you remember the items hiding in the back of the closet that you don't wear as often and may help you pack or get dressed faster in the morning.

Specialized applications exist for the computer and mobile devices, but since Picasa is free, possibly even more versatile, and able to handle this project very well, it's an ideal way to fix your wardrobe with ease.

Why not run a holiday program for your community? Find out how here.

What’s New 18 August 2011

2011-08-18T10:15:00.000+10:00

School Sparks

The SchoolSparks website offers hundreds of free printable worksheets for parents to use at home and for teachers and library staff to print and use in the classroom or library. The worksheets cover a variety of topics from letter tracing (both uppercase and lowercase), math/number awareness, visual discrimination, auditory processing, phonemic awareness, letter/word awareness, social/emotional development, fine motor development and gross motor development.

Computer Viruses and Threats - Explained by Common Craft

Here is another great video by Common Craft. It explains computer viruses by comparing them to human viruses and focuses on the role of prevention in being protected. Major points include:

· A basic look at computer viruses as computer programs that can spread like a disease and can be prevented by anti-virus software.

· An introduction to worms, how they cause damage in networks and can be prevented by software updates.

· An introduction to trojans, how they trick people into downloading a virus and how awareness is important for prevention.

Watch the video here.

Conduit Mobile

Conduit Mobile is an all-in-one app platform. It enables you to create an app once and distribute it on all leading platforms, without any developing or coding skills. By cutting the technical workload, they allow you to focus on the content, delivering apps quickly, simply, and across all mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Nokia, Bada, Windows Phone 7 and more). What's more, it's all absolutely free.

Here is a test I carried out -

It took me less than 5 minutes!

The Best Way to Store Stuff in the Cloud

Brent Rose at Gizmodo provides a list of eleven of the most popular cloud storage services out there in his article The Best Way to Store Stuff in the Cloud. This post provides detailed reviews and screenshots of each cloud service including:

Amazon Cloud Drive

Dropbox

Google User Managed Storage

iCloud

iDrive Sync

SkyDrive

The Updated Social Media Video - 2011

The world's most watched social media video by Erik Qualman. Based on #1 Best Seller Socialnomics. Version 3 with Fat Boy Slim music.

Watch it now.

Slidestaxx

Slidestaxx enables you to gather various social media into a beautiful slideshow for your blog, website or directly on slidestaxx. It's fast, easy and free! Check out some stacks other people have created with slidestaxx here. It's fast, easy and free! Add pictures, videos, websites and more into your slideshow and then embed the slidestaxx into your own website or blog. slidestaxx brings it all seamlessly together.

Just for Fun

Customise your own Barbara Streisand song with GoBarbra. You can type in text in different languages (English, French, German, Polish, Romanian, and Spanish) and pick different voices.

http://gobarbra.com/ . Here is a song I put together for the State Library http://gobarbra.com/hit/new-795d637d97a0169f5446c6beacb70874 .

The Corner

2011-08-18T09:11:00.001+10:00

What's New 2 August 2011

2011-08-03T10:34:00.000+10:00

Knovio

Knovio [http://www.knovio.com/] is a free tool for turning PowerPoint slides into rich video presentations right from your web browser. No fancy hardware or video software is needed - just a webcam and microphone. Simply take a static PowerPoint slide, record a video of you talking about that slide and Knovio syncs both together. These video and audio presentations can be accessed anytime on-demand and shared with others through email and social media.

See Knovio in action:

Show Me What’s Wrong

Trying to diagnose computer issues remotely is really hard unless you can see what's actually going on. The next time someone needs your help with their computer, point them to ShowMeWhatsWrong [http://showmewhatswrong.com] and have them take a quick screencast. Simply go to the site, enter your name and email address, and the app will generate a unique URL you can pass on to the person you're trying to help. When they click the URL, all they need to do is click "Start Recording" and the app will automatically take a screencast of their computer for as long as five minutes—though you can stop the action at any point along the way.

The app also picks up the user's voice through the built-in or connected microphone, so the person you're trying to help can talk as they walk you through the problems they're having. Click stop and the app automatically packages and uploads the video to its server, then sends you an email letting you know it's there. You've got seven days to view it before it expires. It's a foolproof way for even the most novice computer user to capture and send a video of what's going wrong on their system, and they don't have to install anything.

Why not use it to assist your clients with their home computer issues?

15 Beautiful and Creative QR Codes

Amy-Mae Elliott at Mashable has compiled a list of 15 Beautiful and Creative QR Codes. Did you know that these 2D barcodes have a 30% tolerance in readability?

That really opens up a lot of opportunities for libraries to be creative. The codes that made this list are exceptional. If you’re looking for inspiration you won’t want to miss this post.

Social Media Revolution 3 Video

Have you watched Social Media Revolution 3 Video

http://www.socialnomics.net/?p=3790

Contains some amazing statistics.

iPad presentations using Keynote

If you have an iPad2 you may be interested in doing a Presentation with your iPad (only for iPad2). The iPad version of Keynote (Apple’s PowerPoint-like presentation software purchased from Apple’s iTunes Store for $9.99) has a handy presenter notes feature that is easy to use so your notes are on your screen, and your slides still appear on the LCD projector. The screengrab above shows the presenter notes view on the iPad. If there’s more text than shows on the screen, just use your finger to scroll down to the rest of the text.

You also use your finger to advance slides – just swipe the screen, and slides advance. Swipe the other way to go back a slide. Pretty simple to use!

Now – how does it work?

You need to use the iPad VGA adapter, and plug that into the LCD projector. Then the iPad magically does everything else, no need to mess with screen resolution compatibility, etc.

You can then just hold the iPad, and finger-swipe away, or place it on the podium/desk.

There are a couple of oddities, too:

· If you stand with the iPad, you need to hold onto the VGA cable. Otherwise, the weight of the cable will pull the iPad VGA adapter out of your iPad. Not good.

· The on-screen slide appears first, followed by the presenter notes, so there is a bit of lag time.

So if you are looking to do a presentation without having to lug around a laptop you might consider using an iPad/Keynote setup.

ALIA Internet Access in Public Libraries Survey 2011

ALIA's latest report on how public library Internet services are managed, delivered, and used is now available.

http://www.alia.org.au/advocacy/internet.access/Internet.access.Survey_v2.pdf

5 Questions to Ask When Evaluating Apps and Ebooks

Kiera Parrott, Assistant Head of Children’s Services at the Darien Library, provides 5 Questions to Ask When Evaluating Apps and Ebooks at the ALSC Blog. She makes some solid points in her discussions, Here are the five questions she addresses:

Does it expand and enhance the traditional reading experience?
Does it allow a linear reading experience?
Does it engage multiple literacies and learning styles?
It is intelligently designed? Is it intuitive, flexible and customizable?
Does it have legs (i.e., longevity)?

Explore, learn and enjoy

What's New 6 July 2011

2011-07-06T12:53:00.001+10:00

Many Books: the best ebooks at the best price: free!
http://www.manybooks.net/
Browse through the most popular titles, recommendations, or recent reviews from readers. Perhaps you'll find something interesting in the special collections. There are more than 29,000 eBooks available here and they are all free! If you still can't decide what to read you might want to browse through some covers to see what strikes your fancy. There are over 29,000 free ebooks.

Mr Printables

Mr Printables http://www.mrprintables.com/ is a site offering free printables for children, parents and teachers. Resources include flash cards, games, masks, colouring pages, stationery, calendars, planners and puzzles.

Animaps

Animaps http://www.animaps.com is an innovative site for creating animated maps in Google Maps. This is done by creating a map and then adding markers, text, images and shapes that are all set to specific timings.

Tildee

Tildee http://www.tildee.com allows you to create your very own how to page and then share it with others. This is done by creating text, uploading images or videos and then clicking on share. A unique URL is then created for these tutorials that can be shared with others. Also, a person can view the public tutorials of others to find self help information as well. View an example of a featured tutorial Editing your work using Microsoft Word's 'Track Changes' feature here.

Gnowledge

Gnowledge http://www.gnowledge.com/ is a new (beta) free test paper repository that's free to use. You can take, create and share any tests that you find on the website.

You can also:

· Access any tests' answers at the end of taking a test

· Track your taken test scores history

· Save the progress in your test, so you can continue it at any time

· You can have access to your own Vanity Page detailing your profile information and all of your.

Evaluating Web Pages

The World Wide Web can be a great place to accomplish research on many topics. But putting documents or pages on the web is easy, cheap or free, unregulated, and unmonitored. I am often asked “How do I evaluate a web page?” or “How do I know if a website is reputable?” The University of California, Berkley Library have compiled a guide - Evaluating web pages: Techniques to apply and questions to ask http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html to help you to establish the validity, authorship, timeliness, and integrity of what you find. Why not create a link to this page from your website?

