Mashup (from Wikipedia)

The version of Mashup I reviewed was retrieved on May 12, 2008 at 7:10 p.m. To be honest, I wasn't excited about reading the Wikipedia entry on Mashups, but found I liked it and learned more from this than I did the other readings. They listed different flavors of mashups which include consumer, data and business. Google Maps is a consumer mashup. A data mashup often includes information from an internal and external sources. A business mashup is a combination of the two other types together. As always I appreciated the specific examples of mashups, such as Chicago Crime, Flickr, Travature and Digg. I would like to check out the Travature travel portal for my next trip. Well, I was just on Travature, and they are upgrading their server currently. I'm interested in learning about other mashups that others have experienced and what they are used for.
This should conclude my weekly article content blogging.
See everyone Saturday, happy paper writing!

Map Mashups and the Rise of Amateur Cartographers and Mapmakers

A mashup is a combination of content from more than one source. Much of this is created by generation C, those who contribute 'new content' via the Internet. This I found to be the most interesting take away from this article. The other is "cloning" which is 'a method whereby source codes can be downloaded and edited or updated for new content.' I think this is a huge trend today, copying and pasting someone else's code for your use. During my Internet Fundamentals class, we were encouraged to find another site we like and use that html code to use within our created sites. The final item that was new to me was API's or Application Programming Interface. I don't completely understand what API's do, but I think it is similar to a language interpreter between the two applications you are combining.
Relevant uses for mash-ups listed in this article includes; weather tracking, transportation and flight trackers. This is really cool stuff, but I doubt I would ever create something from scratch, but I'd love to explore what others have done.

Article Citation for "SLA's Second Life"

I was going through my mail pile this morning and came across my June, 2008 issue of Information Outlook. Lo and behold there is an article on Second Life. Here is the citation and intro.

Hulser, R. & SLA Second Life Workgroup. (2008). SLA's second life.
Information Outlook, 12(6), 23-30.

"Wondering what second life is all about and why it is important to you? An SLA workgroup
launch an experimental space for members to work in."

Posting on Second Life via web4lib@webjunction.org

I came across this posting on a list serve I subscribe to. I thought it is pertinent to next week's readings on Second Life. I will cut and paste the discussion below.

Do any of you install the Second Life client on your Public Computers? If so, are there some important things to consider in regard to security or configuration?

Thanks.

Jane Frasier
Software Support Specialist
Jefferson County (CO) Public Library
10500 West 38th Avenue
Wheat Ridge, CO  80033
Phone: (303) 403-5296
Fax: (303) 403-5295
Check us out on the Internet at http://jefferson.lib.co.us 

Hi Jane,
We install SL in our Learning Commons. A number of the issues we have
are probably highly specific to our local environment for
authentication and profile management--so I'll just say, make sure to
test SL extensively on your machines as far as logging in and out of
the application, since it does some odd things with how it stores
profile and session information. We've seen behavior where you can
launch the client successfully and log in, then log out and come back
an hour later and the entire application crashes on launch. Clearing a
user's cached local profile on the network usually resolves that
issue.

The big one to watch out for with SL is the frequency of updates to
the software. Linden Lab updates the software fairly frequently, and
invariably the update is forced, meaning you can't run the older
version at all. This becomes a problem in a managed lab environment
where you're having to constantly update the image every time a new
update comes out or the application becomes useless. Essentially you
have to have a method for pushing out Small Frequent Updates to your
machines or else you're going to be going around to every machine
individually to install as admin, or constantly thawing and
re-freezing, or what not based on how  you manage your images.

-Maurice

************************************
Maurice York
Interim Head, Information Technology
NCSU Libraries
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695

maurice_york@ncsu.edu

Librarians and Second Life

Great, just what I was seeking, more information on Second Life! I was struck by a statement just below the article title, "an opportunity to try out new approaches before you take them to the real world." I like that idea, what a great place to try a new service and see if it works. Hopefully this would be less time consuming and costly than reality. If something doesn't work, dump it and move on, or implement within the traditional library walls. It is important to deliver information in a variety of ways, and platforms. I would be interested to visit some of the organizations mentioned in the article and see how they operate, to see how their virtual world is similar or different than the real one.
I always enjoy lists, and this article gives me a list of what librarians are doing in Second Life. The list includes; library services, networking, collaboration, rethinking space, supporting other SL efforts, supporting virtual communities, learning to use virtual space for education, discussing the use of role-playing, creating new tools, prototyping and positioning for the future. They are all great uses, but my favorites are rethinking space and education.
Rethinking space is tough in reality, so Second Life would give a chance for users to participate in how and what the space should look like. I guess this would also be an extension of prototyping, try something, see if it works, if not adjust to get the best feel and then translate that into the 'actual' library space.
Education on Second Life is an interesting concept. I'm always looking for ways to sneak education into my autistic daughter's life. She is a very visual learner and loves the look and feel of video games. As with many computer applications, I'm concerned with the lack of human contact and interaction. Can you learn enough virtually to help a shy or socially ackward person in real time?
Finally, the last item I took from this article is that Second Life would 'eliminate emotional barriers that cause us to not adopt new technologies.' I find that this can be a huge barrier for some librarians. We often operate based on how it was done in the past and it is difficult to move beyond these standards, especially for those librarians who have spent 20-30 years in the same library.

At Second Life, Info Pros Will Find Much To See, Do, Learn, Play With, Try Out

Where to begin, oh ya, I've never been on Second Life, hence I am reading about it! Abram defines Second Life as a "open-ended virtual world. . . focusing on socialization." The first thought that comes to my mind is the Sims computer game, but with the difference being the socialization with others who are playing or creating within Second Life over the Internet. Over 1.2 million people have created avatars, silly me, I thought 'avatar' was a cartoon series my daughter watches. So they define an avatar as a "graphical representation of a real person in cyberspace." This is kind of cool, you can become someone else, create a persona of whom you wish you had the courage to be, or just duplicate your current personality. Another figure that is staggering is that the monthly growth rate in Second Life is 23%, wow! The article also states that there are currently more than 400 librarians working on virtual library services on nine islands. Apparently, this is where numerous patrons seek information, an interesting study in user needs. So, as always, I need to read more before I dive in. I would be interested to know, how many in our class regularly participate in Second Life?

Social Networking Services (SNS)

Social Networking Services provide the platform for users to: interact, share themselves, create content, email, video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging and discussions. This is accomplished through identity, presence, relationships, conversations, groups, reputation and sharing. Many people use these SNS sites to socialize with others online and extension of their physical life. In a comparison of MySpace and Facebook, the author liked the look and applications of Facebook. Facebook was said to be 'cleaner and more user-friendly space." I am under the impression that MySpace is open source, is it? It was stated that if you know HTML you can do whatever you want, but this was also the main reason they didn't like it, lack of consistent look.
I agree that we need to engage users (or student's) where they are, we can no longer expect them to come to us. This is a hard sell for a private residential campus!
I had never heard of Ning before, has anyone participated, posted or joined a Ning network? Last.fm is something I would like to investigate more, I attended a presentation on it at the last Music Library National conference. Maybe a good idea for a music library??
Finally, does anyone know of a library blog for parent's on manga and anime? (This was a MySpace suggestion for public libraries). My youngest daughter loves this stuff and I haven't taken the time to learn more about it.