IL2007: Second Life, part one

This morning, there were two sessions on Second Life and virtual worlds.

• Lori Bell spoke about what virtual worlds are, why we (librarians) are in Second Life. She also talked briefly about librarians getting involved in another virtual world geared for children called Whyville.
• Shawn McCann spoke about being an Immersive (Gaming) Librarian.
• Jeremy Kemp gave a presentation about the work San Jose State University is doing in SL.
  
• I (Jill Hurst-Wahl) spoke about the tools needed to build virtual communities [presentation]
  
• JJ Jacobson talked about supporting communities in a virtual world and specifically groups were role-playing is important (e.g., an idealized Victorian community). [presentation]
• Kate Fitz, a law librarian, gave an interesting presentation on the work she is doing in SL as well as some of the legal issues that have been raised about SL. [presentation will be here]
  
• Rosemary Arneson is an academic librarian who talked about the work her library is doing in SL and what she'd like to do in the future. One thing she wants to build is a virtual wetlands/swamp to highlight that type of environment and teach why they need to be saved.
  
• Michael Sauers talked about some of the issues/problems/concerns with SL. We tend to say that it is all "rosey", but it isn't.
  

The audience asked good questions, both publicly and privately. I think people got a lot out of the presentations and hearing from people who are using SL (and who are willing to point out concerns).

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Technorati tag: IL2007, Second Life

IL2007: What's Happening in IL Space?

The Sunday night event was at the Monterey Public Library and was an intro to several themes that are going to occur at the conference.

Jeremy Kemp, Lori Bell and Kitty Pope talked about Second Life.

• Jeremy talked about how San Jose State University is using Second Life. They got into SL early and have been innovative. What was a bit disappointing is that their space in SL seems to really mirror their RL space.
  
• Lori and Kitty talked about the work the Alliance Library System has been doing in SL. There are 37 library and partner islands. There are 50+ libraries in SL. There are 600+ library people in the Alliance SL Google Group and 700+ working in SL, most on a volunteer basis. And these are people from around the world.

Aaron Schmidt talked about gaming. It's a $11 billion industry. Games are about content and learning. He believes that libraries should support gaming and talked about events that libraries could hold for all age groups.

Amanda Etches-Johnson talked about a couple tools that libraries are using to provide more services to their patrons. For example, becoming an Amazon affiliate or doing readers advisory through Facebook ("I Read" Facebook Application).

These were all quick 10-minute presentations. Teasers. Then there was a wine and cheese reception that allowed us all to talk and mingle before heading to dinner.

How many people were there? I didn't count, but definitely more than 100 I think.

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Technorati tag: IL2007

Second Life workshop at Internet Librarian conference

Yesterday, I was part of a team that did a three-hour workshop at the Internet Librarian conference entitled Libraries on the MUVE in Second Life (SL). The other members of the team were:

• Kitty Pope (Kitty Phillip in SL), Executive Director, Alliance Library System
• Barbara Galick (Puglet Dancer in SL), Executive Director, Cullom-Davis Library, Bradley University
• Tom Peters (Maxito Ricardo in SL), Founder, TAP Information Services
• (My avatar name in SL is Jillianna Suisei.)
  

The handouts for the workshop will be online later this week at http://www.alliancelibrarysystem.com/presentations.cfm

From the workshops I've done on SL, there are several things people often want to know. A few of these questions (below) were raised yesterday:

• What equipment is needed to do SL? The info is on the SL web site...but good to have better than what they state.
  
• Do you need to pay to do SL? No
• How do I know who these other avatars are in real life? Look at their profiles and/or ask.
• How much does it cost to own land in SL? The land prices are on the SL web site. Not-for-profits can receive a 50% discount. There are also monthly maintenance fees. All of these fees go to purchase and maintain server space.
• How much does it cost to construct buildings in SL? Well, often people will volunteer to do construction, which means the labor is free. However, if you need to pay someone, then the costs can vary, likely based on the person's skills and the time required to do the building. Buildings can be inexpensive ($50 - $500) or very expensive (multiple thousands of dollars). It was noted yesterday that one person charges $2,000 to do terra forming (forming islands to specifications).
• How much time do people spend "in" SL? That really varies. The consensus is that spending a lot of time upfront learning the commands, etc., is very important. After that, it depends on a person's preferences.

