Productivity Tools

These are really use productivity tools that I found on Computers In Libraries page s4. I am going to list all of them here. Just scan through the list to if there are any tools you my be interest to you.

1. Microsoft Maps-Live Search
http://maps.live.com
This site can find directions, businesses by category, and maps for areas. Easy to use and an all in one site for the SMB.

2. TinyURL
http://tinyurl.com
Long URLs become managable, tiny ones.

3. Trip Advisor
http://www.tripadvisor.com
Helpful for planning business trips.

4. Seat Selection
http://www.seatguru.com
If you travel a great deal and want to understand seat selection, airline travel rules, and other amenities, start here.

5. Hot Spot Finder
http://www.jiwire.com
Find wireless connects for 150,000 plus hotspots in approximately 135 countries. I know that Dunn Brother's Cafe also provide free wireless.

6. Data Visualization
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches
Smashing Magazine shows different ways to present data visually. Some powerful approaches to displaying information as visual images appear on this link.

7. Panimages.com
http://panimages.com
When you want images but don't want to pay for them or at least not much, try this site.

8. Time Zone
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock
Time zones around the world.

9. Weather
http://weather.com
Heads up on weather conditions hour by hour.

10. Conference Calls
http://www.budgetconferencing.com
Set upa conference call quickly and cost-effectively from this site.

11. Melissa's Lookups
http://www.melissadata.com/lookups/index.htm
This site allows you to look up a variety of information for free as long as you register. In addition, it offers sources for direct mailings and other products for a fee.

12. Widgets/Gadgets
http://widgets.yahoo.com
The tag line of "Save Time, Waste Time, Have Fun!" sums it up. Find some useful gadgets here, but watch out that you don't end up wasting too much time looking for timesavers.

13. Who Called Us
http://whocalled.us
This site logs call from phone numbers that appear to be unknown. Sometimes ou can find a company name.

14. Google Search Tip
http://www.googleguide.com/advanced_operators_reference.html
Everyone wants to search google more productively.

15. Google Usability
http://More links to make Google searching more productive and profitable.

16. Travel.State.Gov
http://travel.state.gov
This site from the U.S. State Department gives good advice for those traveling internationally, e.g. passport information, danger zones,ect.

17. LookSmart's Furl
http://furl.net/home.jsp
With this site the SMB can save a copy of any webpage with one click, share the webpage or mark it as private, and organize and store the information with tags the SMB creates. Additionally, this site allows the SMB to read and save other information "furled" by other users.

18. Zotero
http://www.zotero.org
This site has some of the same elements as Furl but with more academic feel.

19. Snagit
http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp
This site provides a low cost yet easy way to capture information on a screen.

20. PDF Creator
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator
Download software here that can convert other document formats into PDFs.

21. You Sent It
http://www.yousendit.com
When you have a file larger than your email service can handle, try this site.

22. DropSend
http://www.dropsend.com
Another site that can handle large files up to 1GB and store files too.

23. Format conversions
http://docmorph.nlm.nih.gov/docmorph
Fifty document conversion tools from the National Library of Medicine.

24. File Extensions
http://filetext.com
This site helps identify unknown file extensions.

25. Transfer applications on a USB device or ipod
http://mojopac.com/portal/content/products/index.jsp
mojopac has a free software download (currently 1MB) that allow you to transfer key software applications onto a USB device or ipod and run it on a host PC using Windows XP with the look the SMB owner would have on his or her PC back home. Mojopac "transforms your ipod or USB Hard Drive or flash drive into a portable and private PC."

26. Iron Monuntain
http://www.ironmountain.com/digital/pc/backup.asp
this company uses connected.com to automatically back up files on an SMB's PC for a fee.

27. Carbonite
http://www.carbonite.com
This company will also automatically back up files on a PC for a low annual cost.

28. Copyscape
http://www.copyscape.com
This site lets the UMB owner see if anyone has copied portions of it's company website.

29. Domain Tools
http://whois.domaintools.com
SMBs can use this site to keep updated on their website status and to make sure it does not expire.

30. TrendMicro
http://housecall.trendmicro.com
This site can do analyis of a user's computers to see if it has been infected by viruses, spyware, or other malware. There is information on donating to schools if the user wants to express his or her appreciation.

