Thing 26: Who, What, Where and When Now?

This is it, folks. The final stretch of our run together. I want to thank you all for joining me as we've run, jogged, walked and occasionally crawled through the social web.

Please take a few moments to fill out our end-of-session survey -- it's even shorter than the Midway Survey! I'd prefer you did this online, but I will have a few paper copies on hand at our Finish Line celebration on December 2nd.

Speaking of which, you should have received your invitation to our party through Google invites, one of the functions of Google Calendar. If you haven't, please check your Gmail account and let me know if you need the invite sent again. I hope to see many of you there!

If you're interested in tools for online event organizing, you've got a few options to choose from. Evite was one of the first event invitation tools out there. It's free, separate from any email or calendaring system, and easy to use. Crush3r offers a similar service, but the display is a little clunky.

Meetup focuses on regular meetings and serial events. There's a fee for organizers who want to start a group, but none for folks to find one. Better still, you don't need to register with the site to find a group and get more information about it. CityCita is a comparable free service that focuses on the person searching for a group to meet, rather than on listed events.

Finally, Zanby is an interesting blend of a social network and an event planning site. It seems like a great tool for organzing large family gatherings....or Friends of the Library groups!

Discovery Activity
Please RSVP to the Google invitation. Yes, Maybe or Regrets...just let me know. (See, I promised you an easy last week!)

Now, at the end of our class, I'd like to share a video for the holidays that's just bursting with social web fun. Enjoy, and thank you for running with me!

Thing 23: The Internet Brought Back the Radio Star

Shaking loose the bounds of archived media, let's take a look at the wide variety of live media out on the internet. To keep things manageable, we'll focus on live audio streams; the number of live video streams (from the Times Square webcam to the NFL) is truly overwhelming.

Traditional radio stations (such as NPR, WFNX, and WMJX over there) are increasingly providing access to their broadcasts online, though some do require you to register to to listen.

Radio Paradise is one of the giants of internet-only radio. Using just about any media player you have on your computer, you can listen to commercial-free, listener-supported alternative music radio. While you're listening, you can browse through a playlist of current and prior tracks, discussion forums and additional information about featured artists.

Moving from 1.0 to 2.0 streaming media, Pandora is a free online service powered by The Music Genome Project. First, you create a free account and 'seed' a radio station with music you like. As your station plays, Pandora will begin adding other music related to what you chose. You can give each song a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, move it to a more appropriate station, or find out why Pandora suggested the song. Over time, you can fine-tune your own stations and add to the data of the Genome Project.

Magnatune takes yet another tack by providing access to the music of independent artists around the world. You can either listen on a song-by-song basis, or play through a genre mix. Here's the World Music mix, just for Nancy V.

Last FM works on a related principle, and expands it to include video. From the Music or Videos tabs, you can browse popular hits or search for a specific artist or song. The Radio tab works like Pandora, creating a station for you based on an artist you request.

Seeqpod goes one step even further by including podcasts, Flash animation, slideshows, lectures, images and all sorts of playable media in their results. It really does give you pieces from the whole media pie:



Discovery Activity
Yup, you guessed it: choose one of the sites above, poke around a bit and report back on what you find. If you're already familiar with one of these services, please pick one that you haven't worked with before to explore.

To Go the Extra Mile, choose one of the more tradtional live audio sources (RadioParadise or an NPR affiliate) and one of the more social services and contrast the experience of listening to each of them. What do you like or dislike about each style; how engaged are you; what do you think of the songs you're listening to?

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Housekeeping Note: I will be away from my computer from Thursday through Sunday of this coming week (11/20 - 11/23). I'll be checking email, but my response time may lag a bit. For those of you still looking to complete Thing 20, I promise to be online as much as possible once I return.

Now, just as the final leg of the Marathon is down an easy stretch of Boylston Street, so too shall this run through 2.0 wind down to the finish line. Our last set of Things will be another week of fun and games, starting with Thing 24: Itty Bitty Blogging. Keep on jogging, folks -- we're almost there!

Thing 11: You(Tube) Oughta Be in Pictures

So, enough with the screens and screens of static text and images. The first decade of the 21st century is much like the first decade of the 20th: still images have begun to move! They've also started to speak and sing and...well...



Meet Keepon, a robot designed to react to and engage with children with autism. Turns out, he's also a YouTube sensation. Just as I'm doing right now, videos posted to YouTube are linked to and embedded in blog posts and web sites around the globe, quickly shooting unknowns into online stardom! They even inspire responses and parodies.

YouTube began as a place for individuals to share moments from their lives, from zombie marches to orchestral experiments and drum line performances. Christmas house light displays and the Hallelujah chorus. Oh, and knitting instruction...lots of knitting instruction.

Somewhere along the way, posting a video to a website became an important marketing strategy. Bands are using online video for inexpensive and easily shared exposure. The pop group OK GO! posted an innovative music video two years ago and it's gotten 40 million views to date. The popularity of this video earned them a spot at the MTV Music Video Awards in 2006.



YouTube is the most well-known free video hosting site, but there are others: Google Video, Vimeo and many more.

As internet connections have gotten faster, longer and more serious video has made it to the smallest screen, usually kept on an individual site rather than with a free service. The TED Talks, Google Tech Talks and Berkman Center lectures are three series of presentations given at esteemed institutions and conferences, put online to share ideas beyond the limits of the lecture hall. Similarly, some higher educational institutions are videotaping professors and offering their lectures online, while others are offering distance learning with print, audio and video components.

Now, for the obvious question: How are libraries using this multimedia tool?

Discovery Activity:
Go to YouTube and run a search for "library video". Include the quotation marks to focus the search a bit. Choose a video that strikes you and link to it. In your post, talk a little about the video and what you think of the library's use of this tool.

If you'd like, Go the Extra Mile and embed the video in your blog post.

And now, reversing the usual course of history, we're going to move from moving pictures back to audio-only with Thing 12: Can You Hear Me Now?

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Some more of my favorite videos, just for fun:

Mime Johann Lippovitz's version of Natalie Imbruglia's Torn echoed across the web....and eventually got him onto to the stage with her.

Do you remember The Dot and the Line?

And, because we must be able to laugh at ourselves...The March of the Librarians.