In the far distance (Milwaukee) WAAL is getting revved-up... meanwhile, back in Madison the LILI IT Interest Group carries on... Today we looked at a number of interesting sites and news-worthy developments:
Nancy started us off by demonstrating a very useful tool called Readibility: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/ This site provides a bookmarklet that can be used to strip out extraneous advertizing and banner content from pages that you visit. It works very well! (I am planning to use it right away.) Nancy also mentioned the New York Times technology columnist David Pogue: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/ His column is very informative, AND it benefits from being Readibilitized.
Nancy next moved us on to a demonstration of the http://www.mailboxmap.com/ tool. It is a map of mailboxes! (And post offices). It is fantastic! How many times I have wished something like this could be easily available. With a newer cell phone the world is at your fingertips...
Tom (now writing in the 3rd person) mentioned the new Facebook Like button that is capturing the news lately and causing a stir. Some see this as a bid to knock Google off of its "organizing the web" pedestal, some privacy advocates seem to be concerned, and some Facebook users are confused about what it all means... It strikes me (for now) as a tempest in a techpot. Sorry for the pun. But worth seeing where/if it develops further.
Nancy mentioned the Facebook "Share Bookmarklet." Cool! This tool lets you share pages and bookmarks that you like to your profile. You have to be logged-in to Facebook for it to work, but you no longer have to go back-and-forth between pages and your profile to add the suggested links. Yay!
Katie mentioned the http://www.stumbleupon.com/ tool. It has been a while since I looked at this. Why! As you all know, this useful services utilizes your ratings to build a preference profile for you. It works very similarly to a number of music rating services I have seen/used. The more you rate, the better website suggestions the service makes.
Sarah finished off our meeting by telling us all about the very, very cool project that College, Sarah/LILI, LTG, Lee, and Lisa have been working on with Professor Jon McKenzie. The Digital Salon includes: "Podcasts, experimental videos, graphic novels and essays, websites, blogs, multimedia installations, and posters..." They will be presented online and at College. It is this kind of project that draws people to creative and thoughtful activity on the web.
"The heart of the Digital Salon is a one-week exhibition of new media work by UW graduate and undergraduate students, to be held in College Library's Open Book Café from April 25-30." In addition "A one-day symposium will bring together UW-Madison faculty and staff to present and discuss their digital arts and humanities research, teaching activities, and support services, as well as the larger implications of new media for cultural research and artistic production. The symposium will be held in Memorial Library on Friday, April 30th."
The student work will be presented in a new online space. Very exciting!
See you all next month!
Friday, April 30, 2010
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