31. Belarc
http://www.belarc.com
This site does a PC audit of hardware and software.

32. ScanSafe
http://www.scandoo.com
This site rates the safety of websites.

33. Open Office Suite
http://www.openoffice.org
This site offers a downloadable free office suite and includes desktop applications such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentaion manager, and drawing program.

34. Zamzar
http://zamzar.com
This site helps when you need files converted. It has online conversions for documents, videos, music, and images plus other miscellaneous file extentions for free.

35. Stuffbak
http://www.stuffbak.com/sb/default.aspx
This site has information that can potentially help a business recover lost electronic asset and at a very low cost.

36. Inc Mazagine
http://technology.inc.com/internet/articles/200707/campbell.html
In the technology section, you will find several sources of information for technology related issues. For example, the link discusses 10 tips for choosing a domain name.

37. Copernic Tracker
http://www.copernic.com/en/products/tracker
For a mominal fee, this site provides software to monitor changes of content on webpages that have a business interest.

38. University of Minnesota, Duluth
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/support/Training/Online/webdesign
This site provides information and resources on web design.

26.

Tips to help you with the next set of more things on a stick

While attending a Webjunction session at an MLA conference in Bloomington,MN this month, I learned that there are more things on a stick to come January 20, 2008. From the reaction that I noticed, not all of them are excited (-_-) about the new Things. From observation as an IT person from the Rochester Public Library and the conversations I got from the people at MLA, the main reason some people are not excited about these "Things" is because they are time consuming. As a systems administrator I can tell you that you can save a lot of time on these "Things" and save a lot of time at work if your computer skills are a little bit up to date. While reading Computers In Libraries October 2008 I found this article on page 54 that may help you with the next set of Library on a Stick Things.

Thing 1 Reboot, Reboot, Reboot.
Just so you know it is perfection ok to reboot the computer when it gets sick. We IT people expect you to do that when first. Instead of taking Tylenol when we get sick, rebooting the computer can cure the computer's sickness 95% of the times.

Thing 2 Minor reboot troubleshoot
Both patrons and staff are prone to leaving floppy disks in drives and flash drives in USB ports, leading to the dreaded "non-system disk" error on boot. Before rebooting the machine, please take your floppy disk out first.

Thing 3 Copy /Paste
Copy and Paste is a very useful tool that everybody should know how to do and use as often as posible. To copy, just highlight the text or URL then "CTRL +C". To paste, position your mouse at the place you want to paste then "CTRL + V" . Right click on the mouse to Copy, Paste, and Delete can do the same trick. I like this better because it is faster. You can copy folders, URL, Text,ect. I recently showed a staff how to use the right mouse click and he loved it.

Thing 4 Save, Move, and Copy files
Make sure you know how to save, move and copy files. If you don't know how to save a file to a location that you like and don't know how to find a file where you saved, that is going to be very difficult on everything that you do. Get these basic skills down quickly. Make sure you save the files on one of the network drives so that they are backed up regularly if you have a network.

Thing 5 Ask questions
If you are confused or don't khow how to use some functionalities, ask your IT personnels or co-workers. We IT people won't laugh at you for asking basic computer questions so call. You shouldn't wait until one of us walk by your desk then ask.

Thing 6 Deal with Printer Pressure.
You know how to load paper into the library's printers, change cartridges, and clear paper jams? Where does each printer open up? Where is most likely for paper to jam? Do you know that you have to remove the protective plastic covering before installing a cartrigde? Don't waste patron's or staff's time by waiting for an IT staff to come to clear a paper jam or other small things.

Thing 7 Decide among printer options
Make sure you know how to change paper from portrait to lanscape, change from color to black-and-white, and how to print multiple copies. You should know how to select printers if you have multiple printers installed.

Thing 8 How do you print frames, how do you print selected text?
Do you know how to print a given frame or selected text off any page? Can you show patrons how to do it? Some times you don't want to print the whole website just to get a selected few text.

Thing 9 Master basic word processing functions
What do the buttons on top of the page do? How do you make text bold or italic? Change font? text color? insert and image? Your blogging skills can improve significanly if you know these basic word processing functions.

