iHCPL The Web According to Google #88: Wave, Buzz, and Mobile

Exercises:

1. How do you think you could use Google Wave or Buzz for collaboration? Do you currently use any online collaboration tools?

I could use Google Wave for teleconferencing and working on joint projects if other members of the team also used it. But I don’t see what its comparative advantage over an e-mail with an attachment would be for a joint project. I signed up for Wave about a year ago on my home computer, and I have yet to find a practical use for it.

Buzz, the Twitter wannabe, is frighteningly repellent. Currently I get in my Gmail inbox, on average, more than the fifty messages a day. About half of them are commercial or political noise that I delete after a quick glance. Why—in the interest of sanity—would I want to increase this? The only thing that could possibly make it worse was if started popping up on my cell phone!

As part of the LIT team I used a wiki and now socialwok.

2. Read a little about one or two of the Google Mobile apps available for mobile phones. Which ones do you think you would use the most and how?

As a stingy person I would not give my phone company any other excuse to jack up the phone bill if I could help it. I would not use any of them if I have a choice. If I do not have a choice I might use the Calendar if I found myself without my hard copy calendar with me, and I would use the search to find the library catalog if all the library terminals were busy and if I didn’t have my netbook with me.

3. Make a post in your blog with your answers.

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iHCPL The Web According to Google #87: Google Reader

Exercises: 1. Take the tour or sign-up and try the service out. Do you currently use a feed reader? If so which one do you use? Would you switch to Google Reader if you don't already use it? Why or why not?

I took the tour to refresh my memory, but for once, it didn't need to be refreshed. Back in Thing #8 I chose Google Reader as my aggregator and have been using it ever since. The only downside is that when I went to it today:
AgggggggggHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH 823 posts to read! Perhaps I need to find a 12-step program for Info Addicts. Hello, my name is Bruce, and I'm powerless over my Aggregator.

2. Take a look at some of your favorite sites. Do they have feeds? If they do, subscribe to one of the feeds. Hint: Our website has feeds.

Yes, most of them do. That's what contributes to my overabundance of posts, the 53 feeds to which I subscribe. Harris County Public Library - Our Space: People & Books @ HCPL is one of the 53. The only site I haven't had success subscribing to is Book Examiner written by Michelle Kerns. It has delightfully snarky reviews, but Examiner.com does not play nicely with the Google Reader. The RSS posts repeatedly took me to notices that said "the article isn't published yet," so I've had to revert to a listserv subscription for my fill of often outrageously catty reviews, trash talk about other reviewers, or statistical counts of the number of clichés appearing in reviews.

Going Bovine

Going bovine / Libba Bray.-- New York : Delacorte, 2009.
480 p. ; 22 cm.
ISBN: 9780385733977

1. Automobile travel – Fiction. 2. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy – Fiction. 3. Dwarfs –
Fiction. 4. People with disabilities – Fiction.

813.6

Just before dying Alonso Quixano recovers his reason and addresses his family and friends from his deathbed, “I was mad, and now I am sane; I was Don Quixote of La Mancha, and now I am, as I have said, Alonso Quixano the Good. May my repentance and sincerity return me to the esteem your graces once had for me...” Alonso was fifty years old when too much reading—day and night he consumed books of chivalry—and too little sleep deprived him of his reason and he decided to become a knight errant.

Cameron Smith is only sixteen when his study of Don Quixote for the state mandated SPEW (State Prescribed Educational Worthiness) test is rudely interrupted. His muscles begin to twitch uncontrollably; he collapses in class, after punching a classmate and insulting the teacher. He is diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In animals it’s known as mad cow disease. His brain is deteriorating and he will lose control of his muscles and be subject to dementia and delusions. A gang of eight-foot high fire giants have already chased him, and when he tries to flee he finds the way blocked by, a “Big Dude. Black armor glistening like oil. Spiked Helmet, steel visor. Sword. The light bounces off the sword in arcs and hurts my eyes. Sword.”

But all is not frightening or hopeless. In the hospital he is attended by a nurse named Glory, and awakes to meet one of his classmates in the bed next to his, “Paul Ingacio Gonzales, but everyone calls me Gonzo.” Gonzo is a champion gamer and a bit of a hypochondriac, but he shares Cameron’s love of science fiction movies. Cameron also meets someone that he’s glimpsed briefly before. He wakes up to find her standing at the end of his bed. As he describes her, “I take in the torn fishnets, plaid mini-kilt, shiny riveted breastplate with leather straps at the sides… Her wings are a crazy black-and-white-checkered pattern, like they’ve been spray-painted at a body shop to look like hipster sneakers.” Did I mention that her hair is pink?

He blinks his eyes to make the hallucination go away, but she doesn’t. Then she introduces herself as Dulcie, eats the chocolate pudding from his hospital tray, and tries to enlist him in a mission to save the world and maybe himself by tracking down Dr. X, whose travel between dimensions has opened this universe up to forces of dark energy, including the ones now consuming Cameron’s brain. He tells her this is the most random thing he’s ever heard. She tells him that he has to take Gonzo with him because their fates are connected. He counters, “There’s no such thing as fate.” To which she replies, “Except for random fate.” And he figures, it’s better than just sitting in the hospital bed and waiting.

