Instant communication

Many of the web 2.0 communication tools allow you to communicate with
people at times totally of you choosing, you can blog when you like,
post to Flickr or tweet at times which suit you. There are also good
options for when you are online at the same time as other people you
want to have a discussion with.

Instant messaging
Instant messaging is chat communication over the internet. Many web
2.0 tools have instant messaging (or IM) included in their range of
services (Yahoo and Google to name a few).

Quite a few libraries offer IM as a way of contacting them for example the University of North Carolina library and Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library. Both of these examples show a range of IM options.

Most online games have chat communication as well as does Facebook.

Most IM have a audio and video chat option as well as a typing option so you
can talk with the person online as well. You need a webcam and microphone for this.

With any kind of IM you have to be online at the same time as the person you are
talking with (typing with).

Exercise
Try Instant Messaging You will need to line up someone to do this
with you - feel free to contact nswpln@gmail.com to chat.


Skype
Skype is telephony over the internet. It needs a registration (free) and some software installed on your computer. You might light to try it out. Feel free to contact me on skype (ellen_forsyth)

Twitter discussions
Twitter discussions are focused interactive twitter posts, usually
based around a #tag. This allows people to respond to comments and
ideas, and have their responses replied to in turn. This social chat
is an example of this .

Some conference tweeting also merges with this as people respond to the
ideas raised in a session.

Blog points
Try some of the instant messaging tools.
What did you like about them?
How would they be useful in a library?

delicious

Delicious was one of the tools people were not sure about during the original course. Some really liked the convenience of having access to bookmarks from any computer, anywhere, while others did not see the need. To get even more out of Delicious, try the networking and search features, along with the widgets that make your Delicious account more visible to your readers.

Public Library Services has a delicious account which has links to all the website we send out on the e-mail lists. We are putting all the sites used during the course here as well and they are tagged with nswlearning2.1. We have included a tagroll in this blog post.

Explore

You can link your twitter and delicious accounts so that when you see a new bookmark you can choose to tweet about it. You don't have to tweet about every new bookmark you add (unless you really want to).

To link your delicious and twitter accounts sign in to your delicious account, and click on settings

Click on Sharing Share your bookmarks on Twitter

Fill in your Twitter password and username - note only tweet all bookmarks if you really want to tweet about everything you bookmark - otherwise leave it unchecked.  This will allow you to choose what you tweet about.

When you click save you will receive the following message "Success! Your credentials are now saved."

 The next time you save a bookmark you can choose to send it (by selecting Twitter) as a tweet and you can then add in some text.

This is what is looks like in delicious

and on twitter

Search Delicious
There are a variety of ways to search Delicious from your browser address bar.  In these examples substitute your keyword of choice for the generic 'keyword' used in these examples:

To view bookmarks tagged with a specific keyword, type in:
http://delicious/tag/keyword

To view bookmarks tagged with two or more keywords, type in:
http://delicious/tag/keyword+keyword

So for example, if you want to look for sites about rss and productivity, type in:
http://delicious/tag/rss+productivity

If you want to narrow the search even further, you can include four terms:
http://delicious/tag/rss+productivity+tools


If you are looking for the most popular sites in any category, than simply type in:
http://delicious/rss/popular/TAGNAME

So if you are trying to find the most popular sites related to RSS, you would type in:
http://delicious/rss/popular/RSS

In the search box, you have the choice of searching your bookmarks (or click on the tag in the sidebar), my bookmarks, or all of delicious. If you want to limit your search to specific tags, then use the prefix “tag:”. An example, “tag:rss”.

Organize
If your tag cloud looks like a huge, disorganized mess, bundle the tags into related categories for easy access. To organize your tags into bundles, click on the “Settings” link in the top right-hand corner. From this page, click on “bundle tags” under the tags heading and start creating your own bundles.