How many people are active in SL? I like to raise that question. Generally, at any given time, there are 30,000 - 50,000 avatars in SL. In the last 60 days, 1.4 million avatars have logged into SL. However, you'll notice that there are more than 10 million registered avatars. This morning, Stephen Abram mentioned over breakfast that many avatars go into SL around 5 times and then quit. Why? I believe it is because SL is not intuitive and not easy to learn. People may also not understand what the benefit is for them.

How many virtual worlds are there? Tom Peters has been keeping track and has a list now of 50+ virtual worlds. Some are geared for young children, which means that kids are growing up understanding this technology. How will that influence there interface preferences, etc., when they are adults? Interesting question, eh!

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Technorati tag: IL2007

RSSCalendar purchased by Lookout Software

In looking for a calendar program that would integrate into a blog, I found RSSCalendar though a colleague and liked it. It is easy to use and can generate an RSS feed that can be integrated into a web site or blog. RSSCalendar has been in perpetual beta and the features have not changed in a year. Today I received word that RSSCalendar has been acquired by LookOut Software. LookOut says that there will develop a more powerful commercial application based on the RSSCalendar platform, but will also keep a free consumer-oriented version. It will be interesting to see how the product changes.

It's about sharing

I believe that social networking tools in general can be divided into three categories. Tools for:

• Connecting
• Sharing
• Collaborating

When I talk to people about using the tools for sharing, I always emphasize that you may not have information to share, but that you may want to find and use information that others have shared. For example:

• Use a photo sharing serve to find photos that relate to a topic of interest. An example is that I was interested in photos of technology that people are using. People do take photos of their technology and put them online. (Check out the group of photos called "What's in Your Bag?")
• Use SlideShare.net to locate presentations on topics of interest to you.
• Use blog search engines (e.g., Google, Technorati) to find blogs and blog posts on topics that are interest. There are many serious bloggers who talk about business and technical topics, and who have very up-to-date information.
• Use YouTube to find short instructional videos or videos that show something that you need to know. For example, you may be interested in Second Life, but don't want to explore it directly. You could, instead, look at YouTube videos that demonstrate the power of that virtual world (example).
• Use LibraryThing to read what others have said about a book before buying it or recommending it to someone else.
  

Don't be afraid to think creativity about how to approach your information need through social networking tools. Run searches in the tools to see what information they contain that will pertain to your need (and be sure to use alternate words/terms). If you find nothing, at least you tried. However, you may be very surprised to find information that is very useful to you.

Presentation on social networking tools

I followed up my full day workshop in Buffalo, NY yesterday with a one-hour presentation today on social networking tools in Tallahassee, FL. The event was co-sponsored by the Florida-Caribbean Chapter of SLA and the North Florida Library Association. It was interesting to see what tools people were already using and what they had questions on.

For example, one person asked about Skype and whether it used the networks of its users to route phone calls. Good question. Skype says:

Non-firewalled clients and clients on publicly routable IP addresses are able to help NAT’ed nodes to communicate by routing calls. This allows two clients who otherwise would not be able to communicate to speak with each other. Because the calls are encrypted end-to-end, proxies limit the security or privacy risk.

Likewise, only proxies with available spare resources are chosen so that the performance for these users is not affected.

That means that not all networks are used. The questioner said that one university found its networking being impacted by Skype and so had disabled it. I, however, don't see my network being impact at all by Skype. Whether or not your network is impacted will depend on whether it is non-firewalled and has publicly routable IP addresses.

However, Skype -- when its running on your PC -- does use resources. According to Skype:

On average Skype uses 0-0.5 kilobytes/sec while idle. This is used mainly for contact presence updates. The exact bandwidth depends on many factors.

That's not a lot, but it may mean that you don't want to be running Skype all the time, if you're concerned about the resources your using. They also say:

Skype automatically selects the best codec depending on the connection between yourself and the person you are calling. On average, Skype uses between 3-16 kilobytes/sec depending on bandwidth available for other party, network conditions in between, callers CPU performance, etc.

And that's not bad either!

So the question led me to investigate and learn, and now you've learned something new too.

RSS & FM Radio

Yesterday I gave a workshop at the New York Library Association (NYLA) conference on "Social Networking Tools." The 22 people in the workshop came with varying levels of familiarity with social networking tools and everyone left with new information. Many people said they had ideas they wanted to follow-up on. Polly Farrington posted some notes in her blog from the session.

