Thing 24 - Discover some useful search tools for locating podcasts

Listen to a podcast about podcasting. Too bad that I could not figure out how to make an alliteraton out of that sentence.

Podcasts
AUDIO FILE + RSS FEED = PODCAST. A podcast is an Internet radio show. What makes them special is how they are delivered to the user. It is distinguishable from other digital audio formats by its ability to be downloaded automatically using software capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom. The software is always-on when the user’s computer starts and runs in the background. In other words, you do not need an MP3 player to listen to a podcast; your computer does all the work. In fact, 80% of all podcasts are consumed on the PC which they were downloaded.

Vodcasts
Video podcasting, sometimes referred to as vodcasting or vidcasting, is video-on-demand. It is almost identical to podcasting except the content is video versus audio. The content is also more likely to be played on a personal computer than on a personal media assistant. It may be delivered as a file or as a stream. Estreaming is a form of Vodcasting.





More on the topic

People often use the word podcast to refere to both a podcast and a vodcast as defined above. In 2005, "podcast" was named the "word of the year" by New Oxford American Dictionary and with the growth of podcasting over the last 24 months, it's easy to see why.

Podcasts take many forms, from short 1-10 minutes commentaries (like the ones used in this Learning 2.0 program) to much longer in person interviews or panel group discussions. There’s a podcast out there for just about every interest area and the best part about this technology is that you don’t have to have an iPod or a MP3 player to access them. Since podcasts use the MP3 file format, a popular compressed format for audio files, you really just need a PC (or portal device) with headphones or a speaker.

iTunes, the free downloadable application created by Apple is the directory finding service most associated with podcasts, but if you don’t have iTunes installed there are still plenty of options.

For this discovery exercise participants are asked to take a look at some popular podcast directory tools. Do some exploring on your own and locate a podcast that is of interest to you. Once found, you can easily pull the RSS feed into your Bloglines account as well, so that when new casts become available you’ll be automatically notified of their existence.

Discovery Resources:

• To find out more about podcasts, start with the Yahoo: What is a podcast tutorial.
  
  
• There are many podcast directories and finding tools available. Here are just three of the more popular ones that, unlike iTunes, do not require a software download:
  1. Podcast.net
  2. Podcastalley.com
  3. Yahoo Podcasts

• What? You want to learn how to be a podcaster too?
  (Optional Resources for those who want to learn create podcasts)
  
  






• Yahoo: Publish a podcast
  
  
  
• Odeo’s Studio – online recording studio.
  
  
  
• Beginner's guide to Podcasts & Creating Podcasts
  
  
  
• How to podcast tutorial

Discovery Exercise:

1. Take a look at one or two of the podcast directories listed and see if you can find a podcast that interests you. See if you can find some interesting library related podcasts here like book review podcasts or library news.
   



2. Add the RSS feed for a podcast to your Bloglines account.
   
   
   
3. Create a blog post about your discovery process. Did you find anything useful here?

Optional: If you're ambitious, why not try out the Audioblogger service and add an audio post about your experience to your blog.

Thing 23 - Discover YouTube and a few sites that allow users to upload and share videos

Listen to a podcast on video hosting and sharing

Within the past year online video hosting sites have exploded allowing users to easily to upload and share videos on the web. Among all the web 2.0 players in this area, YouTube is currently the top video hosting web site serving up over 100 million a day in 2007 and allowing users not only to upload their own video content easily, but also to embed video clips into their own sites.

Do some searching around YouTube and see what the site has to offer. You'll find everything from 1970s TV commercials and 60s music videos to library dominos and kids singing about bloopers here. Like any free site, you will find videos that do not suit you. Explore and see for yourself what the site has to offer visitors.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Explore YouTube and locate a video y0u want to add as an entry in your blog.
   



2. Create a blog post about your experience. Here are some questions to get you started: What did you like or dislike about the site? Why did you choose the video that you did? Are there any features or components of the site that you find interesting? How can they be applied to library web sites?
   
   

Optional Discovery Exercise:

Try adding a video clip to a blog post.

Here are the steps:

!. Copy the code for the "Embeddable Player" that appears to the right of the video in YouTube.
2. Sign onto Blogger.
3. In Blogger, select new post.
4. In the new post window, select the edit html tab.
5. Paste the code into the edit html window.
6. Select the compose tab and type your comments.
7. Save or publish your post.