Image Embellisher

Image Embellisher http://www.chami.com/html-kit/services/imge/ is an online tool that can apply special effects to images. Image Embellisher makes it easier to create special effects with a few clicks. Simply pick the Image Effect you'd like to try, select your image and click Submit to generate a new image.

Screen Capture Tool – Free

PicPick http://picpick.en.softonic.com/ is a full featured screen capturing tool. The program is a screen-capture tool that allows taking screenshots of an open window, rectangular areas, a free-form area or the entire screen. PicPick is also an image editor. You can easily perform simple editing tasks to your photos, including brightness, contrast and colour adjustment, greyscale, blur, pixelate and other special effects. There is also a whiteboard feature which enables you to write and draw directly on the screen.

Papyrs
Papyrs http://papyrs.com/ is a new (beta) site for file sharing. This is done in a social network type environment and is ideal for sharing documents, notes, and more. What makes this more than just a file sharing service is the social network interface which allows users to collaborate, leave comments, build their own page, etc.

Thinking eBooks

2011-06-21T12:22:00.004+10:00

http://youtu.be/LV-RvzXGH2Y
Mike Matas: A next-generation digital book

http://youtu.be/1eITfhOwyTU
The Finnish Library Association

http://youtu.be/Je90XRRrruM
Harper Collins 26 Check outs

http://youtu.be/9uGLt1tSOrE
Abbey the digital native.

John Scott - Burdekin Library
http://www.mediafire.com/?uci18zw7gow2cid

What's New 15 June 2011

2011-06-15T10:01:00.000+10:00

Staff your desk wisely

Your library's questions and answers put to their best use. Know when your desk will be busy. Everyone on your staff can find answers to difficult questions.

Just $10 a month per library branch.

Free trial. No credit card required. Pricing details

http://gimlet.us/

Twitter unveils automatic link shortening

TWITTER has overhauled its service, offering automatic link shortening, direct uploading, and a new search engine for photos and videos.

Having trouble fitting a link into just 140 characters?

With Twitter’s new auto link-shortening feature, you can now paste a link of any length into the Tweet box on Twitter.com, after you’ve composed your Tweet and you hit the “Tweet” button it will be shortened to 19 characters. You no longer have to worry about fitting a long link into the 140 character limit.
As part of the rollout process, this will initially be available to a small percentage of users. It will eventually be available for everyone. You should see it soon.
Of course, if you want to keep using your favourite link shortening service, you can continue to do so.

An ability to directly upload photos to the Twittersphere is likely also to influence the way professional and serious Twitter users seek to attract followers. Twitter is likely to become a more visual platform. Read more here.

If you want to know more about Twitter, ask those who already use it at one of two Twitter training sessions next week at slq. Do you want to know how to use Twitter effectively for conferences, workshops, work and as a personal learning network? Some staff already use Twitter and are happy to share their knowledge with you. The sessions will cover effective marketing, how to develop a personal learning network and what’s out there to make Twitter more effective. Sessions will be held in the training room on level 1 on Monday 20 June from 9am to 10am and Tuesday 21 June from 1pm to 2pm. Bring your mobile device, phone or tablet, or you can use a PC or just follow along with someone else.

Feel like getting away from it all?

The OSTRICH provides a refuge for a mid-afternoon power nap. Lying somewhere between a travel cushion and a soft bag to put over your head, the OSTRICH is a design concept that aims to provide a portable retreat from any waking daytime environment where the stresses and strains of the day can melt away. See more images here.

Sendoid

http://sendoid.com

Sendoid is an on-demand peer to peer (P2P) transfer system. It makes transferring any size file between two people as simple as clicking a link! This is done by generating a unique URL where all files are sent P2P rather than stored on the cloud/internet. A desktop app can be downloaded to eliminate size restrictions when sending/downloading files.

A simple explanation about the cloud

You may have heard about cloud computing. People in your work unit may make reference to utilizing The Cloud for an upcoming presentation. Have you ever sent yourself something via email just so you could access the document or file later at another computer? Do you use Google Products like Google Docs, Google Reader, or Google Calendar? Have you uploaded photos to a photo storing site like Flickr to be able to share with friends and family, as well as to be able to access anytime? If so, you’ve used cloud computing.

Cloud computing is simply the act of using a network, usually the Internet, to store information that you want to access from multiple network devices. No longer do you have to worry that the file you need can only be opened from the hard drive of a single computer. By utilizing “The Cloud,” you can get to any of your uploaded information anywhere you have access to the Internet.

Through network devices like laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones, you can utilize cloud computing to access blogs, documents, chat, email, photos, presentations, calendars, to-do lists, spreadsheets, address books, music, games, bookmarks, and much more.

OverDrive Brings Free Books to Windows Phone

OverDrive today released its eBook and audiobook app for Window Phone. Readers at 15,000 public, school, and corporate libraries can now download eBooks and audiobooks directly to their Windows Phone with the free OverDrive Media Console app. This new app enables users to find a library that offers digital books, and then download and enjoy EPUB eBooks, as well as MP3 audiobooks, on their device.

Here is more:

OverDrive’s Windows Phone app provides untethered access to EPUB eBooks and MP3 audiobooks from the library. The app’s “Get Books” feature makes it easy to find a local library, and then browse for titles, check them out with a library card, and download directly to Windows Phone devices. Digital books from the library will automatically expire in the app, so there are never late fees. Users will also benefit from enhancements, such as an orientation lock and custom bookmarks.

The OverDrive app for Windows Phone is now available for download from Windows Phone Marketplace. To see if your local library is a member of the OverDrive network, visit http://search.OverDrive.com .

OverDrive provides digital distribution services for more than 15,000 libraries, retailers, and schools worldwide with support for Windows, Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, Sony Reader, NOOK, Android, BlackBerry, and now Windows Phone.

PDF books free to download

American publishing collective National Academies Press now offers downloads of all of their PDF books free of charge to users. The free PDFs are available exclusively from www.nap.edu, and remain subject to copyright laws which means they must only be shared via approved methods. The National Academies Press, which publishes for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council, states its mission is to “disseminate the institutions' content as widely as possible while maintaining financial sustainability”. The organisation has offered free content online since 1994 with all PDFs free to download in developing countries and 65 percent available for free to any user.

Enjoy

Mary

What’s New 18 May 2011

2011-05-19T12:09:00.000+10:00

What’s New 18 May 2011

EBSCOHost releases an iPhone app
EBSCO has just released an iPhone app. It'll also work on an iPad, but not at full screen.
So how does it work? Log on to an EBSCO database. I’m going to use MasterFile Premier for this example. Scroll down to the bottom of the page. There you should find a link that says EBSCOHost iPhone/iPod Touch Application:

Select EBSCOHost/iPhone and enter an email address. You will receive a link to the App Store (you can also search and find it there without the link), and also a link to click that will marry the app to your specific institution. A very seamless and straightforward process.

There is just a basic search box, no option for "advanced search". Limiters such as Full Text, Peer Reviewed, date etc, appear under the Settings tab, but all the way at the bottom of the screen, below the list of databases. All databases appear to be checked by default.

The app helpfully remembers recent searches, and you can save both searches and articles for later viewing. Individual articles can be emailed, with full text. PDFs are available within the app. Results can be sorted by date or relevance.

Recipefy: Manage, Share and Discover Recipes
http://www.recipefy
Recipefy is an easy to use recipe manager to create and share your cookbook online. Organize recipes by tag, share it with your friends and bookmark your favourite one from people around the world.

Explore Artworks in Top Museums of the World Using Google Art Project
http://www.googleartproject.com/
If the big museums and their amazing art collection are something that you only get to see in the movies and documentaries then you should check out this awesome product by Google that’s called Art Project . It lets you virtually browse the art collection of some of the most well known museums across the globe. You can also explore the museums virtually using this tool.

The Art Project shows you high resolution images with deep zoom levels. It almost gives you the feel that you are standing right in front of them in a museum.

The homepage lists the museums on the left and the options to explore the artwork and the museums themselves on the right.

The Art Project isn’t just about browsing the artworks and the museums. You can also create your own art collections by signing in with your Google account and saving the artworks you like. Then you could add comments at specific zoom levels and share that collection with others.

QR Codes: Resources for Librarians
A QR code (short for Quick Response) is a specific matrix barcode (or 2D code), readable by dedicated QR barcode readers and camera phones. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be text, URL or other data. They are easy to create and offer a quick and interactive way to promote library events and services as well as engage students and patrons.
Blogger Ellyssa, aka the iLibrarian, has compiled a list of resources to get you started. Here are a few:

·         How To: Make Your QR Codes More Beautiful

Hamilton Chan, CEO and founder of Paperlinks, writes a quick guide for Mashable about How To: Make Your QR Codes More Beautiful. This excellent article offers tips and techniques for making these useful barcodes more attractive, including adding color, rounding edges, and incorporating 3D impact.