One person asked about RSS (really simple syndication) and wanted to know what it was. The good news is that we don't really need to understand how RSS works. I likened receiving RSS to listening to FM radio stations. RSS allows people to "broadcast" content on the Internet, in the same way FM radio broadcasts many signals into the atmosphere. With FM radio, we use a receiver to help us pick up the signal we want to hear. With RSS, we use an RSS aggregation (like Bloglines) to help us pick up the content we want to read (or just be aware of). That content could be photos, videos, podcasts, vodcasts (video podcasts), or text.

How do you find the RSS "signals" that you want to follow? Ask your colleagues what they are reading or listening to. Do some searches on the Internet to find content that may be of interest. You can use blog search engines (e.g., Google or Technorati).

BTW I don't know if the FM radio analogy is the best one for RSS, but it worked yesterday, and that's all I can ask for!

Article: Business finding advantages in virtual communities

How are businesses using virtual communities? Trade shows, conferences, and more! And it's not all Second Life. This is a very interesting article that shows that there is a solid business-side to connecting through these virtual communities.

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Pew Internet Report: Teens and Online Stranger Contact

Everyone is concerned about teens being contacted by strangers online. This report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project provides some information about the factors that can lead to being contacted by a stranger. The abstract is below and the complete four-page report is available here.

Abstract:

Fully 32% of online teens have been contacted by someone with no connection to them or any of their friends, and 7% of online teens say they have felt scared or uncomfortable as a result of contact by an online stranger. Several behaviors are associated with high levels of online stranger contact, including social networking profile ownership, posting photos online and using social networking sites to flirt.
Although several factors are linked with increased levels of stranger contact in general, gender is the only variable with a consistent association with contact that is scary or uncomfortable--girls are much more likely to report scary or uncomfortable contact than boys.

How to read a blog

Blogs have become an important part of how we share information. With a blog, the author (or authors) write on topics that s/he is knowledgeable about. Readers can read and comment on what has been written, often providing additional information.

Bloggers, because of their need to provide up-to-date information, often are well-read and have an understanding of "what's happening" that others may not have. In Meredith Farkas' recent survey of the blogosphere, she found that 62% of bloggers who responded subscribe to (or follow) up to 75 blogs. 10% of bloggers follow more than 200 blogs! Reading or even skimming that many blogs can only occur if you use a web-based or desktop RSS aggregator, like Bloglines or Google Reader (both of which are free).

Most blogs automatically create RSS feeds even if they don't say so. However, you might look for something on the blog page that indicates you can subscribe to the blog. There may be text or a symbol such as .

If you are using a RSS aggregator (also called an RSS reader or blog reader), then when you click on the link for the RSS feed, your RSS aggregator may recognize what you've done and ask if you want to subscribe to the feed. Or you may need to cut-and-paste the URL that you see when you click on the link for the RSS feed into your RSS reader (adding that URL to your RSS reader). It sounds mysterious, but once you do it a couple of times, you'll get the hang of it.

In fact, everything about RSS sounds mysterious! The good news is that we don't need to know how it works.

Once you subscribe to the RSS feed for a blog, every time the blog is updated with new content, your RSS reader will be alerted and that new content will be available for you to read. If you are using Bloglines, for example, you can quickly see what blogs have been updated and read those updates (or save them to read later).

Can you get blogs posts to be sent to you in email? Yes. There are several tools that will do this for you, including FeedBlitz. See the bottom of the screen for a quick way of getting blog posts emailed to you for free.

I primarily use Bloglines to reader blogs. I'm currently following over 160 blogs/RSS feeds, which is possible only because I'm using an RSS aggregator/reader like Bloglines. Bloglines helps me keep my feed organized and give me functionality (e.g., save, read later, email) that I need. Bloglines may not be for you, so ask your colleagues what they are using and experiment to find what meets your needs. For example, the Google Reader -- which integrates into iGoogle -- may be a better option for you.

Video: What if real life was like Second Life?

Second Life, is a popular three-dimensional virtual world being built by its residents. It currently has more than 10 million registered avatars (virtual representations of real people). Real life is influencing what happens in Second Life and undoubtedly Second Life is influencing our everyday world. If we can do "that" in Second Life, for example, why can we do "that" in real life? This one-minute video, though, is a humorous look at what real life would be like if it mirrored Second Life. It's cute.



