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Five Easy Ways To Improve Facebook

I've seen a real boom in the amount of friends I've added on Facebook in the past week or two.  I hate to use a buzzword but it really seems like you reach a “tipping point” where you have a big enough circle of friends that someone finding you leads to a better chance of finding other people you know (or them finding you.)  


The funny thing is I'm still not sure what Facebook is for.  I mean, adding the newsfeed, even though controversial at the time, makes it really easy to follow what your friends are up to.  But beyond that IM-level of superficiality (“Jason joined the group, “I'm from a small town – wanna fight about it?” or “Jason is up when he should be sleeping” or “Jason removed Fried Green Tomatoes from his list of favourite movies” or “Jason posted on Friend X's wall: 'What's up?'”), what's the point?  I think I'm maybe missing something (and the fact that I finally expanded my profile to include more than a single favourite book/movie/TV show plus the fact that I'm checking Facebook obsessively to see these new tidbits of various friends appear means there is *something* to it.) 

Anyhow, part of me thought about submitting the following list to Digg.  But seeing how many sites get shut down after being linked to on that site (er, assuming more than 11 people Digg your story! ), it's a gamble I'm not willing to take at least until I get my bandwidth increased again.  I doubled it after the shutdowns at the end of October/November but I'm still pushing my limit every month as more people find this site. 

It's kind of like a virus – once you put a site out there and show that you're going to keep it up, more and more people will inevitably find you and some are going to stick around.  For instance, joining the Sask Blogs aggregator has led to a whole new influx of non-library-related readers.  (That site also links to similar blog aggregators for most other provinces further down on the left side if you're interested in checking out some blogs beyond the usual ones you might read.)

So as usual, that's a lot of preamble before the main event.  Here you go…

Five Easy Ways to Improve Facebook
5. Instead of just “Friends”, have two categories for connections – “friends” plus “acquaintances” for people you might add because of a common geographical, educational or other interest.  Actually, why not allow users to categorize friends as much as they want?  I'd love to be able to have groups set-up for library school friends, people I worked with, people from my hometown, working librarians I know, family members and so on. 

4. Turn Facebook into a full-fledged online address book by allowing users to enter contact details for friends and acquaintances, even if they aren't existing members.  The easiest way to do this?  Buy Plaxo.

3. Have spots for not just “hometown” but current place of residence and former place(s) of residence.  Sort of related, allow people to choose whether or not to display the history of changes to their profile, similar to how you can see how a Wikipedia page has changed over time. 

2. Make the groups more active & useful somehow – perhaps by adding more about their activity levels in the newsfeeds?  On that note, have an RSS feed of the Facebook newsfeed so you don't even have to log in to “playfully” stalk people. (Please, somebody post a better way to describe the type of stalking you do online with no harmful intent but near-total access to a person's life and actions.  “Playful” isn't the word I'm looking for and I'm beginning to creep myself out every time I use it! )

1. My best idea is so obvious and yet has so much potential, I'm only going to share it if I (or my agent ) is contacted by somebody at Facebook.  We'll talk…

(It's been a long time but I've got to give a Classmate of the Day to Quinn Dupont.  I approached him with a pretty crazy idea last night and he's in.  So I'm not going to say too much about it now but hopefully you'll hear more about in the weeks and months to come if the tech gods are willing.)

Posted 23 February 2007 § Internet § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (5) °

My Celebrity Matches

I'd seen this
Celebrity Face Match site before but a recent Facebook post made me realise it now had all kinds of fun new options to create collages and share your results. (You can click on any collage on this page to try it yourself – and make sure you post your results to your Facebook or personal blog too!)

I've also done the (non-computer assisted) “Which Celeb Do I Look Like?” thing before but it's interesting to see how a “neutral” computer program finds me versus who I think I look like myself (I  thought I looked like Tom Hanks circa “Castaway”) 

  


The “My Celebrity” match web site wouldn't recognize the FIMS “stalker page” photo I used in that original link but here's what a similar photo produced (and no Tom Hanks to be found)…


…and not to bring up my “Your Digital Footprint” genealogy presentation again but one thing I off-handedly mentioned in that was that facial recognition would have a major impact on the Internet, allowing people to be recognized in Facebook and Flickr photos and eventually, even in videos on YouTube, even if they're aren't identified by name.  Then, there will be less hiding behind pseudonyms and initials which obviously, has all kinds of positive and negative aspects. 