Alonso Quixano’s quest ends with his death. Will Cameron’s quest take him beyond? Did I mention the yard gnome that’s really a Norse god?

iHCPL The Web According to Google #86: Calendar and Documents

1. Create a calendar in Google Calendar and try adding some events or tasks to it. How do you think you would use Google Calendar in the workplace or at home? Do you think you would find it helpful to share calendars with coworkers, friends, or family?

I forgot I have a Google calendar! I last used it on Wed Jun 27, 2007. Since it duplicates my Outlook calendar and the pencil and paper one that I carry around with me in my ever-present notepad at work, I haven't used it. However, it might be useful when I'm attending a library conference. Its last use for the ALA 2007 annual conference in DC, but I can't remember if I ever used it while I was there. I'll try again for this year. While it could be useful to share it with coworkers, family or friends, it’s been my experience that none of them, myself included, actually use it.

2. Try creating a file Google Docs and uploading one from your computer. Can you see yourself using Google Docs in addition to or instead of a desktop office application? Why or why not?

I also forgot that I had a Google Docs account that I created during the original iHCPL. There were four documents from 2007, one blank word processing document from 2008, and a document that was sent to me in April 2009. I started typing the draft for this post using the blank word processing document from 2008. The choices of typeface are limited, but sufficient for taking notes. Initially it let me copy and paste from the Google Document onto Word, but not from Word onto the Google Document, but then a few minutes later it did. I'm somewhat puzzled by its repentance, and wonder if I did something differently the second time. The Google Document's tool bar was simpler than the Word 2007 ribbon, which I count as a plus. I was able to copy and paste the image of a book cover from the jump drive I had plugged into my desktop and re-size it easily. The Google Document had a handy drop down menu that gave sizes for the image that went from thumbnail to full page, or custom dimensions. On the other hand, cutting and pasting an image that was not already a .jpeg file or cropping an image were processes that I needed the extra functions of Word to accomplish.


I started uploading my Books Blogged spreadsheet, a 91K excel 2003-2007 file, on May 4, 2010 at 8:22 a.m. CST. At 8:28 I clicked back to the previous page, and it stopped attempting to load the file, as near as I could tell it had done nothing. I stated again at 8:33 a.m., and this time it worked.

Overall Google Docs was much faster than I remember it from 2007, so I don’t know if this is a function of improvements in its software or more bandwidth at the library. Will I actually use it again? I doubt it. All the computers at work are loaded with Microsoft Office, the desktops, laptops at home, and my netbook are all loaded with Microsoft Office.

Catch-22

Catch-22 / Joseph Heller; performed by Jay O. Sanders. -- New York : HarperAudio : Caedmon, p2007.
16 sound discs (19 hr., 30 min.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.
Compact discs
Unabridged
"Bonus: a rare, archival recording of Joseph Heller reading his personal selections from Catch-22"--Container.
Originally published in 1961
ISBN: 0060890096

1. Black humor. 2. Satire. 3. War stories. 4. World War, 1939-1945--Aerial operations, American -- Fiction. 5. World War, 1939-1945--Italy—Fiction.

813.54

Catch-22 is wonderfully witty word-play, a ball of tangled narrative time, dialog, fears, and desires. Set on an Army Air Corps base on the imaginary island of Pianosa off the coast of Italy during the closing months of the Second World War, the book begins in the base hospital and introduces protagonist Captain John Yossarian and his like-minded friend Dunbar. Yossarian is bombardier who is malingering, faking a liver ailment to avoid combat duty. He’s confronted by a positive thinking fellow officer from Texas, who unsuccessfully tries to cheer him up.

“But Yossarian couldn’t be happy, even though the Texan didn’t want him to be, because outside the hospital there was still nothing funny going on. The only thing going on was a war, and no one seemed to notice but Yossarian and Dunbar. And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he was crazy. Even Clevinger, who should have known better but didn’t, had told him he was crazy the last time they had seen each other, which was just before Yossarian had fled into the hospital.

Clevinger had stared at him in apoplectic rage and indignation and clawing the table with both hands, had shouted, ‘You’re crazy!’

‘Clevinger, what do you want from people?’ Dunbar had replied wearily above the noises of the officers’ club.

‘I’m not joking,’ Clevinger persisted.

‘They’re trying to kill me,’ Yossarian told him calmly.

‘No one’s trying to kill you,’ Clevinger cried.

‘Then why are they shooting at me?’ Yossarian asked.

‘They’re shooting at everyone,’ Clevinger answered. They’re trying to kill everyone.’

‘And what difference does that make?’”
--Page 25

Repeatedly others call Yossarian crazy, but as the book goes on and instances of bureaucratic reasoning stray farther and farther from reality and instances of injustice and gory death are heaped one upon another, the reader begins to feel he may be one of a few sane people in the African, Mediterranean and Middle East Theater of Operations.

Heller’s command of vocabulary and rhythm is astounding, as are his critiques of human institutions and motives. The book is a precisely crafted Gordian knot of circular logic that weaves themes of human self-delusion and hope as it progresses, and Sanders does a superb reading of this twentieth century classic.