Here is where you will find the code:

Other popular video hosting sites:

• Yahoo Videos


• Google videos


• Others - top video site list

NOTE: Videos, like music downloads, require large amounts of bandwidth. It is recommended that you complete this exercise during light internet usage times.

Thing 22 - Have some Flickr fun and discover some Flickr mashups & 3rd party sites.

Like many web 2.0 sites, Flickr has encouraged other people to build their own online applications using images found on the site. Through the use of APIs (application programming interfaces), many people have created third party tools and mashups* that use Flickr images. Here are just a sampling of a few …

• Mappr - allows you to take Flickr images and paste them on a map
  


• Flickr Color Pickr - lets you find public photos in Flickr that match a specific color.
  


• Montagr – create a photo mosaic from photos found on Flickr.

Discover more mashups, web apps, and Flickr tools.

Discovery Exercise:

Your discovery exercise for this “thing” is to:

1. Explore some of the fun Flickr mashups and 3rd party tools that are out there.


2. Create a blog post about one that intrigues you.

I really cool mashup is FD Toys’ Trading Card Maker. And there’s a ton of librarians out there that have created their own Librarian Trading Card.

So have some fun discovering and exploring some neat little apps. And if you're up to the challenge while you’re at it, why not create a trading card of your own. :)

* Mashup Note: Wikipedia offers some great articles that explain mashups. Basically they are hybrid web applications that take features from one application (like Flickr) and mash it up with another (like a map). In this example, you get Mappr (http://mappr.com).

PS: At the top of this post, you'll see Learning 2.0 image created by Spell with Flickr.

Thing 21 - Learn how tags are essential in this site.

We learned about tags, tagging and folksomony in week 8. This week, we looked at Flickr. Tags are really important in this photo sharing web site. Tags allow you to share your photos in many different and very creative ways. In many ways, Flickr has features similar to online social networking sites that we talked about in Week 7. Check out the discovery resources below!




Discovery Resources

Do More with your photos - Flickr

“The Friendster of Photo Sites” by Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon, 12/20/2004

Flickr - Wikipedia

Flickr + Libraries= Scary, scary, scary - Blog post by Michael Stevens, ALA TechSource, 7/28/2006

Ten Ways to use Flickr in your library - Blog post by Michael Stevens, Tame the Web, 11/11/2006


Visualizing the Flickr social network - Flickr Central Discuss

Help / Tags - Flickr



Discovery Exercise

1. Read at least 2 of the Discover Resources and think about how Flickr is different from traditional photosharing web sites.



2. Create a blog post with your thoughts. Dig deep with this one: To get you started, why is tagging important? What does it allow users to do? How does community develop on Flickr?

Wow! 21 Things complete so far. Keep going --- you're almost there.

Thing 20 - Explore Flickr and learn about this popular image hosting site

Photo sharing web sites allow users to upload and publish their digitial photographs online; these services enable both private or public photo sharing. Each user determines by privacy controls how their images are viewed by others.



Photo sharing web sites have been around since the 1990s; but it took a small startup site called Flickr to catapult the idea of “sharing” into a full blown online community. Flickr is fastest growing photo sharing site on the web. It is also known as one of the first web sites to use keyword “tags” to create associations and connections between photos and users of the site.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a good look at Flickr and discover what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work, what groups are, and all the neat things that people and other libraries (list also here) are using Flickr for.

Discovery Resources:

Flickr Learn More tour (6 steps)

Mediamazine Flickr Tutorials

Flickr: Popular tags
Interesting- Last 7 days

Flickr Services (3rd party applications & mashups)
and let’s not forget to look at some other libraries on Flickr

Discovery Exercise (Option 1)



1. Take a good look around Flickr and discover an interesting image that you want to blog about.

2. Create a blog post about your Flickr experience. Be sure to include either a link to an image or, if you create a Flickr account, you can use Flickr's blogging tool to add the image in your post. Another option you have for including images in your post is to use Blogger's photo upload tool.

Discovery Exercise (Option 2)

1. If you're up to an easy challenge ... create a Free account in Flickr and use your location's digital camera to capture a few pictures of something in your branch. Upload these to your Flickr account and tag at least one of the images “VBPL_L2” and mark it public.

