Documents, documents

Today's rant was brought to you by the power of Google. It is pretty strange writing anything longer than a few sentences without being in the confines of Microsoft Word. A lot of people don't even realize that the idea of a word processing program that manipulates text the way you would see it if you were to print. In other words, if I want something to appear in bold type or italics it will look that way on both screen and paper. I remember using a very old version of WordPerfect or some other oldish program and the only way to tell what font or style a character was in was by highlighting the text and seeing what "attributes" it had been endowed with.

Now documents and spreadsheets are going to the next level: collaborative. Unlike putting something to disk or tossing around an attachment, a shared document on Google Documents keeps everybody on the same page...literally. This is really great for group projects. No more trashing old versions or recklessly overwriting something that you actually meant to keep for reference. For individual use, it's a nice way to get around the cost of Microsoft Office programs. Too bad there are still many people out there who will insist documents stay in a Word format. Oh, and there is a spell checker on Google Docs, too. They seem to be everywhere now (Firefox has become particularly obsessive about watching what I type!).

What is Not So Good? I'm pretty positive about how Google Docs runs, but a couple worries surface:

(1) Your work lasts only as long as Google remains in business. Sounds crazy? Remember Netscape? We thought they were going to be the new Microsoft, but instead they were consumed by AOL, which in turn became a decaying mess. AOL today retains none of the spunkiness of the Netscape it consumed. The Netscape name today, in 2007, means nothing of importance. Even sadder, one of the greatest search engines of 1995, Infoseek, twelve years down the road, is nothing more than an alias for Disney's tepid Go.com search engine. AltaVista, the greatest search machine before Google burst on the scene, is now a bit player in the Yahoo! family. The point to all of this is that those things we think are going to be with us forever often die, and the online world tends to be more accelerated than the physical one.

(2) I feel kind of weird having no local home for the stuff I write. I feel like I am giving Google a little bit of ownership of my work with every document I create with their programs.

Everything you just read was made in a Google Documents template. Here's a very special link that will take you right to the meisterwerk itself:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhgdfjf6_0dxcd3q

Creating and remixing culture on YouTube

Once upon a time, there was a truly awful commercial, which somebody put on YouTube. Little did they realize, a cultural phenomenon had been born (and the spot on the Ellen DeGeneres show didn't hurt). Go ahead and watch the original, but don't except to get the next two minutes of your life back:

OK, that was really bad. However, various people saw this as raw material from which to create their own masterpieces. Although a bit on the long side, the following clip demonstrates some of what people have done to the "classic" original.

Finally, some people are just sick of the whole concept. And yet they have inadvertently contributed to a cultural phenomenon that only YouTube could have birthed. Enjoy this final (and thankfully short!) clip.

To see more of how dumb raw material can be honed into remixed classics, check out the latest craze, and at least one clever remix of the concept. Judging by the high number of hits, this is even bigger than old Flea Market ever got. The lightning short running time helps, too.

Misadventures in social networking

Today I decided to snoop about some of the finest social networking site the Internets have to offer. First it was off to MySpace to see what all the fuss was. MySpace has a truly awful search engine. Don't even try quotes in your search. My first successful search on "Fullerton Public Library" (no quotes, mind you) turned up many places that had all of the words present in the profiles, but it had nothing to do with the library. For example, Joe Bob Public graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 1994 and watches public access cable shows when not maintaining his large library of comic books. What a charming false drop. I was fortunate to find the profiles of some fellow employees of the library as well as the TAG (teen advisory group) profile. Nice work, everybody.

Before bidding adieu to MySpace I decided to see how the latest crop of president candidates reach out to the electoral through this forum. Not only did Barack Obama have more donors than Hillary Clinton, but he also has more MySpace friends! If this isn't the smell of victory, I don't know what is. Both sites, however, are easy to read (no crazy wallpaper and/or clashing colors). Unfortunately, like Cylons, there are many copies. Anybody can make a site for a candidate, and some have done a good job at confusing the casual potential voter. Watch the spelling the names in the URL if you have any doubts over the authenticity of a profile.

I moved on to Facebook, where I am currently faceless. The layout is much cleaner than MySpace. That is good. Not so good is that I cannot jump in and start randomly spying at people's profiles. In fact, I cannot even show you the account I just created. I guess you will have to join my network or become my friend to see it. Since this sucks a lot of the spontaneity out of the experience, this may explain the diminished popularity of Facebook next to MySpace. We want our instant gratification!