·         QR Code Quest: a Library Scavenger Hunt

Gwyneth A. Jones, Teacher-Librarian at the Murray Hill Middle School, aka The Daring Librarian has created an exciting QR Code Quest: a Library Scavenger Hunt. This innovative use of QR (quick-response) barcodes was created as a library learning experience for 35 middle-schoolers in an ESOL program. What a great idea!

·         Scanning Library Cards on Smartphones

Brian Herzog at the Swiss Army Librarian writes about Scanning Library Cards on Smartphones. This is a very interesting article about how we can offer convenience for patrons who want to store their library card barcodes on their phones.

·         QR Codes 101: Make Links to Your Website from Anywhere

Charles Hamilton at GigaOm provides a brief explanation of quick-response barcodes in QR Codes 101: Make Links to Your Website from Anywhere. This quick post suggests three different ways that you can leverage these mobile-friendly codes including:
To transfer contact information.
To drive traffic to special offers.
·         To drive traffic to websites from display ads.

I can think of many ways that libraries could use these QR barcodes including:
·         To provide links to stacks guides and maps.

·         To provide the library’s text reference phone number.

To provide links to the library website, blog, and social media profiles.

·         Use QR Codes and Dropbox to Share Event Photos

Matthew Rogers at Lifehacker suggests that the next time you’re planning an event you should Use QR Codes and Dropbox to Share Event Photos. What a great idea!

·         QR Codes and the Library: The Library Audio Tour

Michael Whitchurch, Information Commons Section Head at Brigham Young University, presented

about QR Codes and the Library: The Library Audio Tour at this year’s ACRL 2011 conference.

His paper is now available online along with over 60 top-notch papers from the event.

Free Sites for Creating Word Clouds
A text cloud or word cloud is a visualization of word frequency in a given text as a weighted list - Wikipedia. Useful for visualization, brain storming, and mind mapping.

Here are David Kapular’s list of 10 Free Sites for Creating Word Clouds

Wordle - probably the oldest and most popular of the word cloud creators. Word clouds can be edited with different fonts, colours, layouts, and even shared with others online.

Tagxedo - make word clouds from websites and social networks, and then change the shape to meet your needs (ie, star).

Tagul - similar to Tagxedo, an easy to use tool which creates fun shaped word clouds.

Worditout – make word clouds by just copying/pasting text.

Word Sift - pictures are generated to best represent your word cloud.

VocabGrabber - similar to Word Sift. The clouds generated are colour coded.

Tag Galaxy - an innovative site that visually represents words in a galaxy style format.

Tag Crowd - a simple to use site for creating word clouds by pasting in text or a web page URL.

Quintura - is a visual search engine where results are returned in a word cloud style format.

TwitterSheep - a fun site that generates its results by keywords found in bios from a user's followers.

Food Tales
Food Tales, a joint initiative of the Queensland Writers Centre and the State Library of Queensland, is a celebration of the many traditions, cultures, and memories contained within recipes old and new. In a series of regional tours visiting 11 libraries throughout South West Queensland, Food Tales provides words and stories to the table in a series of luscious narrative feasts to aspiring writers. The tour includes author talks, creative writing workshops and the opportunity to explore what each local library can offer. As an added bonus, the workshops include practical digital publishing discussions with the chance for participants to contribute to the Food Tales website or even set up their own blog.

Check out our Food Tales blog and add your recipe or tale. http://foodtales.slq.qld.gov.au/

What's New 7 April 2011

2011-04-08T13:34:00.000+10:00

Little Bird Tales

Little Bird Tales http://littlebirdtales.com/ is a wonderful site for digital storytelling for young learners. Children can create and upload their artwork, narrate and record their voice, and add text to their story. The finished story can then be viewed online or emailed out.

Watch a demonstration video here.

Amazon Cloud Drive & Cloud Player

Amazon has introduced Cloud Drive and Cloud Player. The two services are connected, but distinct in capabilities and effects.

Amazon Cloud Drive, is similar to Dropbox or Windows SkyDrive. Amazon is giving everyone 5GB of space for free, with the ability to purchase additional storage for $1 per Gigabyte in chunks: 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, or 1000 GB levels are all available. While 5GB free is more than Dropbox's 2GB, and way less than SkyDrive's 25Gb, for raw storage in the cloud, Dropbox has everything else beat in usability. For Cloud Drive, you have to do all file interactions (uploading/downloading) within your browser.

The exciting thing here isn’t Cloud Drive by itself...it’s the associated Cloud Player and the model that Amazon is using for the connection between the two. Cloud Player is a web-based media player that has access to the files uploaded to your Cloud Drive. That is, if you use your Cloud Drive to hold MP3 or AAC encoded music files, those will be automatically available to Cloud Player, and can be streamed to nearly any browser. Cloud Player has the basic controls that you would expect from a music player, allowing you to view your collections by album, artist, or genre. It also allows you to build or import playlists, shuffle, and repeat songs in the same way that pretty much every music player does.

This means that with Cloud Storage + Cloud Player, I can take my own music, upload it to Amazon, and then listen to it anywhere I have a browser...or on the updated Amazon MP3 for Android app on any Android based phone or tablet. In a brilliant marketing move, Amazon is also letting you automatically cross-load any MP3 that you buy from the Amazon MP3 Store directly to your Cloud Drive...and anything that you buy from them doesn’t count against your storage limits. They are also offering a free upgrade to their 20GB storage level if you just buy any MP3 album from Amazon through the end of 2011. So you can purchase any amount of music from Amazon, and it will all be available for streaming to any computer or directly to your phone if you have an Android handset. For free.

Screen Reading

Do you need a screen reader? NonVisual Desktop Access NVDA is an Australian free and open source screen reader for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Providing feedback via synthetic speech and Braille, it enables blind or vision impaired people to access computers running Windows for no more cost than a sighted person. Major features include support for over 20 languages and the ability to run entirely from a USB drive with no installation. You can download the application to your computer and it will screen read with spoken or braille outputs. It even comes with a portable version, which you can keep on a memory stick and plug in anywhere you need to.

Why not put it on your public library terminals?

Give Away Some Ebooks

The Denver International Airport has some large advertisements up in the airport giving away free ebooks (see the pic in this post). All you need is a smartphone with a QR Code reader – aim and read the code, and you were directed to download a free ebook. The books are “free” out-of-print classics. For most people – people who are stuck at the airport with nothing much to do – what a cool idea! Give them a book (even if it’s freely available online), and brand it as your business.

How can this work for a library?

Why not copy this idea? Use a QR Code, put up a sign at your shopping centre or the local store, and offer a “free” ebook (perhaps something free from Project Gutenberg). Send the user to a mobile webpage, branded as your library – with a link to the ebook, and some info about your other cool services.

In essence, it looks like the library is giving away a free ebook – that works with multiple ereaders!

Create Your Own QR Codes

QR Codes are 2 dimensional barcodes that are easily scanned using any modern mobile phone. This code will then be converted (called "dequrified") into a piece of (interactive) text and/or link. For instance, you walk around in the city and notice a poster for an event that seems interesting. You take out your mobile phone, scan the QR Code and will instantly get more information and a link to a website where you can book your tickets. You don't have to type or remember anything and because QR Codes can be very small, this saves a lot of space on the product as well.

Here are some QR-Code Generators –

1. Kaywa - http://qrcode.kaywa.com/

Simply add the URL, telephone number, text or SMS you want to link. Select what size you want and Generate.

2. Qurify - http://www.qurify.com/en/

· Type your message

· Click “Qurify”

· Download the QR Code image

· QR Code done

3. i-nigma - http://www.i-nigma.com/CreateBarcodes.html

You can encode either a link to a website, a message to a friend, or your contact details. Then turn the information into a mobile barcode, one that can be printed on stationery, advertising or packaging, a t-shirt, or even built into a website or a Facebook page - and read by an i-nigma enabled mobile device.

LuLu

LuLu http://www.lulu.com/ is a site that meets all publishing needs. You can create books, ebooks, photobooks and calendars. Simply upload a file, choose a theme and create your ebook.

Watch a video demo here.

What's New 4 February 2011

2011-02-04T12:17:00.000+10:00

Simple Way to Share Files
I like syncing services like Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTExNTU4NTc5 because I can keep my files synced across multiple computers. Dropbox makes sharing files with your clients and colleagues super easy.

One of the challenges with Dropbox is that it requires the other person to download and install the Dropbox application. Quite a few organizations don’t allow the installation of outside applications. Plus, many people are blocked from accessing the Dropbox site because it’s a file sharing site.

