Blogging Section of SLA-IT

LinkedIn Professional Network

If you're not on LinkedIn yet, it's time to sign up!  So many of your colleagues are signing up and keeping up with people they meet.  I think John Sviokla says it best:

Going to LinkedIn is like going to a convention – you may find some fun, but you know people are there for commerce.

On LinkedIn you're surrounded by professionals looking for jobs, answers and contacts.  By keeping my LinkedIn profile up to date, people are able to come to me with professional questions.

Also, of interest to most of you would be the LinkedIn groups which include several SLA related groups.

Spreading the Web 2.0 gospel

Yesterday a colleague (also an SLA member) and I gave a presentation on Web 2.0 to a fairly large audience of people in our company. The presentation seemed to be well-received. We were joined by Oliver Young, an analyst at Forrester. Together we covered the whole gamut of definitions of what is Web 2.0 to how we can begin implementing Web 2.0 internally and externally to how we can determine ROI. The truth is my company is already participating in these initiatives in a variety of ways, although there isn't as of yet a coordinated effort. Part of what we tried to do yesterday was to highlight this fact.

At the close of the event we brainstormed about specific, focused problems that could be remedied by use of Web 2.0 tools. One example of what we came up with was developing a Digg-like forum for generating ideas from employees about how to further reduce our company's carbon footprint.

I'd be interested to hear about what other SLA members are doing to facilitate and encourage Web 2.0 in their work environments.

Name change on Facebook

I just want to share a disapointing experience with Facebook. My institution recently changed names; my library's name is build out of my institution's name so it changed as well (I'm still looking for that wealthy donor to grace our front door with his or her name). I had created both a Group and a Page for my library in Facebook. Figured I could simply edit the name of both, right? Wrong.

Is it because of the way they build their files names or set their links but there is no way of changing a name of an user, Group or Page. I have to start over with a new Page. Thankfully, I didn't have that many fans or group members that we should be able to have them all transfer through but imagine if we did? Bad enough I cannot transfer all the wall posts, the discussion board topics or the events.

Buyer beware (sigh).

Flickr Machine Tags

Today I was uploading pictures to Flickr from a concert I attended last night and found out that I can put what Flickr calls "machine tags" on my pictures to link them to other services (in my case Upcoming and Last.fm).  These have been around since 2007, but I had never heard of them.  Why aren't we using these handy things for our events and conferences?  Is anyone using Flickr machine tags?

See what it looks like when you use them (look under the copyright):

Clicking the links next to "Taken at" will take you to the event information on Upcoming & Last.fm.  Very cool!

Article: 101 Things To Do For Hubbers And Bloggers

Thanks to Laura Solomon for finding this.  We all run "out of steam" on occasion, so lists like this are helpful.  Here are some ideas from the list:

29. Enter a blog contest to get more exposure.
30. Encourage your readers to leave comments.

70. Submit a sitemap to Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
71. Search for your articles in Google.
72. Setup a profile for yourself to network your blog on a social network

89. Try out a new template on your blog.
90. Update your keywords and title tags.
91. Write about the free online services your enjoy.
92. Write a constructive profile page.

SLA-IT Blog on Facebook

Facebook has a new app that I think is pretty neat.  It's called Blog Networks and it lets you set up your blog on Facebook so that people can rate it, read it and mark it as a favorite.

If you read this blog, join our blog network.

The Internet is made up of switches

I started using this tool a little while ago and forgot about it :)  It’s that easy. This from Lifehacker:

switchAbit, a free social syndication tool, offers the tools to create multiple “switches” for all your cool tools. So you can, say, upload a photo on Flickr, then have a link or thumbnail of it show up on your Blogger, Twitter, and your Facebook page. You can leave the syndicating switches always on, or head over to switchAbit to manually turn them on and off.

Here’s my switch:

Basically, I have it set up so that when I update Twitter or Flickr, it sends those updates to Facebook.  It’s pretty handy for me.

Technorati Tags: switchabit

Swamped

A colleague of mine reported two weeks ago that he was behind in reading new email and had 450 emails unread in his inbox.  Because of his workload, he has only been doing email early in the morning and perhaps at night, so the emails are piling up.  He reported that another colleague (Gentleman X) had resorted to sending text messages that might prompt him to read specific emails.

So today I found myself needing to talk to this swamped colleague but what's the best way to get a hold of him?  I sent a direct message to Gentleman X with the question.  His response was:

short of lying in his driveway in the morning - probably text msg.

Email is no longer the way to get someone's attention.  In fact, for some people, it is the LAST method you should use (and used before fax and snail/hardcopy mail). 

Is your browser up-to-date?

This study shows that many people are using insecure/older browsers:

Overall, 45.2% of Internet users were not using the most secure browsers. The results were on the optimistic side since the researchers were unable check for out-of-date and vulnerable browser plug-ins, nor go back in time and adjust for the many zero-day attacks aimed at browsers.

It's time to check your browser and upgrade!!

Found via O'Reilly Radar.

Top 10 music sites

A recent blog post in WIRED magazine provides a helpful top 10 list of the best music sites available.  From learning how to play a guitar through online lessons via IVideosongs to using the MP3 music search engine available at SeeqPod, the article provides a wealth of information for anyone interested in music online.