Mashups!

Well, this topic looks really great. I really like what I see in mashups, they seem to "leverage" the technologies by being combined. I like the "London: A life in Google Maps" mashup, which allows you to graphically search (by clicking on a map of London) for interesting tourist attractions in London, which would be really great if you just wanted to explore the city thoroughly, chunk-by-chunk; I think it would help you plan your days travelling better, by giving you a really good visual idea of where everything is in the city, as well as little pictures of each attraction, linked back to it's specific website. And of course, the benefit of that is that you can then access everything about that place, like opening times, addresses, etc. The concept would lend itself to just about any topic, especially broad topics with lots of categories. I can almost imagine the library web catalogue being "mashed up" with a "virtual bookshelf" graphic that helps people "discover" books on related topics, authors, etc (just using the ordinary authority tags in the MARC record would allow this), and I guess that is what is already happening with some library catalogue software - searching by picture in a "kids opac", for example.
I wonder if we could "mash up" our pictures in the historic local photo database. Mash them up with a Google map, and maybe some relevant scanned documents/newspaper articles, etc? Perhaps create a virtual historic walking trail around Campbelltown, with links back to the old photos from each site?

Update:
I've happily been "mashing" pictures from our Local Studies database into a Google Map - creating a virtual historic walking trail! What fun! The boss says put it onto our website, so I am very pleased. We just need to add a few more points of interest first, and then will add it to the site.

Here is the Campbelltown map in progress:

http://bit.ly/b22nuc

And here is the London map mentioned above:

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/londoninmaps/exhibition.html

Podcasts

So far, in my web experience, I've only found podcasts to be useful when I have a specific interest in seeing a video or hearing a spoken audio file when other static web material (text/photos/diagrams etc) have not been so useful. this has not happened much for me.
However, I can see that a lot of people would often prefer a sound or video file. For example, library customers who have poor eyesight like listening to books on CD or tape. For them, the audio podcast would be good. Although - how do they find it & start it running if they have bad eyesight? The internet is largely searched via our eyes on a web-browser - which would make this difficult for partially-sighted people, I would have thought?
For video files and audio files, obviously, this is the best way to access them on the web. I can see that all my favourite sound & video tracks & snippets are so conveniently accessible, all through this little PC. Which is amazing.
Our library is planning a digital audio book service, in partnership with a commercial vendor, who will provide digital content for a very large number of audiobooks, plus the website interface to blend with ours, providing the necessary links to digital audio players, and the books themselves.
This is a wonderful service for all library customers, especially those that are tech-savvy enough to be able to download an item to their home PC & save it onto either a CD or MP3 player for use in their car, etc, which is already a very popular use serviced by our existing physical talkingbook collections.

"Slamming the Boards"

I like answer boards. I often use a forum for my car, which has helped me a lot over the last few years, both in asking questions & getting helpful replies, and also in using the "search" facility to find old posts that refer to what I'm looking for. This is a really great way to find very specific answers to often very technical questions. I guess the power of the answer board is the fact that so many people provide answers, and you can look through them all to get your information.
While somewhat tedious (having to log in & check through the boards periodically), answer boards sometimes have an alert feature that emails you when the answer comes in.
As far as the idea of librarians trying to answer all the questions out there - it is a very big ask! the boards are many and varied, and not really organised or linked systematically. But I do think we could focus on some of the more popular answer boards, perhaps the more general ones? and help build the knowledge up.
I guess the way I see answer boards now, is pretty much as databases which can be searched for good information. I think the best boards should have a search feature, be split into topical categories, and sortable by post date, poster, and topic.

Library Thing

Library Thing is a really cool tool! What a great way to catalogue your own private collection, plus make it available for others to share. (Look out, catalogue record providers!).

I really like the immediate cooperative sharing of data - something various library networks have been doing for years, but now looks so simple in this library "thing"....

Hmmn, I wonder if we could start using it for our library records? (Banish the thought! God forbid!) In reality, I guess it might just be a bit too messy to use as a normal library tool - we're programmed for neatness!
Click here to see my catalogue on Library Thing:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/andrewhgee

Technorati

I'm not so excited about Technorati.
First up, my blog hasn't appeared in it yet, even though I've registered. Found a note saying it crawls the web for new stuff & updates as it finds it. But if I've registered, surely it would appear immediately?
Tried the search and got the same results using the advanced search. Only after I changed the search settings to do a "low authority" search, did it bring back 14 results instead of the 2 I got with the standard search.
Hmmnn

Favourite song of the day

I just had to post the lyrics that are circling in my head today. From John Hiatt's "Angel Eyes":

Girl, you’re looking fine tonight
And every fella’s got you in his sights
What you’re doing with a clown like me
Is surely one of life’s little mysteries

Chorus:
So tonight I’ll ask the stars above
How did I ever win your love?
What did I do, what did I say
To turn your angel eyes my way?

Well I’m the guy who never learned to dance
I never even got one second glance
Across the crowded room, that was close enough
I could look, but I could never touch

Chorus

Don’t anybody wake me if this is a dream
’cause she is the best thing that’s ever happened to me
All you fellas you can but look all you like
But this girl you see, she’s leaving with me tonight

And there’s just one more thing I need to know
If this is love then why does it scare me so
Must be something only you can see
But girl, I feel it when you look at me

Chorus

What did I do, what did I say
To turn your angel eyes my way?

Link to my Delicious tags

Forgot to put a link to my Delicious tags in. Here it is: http://delicious.com/andrewgeee

Delicious

Well, I am still getting through the 2.0 course. Spent a fair bit of time exploring "Delicious", setup my own account & started tagging some of my favourite websites. This is an improvement on using simple bookmarks or favourites. All my real favourites arranged in alphabetic or date order, with more detail, and very searchable. The tagging is a big plus, as it enables me to use my own language to link to the websites. A bit like a personal phone directory that links you straight to the relevant site when you click on it. Overall, I think it's a great idea! Another plus is that you can cross-ref to other users' chosen sites, thereby leveraging the effort of others. I guess the challenge, (as always) is to include only the really good stuff, so it doesn't get full of junk?

Model rocket video

Check out this great video of a model rocket in action. this is the sort of thing I dreamed of when I was about 12. Always wanted to build a working rocket. But the solid-fuel engines were only available at expensive model shops, or via mail order from the US. A school friend of mine (Nick) had a commercial one - his dad was an airline pilot who was able to get these sort of extreme toys, and I was often over at their place, dazzled by the cool stuff Nick was able to do. I had to satisfy myself with rubber-band powered models made of cardboard & balsa. But hey, at least I got the parachute to work on it, which I was very proud of.
I'll post an old photo if I can find it.