2. Then create a post in your blog about your photo and experience. Be sure to include the image in your post. Once you have a Flickr account, you have two options for doing this: through Flickr's blogging tool or using Blogger's photo upload feature.

So go ahead, explore the site and have some Flickr photo fun and if you're interested in looking at some photo hosting sites, then why not check out this Wired story.


NOTE: Photo posting etiquette

1 - When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) is it advisable to get the person's permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr.

2 - Never upload pictures that were not taken by you (unless you have the photographer's consent)

3 -Always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else.

Thing 19 - Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list, play with it and write a blog post about your findings.

So far, we have explored a small sampling of new Internet technologies and web sites that are empowering users with the ability to create and share content. There are hundreds more available. I keep a watch on new mashups at http://www.programmableweb.com/. There are tons of blogs and web sites featuring web 2.0 web sites and technologies.

For this discovery exercise, participants are asked to select any site from this list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees and try it. With so many to choose from, it might be handy to first select a category that interests you (like Books or Personal Organization) and then simply select a tool or site to try.

NOTE: Be careful to select a tool that is Free and that does not require a plug-in or download. The majority of these are free. If privacy is a concern for you, please select one that does not require registration.

Discovery Exercise:

1. Select any site/tool from the list of Web 2.0 Awards nominees. (If you prefer to select from just the winners, here’s a link to the short list.)


2. Explore the site you selected.


3. Create a post about your discovery. Here are some questions to get you started: What did you like or dislike about the tool? What were the site’s useful features? Could you see any applications for its use in a library setting?

Thing 18 - Explore Tecnorati and learn how tags work with blog posts

Now that you’ve been blogging for awhile, you might be wondering just how big the blogosphere is right now. Until recently, Technorati, the leading search tool and authority for blogs, showed the number of blogs doubling just about every 6 months. In April of 2007, there were 70 million blogs being tracked by Technorati. Technorati also reported a slowing in the growth rate of the blogosphere and the rate of daily posts.

Here are some other statistics reported in April 2007:

70 million weblogs (blogs)
About 120,000 new blogs each day
1.4 new blogs every second
1.5 million posts per day
17 posts per second
Growing from 35 to 75 mission blogs took 320 days

The numbers are astounding. Blogging is so easy that these publishing tools are being taken advantage of by almost every industry, including libraries.

Technorati is tracking more than just blogs. How is this possible? Tagging or the practice of adding tags (keywords) has crossed over many different forms of social media and publishing platforms supporting these different types of media.

How does a person get their blog listed as part of the blogosphere? How can you tag your posts with keywords to make them more findable through a Technorati search?

The answer to the first question is that your blog is probably already being captured by Technorati due to the fact that you're already using Blogger, the most popular blogging tool. But if you want to join the party and have your blog officially listed on Technorati and also take advantage of the watchlist and other features, you’ll need to claim your blog yourself.

As for tagging posts with Technorati tags? This is easy, too. All you need to do is add a little bit of HTML code to the bottom of your post (see my example below) and Technorati will pick up these tags when it spiders (or web crawls) your site.

There are a lot of new features that have been added to Technorati, including new ways to search for blogs. You can search for keywords in blog posts, search for entire blog posts that have been tagged with a certain keyword, or search for blogs that have been registered and tagged as whole blogs about a certain subject (like photography or libraries).

Discovery Resources:

Technorati Tour – videocast of new features & new look
Technorati Discover & Popular features

Discovery Exercise:

1. Take a look at Technorati and try doing a keyword search for “Learning 2.0” in Blog posts, in tags and in the Blog Directory. Are the results different?
   
   Explore popular blog, searches and tags. Is anything interesting or surprising in your results?
   
   
2. Create a blog post about your discoveries on this site.
   
   OPTIONAL: If you're up for a challenge, learn how to tag your posts by with Technorati tags so they can join tag searches. Create a post about something. It can be anything you want and add the HTML code to the bottom to tag it as “VBPLL2.” You may also want to consider claiming your blog and creating a watchlist.
   NOTE: When adding HTML code, you'll want to make sure you're in Blogger's Edit HTML window.

There's a lot to explore.

Technorati Tag: VBPLL2

NOTE: If you liked Technorati and want more, try out IceRocket. It is a combination of some of the best features of existing blog search engines plus some unique things like the date specific search. Find IceRocket at http://www.icerocket.com/.