Thing 10 Is everything plugged in?
Monitor cables, power cables, they all have an annoying habit of getting loose especially in the public in Children's area and Young Adult area. If a particular mahcine or peripheral doesn't turn on, which cable to check? These are level one technical support questions that we IT staff always look for first before anything else.

Thing 11 Are you on the network? Is that website really down?
Am I the only one having this problem or is it just me? If a patron complain that that his/her favorite website is down, make sure everyone is having the same problem. The cute little icon in the bottom of the computer can tell you something too. An X means bad, no connection. You can try to reconnect to the network or fall back to reboot, reboot, and reboot. One more thing, if you can't find the network drives that you usually find under the "My Computer" icon, make sure you are logged onto the network but just the computer itself. It doesn't hurt to try and log in again.

Thing 12 What's the good password
Please try not to leave password on sticky notes in plain view or next to the computer. Store it in a place that you or your staff have access to easily. Does all staffs know what the new password is? A safe network will ask you to change your password once in a few months. Make sure you change it when it asks you to, write them down somewhere and memorize them quickly.

Thing 13 What's Open on my computer?
What programs are currently open? how do you switch between them? How do you maximize, minimize, and close windows? If your computer have many programs open, then tend to overload and crash often. They slow down your computer as well. Make sure the window is already open before launching again.

These are just the basic skills that can help you significantly if you have a good handle on them. They will prepare you for the next set of 23 things on a stick. As an IT staff, I have so many other things that I would like to add to these basic 13 things but I will save it for other time. Have to go.

Thing 23 The End

I have to admit at the beginning of the 23 things I thought I couldn't have the time to complete this. I thought to myself how do people have the time to discover all these great tools and try to fit it in their busy schedules? After doing all these things, I still think it takes too much of our time but they are all worth it. I am very proud that I was able to complete it. I have a lot of fun generating the pictures and I am very happy to discover that there are lots of ways to be creative with the pictures. I will for sure go back to the "Things" and explore more for my personal use and for work then blog about them.

Thing 22 What Did I Learn Today?

I will make an effort to incorporate what I learned while doing the 23 things to maintain the blog. I don't think I can put in 15 minutes per day like the program recommended but I will try to log into the blog to update things once in a while. And of course learning about online tools does not stop here for me. I am the systems adminstrator for the library so I have to keep learning new thing to apply to work. As I learn new things and apply them to work, I will write about on my blog.

Thing 21

Wow I wasn't aware that there could be so many social networks out there. There is even one for 23 things on a stick which I joined. Now I am a member of that. I'm going to add the link here so that I can get back to it when I forget (http://23thingsonastick.ning.com). I guess I am a member of this online community now. After browing the social network sites, I really like gather.com. This site lets me actively participate in topics that I enjoy.

Thing 19 (Social Networks)

Facebook is nothing new to me. I first joined it while I was in college. I find it so easy to use to get connected to my friends that I regularly log into facebook every week. It has been a long way for facebook to reach to this point. When I joined, only college students were allowed to join. Now aday every body can join. They added a lot of application on their interface as well. Recently they added Poker and Blackjack. They have tournanments on these games as well. With a facebook account, you don't even need email. I rarely use personal email because I can contact my friends easily using facebook. You can join groups or networks that connect you to that group. I joined John Marshal Senior High, Minnesota State University, Barack Obama, and other friend groups. Libraries can use these Social Network sites to get connected to young adults and this can encourage them to come to libraries more often.

Thing 19 Podcasts

Because the election is coming soon in two months and I'm very concerned about the immigration issue, I listened to Minnesota Public Radio's Podcasts: "How do the candidates differ on Immigration?" to see where the candidate stands on the issue. After listening to it, I think both candidates have good plans to implement but enforcing it and passing the debate in congress is going to tough.

I checked all the podcast directories, and liked them all. All of them are as simple as typing in a keyword search and clicked to listen. Even though I like the podcasts I will not sign up to be a regular listener but I will be listening more then I do now because of this "Thing".

Thing 18 Youtube

Wow that is interesting. I dindn't know that a Central High graduate was responsible for one of the greatest site of the generation. I have been using youtube for years. Mostly for japanese aminations and to get a good laugh when I need a dose of that. Go head! I dare you to have a laugh by going to youtube and search for "japanese practical joke" and watch for one of the videos. To save time, I will just post one.

