Hello World

This is a post to test the new Feedburner-RSS-via-email-subscription-tool-thingamajig.

Even the Skrulls are Tweeting!

Tying in with the new “Secret Invasion” story arc, Marvel Comics has created a user called “EmbraceChange” that can be followed on Twitter. They’re sending out ominous messages such as “You will conform. You will assimilate to our ways. Because they work. And because you have no choice.” It’s a little odd to think of a super-advanced race of alien shapeshifters who have secretly taken over Earth sitting in a coffee shop with a bagel and a blackberry informing the puny human masses of their fate.

Web Tools

Learned more Web 2.0 tools today. The ones that appear most useful to me are not only those that gather information from various sources (e.g. RSS Feeds) but also those that process that information so that it may be distributed and consumed easily (Feedburner, Yahoo Pipes, Feed2JS, etc.) It seems that as soon as one social web tool is created, another 10 are created to make the first tool even more useful. Developers appear to feed (no pun intended) off one another’s creations until we as information professionals have a seemingly endless list of tools with which to work. All the better for us.

Aha moment

The majority of my time today was spent setting up iGoogle widgets (Google Reader, Google Calendar, etc.) I think it can help me consolidate the things I’m interested in and the web services I manage without having to keep a list at my desk. I haven’t previously used iGoogle much but the huge number of widgets could easily make it a useful tool.

Blog Ideas

I’ve previously contributed to a reader advisory blog which consisted primarily of staff reviews. This worked relatively well but, as you can see, it wasn’t/isn’t frequently updated with new contributions. Now that I know there are more static “pages” I can see where RA lists and links could be easily accessible in addition to staff reviews.

Web 2.0 Class Post

I’m here in Columbia at the Technology Institute put on by MORENet on Web 2.0 tools. I’m somewhat familiar with these tools but learning to use others as well. I’m most interested in del.icio.us, wikis and blogs for our library. Here’s an example of a wiki that I was previously involved in creating for the Olathe Public Library.