Facebook's Biggest Privacy Threat May Be You

According to an article posted in the Techlicious Blog, Facebook's Biggest Privacy Threat May Be You. 
There are also several ideas in the blog to help you with setting and protecting your privacy.

Diigo

I always loved the idea of bookmarking sites, where you can store bookmarks to sites you visit in the cloud, but I never wound up using a service consistently. I tried delicious, but never got used to how it organized your sites, and when it looked like they were going to be sold and shut down, I shifted over to Google Bookmarks. I loved their "list" feature because it was similar to using folders instead of having to tag every link like on delicious. But then, Google shut down their list feature--just turned it off! All my beautifully curated lists were thrown into one big pile with one tag. Needless to say I was frustrated and looked again for another alternative. After surfing, reading, and researching, at the beginning of February I started up on Diigo.

Like delicious, Diigo is a web-based social bookmarking site. So far I think it's the best of the 3 sites I've used! Here are some of the reasons I like it:

• The toolbar is easy to use. If I highlight text on a webpage before I click "Bookmark this page," the highlighted text is automatically saved to the "Description" box. Very handy!
• I can mark everything private, or allow others to see what I've saved.
• I can highlight sentences on the website, and Diigo saves them for me! When I go back and visit a bookmarked site, my highlights are still there. (No more wondering why exactly I thought this site was worth bookmarking!)
• I can also post "sticky notes" on a page, too, with my own comments about it. Kind of like writing in the margins of a book!
• You can email your highlighted, sticky-noted site to a friend, and THEY can see your highlights and notes, too.
• When I go back and look at my bookmarks, the sentences I've highlighted show up in the annotated list...which means I can see the pieces I thought were valuable without clicking through to the site itself.
• Diigo runs on tags, just like delicious and Google, but it also supports a list feature. The cool thing is you can turn your lists into handouts of links, and Diigo does all the formatting for you. 
• I haven't used the social features of Diigo yet, but I could follow other people on Diigo, just like on Twitter, and see what they bookmark. Or I could be part of a group that collects bookmarks together.

The other reason Diigo is working better for me than the other services doesn't have anything to do with them! I noticed when using Google that I had a hard time remembering what tags I used to save a site with. I knew something was there, but couldn't figure out how to get at it easily.

So before I saved a single site on Diigo, I wrote down a starter taxonomy for myself. I tried to think of the ways I remembered sites, and then came up with a brief list of tags to use consistently. For instance, I will remember if something was a slide set, or a pdf, or a video. So now I always tag each site with a format tag. I also tend to remember what type of content it was--like was it a research study, or  blog post, or a news article. So I tag everything that way too. Then I also tag something by what project I'm researching at the time. So I might tag a site with "Storytime Newsletter," or "Spark Activity Cards" or the name of a training class I'm working on. And then last but not least I also tag by subject words.

The other technique I'm using is to bookmark everything I land on while I'm researching. In the past, I would remember visiting a site, but at the time I didn't think it was worth bookmarking, and then I had a hard time finding it again! Now I try to bookmark everything I read most of the way through. Now when something I've read is nagging at me, I can be pretty sure it's in my Diigo list somewhere, and my new combination of tags helps me find it.

Pinterest Curiosity

Who uses Pinterest?  I have heard people using pinterest for work, for library programming and displays, for personal use for recipes, hairstyles and decorating ideas.  I am curious to know who in our Neighborhood Libraries uses it and how.  Pretend I was patron, who had just heard about this, so I came into the library to find out more.  How would you describe it?  What are its best features? If you took them to the website and were showing them how to navigate it, what would you search by to present it to them? 

Tech Talk Winner for March - Jenny P!

It's a little late in the month to be announcing the Tech Talk winner for March, but I've had a few other things on my plate of late;) This month's winner is Jenny P. She got us talking and thinking about our ereaders and kept this and other conversations going on our blog. Thanks for asking thought-provoking questions, Jenny! Jenny's prize is a $10 gift card to Amazon.com. Congrats, Jenny!

This will mark the end of the monthly prize unless the new manager decides to continue the incentive. I know you don't need an incentive to talk to each other about the cool things you're learning as you explore the frontiers of technology. Keep it up!

Sign now

Usually, if we need to sign something (new hire documents, apartment leases, bank account documents, you name it) you have to print it, sign it in pen, then fax it (since many places won't accept things by email)

I've stumbled upon a site (which is legally legit) called SIGN NOW {www.signnow.com}

This site allows you to upload a document from your computer, electronically sign it (you can draw in your signature, or have the site pick a font), then you save it, and you can either email it to yourself or download it back to your computer. No lengthy registrations needed, just an email address/password.

If the receiving end needs you to fax it and you don't have a fax machine, you can use: http://faxzero.com/ for easy fax jobs.

Since a lot happens between library branches, this may come in handy! (Especially for staff at the Deer Trail branch!)

I understand this is a tech blog, but I leave you with some food for thought:
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/04/the-upsides-to-working-without-internet-access-for-80-days/255606/

Happy signing everyone!

Improve your cellphone photos with Instagram

I don't take many photos with my cellphone but if I did I think I would try out Instagram. This article about Instagram sounds like it would be a good app to use to improve photos that you take with your android/smartphone. http://www.techlicious.com/review/instagram-for-your-android-smartphone/

The Future of Libraries

If you are looking for a positive Monday morning pick-me-up, I advise against reading the article by Steve Coffman that appears in InformationToday.com. It is entitled "The Decline and Fall of the Library Empire". Basically, Coffman argues that all of the things libraries thought they could do to re-position themselves in the digital age have been a bust - including web directories, Library 2.0 (never caught on), virtual reference, intermediated searching, public access to computers (actually showing signs of decline due to rise of smartphones and ipad devices), and even e-books (too many publisher restrictions/not a good investment for libraries). He says "The Electric Library is here - it just isn't us. It is Amazon, Google, Apple and Barnes and Noble". Interestingly, he says our fallback is to embrace the tangible property we started with - our physical books, the thousands of buildings,and the millions of people who still walk through our doors. He offers hope that in a world where physical bookstores may become uneconomical, we'll need places where people can get together to listen to stories or discuss books and ideas.
So is he right? It does seem that ALD is doing a good job both of responding to the public's technological needs and repositioning itself in accordance with Coffman's vision that libraries should hang on to their physical presence in the community . Are there any other options?
http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr12/Coffman--The-Decline-and-Fall-of-the-Library-Empire.shtml