CJRLC Technology Group

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

New & Noteworthy for March 2009-PDF to Word Converter, Twitter in Libraries, Web 2.0 directory, Webook

Why Twitter Is My Personalized Search Engine
By Corvida on search engine
Mike Arrington is right, it’s definitely time to start thinking of Twitter as a search engine. I’m going to tell you exactly how powerful Twitter’s search data is and why you might want to start using Twitter’s search engine a lot more than Google.
SxSW Interactive
For the past three day’s because of Twitter, I’ve been able to score a Press Pass for SxSW Interactive (free) and stumble upon a ride to Austin from Atlanta (I just need to help with driving) with the awesomesauce Grant Robertson, lead blogger of Download Squad (a must subscribe), and his awesomesauce other half Christina Warren b.k.a @film_girl from The Unofficial Apple Weblog. They’re native residents of Atlanta. Guess who told me that? I’m generating great sponsorship offers to accommodate the outrageous hotel prices for SxSW Interactive because of Twitter search also.

After all this, the surprises didn’t stop there. Today I became a panelist for the panel: Can the Afrosphere Survive the Age of Obama (If you have room on your schedule, stop by). I DM’d the Moderator of this panel a few months back when it seemed she might need an extra panelist. I saw her tweet about the dilemma because of Twitter search. I highly doubt she would’ve been in Google’s results and she was exactly who I was looking for. Now I have access to a few Film panels too.
All of this was made possible with a few connections that gave great advice, and a lot of playing with keywords on Twitter’s search engine to find everything I needed to gain sponsorship. Twitter was where I gathered the bulk of my results. Not our beloved Google.
Pay Attention
How I came across the information is by paying attention to the context of the tweets and who tweeters were responding to. Twitter’s search engine is full of connections. You only have to pay attention to the stream. The results are so much more personalized all because it’s YOUR creation. It’s a human powered search engine in a lot of ways! It has a TON of potential once the masses figure out how to use it.
Something to ponder, yes?

Twitter basics for Librarians
http://www.leoraw.com/blog/2009/02/17/twitter-basics-for-librarians/


4 Reasons To Not Increase Your Followers On Twitter
By Corvida on social networks
Following over 700+ people on Twitter can become one of the most tedious and time consuming tasks of social networking. People are constantly following you and unfollowing you. All you really want is for people to stick around, the opportunity to build your very own micro-community, and for people to listen and be listened to in return. So there’s a bunch of tips out the web on how to increase your followers on social networks. Assuming you plan to follow most, if not all of those new followers, here are are 4 reasons why you probably don’t want to do that.

1. Too Many Connections To Manage
The biggest problem that occurs when increasing your followers/following count is managing those connections. It becomes harder to keep track of why you followed someone or why someone may have followed you. As the list increases it also becomes harder to follow your “real” connections & those that are just information firehoses. If you happen to be experiencing this problem now, check out 2 Great Apps For Cleaning Your Twitter Contact List & Tweetsum.

2. Decrease In Connections
Ah, the decrease in connections. I won’t keep you long on this. In fact, just head over here: Decreasing Connections While Increasing Our Networks.
Maybe growth on some of these networks isn’t the best thing in the world. Should there be self-imposed limits on how many people you befriend? No because in the end, while your network growth may increase, your connection with your network still increases. However, the rate at which the connection can increase actually decreases. Did that make sense? Unless your friends are constantly questioning you or keeping tabs on you, it’s going to take a lot longer to make deeper connections the more your network grows.

3. Increase in Noise
AHH, the noise! Twitter can become a horrible place when off-topic noise suddenly floods your Twitter stream. People are forever changing their minds or expanding their interests. In doing so, those new followers may have absolutely nothing in common with what you relate to on Twitter or current followers may become irrelevant to you. Do you really want to constantly prune through thousands of followers just to continuously get a better signal-to-noise ratio?

4. Getting Off Topic In Your Stream
In turn, taking part in these off-topic conversations can change the flow, context, and content of your own Twitter stream. With an increase of followers comes the task of staying on topic and not abandoning your “original” audience, which I like to think of as the first 400 people to follow you.

Professional Advice
In the end, an increase of followers can also increase any headaches you already have with Twitter, and make room for new problems. Connections can be severed and your pleasant Twitter experience can become a nightmare. So please, think twice before increasing your followers and those you’re following. You don’t have to follow everyone back. You shouldn’t follow everyone back. STAY FOCUSED!

