Category: ‘puters

Damn you Greg Schwartz, for making me listen to your podcast to see what you had to say about me! Fascinating stuff, though once again I would have rather read it quickly than listened to it slowly. Greg on the other hand, probably liked getting to talk rather than type for a change. Plus, he has a mellifluous voice, so it was a painless and rewarding eleven minute intro to the podcast world, thanks Greg. I wonder if my “Why I don’t listen to podcasts.” pronouncements sound like my friends when they tell me they just don’t use RSS, or me when I explain why I don’t TiVo. There are two parts to these arguments I think

1) I don’t need the new technology to improve the experience I have [“I read blogs pages by page, who needs RSS?” or “I have an answering machine who needs voicemail?”] versus the subtly different

2) what the new technology brings me is something I don’t feel that I need in the first place [“I don’t need a cell phone.”, or “I don’t need an MP3 player.”].

There’s more room to move and convince in the first kind of argument than in the second. As for my personal choices, I have an answering machine, MP3 player, RSS reader and no cell phone, all pretty much intentionally.

This has more to do with technology adoption generally than podcasting in specific. Greg makes some really good points about the strengths of getting your news and/or new music this way. If you listen to a lot of radio, you should look into podcasting. The radio I listen to here has my traffic reports, weather updates and the status of the parking garage demolition. I’m sure over time I’ll be refining my “why I am not listening to your podcast” line like many people greet me with the “why I am not reading your blog” line but right now my answer is “I’m waiting for the local podcasters” Tell me if you find them.

Aaron details more on what he is doing with Flickr at his library. Since part of my job over my last six weeks at the library is to make the web site maintainable by other staff, I’ve been looking for ways of simplifying and streamlining web updating processes. I installed WordPress so even though my library doesn’t have a blog yet — we’re still getting staff on email, everything in due time — they do have a simple web interface for editing and uploading new content. Flickr will automatically crop photos to 75×75, among other sizes, so I built that size image into our home page. Flickr gives people easy URLs for uploaded images and has even simpler ways of showing revolving images on a non-blog site via a badge system they concocted. Did I mention that it’s free for basic users? I don’t own Flickr stock or anything, I’m just always really happy to see clean usable tools that are feature-rich enough for me and yet easy enough to use and understand for my Mom or the folks from work.

Two more little Flickr exercises and then I promise I’ll leave it alone: Eric is looking for librarians to send postcards to his son Odin to encourage a love of reading. I sent mine. Also, I installed a “safari theme” for my Firefox browser and am finding it to my liking. How is it like and not like Safari proper? See this little graphic for some point by point comparison.

A somewhat creepy implementation of RFID technology. thanks fiona

I have always enjoyed Andrew Pace’s writing and his Technically Speaking column in American Libraries. This month he talks a little bit about the awkward acronym that reflects the awkward systems that are OPACs.