Coordinated Connections are Cool

RSS Feeds. One more advancement using technology to bring together your interests and most recent news at a simple click. This week I explored Bloglines.com and added RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication). The idea is to gather together all of the sites and blogs you regularly check into a list. When you click on a site, you will see the most recent post instantly.

I had trouble getting Bloglines.com to set me up at first and later Blogger.com was down and wouldn't let me post, so technology still is not perfect. In eagerly setting up the sites I wanted to include, I discovered many of them do not have RSS feeds. However, I did start the process of including several sites that would be useful to a librarian engaged in collection development and reader's advisory along with one or two blogs from personal friends. A few I added are Amazon's Top 100 bestselling books, Entertainment Weekly's Books, and an RA site called EarlyWord. Recently I read, Samurai Shortstop. A father is hard on his son for taking the train when he could easily walk many miles to his destination. The son balks and praises the train for its speed. The father remarks coldly that we are foolish if we think modern conveniences free up time. Is it really better to fast forward in the interest of efficiency, or is there still a place for a deep breath and a dose of old fashioned pondering. Hmmm.

Flickr Creativity

I've been clicking and "linking" all over Flickr, and I confess that while it is fascinating and eye appealing on one hand, I am just not sure what to do with it all. Do I really need my own library trading card? What would someone actually DO with a mashup? I almost get the feeling that those who are extremely computer literate are just having the best fun with this. For the rest of us, it would behoove Flickr to spell out what you can do and how you can accomplish the task in the plainest language possible. Some sample projects would be most welcome. Remember, Microsoft placed Solitaire on the early computers just so users would learn how to use a mouse. That concept is simple. Eliminate the hesitation and fear of the product and users will take off!

The endless combinations of pictures and colors is clearly paving the way for some awesome creativity. A friend of mine creates custom quilts and often uses personal items such as ties and t-shirts in her designs. She has also used photographs. Using a collage of pictures in a quilt project would be so personal and lasting. Hmm, maybe I'll see if she knows how to do a mashup.

Technology Connects Readers with Authors

In our exploration of 23 Things, it is possible and perhaps desirable to focus on the latest web sites, links, macros, etc. This week I learned of an intriguing trend: authors allowing readers unprecedented easy access to them via web sites.

If a person knows how to type in a web site address and click on links, that is all they need to know. Once in the site or blog of the author, the user can find the author's biography, a list of their works, find out what is coming out next and when, and access the author's social network page on MySpace or Facebook. Best of all, the readers can ask questions directly.

This last week, the movie Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, based on the book of the same title, came out to an enthusiastic teen audience. The two authors, David Levithan and Rachel Cohn, each have their own site that incorporates fun information and a conversational tone. This is a stunningly successful way to promote books, reading, writing, and sales. What if Shakespeare, Hemingway, Hawthorne, and Proust had their own sites in their day? It was "to be" now and "not to be" then.