This is where Airdropper http://airdropper.com/ comes in. It’s a service that lets you create a way for people to upload and send files to your Dropbox without requiring that they actually sign up or download any Dropbox applications. Essentially, you share a folder with Airdropper and they send the files to you via that folder.

Juxio
http://www.juxio.com/beta/index.php
Juxio is a site for creating visual mash-ups. Juxio allows you to easily create elegant, large-format posters for display at events such as birthdays, anniversaries and graduations. During Beta, they've added templates to simplify the poster-making process and to provide smaller formats for personal framing and gift-giving. Educators and librarians in particular have found Juxio's simple, linear, organized way to tell stories a useful tool.

How to Create Printable Booklets in Microsoft Word
Have you ever needed to create a small booklet of literature for your library? Thankfully Microsoft Word 2010 makes the process easy. Here’s the quick guide on how to do it.
Create Booklets
Open Word and select the Page Layout tab, then click on the icon in the corner of Page Setup to launch the Page Setup dialog. It’s probably best to do this before creating your document, then you’ll get a better idea of how the layout will look. However, you can make your document first then create the Booklet layout, and edit it from there.

In the Page Setup screen under Pages, change multiple pages to Book fold from the dropdown.

You might also want to change the Gutter setting under Margins from 0 to 1. Otherwise, there is a chance words will get jumbled in the binding or crease of your booklet. Also, after selecting Book Fold Word automatically changes to Landscape Orientation.

Click OK after you’ve made your adjustments, and you’ll be able to get an idea of what your booklet will look like.

Of course you will have the power of Word 2010’s editing features so you can make your booklet as simple or complex as you want.

After you have the Booklet setup in word, you can navigate to each page, and make any edits or changes you need.

You can also create booklets in Office 2003 & 2007, but of course the options and layouts are different.

PreZentit
PreZentit is a new free site which allows you to create, share and show your slide show presentations.
· Work with your team in the same presentation at the same time.
· Your presentations can be private or public. And each one has its own web address.
· Download your presentations and show them even without an Internet connection.
· There is no limit in the number or length of the presentations and you have 250MB to store your images.
· The presentations are web pages (HTML) so you could even edit them manually (if you want it)..

Miro Video Converter
http://mirovideoconverter.com/
Miro Video Converter is a free super simple way to convert almost any video to MP4, WebM (vp8) Ogg Theora, or for Android, iPhone and more.

Doing Research with Google Scholar
Google Scholar http://scholar.google.com/schhp?hl=en&tab=ws is a search engine by Google that has been out for a few years now and aims to make academic research a little more mainstream.
Using the Google Scholar portal, you can make basic or advanced searches for peer-reviewed journal articles, court decisions, magazine articles, books, patents, editorials, and other similar written publications.

Google Scholar offers a far more user-friendly interface than the typical journal index. It also provides direct links to the material. However, its scope is still limited, mainly to material <1o years old and in electronic format.. Also, no single search engine, not even Google, can perfectly index all of the academic material in the world, let alone cyberspace.

Google Scholar Search Tips
Google Scholar allows you to search by author, title, year, and/or keywords. You can enter these in the specific fields in the advanced search section, or use advanced operators to specify your search terms. Here are some examples:
1. Author search – use the “author:” operator, e.g., author:”r dawkins” or author:”richard dawkins”.

2. “intitle:” operator only returns results that include your search term in the document’s title, e.g., intitle:neuroscience.

3. “+” operator makes sure your results include common words, numbers, or letters that Google’s search technology generally ignores, e.g., “+no carbon footprint”.

4. “-” operator excludes all results that include this search term, e.g., “diamond -author:diamond”.

5. use of quotation marks to phrase search to match the exact string of words, e.g., “the tea party”.

6. “OR” operator returns results that include either of your search terms, e.g., ruby OR sapphire.

Google Scholar Email Alerts
Another useful related tool is to sign up for email alerts by doing a scholar search on a topic, e.g., “particle physics”, and click on the envelope icon on the green bar that says “Create email alert”. This allows your email account to receive notices whenever a new paper/article/etc. that matches the search parameters is published.

Music Theory
http://www.musictheory.net/
Music Theory is a site designed to teach different aspects of music and includes lessons, exercises, and tools. Great for both music teachers and students.

Voices in the Dark
http://voicesinthedark.com/content.php?iContent=50
Voices in the Dark is a free site in which audio books and stories are read aloud by real people for free. Categories include mystery, poetry, fairy tales and fantasy.

What's New 25 January 2011

2011-01-25T11:54:00.000+10:00

Top 10 Sites for Images and Clip Art
Finding images on the internet for use has been a problem for many librarians and educators, for reasons such as copyright privileges, inappropriateness, etc.
While there are a number of paid solutions for finding images such as Nettrekker or Discovery Streaming, there are a number of free alternatives that work nicely as well.
This list includes:
Pics4Learning - Very popular site to find free, safe-to-use images
Pics4Learning - Very popular site to find free, safe-to-use images
Open Clip Art - Great way to find free clip art.
Go to the full article to see all ten sites http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/35376.

Grow with Good Reading
Recently gr helped run a competition in conjunction with Joondalup Library in WA for the promotion of gr online (gro). The results were brilliant!
Joondalup saw a significant boost in online stats for gro, library members won prizes and there was an overall increase of online resources awareness.

If you would like to find out how gr can help with in-house competitions to promote gro, email Bonnie at: subscriptions@goodreadingmagazine.com.au

Incredibox
Incredibox http://www.incredibox.fr/ is a fun site for creating and mixing music similar to Soundation Studio. It is user friendly and allows you to drag and drop your choices lots such as: effects, voice, chorus, etc.

Google knows what time it is where you are
This is likely very old news, but it's new to me so I thought I'd share. I just noticed that within Gmail, Google will tell you what time it currently is where the sender of an email is.
A little thing, but pretty cool and potentially very useful!

Google Place Search
Google have introduced Place Search, a new kind of search result that organizes the world’s information around places. Whether you’re looking for a park, a great restaurant or a local plumber, you’ll find what you’re looking for more quickly and easily. They have clustered search results around specific locations so you can make comparisons and decide where to go. You should already be seeing place results automatically for many local searches. If you don’t see Place Search results at first, you can always click Places in the left-hand panel of the results page.

On the right hand side of each result, there’s a review and place page link that directs you to the corresponding Google Maps location review page for that place.

Best Free Web Stuff for Broke Libraries
Here is Sarah Houghton Jan’s presentation for the best free web stuff for broke libraries from Internet Librarian 2010. Enjoy!
http://www.slideshare.net/librarianinblack/il10-freestuff
Sarah will be a keynote speaker at the ALIA Information Online 2011 conference in February.

Mybrainshark
My brainshark http://my.brainshark.com/ is a great free site for creating online slide shows/presentations or adding voice/effects to existing ones. This site can also be used for a number of different educational purposes, such as creating a podcast, powerpoint, etc.

DeweyDigger
DeweyDigger http://cyber-kap.blogspot.com/2010/10/deweydigger.html is a site that is designed to categorize the web via the Dewy Decimal system. It works very much like a search a engine and the results are a combination of articles, pictures, and videos. The user has the ability to share their results page via a uniquely generated URL.

What's New 3 December 2010

2010-12-03T11:16:00.006+10:00

Google Gives Searchers ‘Instant Previews’ of Result Pages

Noticed something different with Google? Google now offers you an instant preview of webpages for your search query. “Instant previews” are snapshots of webpages stored on Google’s servers that pop up on the right side of your screen. They can be launched by clicking on a magnifying glass that shows up to the right of a search-result link.

Mobile Number Lookup Tells You Which Network a Contact Uses

This tool lets you lookup any Australian mobile number to check which network they reside on. This is particularly handy to see whether you can use your free talk time, free sms and other services available only to other mobiles on the same network as you.

http://www.smsfun.com.au/mobile_lookup.php.

Search For Creative Commons-Licensed Media At CC Search

http://labs.creativecommons.org/demos/search/

It’s a challenge to find exactly what you need among the mountains of Creative Commons works on the web. CC Search scans nine popular media providers to drill down and find the CC-licensed media you’re looking for. CC Search is an updated and expanded version of the Creative Commons search tool. You can search for CC licensed content (including those works licensed for commercial use and/or to be modified and built upon). CC Search taps into Blip.tv, Flickr, Fotopedia, Google, Jamendo, Open Clip Art Library, SpinXpress and Wikimedia Commons. The spread of sources ensures you can find audio, video, images and more. Try out CC Search and find Creative Common licensed works for your next project CC Search.