At the time I talked about facial recognition, I was thinking more in terms of the TV show Las Vegas where they have super-amazing software that ID's any crime suspect in the casino in about three seconds, no matter who they are or where they're from (unless the plot needs to be stretched out, in which case the suspect is wearing glasses or a disguise or has their face turned slightly to the left.) 

But anyhow, it turns out that facial recognition stuff is closer to being a reality for everyday, non-NSA use than I realised and coincidentially, it's a genealogy web site that's publicizing it.  It's not perfect yet and picking which celebrity you look like might not be the most efficient use of this type of technology but it does get people interested and using it.  Plus, if I'm ever in Las Vegas, I'll make sure I'm not wearing an Elvis costume or writing unreadable novels set in Dublin and I should be fine. 

Anyhow, the day where you can be found not only by text searches but by the contours of your face, is coming faster than we realise and even though, that has some negative aspects as I mentioned, I think it's pretty exciting and cool – especially if people are going to confuse me for George Clooney!

Here's what a different photo produced (and a different layout – you have six options or so)…

Posted 22 February 2007 § Humour § Main Page § Photo ‡ Comments (2) °

Ding Dong – The Streak Is Dead!

Well, after nearly six months straight of daily posts (a quick run through the sidebar calendar shows Aug 30/06 was the last day I missed!), the streak ended yesterday.  (There was also a missing date on December 24 but I know I posted that day – not sure why it doesn't show up on the calendar though.)

When I did my blog survey, I was surprised that nearly 2/3 of respondents said it was important that I post daily.  But at the same time, I'm glad that the streak broke finally – with a baby coming and possibly a job soon too, the odds of a daily post streak continuing are slight anyhow. 

I was home just after midnight and could've done a “well, it's technically the same day since I haven't been to sleep yet” justification.  I've done that a couple times int he past when I posted after midnight but “adjusted” the time stamp so it would appear in the proper calendar day to keep the streak going.  But as I said, nice that the pressure (such as it was) to keep the streak going is gone. 

So yeah, expect about seventeen posts in the next 24-hour time frame..

Posted 22 February 2007 § Blog § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Saskatchewan's New Family Day – I Called It! (Almost)

Now, far be it for me to take all the credit for Saskatchewan's first-ever Family Day.  But I would like to point out that I made a very accurate prediction, way back in July 2006 about a holiday that was announced in late October of that same year (er, if you ignore the part where I said it would never happen because of economic concerns.)

The blogosphere is alight with tales of the new holiday – the politics of creating a new holiday, business people who oppose it and are still going to work, and of course, the inevitable spike in gas prices that precedes any long weekend (even a shiny new one!)

I'm not working (every day is a day off for me right now! ) but I still think this is an excellent idea for the same reasons I mentioned in my original post – it's a fairly non-controversial idea for a holiday unlike some other ones, it bridges the long gap of no holidays between January hangover and Easter redemption, the $140 million it will cost businesses is nearly off-set by the $100 million in tax cuts they've received recently so it doesn't hurt the business community as much as they say (also, do they factor in how many people will be out shopping or having  a meal to offset the lost productivity or extra wages that will be paid?).  It gives Saskatchewan the most stat holidays of any province in Canada (along with one of the best vacation time guarantees in the country) and once again, shows Saskatchewan leading the country in innovative socially-minded ideals (er, except for good old conservative Alberta who's had Family Day since 1990.) 

Speaking of Oil-berta, of course, the biggest, best reason for this holiday (other than the votes it might gain the NDP in the upcoming provincial election – where's my 'Calbert Cash' rebate cheque?) is that it helps Saskatchewan keep up with our richer, flashier twin to the immediate west. 

One last thing – foreseeing no economic barriers, I expect YouDay to be announced sometime this  year.

Posted 19 February 2007 § Canada § Humour § Main Page § Politics § Saskatchewan § Work ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged:

Stalking = Playful?!?

It's a loooong story but in our genealogy class, there was a bit of a revolt and a group of students ended up going to the prof to request our final assignment be changed from something that, as assigned, was going to be very redundant and not give us much in the way of  library-centered learning (basically, the assignment was “do your family history and report on what you found”) to something more useful. 

At a class meeting, someone came up with the idea that we should have the option to do our final presentation on a genealogy-related area of interest or expertise for ourselves.  In effect, we would teach each other, seminar-style.  The prof agreed to this proposal along with the option to still do the original assignment for those who preferred that and/or had already done significant amounts of work on it.

