Children's Web pages are a haven for annoying web effects

After caving into finally using Flash on the library's website, I decided to open the floodgates to a multitude of other cool yet annoying web effects. The main gripe I have against all these extra multimedia effects is that they slow down the site. Nothing is worst than having to wait and wait for a page to download. However, with a children's website, anything goes because it's okay to wear mismatched clothes when you're a kid. We're still a long way off from having a really cool kid's page like Disney.com but all those "cool" yet amateurish effects are beginning to pop up on the children's "fun page". Animated, blinky gifs - check, a bunch of mismatched fonts - check, loud clashing colors - check, Flash, javascript - check, check. I'll soon tack on some hideous midi sound wav files and mouse trailing effects because a kid's webpage should be a little like Wonka's chocolate factory.

I LOVE RSS

RSS has made my work really simple. For those who don't know what RSS is - it's magic code that allows me to export newly published content from one website to another. HBPL has about 6 blogs maintained by different staff. I was struggling with how to showcase all of them on Facebook. Thanks to a fellow librarian's blog, I discovered Yahoo Pipes. Pipes gathers up all the blog rss feeds and lets me repost them into Facebook. In addition to Pipes, I can use Twitterfeed to forward posts to the Library's Twitter page. I just sit back and the bloggers post to their hearts' content and it automatically gets posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Subcumbed to Adobe Flash and Page Curl Peel

My resistance to using Adobe Flash and scripting on has been broken. I had to find a way to present a lot of information with a less cluttered look. So thanks to Youtube tutorials and Sam's Teach Yourself Adobe Flash CS4 in 24 Hours, I was able to put together a basic flash banner. I hesitated to use Flash because it can take a long time to load if there are too many fancy features. Also, if users block scripts from their browser, the fancy features won't show up correctly. But, it was inevitable since all the coolest web sites now use Flash.

One very cool feature that I noticed on some sites was the use of the dog ear page curl effect. Luckily for newbie Adobe Flash scripters like myself, more advanced gurus have made their Flash files and scripts available. I found this very useful site that offers premade script files for free at a German site: http://www.webpicasso.de/blog/pageear-free-peel-away-ad/ I found a video tutorial that explains how to install the dog eared page effect step-by-step at http://www.videos.bycenay.com/blogging/wordpress/add-page-peel/ So thanks to the benevolent online community, I was able to install a quick and easy page peel curl website effect.

Internet Browsers

There are quite a few free Internet browsing software out there as an alternative to the typical Microsoft Internet Explorer. Some other popular browsers are Mozilla's Firefox, SeaMonkey, Opera, Flock, Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari. I personally like Firefox because of the feature rich add-in options. FireFox's No Script add-in, which blocks potentially harmful spyware, and pop-ups, is very useful for keeping my computer adware-free. I use it when I'm googling research topics and I'm not sure if a web page is safe. For sites that I do trust I use Internet Explorer or one of the alternatives. The FTP plug-in is also handy. I like using Flock for accessing Web 2.0 sites like Facebook and Myspace since it makes logging into those sites easy. Google's Chrome hasn't impressed me greatly. It's not significantly faster than any of the other browsers. For web page designers, it's handy to have a different browsers installed to see how a web page will look. But for the general user, I recommend using Firefox with the No Script plug-in when browsing unknown webpages. Internet Explorer can be used for well-known, safe sites.

More new social networking sites

Social networking sites are popping up like rabid bunnies.
Here's more I've discovered this week.

Glogster
Hi5
TinyPic - Photo sharing site
FotoFlexer - Free online photo editing site. Good if you can't afford Photoshop.

See this list of 100 top social networking sites: http://www.100bestsocialnetworksites.com/

Library Centennial Slideshow Final

A cool site is Slideshare.net that lets you upload powerpoint files and embed them into Web Pages like Youtube.

Library Centennial Slideshow Final

Website Redesigned

After 8 years, the Library website has finally been redesigned and updated. The old website featured a blue, green, and teal color scheme to match the Central Library's blue phase of the 1990s. In 2007/2008, the Central Library was renovated to return the original 1970s brown, green neutral colors scheme. Luckily, the City's website already featured an olive greenish scheme that matched. In 2001, a web design firm called Atomic Source was employed by the library to design our blue/green site. This newest revision was done completely inhouse with the help of our talented City IS dept. The IS dept handled the technical details and a team of five Library staff were responsible for the design and layout. As the team of five, or the Furious Five as I like to call us, has more time to develop our skils in fancy, flashy web design, we'll do our best to keep it fresh and modern looking. But it is a work in progress.