Get Your Loaned Item Back with This Simple Tracking Systems

Remember when you completely forgot to ask your friend to return your favourite book or DVD? ReturnMyPants provides a solution to this problem. ReturnMyPants is a free personal inventory tracking system, it uses a simple form to let you record the details of the items you lent or borrowed from your friend, it even allows you to send a friendly reminder email to the borrower of your precious item. Making it impossible for you to loose a book again!

http://www.returnmypants.com/

QR codes link patrons to the library

Imagine if students could simply scan a barcode at the bottom of your handout with their cell phone and be taken to a website or tutorial you’d created. This sort of seamless access is now possible with QR codes. Also known as Quick Response codes, QR codes are 2D barcodes that any camera-enabled mobile phone can read. There are many free websites where you can generate QR codes. You can program the barcode to take users to a website; dial a phone number or send a text; or pull up text, image, or video content. To scan a QR code, mobile users need to download one of the many free QR code readers available. This article highlights the potential applications for QR codes in libraries, providing yet another way to connect with your users. Read the full article at: http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/columns/practice/guided-barcodes#comment-770

Google’s Nifty Guide To Web Technology
20 Things I Learned About Browsers & The Web is actually an interactive web app meant to look like a children’s book. The book’s content is all about web technology, the interactive book itself shows off some of that technology as it’s built entirely in HTML5. And it’s very slick. Cool things about the book include clickable table of contents, a quick-jump area along the bottom, and if you hover over the corner of a page, it will even curl and the bookmark which doubles as a share button. If you hover over the area, the bookmark will drop down and reveal buttons to share on Facebook, Twitter. Browse the book at: http://www.20thingsilearned.com/

Water Storage Mobile Phone App - Tracks Catchments Across AustraliaWant to know if some of that rain managed to hit the damn. Keep track of how much water is being stored Australia wide with the Water Storage app, built by those weather-loving types at the Bureau of Meteorology. The app covers more than 250 sites across Australia, as well as aggregating city and state figures, and is updated daily with the latest data. Download the free app at: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/water-storage/id380627384

YouTube Social

http://www.youtubesocial.com/

YouTube Social lets you and your friends watch videos at the same time and chat through one unified web interface. YouTube Social gives you a neat interface in which you can enjoy the video with your friends and IM them at the same time. Just head to any YouTube video and add social in between youtube and .com in the URL (i.e. http://www.youtubesocial.com/watch?v=o_NUKxjBlKI). Alternatively, you can search through YouTube’s database straight from http://www.youtubesocial.com/

Is there an app for that?

2010-12-01T11:26:00.003+10:00

What is an app?

APP is an abbreviation for application. Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform singular or multiple related specific tasks. It helps to solve problems in the real world. Application software is contrasted with system software and middleware, which manage and integrate a computer's capabilities, but typically do not directly apply them in the performance of tasks that benefit the user.

What is Android?

Android is a mobile operating system initially developed by Android Inc., a firm purchased by Google in 2005. Android is based upon a modified version of the Linux kernel.

Go to www.android.com/market/ to search for Android apps

Go to http://www.itunes.com/ to search for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch apps

The Apps

Social Networking

Facebook – iPhone, Android

Twitter - Tweetdeck iPhone and android

– Twitteriffic for iPhone, iPad
– Twidroid – for Android
– Tumblr – Android

Office

Documents Free – for iPad and iPhone

GDocs – Android. Allows users to edit, view, create, import, export and send documents as well sync documents with their Google Docs account.

Listable – iPhone

- Allows users to share to-do lists with partners, housemates or colleagues. Once you’ve set up a list, you can share it via an e-mail invite. The new collaborator can then view the list on his or her iPhone, or online if they are iPhone deficient.

- lists are simple - you create tasks as text entries and then tick them off or delete them once complete.

- the app also offers an “activity stream” view, so if you have shared lists with others, there’s an at-a-glance way to view who has done what, and when.

DropBox – app for iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry is software that syncs your files online and across your computers.

- Put your files into your DropBox folder on one computer, and they'll automatically appear on any of your other computers that also have DropBox installed (Windows, Mac, and Linux too!).

- The Public Folder lets you easily share single files in your DropBbox. Any file you put in this folder gets its own Internet link so that you can share it with others-- even non-DropBox users! These links work even if your computer is turned off.

- My dropBox file is at C Drive – Docs & settings – makajew – my docs – my dropbox

Printing for iPad – for iPad only

Bump – iPhone and Android

- a quick and easy way to connect two phones, simply bump them together

- share contacts info, pictures, calendar events, and even connect on social networks with just a bump

Calendar – Outlook – Citrix web - iPhone & iPad

Find iPhone -

Notes

Books

Amazon Kindle – iPhone, iPad & Android

iBooks – iPhone, iPad

eBook Reader

Borders

FreeBooks
Kobo – 1.8 million Free Books

BlueFire Reader – iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch

- First free application to allow access to public library books on iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches. It allows you to download to your iPAD from Overdrive via Adobe Digital Reader.

- Brings e-books from public libraries, independent bookstores and national retailers into a single digital library on mobile devices

- Full-featured customizations including adjustable text size, fonts and colour schemes; text highlighting and annotations; bookmarks; night mode; and table of contents;

EBSCO host – iPad, iPhone, and Android. Optimized for the smaller screens of mobile devices and still includes many of the same features available in EBSCOhost. You can search across multiple databases, email articles, and read full articles right from your phone.

Shopping and Banking

eBay – iPhone, iPad and Android

Lasoo – iPad and iPhone

- catalogues

ShopSavvy – Android and iPhone. Enter a product name or barcode (using the keypad or the camera), and ShopSavvy identifies the product, searches the Web and local chain stores for the best prices, and collects reviews of the item

Keyring – Android and iPhone

NAB

St George

Myer magazine

Music

Shazam – Android and iPhone

Virtuoso Piano – iPad and iPod Touch

Metronome – iPad, iPhone & iPod Touch

Steinway Metronome – Free with more options than above

Getting around and where to go

Around Me – iPhone

MyBrisbane – It includes all great Brisbane area live traffic camera, speed camera , latest council traffic report and weather report, radar and satellite images. Plus MORE, Brisbane Airport Flight Info, Translink timetable, lowest Fuel Price and more.

Hightlights :
1. Live Traffic Web Cam
2. Speed Camera on Map
3. Live Traffic & Road Work Report
4. Weather Report (Text,Images,Video)
5. Translink Timetable (Ferry,Bus,Train)
6. Brisbane Airport Flight Information
7. Greater Union Movie Session & Online Purchases
8. Cheap Beer & Liquid Search
10. Static Ice Technology Gadgets Price Search
11. Your Restaurants Search
12. Yellow Pages Function.
--New Function-
13. Breaking News
14. Brisbane Lions News
15. Exclusive Discount Coupons
Everything you need to survive in Brisbane.

Wifi or 3G Internet Connection is required for this application

Games and Entertainment

Hangman

Tap Tap (similar to Guitar Hero)

Spider Solitaire -

Tic Tac Toe

Grand Theft Auto

Paper Toss

Angry Birds

Cut the Rope

Bubble Shooter - iPad

Sudoku

Whirly word

Wordstorm

Chickionary – iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android

Wordsearch

What's New 17 November 2010 - iPhone Special

2010-11-18T13:57:00.002+10:00

With the increased popularity and ownership of iPhones, this weeks ‘What’s New’ pays homage to cool iPhone apps.

Google search app for Windows Phone 7

Google has released its first Windows Phone 7 app: Google Search. The application allows you to search in four sections: web, images, local, news and more. The Google Search app includes several features that help you to search faster – suggestions appear automatically as you type, you can choose to repeat a query from your search history, and your current location is used to provide more relevant results. Get Google Search at: http://www.google.com.au/mobile/search/

Path - “personal network” app for the iPhone

Path is a new free social network app for the iPhone that lets you share what’s going on in your life with friends and family. Path is based on sharing photographs. Snap one on your iPhone, tag it with any number of people, places or things, and fire it off to your friends. It’ll show up on their Paths and a feature called “See” shows you which of your friends have actually stopped by and viewed your photo. Download Path for your iPhone here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/path/id403639508?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4

Lonely Planet Sydney Guide Free For iPhone Users

A couple of weeks ago, Lonely Planet were offering its Melbourne city guide for iPhone users free of charge. Now it has a similar deal for its Sydney iPhone app. Grab it now for free, especially as Lonely Planet hasn’t said how long it will offer the app for free before reverting to full price. Download it free for your iPhone here: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/lonely-planet-sydney-city/id334758552?mt=8

FixVegas iPhone Application

Have you noticed something in need of fixing around Brisbane? From blocked drains to damaged street signs, rubbish or graffiti, FixVegas allows you to send fix-o-gram requests directly to Brisbane City Council. Just use FixVegas to snap a shot of the problem and your fix-o-gram is submitted to Council along with the location information of the issue that you are reporting. Download it free for your iPhone here: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/fixvegas/id371652681?mt=8

Menulog

How many times have you wished you could order your food while you’re out and have it delivered to your home when you arrive? Now you can order your food at any time, anywhere! Get Menulog’s free Mobile App and have access to 900+ delivery restaurants in the palm of your hand. Download it for your iPhone here: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/home-delivery-takeaway/id327982905?mt=8

(Don’t have an iPhone. Don’t panic you can use the online version http://www.menulog.com.au/)

How to read public library eBooks with DRM on an iPhone

Bluefire Reader is an eBook app for iOS which lets you read digital books in PDF and ePub formats. As of today, it supports the DRM used by public libraries, which means you can download free eBooks from hundreds of public library web sites and read them on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. Up until now you could only read those books on a Sony Reader or a computer.