Moving right along to Twitter... When I plan to make my life an open book, I will thank Twitter for making it all possible. Now if there was some way to send Twitter messages in my sleep. "I am asleep" - I would say...no...think with brain waves. My initial impressions here aren't too incredibly negative. Functionality over multiple platforms is one of the trademarks of Web 2.0, so Twitter is definitely part of this family. In fact, it brings back warm fuzzy memories of college, using a crummy old system called "Broadcast", which we students liked using more than the phone to do things like flirt and meet up for Chicken Finger Night at the dining hall. That's 1998 talking, buster!

Looking to the future, I trolled over to something still developing called MyLifeBrand. Again, the goal is to keep things looking a bit more organized than MySpace, but I wonder if it may actually be a case of entering too late. I would like to see the inner workings of this system, but right now I need a sponsor to go any farther than the "About Us" page. An aggregator of the different social networking site would be valuable. That way I can put this blog, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, Gmail tools, etc. into one big toy chest. Right now the closest thing I have is del.icio.us, but I just looked at my sorry list on that site and I don't think it is particularly representative of who I am. However, in the way VHS vanquished Beta, the best functioning, best looking inventions often still end up as the big losers.

In closing, I left a trail of breadcrumbs behind so you can see the mess I made. Here is me on MySpace, something I put together a few months ago so people would stop bothering me about not having a profile. It is what it is. Again, if you are with Facebook and you know who I am, try looking me up and see what happens. I'm so alone right now! I have a single word in my Twitter profile right now, which pretty much says it all until I get this post published. Now if there was some way to send Twitter messages in my sleep. "I am asleep" - I would say...no...think. Anyway if you want to become my first follower, go there right now! Deals like this don't last!

Web 2.0 in the library

I think we can use Web 2.0 technologies in many ways to benefit the library. While the first things that spring to mind are those which help the staff work with each other, I am more interested in what can be done to involve patrons in positive ways with library functions typically most often handled by the staff. Two big ideas come to mind.

RSS and patron records
A lot of patrons want to see a history of all the things they have checked out. For privacy reasons, that is currently not available. However, a site people pay for, such as Netflix, has meticulously kept five years worth of my rental history on file. Five years is how long I've been with them, so this means the entire history. I should be possible to create a personalized feed with checkout history and wish lists, all conveniently accessible through the patron's RSS reader of choice.

Flickr maps of the library
The chaotic half of my brain has a murky vision of a Flickr mashup in which many more pictures of the library get taken and suddenly the visual data of a catalog search is not just a book cover, but directions on finding it. I haven't put much more thought into it, but it would require a lot of involvement of people reaching beyond just the staff.

Geeks still rule

I was over at Technorati today and found definitive proof that geeks still rule. Simply go to the "most popular" section and pretty much every blog, starting with the mighty Boing-Boing (currently posting info on how to make your own Mont Blanc pen for five bucks), then working down to a blog that helps people "pimp" their MySpace site.

However, I do appreciate the integration of text, video and image results when searching for something. After all, if blogs mix things up, why shouldn't the tools that search them?

In other breaking geek news, I started a del.icio.us account. You will be amazed at all two things I have bookmarked to date. You go check it out now. And does anybody else find it bizarre that soap gets more bookmarks than the New York Times bestseller list?!

Tasty

I just returned from trolling around on del.icio.us. It is a pretty nifty idea. True, there is the risk of "crazy tags" that don't really don't benefit the concept of metadata, but it washes out in the safety of numbers. It is akin to voting. Sure, some people are going to write in "Donald Duck" for president, but it is negligible in the overall results. So just let them have their fun vandalizing 0.000000000000001% of the world. No one will notice. Have faith that most people competent enough to actually use del.icio.us will employ helpful tags and contribute positively to the folksonomy in progress. It is the same concept of openness that makes wikis click, which I think is a matter that will be addressed later.

While the budding information professional inside me says there must be guidelines, I have to concede that the Internet is too big to be diligently indexed by the chosen few. The masses, over time, can do it for free. Let the professionals turn their attentions toward educating others on the art of evaluating information. Don't expect me to say things like "everything in on the Internet" or "if it is on the Internet it must be true." We can file those statements with "since the Internet is now commonplace we can do away with libraries."

I think I'll be setting up an account with del.icio.us, pretty much for the same reason I choose to blog here and not on Myspace: cleaner presentation of data, increased flexibility in its arrangement, and all-around greater accessibility. When the account is finally born and has something to show, you will hear about it.

Regression session

Since the program is taking a break this week, I thought I would regale you with some videos that made me the person I am. Enjoy.