Task Force on Social Networking Software

No matter what your politics, you have to be impressed with the integration of social networking around the inauguration.  CNN is displaying Facebook posts beside the live video feed.  There are Flickr feeds to gather photos and Twitter feeds to grab tweets.  I’m sure there is a lot more out there that I haven’t mentioned (I’ve been scurrying setting up digital displays and projectors all morning).  If you know of more you can share them here in the comments.

It is certainly makes the occasion more participatory.

Bart

Publication alert!

SNSTF member Melissa Rethlefsen, along with co-authors David Rothman and Daniel Mojon have published Internet Cool Tools for Physicians, which is getting alot of press in the blogosphere. Where’s the Facebook fan page?

Congratulations to Melissa, David & Daniel, for an accessible, illustrated and contemporary guide to online tools in medicine.

Last year many MLA members learned the basics of social networking software by participating in the course “Web 2.0 101: Introduction to Second Generation Web Tools”.  Now it’s time to take a closer look.  The Social Networking Software Task force invites MLA members to participate in the free course, Dig Deeper with Social Media: short courses on emerging online tools.  In this course members can pick and choose the topics of interest to them, as each short course will be offered a la carte.

MLA member feedback told us what topics were of greatest interest to the membership. Each short course is designed to take a more advanced look into a topic and may require a greater comfort level with Web 2.0 technology.  Graduates from last years course and intermediate computer users will feel right at home with the new material.

The schedule will be as follows:

January 19th - 25th
Media Sharing
2 CE Credits

February 16th - 22nd
Web Collaboration Tools ( Registration required by Feb 9th)
2 CE Credits

March 9th - 15th
Wikis
2 CE Credits

April 20th -26th
Blogs
2 CE Credits

No registration is required except for the Web Collaboration Tools course, which involves group work. To participate in a short course and earn CE credit, simply complete the course work and submit your progress. All course work, important dates, and links to support can be found at the course Website http://sns.mlanet.org/snsce_advanced/. On the course site you can also join the course mailing list and we will send you email reminders for upcoming short courses, deadlines, and other helpful information. CE credits will be awarded to 2009 MLA members only. Institutional members may only have one person complete each short course for CE credit.

Disclaimer
Access to a computer with Internet on an unrestricted network is required to fully participate in the course. If you work within a restricted network, check with your workplace network administrator concerning access issues to the Web 2.0 tools utilized in the course.  Participants who work on restricted networks will need to access websites from computers outside of these networks to participate fully in the course.

If you have an questions please contact Bart Ragon at bart@virginia.edu.

Well, it had to happen.  With a product as good as Jing, TechSmith is ready to try and make some money off of it.  The good news is that the free version is still free.  If you don’t know the product, Jing is a screencapturing tool that allows you to grab images or even video of any action you perform on your computer.  It even gives you some server space to easily upload your captures. I’ve found a lot of uses for it in my job.

The for fee version, called Jing Pro, promises to provide better video quality,  smaller files sizes, direct uploads to YouTube, and no Jing logos.  It costs $14.95 per year so it’s not cost prohibitive.  It looks like the storage capacity at screencast.com is still the same 2 GB and I would have like to see that increase.   I also did not like that Jing (which loads when I start my computer) took possession of my desktop to tell me about the new version. Bad TechSmith Bad!

You can check out either version at http://www.jingproject.com/.

If you want to learn more about Jing and how it might help you in your job, just wait for my next post or check out the next MLA-Focus. There is going to be a free learning opportunity for MLA members concerning Media Sharing very soon.  Hint Hint – Jing just might be involved.

Bart

Check out this short video by Jesse Dylan about Science Commons, a Creative Commons sister project encouraging an easier way for scientists to share and distribute upstream data.

Science Commons’ goal is to “speed the translation of data into discovery — unlocking the value of research so more people can benefit from the work scientists are doing.”