I chose the new assignment and also, to come at the idea from a slightly different angle (something I love doing!).  So instead of talking about resources people are using for genealogy today, I tried to picture how librarians and others might be doing genealogical research in the future but looking back at us who are alive today.

“How will our children find out about us?” was the theme of the my presentation and the title I gave it was “Your Digital Footprint: Non-Traditional Genealogy Research on the Internet.”

Have I typed about this before?  I'm starting to have deja vu sometimes when I go to post having done just under 500 posts in the past year!  <quick search of site>  Oh, I did an entry while working on the presentation that explains what I was attempting to do:

I plan to talk
about how our children (and grandchildren) might someday do
genealogical research about all of us using intentional things like our
blog posts and our posts to message boards as well as unintentional
online traces like organization newsletters, workplace archives,
University web sites and so on.  I'm also going to talk about things
that are going to increasingly be a factor in recording your digital
footprint – social networking sites, even better search engines, even
better web sites and technologies that we can't even imagine, the invisible web becoming
more visible and so on.

So anyhow, this is all an extremely long-winded way (and ain't they all on this blog? ) of saying that, no matter what I called it, what my presentation really was in many ways was “Introduction to Online Stalking 101”. 

I don't necessarily mean stalking in the harmful sense of the word (although that is a huge issue of course) but in the (do I even risk using the word?) …playful…way that people can sit at their computers for fifteen minutes and find out so much about other people, whether the stalkee realises their information is out there or not (and frankly, part of my presentation was to hopefully make classmates realise their information was out there even if they didn't think it was.) 

Why is this presentation on my mind tonight?  Someone sent me a private message on Facebook that led to me checking out a particular web site.  On that site, someone had left a comment.  I followed a link on that comment to the commentor's web site which led to a post they'd made months ago about a class at FIMS which was none too flattering towards either the class and the prof. 

So this person, who may or may not be someone I know, thinks they've had a relatively anonymous rant about a class and really, it's about one blog post away from being fairly public knowledge. 

I'm not going to do that of course.  And I have my own worries about how some future employer/colleague/co-worker may react to something I've written or posted here – especially since I've made a decision not to be anonymous with this blog (and realising that nothing is ever truly anonymous on the Internet either.)  Nothing I've written was meant to offend anyone  (unless they've offended me first, bastards! )  But criticism and even differing opinions do get people's backs up – that's only natural.

So uhm, be careful what you write out there.  Or at least be prepared to deal with the consequences.  (I used a stat in my presentation that something like 33% of employers use Google to look up potential employees and 10% are even looking at social neworking sites now.) 

One last thing – in that presentation, I had the brilliant idea to link to a YouTube clip as the final slide of my presentation.  But doing a last minute edit, I somehow deleted the link and, having had troubles with technology already that day (the batteries on the remote for the projector went dead when it was my turn to present), I just read the statement you see below (which I luckily had on my notes in front of me at the podium) rather than trying to find the clip after a long morning of presentations (including mine which I'm pretty sure went longer than it was supposed to.)

Here you go – sorry it's so choppy.  (And how does something like this that I uploaded once and never looked at again have 200 views already?  Crazy!)

Posted 18 February 2007 § Internet § LibrarySchool § Main Page § Video ‡ Comments (2) °

Happy Birthday Shea (Try Not To Party Too Hearty Tonight – You're Getting Old!)

(This is an older photo of Shea as I was trying to capture the “party” aspect of the post title more than the “getting old. aspect.)  With that said, if you want to see some pics of how “the belly” is coming along, she has a Flickr account with more current photos!  Sorry for any confusion…)

Here's a sample of how she looks now (well, at Christmas):

Posted 17 February 2007 § Main Page § Photo § Shea ‡ Comments (1) °

10 Reasons You Should Read at the Freedom To Read Week event on Monday

Talking to Michelle Lake on IM and it sounds like she's got a good line-up for the Freedom to Read Week event on Monday although there's still room for more readers to sign up, even now.  So if you're interested in reading, why not drop her a line! 

Here's the scoop on the event:
What: Freedom To Read Week Event


When: Monday, February 19, 2007 @ 5pm


Where: Grad Club – Room 19, Middlesex College (lower level).


Why: Censorship still exists and as graduate students in Library Sciences
and Journalism, we need to be aware of these issues and work to provide
access for everyone.