Thing 17 EML Productivity Tools

Getting these databases running are very important for the people of Minnesota especially students. I myself used these databases for research papers while in college and high school. They helped me a lot. It would be a big lost for the students of Minnesota if they don't know much about these databases. I suggest we put posters at the libraries to let them know that these EML tools do exist out there and very helpful if they learn about it. While doing Thing 17, I discovered that there are a few Ebooks that I can definitly use for at work to advance my knowlege. There are a few personal ones that I wanted to read too.

Thing 16

Too bad the University of Minesota Assignment Calculator requires that you must have a user login to use the reminder feature. If this feature were available to the public as well, I'm sure a lot of schools and libraries will be embedding on their websites. I find that it is very useful for paper projects. I wish I knew about this option while in school. The Assignment Calculator saves a lot of time planning for the paper. It is not fully detailed what you want to do but it has a very good starting points and suggestions. I find the Research Project Calculator useuful as well. I would recommend librarians tell the tutor volunteers at the library use this tool to help students at the libraries.

Thing 15

I chose Second Life because it sounds interesting. I took a tour and was amazed at how creative the developers were. I was even more surprised at the face that Linden can even be exchanged for real US dollars. Sounds like I can make some money here too. The same is very interesting and I will sign up to play this at home. As for a role in libraries, I do not think so. There is no way management can ever approve this.

Thing 14

Above are the five books that I would like to finish reading someday.



Library Things is a very good tool for libraries. We can set this up on the library's website to have patron recommend from other sources besides Amazon that we already have. There will be more choices if we add this into our library's web site.
I think this program has a lot of potential in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if most libraries have this on their website in 10 years.

Thing 13

Because I use Internet Explorer 7 I can choose multiple start pages. The first start page I chose is the library's intranet. I use this one very often to access the library's pages and other applications. The second start page that I made permanantly is MY Yahoo. I have used this start page for quite some time now because of the features that it has. With your zip code, it can monitors the weather in your area and local news. The top stories of the day also appear in the middle of the screen. When I logged into my yahoo mail, it can also monitors the incoming new mails.

COOL ONLINE TOOL:COUNT DOWN TO MY ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY WORKING AT THE LIBRARY

Created by OnePlusYou

I love this count down clock. I will be likely use this at home for personal event and as a programmer, I will incorporate this into one of the projects some day.

Thing 12

These kind of tools can be very useful for reference librarians to stay up to date. All they have to do is monitor a one of two of these social sites and they can very much get the most popular stories. As a systems administrator, I do do not see a lot of values in these tools at work. At home, however, I find it very useful. I like to stay up to date on current issues so I book marked all of these sites on my computer. Now when I have time, I can just scan through the list and get my news.

Thing 11

I went back to all the posts that I had to give them labels. I found it useful because it is easier to search the blogs that I posted before. It may not be as useful now because there isn't a lot of posts yet but as it gets bigger, I will be much easier to organize and search. Even in Flickr, tagging pictures can make it much easier to search especial when I have thousands of pictures on Flickr. I checked out delicious.com and I like it. It helps to centralize your favorite websites in one place. I will however, pass signing up for this account for now as I do not have a lot of bookmarks on my PC. Tagging should be recommended for all on line activities. It helps to organinze better and better archiving.

Thing 10

I think Wikis is one of the greatest creations ever online. I use them very often now a day. At home, I could use wikipedia to learn almost anything I wanted. Just type in a keyword and I guarantee you that you can get lots of information about the topic quickly. I use wiki at work as well. We use it to edit and documents our projects or document troubleshooting steps, storing phone numbers, quick link to favorite sites. The posibilities are endless. One thing that I do not like about wiki is that it is sometimes very tough to find something that you are looking for unless you know the keyword to search. The path to save documents are not very structured.

Thing 9

Wow, this is a very useful tool. I can share most of the documents and have them edit it as I can too. This is like a shared Drive at our library except that it can be accessed everywhere with internet. Currently we can only access these shared folders only if we are connected the library network. The best thing document sharing account is that you can chose who can view them and who can edit them. Google Docs belongs to Google so chances are most of the 23 things participants already have the account too. All they have to do now is use the service and start sharing.