One of the challenges has been to present a huge amount of content in an attractive and engaging format. I've often been torn between presenting a slow to load, yet flashy eye-catching graphics filled page versus fast-loading plain old text page. Due to lack of expertise in Flash and fancy web design, I opted for the fast-loading plain old text in many cases. One of the things I've learned is that XHTML for content, CSS for presentation, javascript for action. I'd love to have a more interactive Children's and Teen pages, but it requires flash and javascript. I'm loathe to have too much flash and java on a page because A) it's slows down the page loading and B) technogeeks like myself like to disable java & active scripts in our Firefox browsers to avoid getting potential spyware and viruses. I like to use FireFox's No Script add-on to block those annoying pop-ups and spyware ads but it also renders many of the cool flash and scripted goodies of webpages useless. However technology rapidly changes and perhaps by then there will be a new web technology that allows for fast loading, yet flashy and interactive features.

HBPL Catalog Widget

Tell Us your story blog

HBPL now has a Tell Us Your Story Blog for the public to tell HBPL what they like about the library and positive effects it has had on their lives.

Add our Facebook Search Catalog app

HBPL has a Facebook app that you can add to your Facebook profile. Just search for “HBPL catalog” while logged in Facebook and add our app. It will allow you to find a library book from Facebook.

Move over Netflix, now there's Hulu

There is a new website http://www.hulu.com/, that allows viewers to watch videos for free. The difference between hulu.com and http://www.youtube.com/ is that there are full feature length films and tv shows. The caveat is the video is sprinkled with short Internet ads. A small price to pay to watch an obscure film that is hard to find or a favorite missed tv episode. There are also Web 2.0 features where you can rate the film and write film reviews like at http://www.imdb.com/

Vivaty, an alternative to Second Life

There is a new virtual reality web game called Vivaty which is still in Beta. It can be played right in your facebook account and while not as powerful as Second Life, it is a fun way to build a customized virtual room. Best of all it is free to use as Second Life is but you don't need virtual money to set up your own room. I set up one with HBPL's Youtube film playing in the room.

New Director, New Directions

HBPL has a new Director and these are some of the links she's dugg:
http://delicious.com/hbpl/director

Bluray Videos @ HBPL

High definition Blu Ray DVDs are now available at HBPL. For a listing of available blu ray titles, do a Dewey Call Number search for BRAY items.

Tableless CSS

One of the newer emerging web technologies is the use of CSS to separate design from content on websites so in the spirit of adopting newer technologies, I converted a webpage to tableless. It was a long arduous process that involved manual coding with notepad, no Frontpage or Dreamweaver to help out. But thanks to sites such as A List Apart, I was able to simply edit existing templates. So check out my tableless webpage at Reading Suggestions.

Drowning in a sea of Web 2.0 sites

The number of Web 2.0 websites seems endless. After just signing up on Facebook, I learn about 3 more new social websites: Hulu, StumbleUpon, Pandora, and get reminded of a few that I forgot all about Digg and Lastfm. Many of these sites I have set up accounts and forgot all about them. Some like Picasa and Delicious I find quite useful for building better websites. In particular, Picasa has a handy slideshow feature for integrating cool slideshows in your website without having to learn any complicated code. Facebook is useful that it imports many of my Web 2.0 accounts into one place, the downside is that users have to sign up for a Facebook account to view my imported Web 2.0 profile.

More about Web 2.0

Besides the social interactivity of Web 2.0 websites, it is also a web graphic design revolution. In the mid to early 2000s the hottest websites had a lot of flash animation and super small tiny text. The emphasis was on graphics rather than content. It resulted in hard to read and hard to navigate sites. Usability was sacrificed for cool looking design. Web 2.0 design is a return to larger text and more obvious navigation, along with a lot of shiny, bold, and colorful graphics.

Check out Web Design from Scratch for an explanation of Web 2.0 design and Web 2.0 Generators for easy graphics for non-Photoshop experts.

Library Catalogs 2.0

First, let's define the whole Web 2.0 term. "SOFTWARE WHICH ENABLES MASS PARTICIPATION IN SOCIAL ACTIVITIES" is a term I lifted from Eli Edward's presentation which I'm sure she lifted from somewhere else. Basically, it's a website or web-based software that allows you to interact with people. Prior to that were static web pages, and one couldn't comment or interact with the content. Nowadays, there's blogs and wikis where you can comment - sort of like a giant message board.