Bluefire is available as a free download at: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/bluefire-reader/id394275498?mt=8

For ‘how to’ instructions, read the full article at: http://mobiputing.com/2010/11/how-to-read-public-library-ebooks-with-drm-on-an-iphone/

Skype on your iPhone

With Skype on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, you can make and receive calls, and instant message anyone else on Skype, wherever they are in the world. You can also save on international calls and text messages to phones. With the latest version, you can now call over 3G*, and keep Skype running in the background. Download it free for your iPhone here: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/skype/id304878510?mt=8

AppBox Lite

AppBox Lite are 10 Useful apps in One application! Just a few of the apps include currency codes, date calculator (ie days between dates), holidays for 83 countries, Bar Chart for price, quantity, and unit price, as well as a tip calculator. Download it free for your iPhone here: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/appbox-lite/id307094023?mt=8

What’s New 11 November 2010

2010-11-11T12:04:00.000+10:00

Batalugu: create digital books

Batalugu [http://batalugu.com/] is a new free (beta) site that is great for creating digital books. The easy to use on-line tools will take you on a step by step journey as you write, rhyme, illustrate, design and print your book. This user friendly site has lots of options to choose from such as: themes, page layout, and is ideal for digital storytelling. The book you create can be shared online with everyone.

Get Your Loaned Item Back with These Simple Tracking Systems

Remember when you completely forgot to ask your friend to return your favorite DVD? It’s time to start using a good system to keep track of the items that you lend or borrow to your friends.

· ReturnMyPants [http://www.returnmypants.com/ ] is a personal inventory tracking system that helps you keep track of items that you lend or borrow.

· IOWEYou [http://www.ioweyou.co.uk/ ] is a similar service to ReturnMyPants designed to keep track of money that you borrow or lend among your peers.

How to Force Reboot and Quit Apps on iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch

Like all operating systems, sometimes iOS will slow down or applications will freeze. If you do have an application freeze, your best bet will be to try and force quit the application first. It that doesn’t work, or your device is completely frozen, you can force reboot your device instead.

· Manually Force Quit Apps

If you’re using an older device that doesn’t support multi-tasking, you can quit an application manually—though this also works as a force quit on the newer devices if you prefer. You’ll need to follow the following steps:

· Hold down the Sleep/Wake Button on the top.

· Wait for a red slider to appear. Don’t slide it.

· Let go of the Sleep/Wake Button.

· Hold down the home button and the app will force quit.

Once you’re back on the home screen the application should be closed, and you can re-open it normally again.

· Reboot Your Device Normally

If your device is completely frozen, or you’re having other problems, you’ll want to reboot your device instead of just quitting an app. You can simply hold down the Sleep/Wake button until the red slider appears, and then slide it across.

Once the device is off, you can use the Sleep/Wake button to turn it back on again—just hold the button down.

· Force Your Device to Reboot Manually

If the device is just completely frozen—which shouldn’t usually happen, but every so often it does—you can hold down both the Sleep/Wake button and the Home button at the same time until the device reboots itself.

Make sure you let go of the buttons once the device starts rebooting, otherwise you might end up in Recovery Mode, which you probably don’t want.

How-To Photoshop for beginners

Photoshop is one of the most intimidating programs for any beginner, but has powerful image editing ability for any skill level. Look through a fresh install of CS5, and learn the basic tools and info to help you get started.

· The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 1: The Toolbox

· The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 2: Panels

· The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 3: Layers

· The How-To Geek Guide to Learning Photoshop, Part 4: Basic Menus

Share Your Training Materials with the WebJunction Community

WebJunction is developing a collection of library technology training resources and assets for all of their members to adapt and reuse. Based on their 2010 survey results, the following topics are most needed for public training:

• MS Office
• Social Networking
• Internet (Email and Web basics)
• Computer Basics
• Collaborative Tools

If you have training materials (such as lesson plans, handouts, PowerPoints, links to tutorials) to share as part of this project, please email them to Stephanie Gerding: stephaniegerding@gmail.com . All materials will be posted to WebJunction with credit to you/and or your library and will be available for free download for noncommercial use.

What is Dropbox?

Whatch the new Common Craft Video on Dropbox.com

Common Craft worked with Dropbox on the video that appears on the Dropbox.com front page (when not logged in).

alt="Dropbox Common Craft Video">

Apple’s iBookstore is open, but why so pricey?

Australians can now use ther iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch as a serious e-book reader after Apple opened the doors to its iBookstore on 3^rd November. There are more than 40,000 books available for download in Apple’s iBookstore. Want to read John Howard’s Lazarus Rising? It’s available for download at a cost of $32.99.

But some e-book stores are offering more books at significantly cheaper prices. And they’ve been doing so for months and months. Unlike the giant lead Apple earned with the iPad tablet, the company is late to the electronic books race. Amazon’s Kindle has been there since April. The company was present for the iPad launch, offering users the chance to download titles they had already bought to their new gadget.

Then there is the Borders Kobo store. Australia’s Borders book group launched their book app in May. That’s a long lead time over Apple, even if they are delivering books for use on Apple’s gadget as well as their own. Plus, both of these stores have many more titles available than Apple (40,000 versus 2.1 million = ouch).

So will you buy into e-books on the iPad or iPhone? Are you ready to turn that screen into a page?

Read the full article here. [http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/hitech/index.php/couriermail/comments/apples_ibookstore_is_open_but_why_so_pricey/]

Calibre: the ebook management tool

If you have e-books, do you also have Calibre [http://calibre-ebook.com/]– the ebook management tool?

It’s not very stylish looking but it is effective. It manages your ebooks, converts files so that they can be read on any device, feeds you news content to view on your reader and is open source.

See the demos here [http://calibre-ebook.com/demo].

What’s New 26 October 2010

2010-10-26T16:01:00.000+10:00

What’s New 26 October 2010

Sketchcast – digital storytelling

http://sketchcast.com

Sketchcast is another free option for digital storytelling. It is also a tool for recording brainstorming sessions, or for creating a ‘presentation’.

Sketchcasting allows you to communicate something online by recording a sketch, optionally with your voice speaking. Any sketch can then be embedded on your blog/ homepage for people to play-back.

You can just let your ideas flow. Here are some examples, but don't let them restrict your creativity!

· Create a tutorial explaining how something works

· Explain a math formula

· Create a cartoon (you can use the eraser tool to make place for several panels of the cartoon)

· Get a partner and explain a concept together... voice recording doesn't have to be used by only one person!

· Create an online course

· Create a riddle for kids: draw something and children have to guess while you're drawing

· and much more...

One place to find everything new from Google

http://www.google.com/newproducts/

If it seems to you like every day Google releases a new product or feature, well, it seems like that to me too.

watch great video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql7jGchLAWE&feature=player_embedded
If you want to keep up just with what’s new (or even just what Google does besides search), you’ll want to know about Google New. Hope it helps you find something useful you’ve never tried before.

Justpaste.it

http://justpast.it

Justpaste.it is a great free site for sharing text or images with other users. This is a very user friendly site that any word processing user would feel right at home with. All you have to do is enter text or an image and then click publish to get a unique URL to share w/ others.

Singing Fingers

A free ipad app that lets you record sounds to actions and then play them back by tracing the action.

Watch a demo here [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCYA7N-vdZA&feature=player_embedded ].

A YouTube Symphony

youtube.com/symphony

Allows musicians worldwide to audition for an international orchestra using the YouTube platform.

