Friday Roundup (Nov. 9/07): You Don't Expect to See Folk You Know

I don't always have time to post every day, so my first attempt writing about things I have been looking at went very well last week. So, I am back to share more! This week I was in Ottawa for a couple of days teaching my Social Networking Tools course for the Professional Learning Centre at the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto (here is a link to the Toronto description). It was my first time teaching at the University of Ottawa facility so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Once we got a few to-be-expected first day kinks worked out, I had a fabulous time meeting and working with the librarians in Ottawa. They were all so positive and welcoming!

Here, then, is what I would have blogged about if I had had more time this week--

• When you turn on the TV in the morning you don't expect to see folk you know. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see Mitch Joel on Canada AM talking about personal image on the internet Monday morning. Click here for the video from the CTV website. His visit coincides with the release of Microsoft's new Windows Live ID. Microsoft pulled him in as a third party expert in their press release, and he was quickly asked to discuss the concept of personal image by everyone. Most recently I ran into Mitch at Podcamp Boston where he gave a kick-off talk on building your personal brand. They couldn't have picked a better expert!


• Speaking of which, check out the Podcamp Boston 2.0 music video put together by Mark Blevis. Look closely and you will see yours truly more than once or twice. You can also see Famous Librarian Andrea Mercado running around in the green t-shirt. She's a real spitfire! It was great to finally meet her after the Boston podcasters have been telling me for the past year I had to meet the "other" librarian in the group.


• women 2.0 Canada - earlier this year at the mesh conference I discovered Beverly Crandon and Ana Gervasio, two lively entrepreneurial women in a big tech world, were helping to start up a Canadian version of women 2.0 based in Silicon Valley. The Canadian group have recently started up a blog and have become active running events in Ottawa. Unfortunately my visit to Ottawa this week did not coincide with a get-together, but I hope to participate sometime in the future. I have been added to their blogroll which was a nice surprise! I have reciprocated by linking to this blog and hope to get more involved in the future.
• The new OCLC report Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World - a copy of this new report came to me a couple of weeks ago. I only had a chance to crack the binding this week, and am slowly making my way through the report. It is quite substantive but actually quite a quick read. It talks about use of the Internet by the general public and by librarians, and talks about issues and opportunities for libraries with social networking tools. I hope to share some of the findings and my thoughts later on after I have absorbed a little more. But I encourage you to start reading it yourself--some great, useful information here. You can read electronically or print from the OCLC website, or order a hard copy.
• Canada Post has opened a city in Second Life called Maple Grove. I wrote at more length about it on SLAW on Monday. The odd thing is no announcement or link was made on the Canada Post website. I asked around a few of my friends "in the know" about Second Life, and they didn't know who had put it together for them (i.e. who had done the scripting and animation a.k.a. created the buildings). I had a tour around. It is interesting, but mostly people stop in briefly to have a look around and then move on. There is not yet enough there to keep you there.
• Some very interesting statistics about Facebook were discussed by Mitch Joel in Six Pixels of Separation, podcast #74 from last week. He also wrote about it in his Oct. 26th blog post Facebook Facts That Will Blow Your Marketing Mind . I hope to write a bit more about that in a future post, but if you are curious as to why Facebook is gaining prominence in both the tech and marketing world, you have to check it out.

There you have it! Some new things for you to think about, too. Have a great weekend!!

Namaste,
Connie

The Friday Roundup - Are We Living in the Future or What?

So many cool things are happening, it is hard to keep up with them all! Here is what has caught my attention this week:

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• Steve Matthews has put together a sample site pulling together those Canadian legal publisher new title feeds over at legalpubs.ca. For information on how he did it, read the About page. Steve is looking for feedback on how to make it better. We are discussing at least one issue over on the About page (comments at the bottom). Please weigh in on what you would like to see!



• Joel Alleyne waxes poetic about the book Everything is Miscellaneous over at SLAW under the guise of his new column Extreme KM.
  

  At first glance, many of the things that David proposes seem like heresy; but dig deep, and you will find there is much of substance in the way he sees things. This is an excellent book. If you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend it. It will challenge your thinking about what is possible as we move KM forward.




• Inspired by Joel's write-up, Ted Tjaden read the book immediately and posted a response, also on SLAW. He agrees it is a "must-read" book. I am hereby adding it to my list!



• A new pay-by-cell phone trial has been launched in Canada. A video was released yesterday to CNW with spokesdiva Anne Koski talking about RBC's new program with VISA. Instead of putting a chip into a card and using the card to make a payment, they are putting the chip into a cell phone so you can use that to make payment. There is a demo of it toward the end of the video. Are we living in the future or what?



• My friends Shadow and James have started up a new "couple cast" (podcast with a couple talking) called, oddly enough, The Shadow and James Show. James has lots of podcasting experience and so it is exciting to see them working together on this project for fun. They are using their Second Life names for this show (SL is where they met!) so I'm not sure if they want me to reveal their real names.



• Wayne MacPhail has always done things a little differently. First he was in the news business, then he jumped to podcasting (well, there may have been a few transitional steps in there), he became a Second Life expert, then a social media guru over at TheRealNews.com. Now, just for kicks, he finally starts up his own blog. Called Interstitial Packrating he has a few bits and bobs here and there, still working on finding a voice I think. I'm hoping at some point he will explain the blog title and it will all fall into place. Wayne is very smart, creative and versatile. Welcome to the blogosphere (finally) Wayne!



• News came out this week that a blogger won a lawsuit down in the U.S. against a company claiming defamation, privacy invasion, and trademark violations. Thanks to Fix Your Thinking blog for picking up the story. This is good news for those who have been affected by cyberbullies.

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It is fantastic to see so many friends pushing forward with projects. Great work, everyone!

Comment "Captcha" is Now On

This blog has unfortunately been hit by a spammer or spambot posting every hour to various old posts. I have turned the "captcha" feature on to stop it. I am not in favour of using captcha typically and hope this is just a temporary measure until the spambot goes away.

Thanks for your patience!

Cheers,
Connie