Thing 8

Instant messaging seems to be the basic gist of this Thing. IMing (okay, so I didn't get that right away either and "instantly" presumed a Chinese dynasty) is bascially a chat room for two, the capabilities ever-expanding, as are the virtual and real universes. (Or are we imploding into a Black Hole, or is that just me?) This is another feature ACLD recognizes as another way "to accomodate preferred means of communication" in its customer-driven revamping. Other "Communication Web 2.0 Style include email, text messaging and Web conferencing. IMers can also send Web links, videos and other images, sounds, files, streaming content, and even talk and have mobile capabilities (cell phones). I'm not sure I successfully registered for Google Talk, although I plowed through their terms and they said I did. No time to talk now, however, just finish this blog before I have to vacate the premises. I read about Voice Over Internet Protocol, and I enjoyed a brief history of Nintendo. I have no experience with gaming (just a grandson who evidently must have Windows Live Messenger for communication between xbox 360 gamers). That family also has the Rock Star game, which evidently is a Nintendo innovation providing for heightened interaction. Business users can use IMing for virtual conferences, collaborating, conversing, and sharing data in real time. Now that's relevant!

THING 7

Online Image Generators are indeed fun, fun to mess around with images and words. It would be captivating to be able to generate trading cards of visual and performing artists for FLYP's
"Be Creative/Express Yourself" Summer Reading Program.
I visited the Gould Library connection and selected Kristin Partlo's "trading card", mainly because I have a daughter named Kristin. I thereby inadvertently chose the social science librarian, and, when I investigated the research subject guides, I found one for "CAMS: New Media & Digital Culture". (No one I asked knew what CAMS stands for, but I'll substitute "Computers: Awesome Mega Systems".) At any rate, I copied the following quotes that I found imminently relevant. "Constantly evolving areas of inqury that do not really lend themselves to traditional reference resources...(including) topics of the World Wide Web, videogames, DVD, digital video and audio (including p0dcasting and webcasting) and virtual reality."
"Digital culture is defined here as the results of the social networking fostered by new media and includes the topics of the social web (or Web 2.0), blogs, wikis, peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing, instant messaging, viral videos, massively multi-player online gaming, Internet memes, and so forth."
In the context of these quotes are, yet again, new terminology: P2P, viral videos, memes. Note that the second quote ends "and so forth". "Mega", like I said. What I thought was interesting in the virtual world is that the location of the Laurence McKinley Gould Library was not readily apparent. After a little searching, I finally found that the school is Carleton College in Minnesota. (And, guess what, Charles Schulz was from St. Paul.) In essence, persons, places and things do not have the same bearings in virtual worlds as in the actual world, and the nature of identity is
altered accordingly.

THING 6

Good grief (I'm reading an exhaustive bio of Chas Schulz)! I finally got here again. How is it that I am so easily confused and readily frustrated. Just keeping track of email addresses and passwords stymies me. Just for signing in to getting going has been a major snag today. Thanks mucho to compassionate co-workers for this bi-polar bozo. So, anyway, Thing 6. I was going to peruse other blogs to see what they said, but my first attempt was thwarted because I was somehow confused by a small component for which there is no negotiating in cyberspace. Explanations introduce other concepts that further challenge my ability to absorb. Mashups are not to be confused with embedded data. Mashups must access 3rd party data using an API and reuse the content in an unintended way. A hybrid. There is pure XML content and HTML presentation-oriented content. I understand that definition better with the Google maps and real estate ventures than I do with the Flickr mashups example. And within that sidetrack are Acamin, Digg, RadioClouds. Then there's Alyve, JackBe, Microsoft Popfly, Mozilla Ubiquity, Netvibes, Pageflakes, etcetera, etcetera, as the King of Siam would say. Anyway, I altered some photos I had in my Flickr account. Not great photos, not great results, but fait accompli nonetheless. I see using Flickr Mashups for altering photos for fun jigsaw puzzles, for name badges, for turning summer reading participants into "artistes" to reflect the "Express Yourself/Be Creative" themes.