What specifically, though?:  Good question; 'Readers' will take the
stage and the microphone, for 3 min max., to read from a banned or
challenged book (lists can be found here OR
discuss a specific case, issue, article, story, current event, or
passage from somewhere that relates to censorship.  You can choose
whatever you'd like, no limitations.  We have an MC and each reader will
be introduced.  There will be some books at the event if you decide at
the last minute to join us and want to read.


How: Email me (mlake3@uwo.ca), and let me know what you want to read,
I'll put you on the list, indicate if you need to go on earlier because
of a night class.  Show up, bring friends, and enjoy the event!



***Please come even if you don't want to read, & support your fellow
students!
***


What is already being read? Harry Potter; Snow Falling on Cedars; The
Diviners; Catcher in the Rye; Asha's Mums; One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad,
Blue Dads; and possibly Of Mice and Men.


Here's a list I started last year and never used so am happy to be able to recycle it this year:

TEN REASONS WHY SHOULD YOU READ AT AN EVENT LIKE THIS

10. Freedom of Expression is something fundamental to *all* libraries.

9. For those of you thinking about graduation, participating would look
great on a resume.

8. Today, in Canada, there are politicians trying to ban books based on
their constituents' comments yet who haven't bothered to actually read
the “offensive” books.

7. If it's a good book, odds are it's been challenged by someone.

6. Where else do you get the chance to swear publicly for a good cause?
(One of my classmates read the “Fuck” section of the “Dictionary of Slang” last year and broke a record for number of times saying “fuck” in a three minute timespan at the Grad Club, beating the record set by a punk band!)

5. It's a great chance to get some public speaking experience outside of
the classroom setting.

4. An 8-year old girl who's the daughter of a prof will be reading at
the event.  If she can do it, so can you!

3. Did I mention that participating in an event like this shows an
initiative that help separate you from other applicants when you're
applying for jobs?

2. Award winning novel, “Snow Falling on Cedars” was recently pulled
from an Ontario Catholic high school's library shelves after the board
received an *anonymous* complaint they *believed* was from a parent.

1. You're not just at FIMS for a piece of paper, are you? <grin>

Posted 17 February 2007 § Censorship § LibrarySchool § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (0) °

Friday Fun Link – March of the Librarians (Feb 16, 2007)

I said last week that I love getting something in my in-box on
Friday morning that I can turn around and use as a Friday Fun Link
later that same day. (In fact, feel free to e-mail me
if you know a site that is funny, unique or thought-provoking. I can’t
guarantee I’ll use it but I’m always on the look out for potential
FFL’s.)

My former classmate, Bruce F., comes through with
today’s link – a parody of the “March of the Penguins” documentary
using the ALA conference in Seattle as a backdrop.

They come to network, for free stuff and possibly, to mate. Hilarious!

Posted 17 February 2007 § FridayFunLink § Library § Main Page § Video ‡ Comments (0) °

Ask Metafilter – Some Thoughts

I recently exchanged a couple e-mails with an MLIS student who was thinking of doing a paper on Yahoo! Answers having seen one of their executives do a presentation at OLA SuperConference.  I suggested that she should focus on Ask Metafilter which is arguably a lot more successful at what it does than Yahoo Answers.  Or do a comparison of both as they provide two unique takes on what could be a model for the future of library reference services. 

On that note, why don't the Ask A Librarian services that are available at most public and academic libraries archive the questions and answers they deal with online?  This would allow multiple people to get benefit from the answers, not just the person who asks the question.  One of the great strengths of AskMefi is the archive of information that has built up in the years it has been in existence.  Because of this, you can search or use the tags to find previous answers that might help with your own question.  In just the past couple weeks, I've used Ask.MetaFilter tags while seeking information on MS-Excel, online address books, babies, and more.  That old saying that there are no new questions, just new people asking, is definitely true in this case!)

Never one to let good information go to waste, here's the full e-mail I sent her:

I've heard of Yahoo Answers, looked at it the odd time but don't use it
because MetaFilter has an excellent service called ask.metafilter.com that is more useful, thorough and effective in my opinion.  Why?  I think people on
MetaFilter are invested in the community and want to support each other
whereas Yahoo Answers tend to have “drive-by” responses (as far as I
know – perhaps they have a sense of community there too?)  But that's
the crux of the issue – Yahoo has potentially millions of people on
their site, AskMetafilter has 50 000 (of which, *maybe* 10 000? are
active participants.)  You can't discredit the interface of each site either – AskMefi has a layout that encourages you to browse and makes answering questions fairly painless compared to Yahoo's.