If you have never seen Second Life, a great 2 1/2 min. video for getting a flavor of this online digital world is the video produced by Ohio University about its Second Life campus. Yes, universities are doing classes in Second Life (SL). In addition, many businesses are using the environment. SL isn't just for fun; it's serious business.

He gets Del.icio.us

Friday a colleague of mine wrote to tell me that he is using Del.icio.us. He said:

Cool system. I never realized...

We have gotten into the habit of saving URLs in our Internet browsers as bookmarks or favorites, then emailing specific URLs to colleagues, when necessary. But what if you'd like to share a growing list of URLs with your colleagues and don't want the email hassle? Or -- as my friend is doing -- you want to have URLs saved someplace where you can access them, no matter what computer you are using? That's when a tool like Del.icio.us comes in handy.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site that allows you to save, organize (via tags) and share your bookmarks with anyone. If you'd like for your bookmarks to become part of your web site (and be updated automatically), you can use the link roll feature. Here is my link roll on "podcast":




If you saved a well vetted list of URLs on a specific topic, then the link roll would be a painless way of integrating that list on your web site. Any organization could benefit from this feature.

You can also have your recently saved URLs displayed in your blog (as a blog post) automatically. There are several people, that I know, who do this, perhaps as a way of further keeping track or -- or sharing -- the URLs.

When I began using Del.icio.us, I thought it was cute, but really couldn't see a need for it. Then I began working on a project where I needed to share bookmarks on podcasting. And then I found others that could benefit from those bookmarks. Lo and behold, I had found a use for Del.icio.us and it worked perfectly!

I've said it once, and I'll keep saying it...you have to have a reason (need) why you use these different tools. If you have a need, then you'll use and benefit from the tool. If you don't have a need, then the tool will be useless to you.

Article: Your Online Identity: Key to Marketing and Being Found

Although geared towards librarians, this FreePint article would be useful to anyone who wants to learn about social networking tools. As the author John McBurnie says, it is all about "finding and being found."

Five uses of a photo sharing web service

We think of sharing ordinary photos on a photo sharing web site, but what else can you do with them?

• Post screen shots of presentations. I can hear you say "why????" For a conference where participants heavily use tagging and photo sharing, posting screen shots is a way of promoting your talk ahead of time. You can also then refer to the screen shot in your blog, wiki, etc. and draw people to it that way.
  

• Post information that you want people to review or comment on. One person who has done this well is Michael Habib, who posted various version of this graphic in Flickr, with links to his blog post about them. With the combination of the graphic and blog post, he was able to solicit input from people and refine his thinking.
  

• Post photos to use for instruction (formally or informally). These may be screen shots or photos that you want to incorporate in a presentation or maybe you want to use a photo sharing site slide show as your presentation!
  

• Store photos that you want to use on your organization's web site, then use a widget to display those photos. Flickr has badges that you can place on your web site that will use photos you've stored in Flickr. (Likely other services has the same feature.) This is a great way of making a site more dynamic. See photos on every page of the Taoist Tai Chi Society of the USA - Syracuse Branch web site as examples of how a Flickr badge can be used.

• Search photos for ideas. Here's an example from the library-world. If you were going to remodel a library, you could search photos to see how other libraries are setup and to gather ideas (e.g., The Libraries and Librarians Pool). Since you can message people who post photos in the services, you can then ask questions to help clarify your thinking.

I was reminded recently that Flickr has rules around using it for commercial use. Specifically, they say:

Flickr is for personal use only. If we find you selling products, services, or yourself through your photostream, we will terminate your account.

I think most of us can live with that rule easily, as with the others rules they have put into place. If you have not read the rules for your photo sharing service, take a moment to do so. It is likely that the rules will not limit your use at all, but it is good to be aware of what the rules are.

Okay...so...don't have a photo sharing account? Many are free and they are very easy to use. Now that you know more about what you can do, why not give them a try?!

Welcome!

I began using the newer social networking tools -- made possible by what we call Web 2.0 -- just over three years ago. Since then, they have positively impacted my work and my life. New business opportunities have come my way and I am known in more circles that I could have dreamed possible.

Once I became comfortable with the tools, I began teaching others about blogs, wikis, social networking sites and more. eNetworking 101 is my latest tool to help people understand social networking tools. eNetworking 101: The Blog will focus on what the tools are, how people are using them, their benefits and their shortcomings. I hope you'll add this blog to your blog/RSS reader and stay tuned! I'm sure I'll share information that will be of use to you!