Technology Free-for-All
Here’s an attempt at a list of what Derek Willis, a few intrepid volunteers, and I covered during the Technology Free-for-All session at the Special Libraries Association Annual Conference.
Derek:
Derek posted more detailed notes.
Stan F.:
- Awesome Highlighter, a way to quickly and easily snag text on a Web page and share the highlighted text and the Web page with other people
Beth S.:
- Meebo, which allows chatting, even with established instant message accounts on other systems, through a Web browser. Beth’s library uses it as a way to let people chat with the library staff.
- Viigo, an aggregator for mobile platforms
- Gizmo, a way to make free calls and instant messaging and other services
Carolyn E.:
- Shurl: shorten URLs and assign them a specific URL
me:
- A very brief intro to social news sites: reddit, Digg, and Babbledog
- Twitter and how to use this microblogging platform primarily for mobile devices to drive traffic to your Web site or find out what’s happening at SLA 2008. raabonte was twittering the session, which I discovered when I put SLA’s feed on the screen. I pointed out that despite us talking about Twitter, it did not crash (progress fixing their problem, I hope) and someone was twittering the session. Althought I looked around to try to see who it was, I did not figure out who was doing it.
- Wikipedia and what’s new there plus a plug for Phoebe’s session at 3:30 p
- One Laptop Per Child’s computer the XO and the work they’re doing around the world
- SLA’s Innovation Laboratory
As a speaker, I really liked the layout of the room. Derek and I were doing theatre in the round, which I hadn’t done before. It was great for me because I really like interacting with the audience and could feel that I was connecting to them better in their midst than just being in front of the room on a stage. I’m not sure how it worked for the audience. One thing I would change is that I would have moved the chairs considerably closer to the stage. There were about 75 people present.