Find New Bookmarks
Navigate to http://del.icio.us/inbox (you will need to be logged in to your delicious account for this) where you can subscribe to various tags or specific users. This is an excellent way to discover new sites that you may enjoy. Click “subscribe” at the top of most pages to add any user or any tag to your inbox—you can even use combine tags. Anytime a new post arrives that meets your criteria, it appears in your inbox. Based on the preferences you submit, you will be find new items to check out.

Adventure

Share
In addition to all that, you can also share your latest del.icio.us bookmarks on your website/blog for all of your readers to enjoy. You do this using Linkrolls and Tagrolls. Linkrolls display your latest del.icio.us bookmarks while tagrolls display all of your del.icio.us tags in a tag cloud.

 Blog prompts
1. Which features of Delicious do you use most--beyond bookmarking?
2. Do you have recommendations or suggestions for using delicious?

Ellen and Mylee

Twitter

What is twitter?

Twitter is a place where people answer the question, "What are you doing now?" Every time you answer that question in 140 characters or less via the Twitter website, SMS, email, IM, or other Twitter client, it posts to your Twitter account. Posts are publicly viewable on the Twitter time line or can be made viewable just to friends or individuals.

Twitter gives you the chance to publish your thoughts quickly or to tune into the thoughts and information streams of other users from around the world. Twitter posts are ideal for making single points or sharing a single piece of information, like a link, instantly. Twitter is a microblog.  Every time you post a new message, that message is relayed to all of the people in your friends list, published to your personal Twitter home page, and added to the public home page unless you tell it otherwise. Your tweets can also be posted to your blog, or other social networking sites to which you belong.  In addition, Twitter offers the ability to send direct messages to any of those you follow, or who follow you, without their being part of the public Twitter stream.

There is a lot of information about Twitter. Here is an short introduction to what Twitter is and how to use it:

This Common Craft video of Twitter gives a simple explanation

  
 Libraries and professional organisations using twitter
Lots of professional organisations, libraries and councils are using twitter to keep their clients informed.
Mosman Council
ALIA
DOK
Denver Public Library
New South Wales Reference and Information Services Group

Mylee and Ellen are both using twitter.

Please add a link to your library's twitter account in the comments on this blog.

Also have a look at this blog post by David Lee King about how not to tweet if you are a library and also at his slideshow about Tweet like you mean it!

Tweet Like You Mean It! Twitter Strategies For Tweeps

View more documents from David King.

You can search twitter for subjects of interest or people. Search twitter

You can also make is easier for people to search for information about an event or organisation by using #tags.  For example if you are tweeting about this course use #nswlearning2.1

Explore

Search twitter for what is being written about libraries (you may need to try a few different terms) and another subject of interest to you

Write in your blog about what you found, what tweets were the most interesting or relevent?

Discover
Visit Twitter and sign up for a free account. Be sure to fill out your profile information so people will know something about you.  Include your blog address if you want to increase traffic to your blog.  Your name and username will be visible to Twitter users, but you can choose to keep your updates (tweets) private or put them on the public time line. Only approved friends will be able to see tweets for protected or private accounts. Since Twitter works best if you have a group of friends, colleagues, or family on Twitter with you, Twitter gives you the opportunity to invite friends to Twitter via email.

2. Try a few tweets. It's not as easy as it sounds to keep your messages to the short 140 character limit and still get your message across. Think of it as a challenge, like making a word with the letters you're given in Scrabble.
3 Find some people to follow.
4. If you are tweeting about the course include the following tag in your tweet #nswlearning2.1
5.  If you have set up a Flickr account in the learning 2.0 course you can link it to your twitter account (as well as your blog).  There are instructions how to set this up.

 Blog Prompts
 1.  Blog about the experience and be sure to post your Twitter username there so others can see it and follow you.  You might even like to share your twitter name in a comment at the end of this post.
  2.   Did you like micro-blogging? Do you love it, hate it or not sure? Explain.
  3.   How else could libraries use Twitter?

Ellen and Mylee