Amazon to allow lending of books on kindle

Amazon is letting Kindle users know that they will be introducing Kindle book lending “later this year.” Of course this isn’t the kind of lending that you can do with a real book made out of dead trees, where you could pass it around your entire extended family.
From what Amazon says in its letter you can lend a book for a period of 14 days, but the lender can’t read the book at the same time. An eBook can be lent once and that’s it. And, of course publishers can choose to turn this off and not allow it for their books if they so choose. I’m guessing most of the publishers can’t wait until technology allows eBook reading devices to transmit back to them when a different user than the one who owns the device is reading a book.
We’ll have to see how this plays out. Keep in mind Barnes & Noble has allowed lending with the Nook for some time now, so this is probably the only front that Amazon is playing catch up with that platform on.
In the same letter Amazon also lets users know that they will be able to read newspapers and periodicals on other devices that can use the Kindle software. This will start on iOS devices and then move to Android and migrate to other devices from there.

Print files from anywhere via any device with Dropbox

https://www.dropbox.com/

Have you ever wanted to print something from your iPhone, or needed to print something on your office printer from your netbook at home? Here’s how you can make Dropbox into a quasi virtual print server.

Syncing files between your own computers or sharing them halfway around the world is simple and quick with Dropbox. The only problem is, these files are digital. Even today, sometimes we all need printouts of our documents on paper. Most of us are not near a printer all the time, and often today we’re using documents on mobile devices that can’t even print normally.

Dropbox, amazingly, can be a solution to this. A free VBS script allows you to set your computer to automatically print any file you place in a certain folder in Dropbox. This way, you can save a file to this folder from your smartphone, and get the printout within seconds from your desktop. See how this works.

What's New 21 September 2010

2010-09-21T13:38:00.000+10:00

Twitter hashtags: quick guide

Twitter hashtags are the strange little oddities that you find on lots of tweets. They use the hash symbol # followed by something else, so an example would be #mylang. They're very useful, but can be a bit puzzling, so let's shine a light on them. Hashtags are informal, they are not something that Twitter has instituted, and there are no rules about how they are used, just a general code of practice.

Why do they exist? Suppose that you're interested in a particular subject, conference, television program, event or other similar 'thing'. If anyone you follow tweets about it, the chances are that you'll see it, but what about all the other people who are also talking about the same thing who you don't follow? You'll be missing all their tweets and information. Now, you can of course do a search at any number of search engines to try and find appropriate information, but how do you find it? There are plenty of different ways that you can refer to something - in short, there's no controlled vocabulary. However, if people can agree on a specific word to use in their tweets, this can in part be overcome, as you can just search for that word, and to enhance, or emphasis it, the # helps identify the keyword even more. Consequently, you can then just search for #keyword and you'll see all the tweets that people are writing, all gathered together in one place.

A second way in which tweets are used is to emphasis something - it's almost like writing in bold or italics - people don't really expect you to search for similar tweets, they're just making their own personal point, such as #gladitsfriday although sometimes these hashtags do seem to take on a life of their own, and you'll find that other people start to use them - I see #latenightlibrarian quite often for example.

You may also find that people will use a specific hashtag to gather a series of tweets together if they're running a training course, just to make it easy for everyone to see what everyone is up to.

There are of course disadvantages to this system. Since it's unofficial and people make it up as they go along, you'll find that the same event can be referred to by any number of hashtags, which kind of defeats the point really! The television show Big Brother might be referred to as #BB or #BB11 or #BigBrother or #BigBro but generally you'll find that after a short space of time a common usage will prevail. Some people write really long hashtags, which I think is ill-advised, since every hashtag character reduces the amount of tweet space you have. The shorter the tag, the better. Ideally a tag should make some sort of sense - a tweet with #mylang on it is probably going to be about MyLanguage. However, as long as a group of people agree on a tag, it doesn't matter what it is. Hashtags also break quite easily, since they only work with a basic character set, and symbols can break them, since it's only the first part of the tag that will be recognised, so #Web2.0 would be seen as #Web2. Another disadvantage is that if spammers see a hashtag trending they can add in their own spam, together with the tag, and this can be rather irritating.

Conference organisers may wish to make use of resources such as TweetChat, TwitterFall, or TweetGrid to display the tags real time.

Printable Flyer Templates Now Live

Printable Flyer Templates [http://www.PrintableFlyerTemplates.net/] has 40 flyer templates in DOC and PDF formats.

There are templates for lost cats, garage sales, apartments for rent, door hangers, and parties/events. Templates are divided into categories and searchable by keyword (which isn’t necessary because there aren’t huge numbers of templates.) If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you can request a new template.

All templates are available in DOC and PDF format. You have to accept a terms of use to download them but you don’t have to register.

What Does It Mean to Be Literate

The official definition from the dictionary defines "to be literate" as:

able to read and write

There is change in the air though.

Being able to read and write seems to remain as the same definition. What is changing, at a rapid speed though, is the medium we are reading in and writing with. No longer is reading a handwritten letter or note, a printed sheet of paper, a poster, a telephone book, a newspaper, a magazine or a book the only medium of communicating information. Since having access to the Internet has become mainstream over the past 10 years, being able to find and read a website has expanded the notion of what it means to be "able to read". New forms of media are being developed and are allowing us to take information in, to be able to "read" in new shapes and forms. With the beginning of web 2.0, the shift from simply consuming (reading) information/content to having the ability of producing (writing) information and content has now expanded the notion of writing as well. The options, that are available to us humans, to communicate in another form, other than speaking verbally to someone face to face, has exponentially grown in the last 5 years. Being able to expand the reach of our communication has opened up opportunities that have not existed before in history. Read more.

Help Computer Users Remotely with TeamViewer

Before remote software, helping your clients, friends and family with computer problems often meant hours on the phone trying to remember what a menu looked like or where a file was saved. With TeamViewer [ http://www.teamviewer.com ] you can remotely help your friends and family on any major operating system straight from your computer, the web, or on the go with your iPhone or iPad. Simply install the free TeamViewer full version on your computer for you to provide remote support for your users. You can both send and receive support with the TeamViewer full version installed on your computer. The full version is completely free for personal use.

Remote Support

With TeamViewer you can remotely control any computer as if you were sitting right in front of it - even through firewalls.
All your partner has to do is start a small application, which does not even require installation or administrative rights.

Meetings / Presentations

Teamwork, presentations and sales talks - a picture says more than a thousand words.
TeamViewer enables you to share your desktop with other people over the internet, even through firewalls - the ideal solution for online collaboration.

Remote Access / Remote Office

Access all your computers and servers remotely around the clock. Need access to your computers on the road?

Complete Guide to Breathing New Life into Your Old PC or Laptop

Do you have an older PC or laptop lying around just collecting dust and not sure what to do with it? Here is a guide on how to bring it back to life.

Before making any changes to your hardware, make sure you backup your system first. Read the article

Art Babble

Art Babble is a great site to find videos about art. Search for videos based on artist or channel (subject).
Give Art Babble a try by clicking here [http://www.artbabble.org].

Good Reading Magazine

Do you:

· Love to read independent reviews of all the latest books?

· Want to keep in the loop with the most recent book gossip?

· Enjoy reading interviews with your favourite authors?

Then Good Reading is your online magazine!

Good Reading is an Australian monthly online magazine dedicated to books and reading. It aims to introduce readers to new and previously published books and authors, all reviewed and discussed by independent writers and reviewers as well as helps general readers, library staff and students find exactly what they like to read.

Good Reading has everything for book lovers, including quizzes, competitions, book trivia, author profiles, reader reviews and more.

Offsite access to the Good Reading database is available for SLQ e-services members and Queensland public library (QPL) account holders.

Follow Good Reading Magazine now on Twitter, Facebook and RSS blog feed. Good Reading also produces a free monthly e-newsletter for readers with all the latest book gossip and trivia. Register here to receive your free copy.

The Good Reading Events Calendar lists book-related events near you. From festivals, exhibitions, author talks, book signings and launches to literary lunches and dinners, there's always something happening in the book world.

Need some help to use Good Reading Online? Why not take a minute to view their helpful tutorials.

Part 1
Getting started
Browsing Good Reading magazine
Accessing the Good Reading website
Part 2
Printing
Emailing a friend
Part 3
Archives
Keyword searching

What's New 4 August 2010

2010-08-04T12:37:00.000+10:00

Can I legally use Microsoft Office on two computers? Yes, you can!

In a twitter reply by Microsoft Australia (MSAU) today, we were reminded of a Microsoft Office license term that many people aren't aware of. The reply to a tweeted question stated that whilst the Home and Student edition of Microsoft Office is licensed for installation on up to three machines, all other versions of Microsoft Office are in fact licensed for installation on two machines. Specifically, the license terms state:

The tweet from Microsoft Australia offered an interesting insight that you might not have been aware of: any version of Microsoft Office can be used on both your home computer and a laptop. As long as both systems belong to you and you're the person who bought the copy of Office - that counts as acceptable use. That's a very handy titbit of information.

After all, if you're using your computers for commercial purposes (making money with them in any way) you're obviously not supposed to be using the three-system-friendly Office Home and Student versions. Thanks to section c, however, you can set up your portable install on a laptop or netbook and still be fully compliant -- without having to hand out more money for a second copy of Office.

