New working environment

I am experimenting ways to improve my productivity at work, of course at home also. Here are some effective steps that I've taken today:

- Since my new computer supports the multiple monitors, I decided to take full advantage of it. I set up a retired monitor beside my regular one. Although they are of different sizes (one is 15" and the other is 17" flat) and different resolutions, they worked beautifully together. After a few adjustments on monitor's physical locations, software settings, and desktop shortcuts, I am up running. So impressed and extremely happy with the results. Especially when I run searches on different databases, with an online dictionary open for looking up unfamiliar terms, also a Word or Excel sheet opened for recording results, while checking and responding to emails in-between, with this two monitors setting, I was able to have both my searching windows and the online dictionary displayed at the same time, it made the copy and paste more easily and I can multitask more efficiently.

- I also installed a desktop clock widgeton my spared monitors. I like to have a clock hang on my wall(my monitors) so that I can keep track of time more easily. There are so many desktop widgets, I need to spend some other times to dig out new/neat stuff.

- Here is another tip I saw somewhere and really agree with it. I started to follow it ever since then. Just don't remember the exact sentence, but the main point is: If you can do it in less than 5 minutes, just do it now. I am applying the rule while dealing with emails, dealing with reported computer problems, and dealing with junk mails at my home mailbox. Now I feel like more controllable over my chores.

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My "new" findings about Google

I believe what I found today have been existed for a while. Those are not new to the Google world, but they are "new" to me.

Background: There are several kids in my son's school have "head lice", I ran a search on "head lice" on google and was surprised to find the refine result suggestions at the top of the result page.

Finding: The refinements, I later found a little more information from Google Co-OP health, or so called labels are: Condition info ( includes treatment, symptoms, tests/diagnosis, cause/risk factors), info type (include: for patients, for medical authorities, for health professions, alternative medicine), drug info and publication types (such as practice guideline, patient handouts, continuing education, clinical trials). The results for each label was not bad, I saw medlineplus, CDC websites, emedicine, familydoctor, clinicaltrials.gov, NEJM, and big name medical school websites are displayed on the top on each category. Those labels was assigned by Google co-opers. Here are some basic on how to use Google co-op.

My thoughts/concerns:
- How trustable / authoratative are those co-opers?
- Will they label the sites honestly and correctly?
- Will the labels increase the labelled sites' rank on the search result?

Hey, is this operation using the social software philosophy and bear the same good/evil of the social software?

Another finding is that the Google reader, an online RSS reader, just like Bloglines.

Technorati

I was learning the searching function of Technorati and surprisingly found a picture of the library umbralla bag was posted in flickr. In web 2.0, you never know who will comment about your library, and how they will do it. Intersting, should I add comments to this picture? Here is another one related to Eskind, but not tagged.

Just like what is said about Technorati in its help page:

Technorati allows you to find out what people are saying about you, your company, your products, your competitors, your politics and, other areas of interest, on the Internet in real time.

Another paragraph answered my question about RSS and Technorati:

What about an RSS search engine? Is that different from what Technorati does?
Yes. RSS feeds are a subset of the World Live Web. An RSS search engine searches only content structured in specialized XML formats such as RSS and Atom but does not look at a site's HTML or other markup. Not all blogs have RSS feeds, and some sites that are not blogs (such as The New York Times or some online event calendars) do have RSS feeds. Many blogs only send out a small portion or summary of their full postings and leave the full postings on their sites as HTML. Technorati specializes in searching all blogs, not merely those with RSS feeds, and instead of only indexing the RSS feed (often the first few hundred words of an article), Technorati reads all of the HTML code in a blog posting, and also tracks all of the activity around a blog or post such as inbound and outbound links.

blogline, social bookmarking, web2.0 and library

I've been quiet and reading a lot these days. Jumping from one blog to another, I found a whole new area that I completely missed out, the web2.0 and its applications in the library and library services. Thinking about my own library, we are talking about redesign the library website a while ago, should we move onto web 2.0 now?

Just to mention a few,
- New books, library news as RSS feed;
- A library blog on library events, CE site, even for library comments page.
- Customized library search bar;
- Library training podcast;
- Library image tour using flikr;
- A wiki for service desk quick manual;
I need more time to work on the list, make a proposal and get it done.

What web 2.0 means to health libraries, instead of summing up myself, I will provide a introducing web 2.0 series articles to show what a canadian librarian says about it:
- RSS trends for health librarians
- webblogs and podcasting for health librarians
- Social network and social bookmarking for health librarians

On RSS, here is a link to a nice presentation abour RSS,RSS aggregator, and RSS applications in library

I also played with the following social bookmarking sites: del.icio.us, digg, topix.net, and feedster. I am working on comparation and will post later.

Another web 2.0 related article is posted by Michael Calore, who compiled "Web 2.0 winner and loser" of web 2.0", the following social networks are the winners:
-flickr
-odeo
-writely
-del.icio.us
-NetVibes

Too late, I have to stop here.

Ask.com Or Google

Sarah Houghton-Jan posted "ten reasons that librarian should use Ask.com instead of google"

1. Ask.com's Smart Answers rock my world.
2. Ask.com clearly identifies their advertising.
3. Ask.com's Image Search is far superior to Google's in terms of relevancy
4. For all types of searches, Ask.com offers one-click links to narrow your search, expand your search, and provides links to results for related terms.
5. Ask.com provides a binoculars icon with each search result
6. Ask.com offers instant white pages searching from their main search box.
7. Ask.com offers RSS Smart Answers
8. Ask.com has a version specifically designed for kids, Ask for Kids, that users natural language searching and has a kid-friendly interface.
9. Ask.com's Maps and Directions Search has some neat features too.
10. Finally, Ask.com has far less ads overall

In the coming week, I will compare these two search engines and see what I feel like.

Joy of Learning

Signed up for a bloglines account and subscribed to several library related blogs. The readings were so good and for me it seems an eye-opening look into a new librarianship. Got to 'steal' some ideas, application to use on our library website and services. I also steped into a MLIS course on "social software and library", the whole course in on blog format, using blog to study blog, what a great idea. The sidebar has a link to worldwide library or librarian blogs. Wow, never realized there are so many fellow librarians are doing blogs.

On Google, I've gathered lots of good sites in my "bookmarks" for my professional readings. Need to get it organized. I've been installing Google toolbar on all the workstations that I am using, my work computer, my home computer, the staff rotating laptop, and the service desks computer. Making the bookmarks available online does make the reading and learning more easiler.

I also discovered the "google webmaster tools", sound interesting, will look more closely later.

Compare photo services

The online version can be seen from Google spreadsheet at here.