There's been some discussion/comparisons of the two services on
MetaFilter so if you wanted to shift your paper in that direction
(either by focusing completely on Ask.Mefi or by doing a comparison of
Internet-based reference services), I can point you to some of those
comments.



Another thing that people have claimed helps make the Metafilter network
of sites what it is is the fact that the co-moderator is a librarian
(Jessamyn West who runs the well-known site, librarian.net).  


So, in summary, I *really* think you should incorporate ask.mefi into
your paper in some way.

Here's a follow-up e-mail I sent to her with more info:

One other thing I forgot to mention – Google had a Yahoo Answers
competitor (creatively named “Google Answers”) where they paid 800 people
(I think they were considered contractors – not full-timers) for good
answers.  It was shut down last November.  Here's an announcement from
Google:



http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/adieu-to-google-answers.html



…and some Google results with more commentary from other sites:

http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8
&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006-12,GGGL:en&q=google+answers+shut+down



Below is a link to a great article explaining why ask.mefi works and Google Answers
didn't (if you don't know when you read the article, Matt Haughey is the creator of the MetaFilter network.)
Here's one interesting quote from the article:


“Just as importantly, Jessamyn is a librarian. I can't overstate how
much a site that's about providing information benefits from the
presence of a librarian, someome who's an expert at retrieving and
disseminating information.”



There are lots of other good links to Metafilter discussion of the topic
and other relevant stuff in this article too:



http://www.dashes.com/anil/2006/12/11/how_matt_haughe



Cheers,



Jason

Posted 16 February 2007 § Internet § LibrarySchool § Main Page ‡ Comments (2) °

505 Is Gone

Heard via the grapevine that “505 – Technology” is officially gone as a required course at FIMS.  Here's a bit of background on how this came about… 

(Disclaimer: all of the following is from my admittedly-faulty memory of stuff that happened months ago when I was at my busiest point in my final semester.  For the reality of what happened and will be happening, talk to Dr. Leckie, Rosanne Greene or Rebecca Efrat, the current Academic Rep.)

The department realised that 505 was problematic for a number of reasons and had been for a number of years.  (To be blunt, profs didn't like teaching it and many students didn't like taking it – either finding it too basic or too advanced.)  I happened to be sitting on the MLIS Program Committee in my role as Academic Rep of the Student Council when this issue was raised so became part of an ad hoc committee to come up with a solution on how to improve/change 505 for the better. 

There were lots of ideas/discussion/debate from everyone involved (my idea was to split 505 into a basic and an advanced course but the trouble with this was finding enough qualified staff to teach two classes per term instead of one plus judging who fit where/what to teach in each class plus stuff I'm probably forgetting.)

This plan which eventually was adopted seemed like the best combination of what everybody wanted.  It was proposed that students be offered a series of technology workshops on various topics and they could choose to take only what they wanted/needed.  For example, if you've done web development, you wouldn't take HTML or FTP but you still might take Excel and/or Powerpoint.

There will still be a tech requirement for every student but it will be the student's choice of one of six (?) advanced tech courses that are currently on the books (things like “Managing Internet Info”, “Database Programming”, “Web Design”, etc.)  Students will have to show they have the skills needed already or the FIMS workshops required before they can take the advanced course.  For those who are absolutely not tech-savvy, this list of options will include “Advanced Reference” which has a heavy database component but isn't as technologically challenging. 

I can't remember if we ever decided for sure how long or how in depth the workshops would be to give people this base level of knowledge.  A figure of three weeks of a couple hours per week jumps into my head but I may be remembering what someone suggested in a meeting – not what the final decision was.  In fact, I'm not sure if it was ever determined when I was there. 

The Program Committee wanted suggestions for workshops so here's the list I passed along.  Did I miss anything? 

– Powerpoint
– Excel spreadsheets
– Access databases
– Integrated Library Systems, OPAC's
– Web Design
– Blogs/Wiki's/RSS
– Web 2.0/Libraries 2.0, Ajax
– Open Source Software
– Digital Imaging/Document Scanning/Text Recognition
– Social Software/Instant Messaging/Virtual Reference
– PHP/Perl/XML/Javascript programming for web sites & databases
– computer networks
– Internet technologies – FTP, Telnet, Gopher, servers

Posted 16 February 2007 § Internet § LibrarySchool § List § Main Page ‡ Comments (2) °