Connect your iPhone or iPod Touch to a Wi-Fi Network

Have you ever wanted to connect your iPhone/iPod Touch to a Wi-Fi network at home, work or your favourite coffee shop but aren’t sure how? Here’s how:

· Find and select the Settings icon on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

· Select Wi-Fi from the Settings menu.

· If your Wi-Fi setting currently set to Off, tap it to toggle On the Wi-Fi access.

· Once your Wi-Fi is enabled you should see available networks appear below. Encrypted networks will show a padlock to the right of the name while “open” networks will not. Tap to select the network to join.

· If you choose a network that requires a password, you’ll be prompted to enter it. Type in your password and select Join.

· When connected, your network SSID will be indicated in blue with a check mark beside it.

· To connect to a network with a hidden SSID, select Other.

· You’ll need to know the SSID, Security type, and password. Enter that information and select Join.

· Now you can browse all your favourite websites and connect to other devices on your Wi-Fi network.

Ask Google Earth Whether it's Raining or Snowing Right Now

Why would you want to see real-time snow and rain on Google Earth, you ask, when weather sites or even your smartphone will tell you just as quickly? Don't give me that—you know how often they're incorrect.
At least with Google Earth, it's all happening in real-time, so you can actually see whether it's worth risking a run outside, or trip to the beach. The new "clouds" feature is available in Google Earth version 5.2, and covers some of North America and Western Europe for now, so if you haven't upgraded to that version yet, do so now.

HOW TO: Send an Audio Tweet

http://mashable.com/2010/07/26/how-to-audio-twitter/

Have you thought about posting spoken word tweets? Amy-Mae Elliott at Mashable gathers a list of five services which will enable you to Send an Audio Tweet. All of the applications listed are free of charge, don’t require a phone, and are easy to use. When Twitter’s 140-character limit just isn’t enough to get your message across, or you want to give a tweet the personal touch, why not add some audio?

The following services have three things in common — they are all completely free, they don’t require a phone (i.e. they are web-based solutions), and they are all easy to use.

· Chir.ps - http://chir.ps/

· AudioBoo - http://audioboo.fm/

· Twaud.io - http://twaud.io/

· Chirbit - http://www.chirtbit.com

· ShoutoMatic - http://shoutomatic.com

Beyond Google: Top 10 Search Engines

http://www.techlearning.com/blogs/31632

Below is David Kapuler’s list of top 10 search engines other than Google.

1. Eyeplorer - A unique and excellent search engine designed around a wheel format that lets a user take notes via an online widget.
   2. Oamos - A wonderful visual experience that is unlike anything else around.
   3. Quintura - A fun "tag cloud" style site that lets users embed word chains into a site.
   4. BevyFind - A search engine that speeds up the searching process by combining different elements into one page.
   5. Kngine - An excellent "Web 3.0" search engine built on semantics.
   6. Spezify - Get visual results with a sticky-type interface that incorporates all sorts of media content.
   7. Scoopler - One of the best real-time search engines on the way w/ a built in button to share results across multiple social networks.
   8. Webkruz - Get search results in visual thumbnails w/ blurbs of text underneath.
   9. Sputtik - A great way to search for results on the web w/ a variety of content covered in different visual ways.
10. Feedmil - A nice way to search where users can adjust their results via a sliding panel that controls the searching criteria.

10 Great Social Sites for Resume Building

Creating the perfect resume is not easy. There are a number of online resources dedicated to helping you create outstanding traditional and social media resumes. Here are 10 great social sites with unique features that let you create your own resume-like profile, edit your resume online, get it reviewed by experts, print it, share it on social networks, and much more.
Remember, building a strong profile can help serve as a great marketing tool to help you get the job you’re looking for.

1. Razume is a service that enables job seekers to complete their resumes and polish them up with feedback from reviewers in the community. Users are able to search for jobs on Razume and will soon be able to apply for them through the site itself.

2. LinkedIn is a combination of a resume, cover letter, reference document and a moving database of your contacts. The resume portion is quite standard, with fields asking for your education and work experience. The cover letter piece is the summary you get to have at the beginning, where you can position yourself for a particular job, based on your qualifications, awards and an explanation of what type of job you’re looking for.

As you accelerate in your career, your network can easily observe your change in jobs or positions. You can also update your status bar, just like in Facebook or on Twitter, with the type of job you’re looking for. Your LinkedIn “resume” will be perceived as noteworthy when you fill it out completely, acquire endorsements for your work, join groups related to your interests, and add applications (such as your blog).

3. VisualCV is a website that provides users with a virtual resume, as well as a database of job openings and networking opportunities. Whether you’re a job seeker, entrepreneur, consultant, student or manager, VisualCV lets you display all of your credentials in an easy to read format, with multimedia integration. For example, you can upload or embed a video resume or a podcast of you being interviewed.

The latest capabilities that they offer allow job seekers to integrate their resume with social media sites, such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, to share their qualifications with friends and colleagues. When you update your resume, it can be shared through websites such as Digg and StumbleUpon . Your resume, or VisualCV, can combine other elements, such as images, charts, awards and recommendations, in addition to traditional resume fields such as “work experience.”

4. Emurse allows you to create, share and store your resume for free online. Their resume builder is job seeker friendly, allowing you to create and maintain a professional resume which can be downloaded in any format, such as PDF. Just like LinkedIn, your resume can have a unique URL linked to your name and the ability to view employers who have seen your resume in the past.

You also get statistics and graphs to aid in resume distribution. In addition, Emurse lets you keep track of your contacts, invite contacts and always access their latest information, similar to LinkedIn. Just like Google does with AdSense, you get job postings in your local area that are relevant to your resume. There is also a job search area and organizer, similar to Monster.com’s, where you can keep track of the resumes you submit over time.

5. Xing is a social network with over 7 million business professionals globally, and is read in 16 languages. Aside from being able to create a profile, the networking part of this site is what shines. There are over 22,000 groups and networking events from London to Beijing advertised.

Xing offers many of the same services as LinkedIn, and like LinkedIn, can serve as your online resume and cover letter. The standard service lets you create a professional profile page, search for people by name and industry, and join groups and events. When you login, you’ll see jobs that might interest you, new members, visitors to your profile and much more.

6. ResumeBucket is a service that enables you to post a resume quickly online. The site provides you with a unique URL for your resume and enables you to promote your resume on your website or blog with embeddable ResumeBucket badges. In addition, resumes are shareable via popular social bookmarking and social networking sites.

If you’re currently employed and would like to keep your resume private, you can. ResumeBucket also provides you with sample resumes and cover letters as best practices to help you when you build your own. And if you need assistance, they have a resume writing service where their professional writers can help you along the way.

7. ResumeSocial is a social resume community, where you can post your resume online and get feedback, just like Razume. Registered users can build a resume through feedback and comments from other users who have similar job experience. You can also be a resume expert and become a valuable member of the community by providing others with resume assistance.

There is also an area for sharing cover letters and follow-up letters, which are very important as well. When someone finds your resume on this site, they can print it, quote it, favorite it and email it to other people. There is also a job search area, a blog and a career area, which gives you advice for putting resumes together.

8. Gigtide is a website that lets you create, publish, manage and track your resumes, contacts and cover letters online. You can store unlimited resumes, contacts and cover letters and there are professional resume templates to help you. You also have the option of creating a social media resume, which includes images, video, direct links and sharing functionality. Another interesting feature is a direct employer contact form, where employers can contact you directly through your resume.

9. Howtowritearesume gives you an easy way to build a professional resume, without being an expert. You get their phrase builder technology, which helps you build compelling headlines, qualifications, achievement statement and more. Then there is “one-click formatting,” which automatically reformats your resume and makes it easy to choose the best layout. Your resume is stored online and is accessible by potential employers. The templates are all predefined, so filling in the blanks is really easy. You can change the font and margins and preview the changes instantly before printing or saving it.

10. Ziggs is designed to help you market yourself and manage your personal brand on the web. The service lets you create a profile and manage your online identity, and alerts you each time a recruiter views your profile and resume. You can discuss topics, ask people for advice or referrals, and search for jobs.

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) is HOT HOT HOT. But most people don’t know what it is yet, or if they do, they’re of scared of it. I encourage you to take a try with AR once more. The San Jose Public Library (SJPL) has received a $50,000 grant to develop historical walking tours using augmented reality and original items in their history collection. Below is a presentation Sarah Houghton-Jan did for the Handheld Librarian 3 Conference. It walks you through some of what’s out there, the differences in the equipment and data, and what that means potentially for library services. Be ready to be amazed! http://www.slideshare.net/librarianinblack/augmented-reality-4886937