Thing 8

Photos sharing make it easier for my friends to be connected to me. They want to know what is going with me. We share photos in facebook as well as Flicr. I have enabled some of the photos below for sharing on this blog.

www.flickr.com thuan1002004's Public Folder photoset

The Amuzing Race

The Amuzing Race is a charity event that the Rochester Public Library hosted this weekend. I was one of the contestants on TEAM BRANDSHE. The event was very succesful. The turn out was great. There were 36 teams competing and each team has four members. You do the math on how many contestants were there. Anyway, we had a total of 16 things or events that we had to complete before having a picnic at the Sport Center at RCTC. The tasks were very tough to do and time consuming. We had to do everything ranging from collecting at least 5 lbs of aluminun cans to wiring an electrical circuit to turn the light on/off. I am very proud to say that we completed the events and made it back on time for the picnic even though we were 21st not the first place I was aiming for. I am very proud to say that our team did everything following the rules that everybody was supposed to follow. It was tempting at times to call for help especially when we cound't find the City's Three Link Shelter anywhere. It is getting late now, I have to go to sleep because I have work early tomorrow. I will post more on this later and will also post pictures later.

Thing 7

Our library and myself are very aware of these web 2.0 tools. I can not imagine our place running effective without email. We use it for communicating with each other, updates on the server, monitoring virus infection on the machines, making appointments, ect. the list is endless. Rochester Public Library currently also has a program to chat live with patron or anybody for an hour every day. The screen name is RPLmnInfo for Yahoo and AIM. One other tool that I notice we use a lot is webinar. There are no surprises here. With the technology age that we are in now aday, this is a very useful tool to communicate to other people far away. Our library will be launching a tutor.com program for our patrons to get help with their homework this fall so we will be utilizing these web 2.0 tools extensively to advertise the program. Youtube.com will be used, email will be used, webinar will be used. The list is endless. How effective we will be using these tools to get the message out is something that we will soon find out.

Some Pictures Created from the Image Generator in Thing #6

Picture was created using the Calendar feature

These pictures were created using the Trading Card feature.

Thing 6

I'm very impress with the image generator. There are so many things you can do with this. I am very sad to say that I have been spending a lot of times in the past two days "playing around" with this image generator. Above is one I created from a picture that my girlfriend and I took in Japan. I have created a lot of pictures like one above in the past two days so I will post more later if my computer does not freeze on me. I see that this program can very extremely useful for our library staffs to do presentation or even create something to put on the library's website. This can also be a good teaching tool to get the kids interested.

Thing 5

I currently have lots of photos saved in Flickr. I have pictures from graduation, Vegas trip, Japan trip, picture of me volunteering in New Orleans and Biloxi for a week after Katrina hit the area. I discovered that this service is very useful. I can store pictures in this account and then open it at any place that has internet. One thing about this account is that we have to pay $24.95 per year to have more pictures stored. We can still use this account but the space is limited for free.

Thing 4

Flickr is an account that I have maintained for quite a while now. Actually I used to use a similar service from yahoo but after yahoo bought Flickr. They closed yahoo photos and forced everybody to transfer their account to Flickr using the same yahoo login names.

Thing 3

I created an RSS account with google reader to monitor some of my favorite websites. Some of them are other people's blog and some are my personal favorite sites. I find this to service to be useful. I will likely utilize it more as time pass by.

Thing 2

Is it just me or there are other people out there that are not excited about library 2.0 yet? It seem to be time consuming. As a technical staff from Rochester Public Library, I hope to pick up some ideas to implement at our library. However, as I spent a lot of time from home going through a lot of these, I have yet to see anything interesting yet. They are either something that we are already well aware of or already have. Of course there will always new things, ideas, and postings that could have some use to our library but it would take a lot of time to "dig it out". Hopefully I will be able to see the some light at the end of the tunnel someday and fully appreciate this.

Interesting for me on thing 1

I never new that I already had a google account. When I first tried to create an account with me email. It complained this account already exist so I reset the passwork so that they would send me a new one. After getting a new password and logged into my account I notice that this email was register with an existing name Thaun Maciel in Brazil. I corrected the name and change everything. Hopefully this does not mess up who ever it is in Brazil with my personal email register.