Halsworkshop's Weblog

More Photo Madness

halsworkshop — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:31:09 +0000

Here’s another site that lets you to get creative and have fun with all those photos you have. Big Huge Labs allows you to make movie posters,

billboards,

photo collages,

fake badges,

or even real badges,

You can have some of the images printed professionally for a fee.

Some Final Comments

halsworkshop — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:16:04 +0000

For some more tips, read Michael Stephens’ Tech Tips for Every Librarian. They are blog posts of columns he wrote for Information Today.

Also, some great advice – originally intended to help declutter and simplify their lives, but could be used in libraries just as easily – comes from the Zen Habits and their post on the Four Laws of Simplicity.

It’s a Google World

halsworkshop — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:29:42 +0000

Google offers more than just a search engine. It has tons of features that are useful.

Google Book Search
   example
Google Maps
Google Image Search
   example
Google News Search
   example
Gmail
Google Blog Search
   example
Google Calendar
Google Scholar
   example
Google Custom Search
   example

You Get What You Pay For

halsworkshop — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:35:04 +0000

Our library system uses two excellent resources that cost money. One is a resource for newsletters; the other is a reader’s advisory database for children.

The newsletters resource comes with more than 20 ready-made newsletters featuring four titles each. These can be changed and/or added to each month. Also, you can create additional custom newsletters and webpages.

Read the Books is a reader’s advisory database for children that features three-dimensional character that tells the children about the title they’ve selected. Children can also vote on the books. Your school district’s Accelerated Reader or Reading Counts lists can be added to the database as well.

A Useful Book

halsworkshop — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:27:28 +0000

Generally, to establish your presence on any of these social sites, you don’t need to know html, xhtml or css code. However to make some changes, a small amount of code knowledge is useful. I recommend the HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition Visual Quickstart guide by Elizabeth Castro and published by Peachpit Press. It explains with clear examples in text and images what code you need to make specific changes. And the index is useful, too.

Random Fun and Interesting Sites

halsworkshop — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 21:18:00 +0000

There are millions of websites out there. Here are some others that are useful, interesting or just plain fun.

Businesscardland – Make and print your own business cards using templates available on this site.
Jott – No time to write a note? Don’t have any paper? Call a phone number and have a message emailed or texted to you or your friends.
PriceProtectr – See whether or not that pricey item you just bought is on sale cheaper somewhere else.
TinyURL – Take a long website such as
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?searchtype=address&country=US&addtohistory=
&searchtab=home&formtype=address&popflag=
0&latitude=&longitude=&name=&phone=&level=&cat=
&address=&city=lake+park&state=mn&zipcode=
and turn it into a small one like
http://tinyurl.com/2s6d8q
LingoZ – A website that’s trying to be the Wikipedia of definitions.
The Sims On Stage – Formerly SingShot, this site is a online social karaoke site without the drunks and smoke.
Splice – Mix your own music from tracks available on the site.
Recipe Matcher – Find recipes for food or mixed drinks based upon ingredients you already have on hand.
Contactify – Don’t want your personal email address on your website? This site allows you to create a contact me box that doesn’t give away anything personal.
Browsing LCSH – Browse through all those strangely-phrased Library of Congress Subject Headings.
I Can Has Cheezburger? – Pictures, mainly of cats, with humorous captions. You could get lost on this site for days.
I Has a Hot Dog! – Don’t like cats? Well, then try this site with lots of pictures of dogs.
A Big List of Sites That Teach You How to Do Stuff – Exactly what it sounds like. Links to sites that teach how to do things that are useful or just plain weird.

Podcasting … sounds silly

halsworkshop — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:27:18 +0000

Podcasts, a combination of the words iPod and broadcast, are audio programs that can be downloaded to your computer or mp3 player and listened to anytime. Or you can listen to them online.

Creating podcasts is fairly simply. You need a microphone, internal or external, on your computer and an audio recording program. The easiest program to use is Audacity. It’s a free download. Record your program – be careful of copyright restrictions! – and export it as an mp3.

Once you’ve created your mp3 recording, you can upload it to your blog or you can upload it to a podcast server such as Podcast Spot. Here’s a sample at Podcast Spot. Our library uses Blogger to host its podcasts.

I keep seeing this RSS thing

halsworkshop — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 17:57:55 +0000

RSS means Really Simple Syndication and is a way to have information from various blogs, podcasts, and other websites sent to you. If a site has an RSS feed, you may see a symbol like one of these.

All of these different symbols mean you can subscribe to the that site in an RSS aggregator. The aggregator collects the information from those sites and stores it in your account until you read it.

Some aggregators are web-based and some must be downloaded to your computer. Here’s a list of various aggregators. Two of the more popular RSS aggregators are Bloglines and Google Reader. Both are web-based.

What? Social Bookmarks?

halsworkshop — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:40:06 +0000

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can now store bookmarks to your favorite websites on another site. And other people can see your bookmarks as well.

That’s social bookmarking in a nutshell. Some sites are Delicious and StumpleUpon.

Social Networks … Dangerous or Not?

halsworkshop — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 18:59:56 +0000

I’m sure you’ve all heard about MySpace and Facebook. These are some of the most popular web sites available. Why would anyone use a social networking site?

And we’ve all heard the horror stories associated with these sites. But what about the positive uses of social networking sites? College searches, communication, plus lots more [opens in PDF].

Our library has a MySpace page or you can see mine. On my page, I’ve found friends of mine I haven’t spoken to since high school.

And then there are the memorials.
Amanda Pinson
Carlos Sousa, Jr.

And the pleas for help.
Kyle Fleischmann
Pray for Violet