Flickr just introduced a new, improved version of their slideshow, with many new features including the ability to include video as well as photographs. But the most important new feature is that Flickr slideshows are now easier to share, and can easily be embedded in blogs and webpages, like this:
You can make slideshows from your own photographs, of course — this is a great way to post a set of pictures from a library event on your website. But you can also make slideshows from groups or even search results, and link to them or embed them on your website. Be sure to play around with the options!
There are a lot of third-party tools around that build different kinds of slideshows with Flickr photographs, but there’s nothing easier than using the new, improved slideshow built right into the system!
SearchMe — This new search engine has one truly beautiful feature — the highly visual way that it presents search results. As you can see in these screenshots, search results are displayed as a stack of images which you can scroll through horizontally. You can click on the arrows to move through the search results one at a time, or the scrollbar to move through quickly.
This is the search engine equivalent of Cover Flow on the Apple iPod and iPhone, and for many visually-oriented people this is both a fun and functional display. The display of search results is an interesting and active area of development, with many contenders looking to improve on the utilitarian, text-based Google display. Search engines like Truveo and Cuil have taken a multiple-column, concise grid approach to getting more information on the results screen, and SearchMe is taking the opposite approach with this highly visual, three-dimensional display.
There are many interesting features here, including the ability to save and share your own “stacks” but you’ll learn more about trying it out yourself rather than reading about it. Be sure to try all types of searches, including Images and Video, and to explore some of the featured news links on the main page. I thought the current New York Times Bestsellers presented as a stack of Amazon pages was especially interesting.
I love YouTube, and have found some amazing things on there, but there’s whole world of video online beyond what you’ll ever find on YouTube. I used to use Google’s Video Search , but was never particularly impressed with the results. I knew there had to be something better…
And then I found Truveo, a video search engine that makes it easy to find all kinds of video content from around the web. A Truveo search on Puffins, for example, finds videos from professional media organizations like National Geographic, the BBC and NECN, as well as social sites like YouTube and Vimeo — the best of both worlds.
Truveo is a great reference resource, a way to find relevant video on all kinds of topics. For example, someone interested in information about the journalist Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink, might be very interested in the Malcolm Gladwell videos found in a quick Truveo search, which includes videos from sources as diverse as Business Week and Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, as well as podcasts from the New York and Pop!Tech, and speeches from Fora.tv.
It’s not just the quality of the search results that make Truveo so useful, it’s also the way those results are displayed in a concise, grid format, with lots of options for sorting and refining the search results. There are options along the top of every page that let you sort results by Most Relevant, Most Recent, Most Viewed This Month, Most Viewed of All Time, etc. If you scroll down below the main search results grid, you’ll find various featured content. This varies depending on your search. For example, for a search on origami, you’ll find featured channels (content providers) like MetaCafe and Revver, and a list of other channels, like HowCast. A search on the name of jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden also has facets for channels, but also tags like “ukelele” and “armstrong.”
Every set of search results also has two buttons, Feed and Snag. Feed is an RSS/XML feed of your search results, handy for putting into your feed reader, personalized Google page, etc. Snag is lets you create a nice blog widget of search results, which you can add to any blog or webpage. Here’s my snag widget for the Malcolm Gladwell search:
I highly recommend Truveo — I can’t imagine how I lived without it!
[This post is based on a presentation I did for NOBLE's annual Tech Expo last month]
Libraries have traditionally dealt mostly with two-dimensional objects: books, maps and pictures and other objects that are inherently flat. But the world is not composed of two-dimensional objects, and computer technology now makes it easy to present information in 3D so the user can explore different angles and viewpoints. 3D systems are important now in all kinds of geographical work, including meteorology and ecology; in community planning, architecture and design; in forensics, medicine and science and many other fields of study.
Young people typically get their first experiences working with 3D systems in the world of gaming, but there are now powerful, simple, free programs that allow users to explore 3D information in the real world, including Google Earth, which is a 3D mapping program, and SketchUp, with can be used to create models of buildings and much more.
Google Maps
Although Google Maps is not a three-dimensional program, but it is an interactive, highly mixable application that allows many different types of data to be presented geographically. It also has one very important 3D function — it gives you an easy way to create files that can be read in the 3D Google Earth program.
Google Earth is a free software program that you download to your PC. It’s normally used online, and is the best-known example of a virtual globe program. It’s an interactive, three-dimensional geographic program. Anyone can create and share files in the Google Earth format (KMZ) — one way to do this is through Google Maps. Google Earth files are collections of placepoints or markers. These markers can include text, images, links, etc. Additional content is added to Google Earth through layers, which can include travel information, news, images, YouTube videos, historic maps, environmental data, and anything else that has been or can be geocoded.
Google Earth Links
Google Earth — Download the software, learn how to use it, visit the gallery
SketchUp is a separate free program that can be downloaded from Google. It’s used to make 3D models of all kinds, including photorealistic models of real buildings that can be placed on Google Earth. SketchUp can also be used for any other type of 3D models, including household objects, people, animals and imaginary creatures, etc. SketchUp is a simple, versatile and extremely powerful 3D program that can be extended through the use of plugins. The SketchyPhysics plugin, for example, lets users create moving models that obey the laws of physics.
Google has created a lot of interesting content, including models of the American Institute of Architects 150 favorite works. Members of the Google community also contribute individual models and whole collections to the Google 3D Warehouse. These shared models are a great learning tool and are one of the reasons SketchUp has been so successful.
SketchyPhysics Examples — A showcase of some interesting models created with the SketchyPhysics plugin
Project Spectrum — Google teamed with parents, teachers and kids on the autistic spectrum to do some interesting projects using SketchUp. The video here shows how kids used SketchUp to design their dream houses, and the manual of lesson plans has some great ideas for using SketchUp across the curriculum. (Most of these ideas could be adapted for working with any group of kids.)
I have added a new feature to this blog — an AudioFeed automatically generated by ReadSpeaker, a company that provides text-to-speech services for the International Herald Tribune, the New Statesman, and many business, non-profit and government sites, many in the UK and other parts of Europe. ReadSpeaker is now working licensed databases from Gale and Factiva.
What I am using here is a simple, free service, which may include advertising. The quality of the recordings is pretty impressive for an automated service. You’d never mistake it for a real person actually reading my words, but it does a good enough job of mimicking the general cadence of English, pausing appropriately at commas and periods, and so on.
ReadSpeaker’s services are intended to provide spoken versions of text aimed not only at the visually impaired, but at a larger group of people who may appreciate a spoken version instead of, or perhaps in addition to, the written words. This may includes people with language, literacy and learning issues, those who find the spoken track an aid to concentration while reading, and those who for reasons of circumstance or preference prefer an audio version to a written one.
I must say that although I have been an admirer of ReadSpeaker’s speech software on other sites, I find it rather odd and unsettling to listen to this disembodied, not-quite-real male voice read my own words. But I do think this free service is interesting and could be a good option for libraries who want to make their blogs and other feed-based services more accessible.
And, of course, if people find the AudioFeed a little off-putting, they can always add their own, personally-recorded audiofeed, which would be a good way to enhance their services without much time and effort.