Science Commons projects include:

• NeuroCommons, a project seeking to integrate a number of existing public databases inlcuding MeSH, Medline and other Entrez resources. (Currently there is no user interface, but plenty of back-end documentation.
• Health Commons, “where a researcher will be able to order everything needed to replicate a published experiment as easily as ordering DVDs from Amazon.”

(Still wondering about Creative Commons? Consider this: Barack Obama’s Presidential transition website Change.gov was put under Creative Commons in November.)

(And yes, Jesse Dylan is related to that folk singer.)

A new data memo from Pew Internet & American Life Project looks at barriers to technology use in their report “When technology fails.”

According to the press release:

• 44% of those with home internet access say their connection failed to work properly at some time in the previous 12 months.

• 39% of those with desktop or laptop computers have had their machines not work properly at some time in the previous 12 months.

• 29% of cell phone users say their device failed to work properly at some time in the previous year.

Also, younger cell phone owners are significantly more likely than seniors to have their
cell phones break, and men were found significantly more likely than women to fix gadget problems by themselves.  Read the full report here.

An article in PC Magazine looks at Google Flu Trends, which uses patterns in Google search queries to explore flu trends across the US.

Explore flu trends across the US using Google Flu Trends

According to Google.org (the “hybrid philanthropy” arm of the search giant): “Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity in your state up to two weeks faster than traditional flu surveillance systems.” Tradition flu surveillance systems meaning the CDC. Interestingly enough, an early version of Google Flu Trends was used to share results each week with the Epidemiology and Prevention Branch of the Influenza Division at CDC. “Across each of the nine surveillance regions of the United States, we were able to accurately estimate current flu levels one to two weeks faster than published CDC reports.” So it’s not competition so much as information sharing. And to their credit, there’s a link to the CDC website and a ‘flu shot locator’ on the Google Flu Trends homepage.

You wouldn’t know it on first glance, but the folks over at the Nursing and Allied Health Resource Section are using a wiki and Google sites to collaborate on information on free nursing resources such as e-journals, databases, and websites.

Check it out: Nursing Resources

Are you a member of NAHRS & want to get involved? Contact Pamela Sherwill.

Kudos to NAHRS for providing a professional looking and well organized example of wikis in use!

An article from the September issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research offers an interesting and critical overview of three-dimensional (3-D) virtual worlds and “serious gaming” that are currently being developed and used in healthcare professional education and medicine. Also includes discussion on two learning theories applicable to the use of 3-D learning environments, and the challenges and benefits associated with it.

Link to PubMed Abstract & free full text
Versatile, immersive, creative and dynamic virtual 3-D healthcare learning environments: a review of the literature.
J Med Internet Res. 2008 Sep 1;10(3):e26. Review.
PMID: 18762473 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

For a librarian’s point of view of health care education in virtual worlds, check out P. F. Anderson’s Emerging Technologies blog for a load of visual presentations and reflections on Second Life.

Ah internet forums, the original online networking tool. Whether it was a question about Star Trek or feeding advice for long-haired cats, forums & bulletin boards have always had their place in the collective wisdom of the Net as a place of debate, wisdom and flaming insults.

Now from the ALA’s Office of Information Technology Policy comes an active, free and useful forum for any librarian who’s had copyright concerns and no one to talk to.

The Copyright Advisory Network is an open bulletin board for copyright questions, with a community of “librarians, copyright scholars, and policy wonks” standing by to offer their expert (but not legal) advice. The purpose of this site is to encourage librarians to discuss copyright concerns, and seek feedback and advice from fellow librarians and copyright specialists. Communication and discussion are encouraged, and you can even ask questions anonymously.

As a part-time digital project manager, I cannot tell you how helpful it is to have a forum like this available to ask stupid questions. It’s all thanks to Freya Anderson’s copyright presentation at Internet Librarian 2008.

PS: there’s also a great digital slider from the OITP to quickly determine copyright.