WEbook is about you and User Generated Books
http://www.webook.com/
Let's face it: The traditional process for publishing a book is a lot like ivy-league school admission. Sooner or later, you'll find yourself brownnosing a guy with elbow patches. And then there's the endless waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
That is, until recently. What changed? Well, now there's WEbook, a ground-breaking online resource for aspiring authors, which lets you take charge of your own destiny. This avant-garde book publishing company applies an interactive approach to the process - in every sense of the word - by using the Internet as a platform to connect truly brilliant writers to print publication. Think of us as a virtual studio lounge for writers, where self-professed literati like you can wax poetic about the finer points of writing and online book publishing, collaborate on project work, and provide valuable feedback to one another - all in real time through the power of the Internet. Best of all, if your contribution makes the cut, you won't have to spend a nickel to see your name in real, live print. Instead WEbook funds publication of the best books as printed books, eBooks, and other customized downloads. You and your collaborators share in royalties on book sales.
Be a part of the "WE" in "WEbook." Achieve Your Lifelong Goal of Publishing A Book, with Plenty of Time to Revel in It.
Channel your literary genius through WEbook, where writing loves company. Discover just how easy it is to break into the elite world of book publishing as a member of this site. Join today! It's free!


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http://beta.go2web20.net/
About Go2Web20.net
For the past two years, Go2web20 has been one of the biggest web2.0 directories out there. We built this application to enable people to stay up to date with all the new & hot services that are born daily into the web. In many cases, Go2web20 has been the first to report the existence of a new application.
Today Go2web20 includes over 2,700 services and more are uploaded everyday. We also make sure to disable services that are no longer working and by doing this we ensure a more useful and enjoyable experience when performing a search. We believe that this is a natural behavior and logical progress - not all the services that you see here will live forever, but they'll serve you for as long as they live.
We know that people like our directory as it is - in fact, we have more than 28,000 del.icio.us posts to prove it and we continue to grow. We're not stopping at this, however, in order to give all of you a smoother navigation and some other added values, we've redesigned the site completely. Don't worry, you can still spend hours on the site, we're not taking that from you!
So what's new?
A search engine that searches all the content at the site.
Auto-complete for services and tags.
Search by multiple tags.
Hide-Show for the tagBar for a wider or narrower view.
Ability to choose between a gallery or a list view.
Very sophisticated navigation.
But, that is not all...Each service will now offer its own app page where you can find valuable information whether you're the app owner or a visitor to the site. Basically it's a mashup, but a good one. We really tried offer only the stuff that you'd care about, and want to read, and avoided the data that you won't find interesting. Simple as that. we've done the dirty work for you.
Go2web20 was founded in mid-2006, has thousands of unique visitors per day, indexes thousands of applications that will help your daily life on the net easier, and keep you up to date on the services that you need to know about as they arrive on the scene.

Friday, March 06, 2009

CJRLC Technology Group Meeting - Virtual Communication Skills - New Date! - March 17th

There has been a slight change for our next CJRLC Technology Group meeting.

This meeting was originally scheduled for Tuesday, March 10th, with Dr. Marie Radford presenting, but that had to be postponed. Instead, our meeting will now take place on Tuesday, March 17th, (same time 3 - 4:30pm) with our new guests Beth Cackowski, Project Coordinator, Q and A NJ and Julie Strange, Statewide Coordinator of Maryland AskUsNow!, the MD Statewide Virtual Reference Program. The special topic for our meeting will remain unchanged, with Beth and Julie team-presenting on Virtual Communication Skills during this special “all virtual” meeting! You won’t want to miss the unique team of two leaders of statewide reference services as they talk about the skill set for communicating effectively in virtual environments!

Registration will open tomorrow, Friday, March 6th for a limited number of seats, and this meeting will be recorded and made available to all. Please register at http://tinyurl.com/cjrlctech starting 9:00 am, Friday, March 6th!

What's required to participate in an online virtual meeting? You will need a computer connected to the Internet and a phone for the call-in portion for the audio. You may use a Mac or PC and any browser. There is no charge to you for the phone call or the connection to the online meeting. After you register, sign-on information will be sent to you.

We hope that you can take part in the next CJRLC Tech Group meeting on our new date, March 17th!

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

CJRLC Technology Group Meeting - March 10th - Virtual Communication Skills

At the last CJRLC Technology Group meeting the topic was Virtual Meetings. Participants attended both in-person and online. Everyone had the chance to learn about and try out the WebEx environment. At the next Tech Group meeting on Tuesday, March 10, we will continue to explore this concept with the meeting taking place entirely online using WebEx.

Appropriately, the topic for March 10 will be Virtual Communication Skills, presented by Dr. Marie Radford of Rutgers University SCILS. As always, the meeting and program are free. However, as there are a limited number of "seats" available, the meeting will be recorded, archived and made available to everyone starting the following day. On Friday, March 6 registration will open. For more information, please see the http://www.cjrlc.org calendar and click on March 10. If you have any questions, please contact Amy Kearns at CJRLC. We hope that other CJRLC groups will take advantage of this type of meeting in the future.

What's required to participate in an online meeting? You will need a computer connected to the Internet and a phone for the call-in portion for the audio. You may use a Mac or PC and any browser. There is no charge to you for the phone call or the connection to the online meeting. After you register, sign-on information will be sent to you. Please register for the meeting at http://tinyurl.com/cjrlcvirtual on or after March 6th!

We hope that you can take part in the next CJRLC Tech Group meeting on March 10th!