LILI IT Interest Group Meeting Notes – March 25, 2010

A short meeting today because of the upcoming LS Forum (which was very interesting) but we still packed a lot into LILI IT!

Jim demonstrated the way that he has been using the POP option in Gmail to read his Wiscmail via Gmail. One of the major benefits that Jim looks forward to is to use his (soon to come) Google Nexus One phone to use his Gmail to check his Wiscmail. That is pretty cool. Jim mentioned that though the email interface is great, there is no easily accessible "get mail" button to run the POP. Soon probably...

Next, Jim showed us a very cool web-based image editing application called Aviary: http://aviary.com/ There are downloadable add-ons for Chrome and Firefox. It looks intuitive and fast. Honestly, I can't remember the huge number of times that I wish I had access to a good web-based imaging application that can compete with Photoshop. Based on a first-look, it looks like Aviary can compete favorably.

Bob let us know about these very useful tools for blocking and dealing with malware, the bane of everyone's existence these days. As Bob noted, malware can lurk in advertisements syndicated to even very popular and legitimate sites, as this CNET article explains.

NoScript https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/722
Flashblock https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433
Adblock Plus https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

Bob notes that though these work, they can also work too well. For example, No Script can and does block JavaScript from running, but many legitimate sites use JS in non-evil ways. So, use these tools wisely.

If you read the blog posts below, you will see a post where I promise to add some of the discussion from the LILI IT Ref-Retreat Lunch Table. Well, this is the LILI IT Group, so, using our time machine to return to the Reference Retreat in January... Jim reminded us (me, really) of the password management application that he demoed at the Reference Retreat lunch table: Last Pass http://lastpass.com/ It works great, and is a very efficient way to deal with ballooning password management.

Tom mentioned the suite of tools from the ZOHO site. http://www.zoho.com/ I like the note-taking application called ZOHO Notebook in particular.

OK, back in the time machine... and now we are back in March... ahhh, March.

Bob lamented that we were not all at SXSW. Truer words were never spoken. Maybe next year we can all do a roadtrip.

Ian mentioned that John Martin has been putting together a Friday Game Design meeting in the GLS offices of Ed-Sci (room 138). Apparently campus librarians have been attending in force. Of course! The purpose is to test game designs and is not restricted to digital games. One of the very fun-sounding activities that they did included designing games from random objects. Read all about it on the ComETS Game Sig page.

Ian also let us know that the notes and materials from the EDUCAUSE Mobile Learning 2.0 meeting were still online for our viewing/reading. I was lucky to be able to attend part of the event. A big thank you to Sarah for making sure this happened locally. Like she is not busy enough already!

Jim showed the interesting site, Fuelly: http://www.fuelly.com/ It shows average mileage for many vehicles. Very useful!

Jim and Ian moved us on to talking about 4Square: http://foursquare.com/ An augmented reality phone app. What does it do? Users share geolocated information to "learn about favorite spots and new places." Ian was Mayor of College for a while. He has since retired. Life is tough at the top.

Katy (DING! New member!) noted the similarity to Yelp: http://www.yelp.com/ and also how they had gotten in trouble lately for extortion...

That is it for today. We packed all that into 45 minutes!