The Library world has been quick to promote Web 2.0 and one of the results is an interactive Library Catalog where patrons can rate books, leave reviews, and make comments to make it more Amazon-like, which is the epitome of catalog 2.0. Some products our library has looked at were LibraryThing, BiblioCommons, and Chilifresh. They all required subscription fees, but the main roadblock to implementation was concern of spam, inappropriate reviews, and lack of staff time to moderate. A new social OPAC product is the "free" Sopac 2.0, recently implemented at Darien Library. It will be interesting to see how well this product is developed and if our management decides to take the plunge into opening our catalog up for public interactivity.

California Library Association CLA conference Nov 2008

Web 2.0 Workshops
Infopeople posted all their handouts at http://infopeople.org/cla/2008 where there were handy mini-lectures on CSS web design, Jing, Flickr vs. Picasa and how to create an avatar. There were a few new websites I wasn't aware of. One workshop introduced a new term to me called Microblogging - a fancy term for sites like twitter, jaiku, plurk, pownce, present.ly, yammer which are short one line blog sites that tell people where you are and what you're up to. It could be handy for an in/out board type service. There was discussion of blogs and wikis. One free online wiki site is wetpaint.com. I also went to a workshop on virtual reference for libraries using instant messaging sites like meebo, qwidget, plugoo. There was dicussion of the paid reference sites like Live Person and Tutor.com. There was also the SecondLife site which really is more useful to academic libraries rather than public libraries.


Free Audiobooks
I went to a workshop that discussed how libraries could implement low budget audiobooks as there are a number of free audiobook sites but the selection is limited to mainly classics which are public domain material and sound quality may not be good. Project Gutenberg has the best index of the free audiobooks. I went to a podcasting class by San Diego County Public Library and the best recorder for podcasting was the Samson H4 Zoom portable recorder.

Privacy

I attended several workshops about privacy concerns, one by Eli Edwards about Privacy Concerns of Social Networking where she brought up interesting controversies liked the Linked In site which is like a Myspace for business people where the site tells you and your business contacts if you've changed jobs, who has looked you up, etc. She also mentioned how teenagers are less concerned with privacy yet are shocked when their parents, teachers, employeers look up their info on MySpace. She talked about how Facebook had partnered with Beacon and for a time was tracking people's online shopping habits with cookies and notifying their Facebook friends what they had been looking at online. People couldn't turn off the notifications and had to send in signed written letter to cancel their Facebook accounts.

Patron Data

Another privacy workshop I went to dealt with the privacy of patron information and how San Francisco Public Library went through a long audit process and adopted a privacy policy. They brought up some interesting points on how long a library should retain patron data and the privacy of Internet search history. They pointed out how Google was able to predict a flu outbreak faster than the CDC based on search activity.

Master Speakers

Attended 3 master speakers sessions and the most interesting and informative was by Daniel Pink author of Johnny Bunko and A Whole New Mind. He discussed the reasons why jobs were being outsourced and succintly attributed it to 3 A's: Asia, Automation, and Abundance. He went on to predict that the jobs of future would involve Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play, and Meaning. The other 2 speaker sessions included the husband & wife writer team Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman who were entertaining but not really teaching anything. The 3rd speaker I saw was actress Adrienne Barbeau who again was entertaining but I didn't learn anything new other than her life story.

SirsiDynix Southern Ca User's Group 2007

SirsiDynix Southern California's User Group Meeting - Newport Beach Library on 5/17/2007.

Stephen Abram, Vice President of Innovation at SirsiDynix gave an informative presentation about the future of technology in libraries. He repeated much of what had been said at CLA and Internet Librarian conferences - that social networking was the biggest thing of the moment. He mentioned Portal technology JSR168, RSS Feeds, Open URL, GPS, Beebo, Library 20.ning.com, Second Life, My Safe Space, Techlife 14, Library Thing, Mozes, Now Public. He stated that for every $ 1 dollar invested in the library that there are $ 6 dollars returned on the investment.

Jeane Spala, West Coast Sales Manager spoke next and gave the users' group a sneak preview of Rome. It looks like it will be based on Sirsi's Unicorn Works product and Horizon 8.0 is being scrapped. They hope to put some support in the new Rome product for Horizon clients but most of the software will likely be based in Unicorn. One drawback of the Unicorn product is that it doesn't allow customization of user screens like Horizon does.