What Digital Natives Really Want March 2, 2010
Posted by pupfiction in Uncategorized.Tags: digital natives, librarians, libraries, Web 2.0
1 comment so far
Libraries are always trying to meet the needs of their patrons, but sometimes we just don’t quite get it. Sometimes we try surveys, or comment cards, but these measures can’t quite capture what it is our patrons want now. Luckily, digital native Abby breaks in down in this adorable video from Australia.
Dictionary 2.0: Wordnik February 24, 2010
Posted by pupfiction in Uncategorized.Tags: dictionary, reference, Web 2.0, words
2 comments
Recently I read a good review by Choice, recommending the free website Wordnik.com as a new type of dictionary. Their goal? “Our goal is to show you as much information as possible, as fast as we can find it, for every word in English, and to give you a place where you can make your own opinions about words known.” As a word lover, I found myself browsing this site for some time. Each entry compiles definitions from American Heritage Dictionary, Century Dictionary, GNU Webster’s 1913, Wordnet, and “elsewhere on the web”. The entries also include examples from online articles, print articles, books, etc. There is a place to tag the entries, a live Twitter feed, Flickr photos which have been tagged with the word, statistics about the popularity of the word, etymology from a number of different sites, and a chart graphing usage. While many of the links depend on public contribution like Wikipedia, there still is a wealth of good information on here. As of today, Wordnik boasted that it is comprised of, “billions of words, 423 million example sentences, 4.7 million unique words, and over 185,000 comments, 95,000 tags, 74,000 pronunciations, 24,518 favorites and 728,464 words in 23,583 lists created by 39,849 Wordniks.” While this might not be the most authoritative source on the web for definitions, it is certainly the most current, and in times like these, that is certainly something to be taken into consideration.
Chatroulette- Another great concept to be abused. February 16, 2010
Posted by dataduchess in Technology can do anything.Tags: NYTimes, technology, Web 2.0, Webchat
1 comment so far
I recently discovered that one of my favorite bands from college has a Twitter feed. Oddly, not many of their tweets are music related, including one this morning about a new obsession. It was a link to an article from last week’s New York Times BITS column about a relatively new web service called Chatroulette.
Chatroulette is a web-based video-chat site that once you log in, matches you randomly with another user to video-chat with. Perhaps I’m a little paranoid or cynical because my first thought was “but you never know who you’ll be matched with, it might be a crazy pervert,” instead of the intended “this is so cool, I might make contact with someone from another country and learn about their culture”. However, some of the comments to this NYTimes article by people who tried the service suggest that my first instinct is not too far off base.
I make absolutely NO COMMENT on what you might encounter if you check this out, and in fact, doubt that I will try it myself. But, the NY Times article is worth a read because it features an interview with the creator of the site, allegedly a 17-year old Russian teenager, who thought teens might like to “party with” other teens. There have been a few discrepancies pointed out that make the validity of the teen’s claim of creation questionable, but if he DID, I’m impressed, despite the creeps!