Cool Tools Episode 31 Screencast: Meebo

This screencast will give you a brief overview of Meebo, a free online tool for aggregating your various instant messenger accounts. Meebo doesn't ask you to download any software and within minutes you can be chatting with friends on Yahoo messenger, MSN messenger, Google talk, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, and Flixster. 

View the screencast (3.28)

Cool Tools Episode 31 Podcast: Meebo

Meebo is a free online instant messaging tool that allows you to aggregate your various messenger accounts in one place. Meebo is web based and requires no downloads so it's particularly useful when you cannot download programs to your computer.

Listen to the podcast (2:05)

[Transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 30 Screencast: Dimdim

I'll show you here some of the basic features of Dimdim, a free web conferencing tool. I'll demonstrate how to use the audio and chat functions, show pdfs and slides, use the whiteboard, share your desktop, give various permissions to your participants, and invite others to your meeting. Dimdim has recently added a recording/archiving function and continues to add features in response to user requests. This is the free version which accommodates up to 20 attendees and is cross-platform for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

View the screencast (3:17)

Cool Tools Episode 30 Podcast: Dimdim

The mission of Dimdim is “to become the leading provider of open source web meeting software.” With this cool tool you can meet with others online to show pdfs and slide presentations, use chat and audio to discuss, share your desktop, broadcast on a web cam, and collaborate on a whiteboard. It is lightweight with no download required for attendees. It is cross platform with Mac, Windows, and Linux and is quite easy to set up and use for both presenter and participants. How can libraries and other organizations make use of this tool? I offer some ideas in this podcast. For those of you out there who are looking to replace spending gas money and travel time with the convenience of meeting from your home or office, give Dimdim a try, and … meet freely.

Listen to the podcast (5:02)
[transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 29 Screencast: Delicious

This screencast demonstrates a few basic things you can do with Delicious, including adding the Delicious add-on or plug-in to your browser, bookmarking a page using the embedded browser buttons, describing an item using tags, and the basics of a bookmarks entry. This is just a brief introduction to the many things one can do using Delicious.

View the screencast (3:09)

Cool Tools Episode 29 Podcast: Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to bookmark interesting links for later use and to share with friends. With each bookmark, users can add descriptive tags in natural language that makes sense to them, creating a folksonomy. Delicious also lets users create a network of friends with whom they can share links and discover new articles and resources. Delicious demonstrates collaborative filtering by engaging all the people who use the service to add and tag items, revealing which Internet pages are being the most bookmarked, and how they're being described and used.

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[Transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 28 Screencast: Flickr

This screencast shows many of the things you can do with Flickr, such as uploading, naming, and tagging photos, organizing photos into sets and collections, sharing them with friends and family, ordering prints and cards, joining groups, and more. This is just a small taste of what you can do with Flickr!

View the screencast (3:00)

Cool Tools Episode 28 Podcast: Flickr

Flickr is an online photo management and sharing application that allows you to organize your photos into sets and collections, to tag them, and to share them with friends and family. Flickr was launched in February 2004 by Ludicorp, a company from Vancouver, B.C., and was purchased Yahoo! in March 2005. According to Flickr, the 3 billionth photo was uploaded on November 3, 2008!

Listen to the podcast (3:29)

[Transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 27 Screencast: Yahoo! Pipes

The Screencast here takes the RSS feeds from the blogs of five LIBR 246 students, and creates one source of updating information. These are simple "mash-up" basics. Yahoo! Pipes allows way deeper use than just that, but these are the baby steps ... to get walking with. A sort filter is added to the demonstration, just to get some of the local flavor.

View the Screencast (4:49)

Cool Tools Episode 27 Podcast: Yahoo! Pipes

Yahoo! Pipes is a relatively new (launched February 7, 2007) syndication and mash-up tool with great potential for librarians and information specialists. This application allows the user to perform the kind of data filtering and organization that only programmers could do until recently. Yet it remains sophisticated enough that only dedicated web participants may be able to bring out its full potential. This application is almost unintentionally designed just for tech-savvy librarians. The podcast introduces the application, discusses its relationship with the UNIX platform, its use as an RSS aggregator, how it mashes material together into new product, and why it is a valuable tool for librarians.

Transcript
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Cool Tools Episode 26 Screencast: Tumblr

Tumblr is a form of tumblelog which has come to mean a blog that is populated with many pictures, URL’s, videos etc. and contains very little in the way of long text narrative as one might normally associate with a blog. Tumblr allows you to easily incorporate everything you want to share on one page. On Tumblr you can share text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos from your browser phone, desktop and email. Tumblr allows you to totally customize the way your page works and when your finished they give you a distinct URL to give to people who would like to follow your blog.

View the Screencast (2:59)

Cool Tools Episode 26 Podcast: Tumblr

Tumblr is a form of tumblelog which has come to mean a blog that is populated with many pictures, URL’s, videos etc. and contains very little in the way of long text narrative as one might normally associate with a blog. Tumblr allows you to easily incorporate everything you want to share on one page. On Tumblr you can share text, photos, quotes, links, music and videos from your browser phone, desktop and email. Tumblr allows you to totally customize the way your page works and when your finished they give you a distinct URL to give to people who would like to follow your blog.

Listen to the Podcast (4:58)
[Transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 25 Screencast: Google Sites

Google Sites is yet another free online tool offered by Google. Google Sites was created for online team collaboration and allows for easy attachment and incorporation of documents, calendars, videos, and gadgets. Touted as a website tool, this application is a combination of wiki, blog, and website technology, without the html and much more intuitive. Customize and share your site with a selected audience or the world.

This screencast demonstrates how easy it is to create a site. Features highlighted include editing, navigation, and appearance.

View the screencast (3:01)

Cool Tools Episode 25 Podcast: Google Sites

Google Sites is yet another free online tool offered by Google. Google Sites was created for online team collaboration and allows for easy attachment and incorporation of documents, calendars, videos, and gadgets. Touted as a website tool, this application is a combination of wiki, blog, and website technology, without the html and much more intuitive. Customize and share your site with a selected audience or the world.

Listen to the Podcast (3:20)
[Transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 24 Screencast: Flock

Flock is a free, open source, "next generation" Web browser that aims to integrate a wide variety of Web 2.0 applications directly into a browser. It allows users to easily discover, access, and create blog posts, feeds, videos, photos, and social communities - all from one single place. Flock's vision is to deliver a more personalized and rich user experience for information gathering and sharing, communication, self-expression, and interaction. Flock is powered by Mozilla, available in over 15 languages, and supported by Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It is connected to over 20 online services, including Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, YouTube, Digg, Flickr, Twitter, del.icio.us, and WordPress.

View the screencast (3:23)

Cool Tools Episode 24 Podcast: Flock

Flock is a free, open source, "next generation" Web browser that aims to integrate a wide variety of Web 2.0 applications directly into a browser. It allows users to easily discover, access, and create blog posts, feeds, videos, photos, and social communities - all from one single place. Flock's vision is to deliver a more personalized and rich user experience for information gathering and sharing, communication, self-expression, and interaction. Flock is powered by Mozilla, available in over 15 languages, and supported by Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It is connected to over 20 online services, including Facebook, MySpace, Gmail, YouTube, Digg, Flickr, Twitter, del.icio.us, and WordPress.

Listen to the podcast (4:24)
[Transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 23 Screencast: 30 Boxes

In this screencast I demonstrate how to add an event in 30 Boxes, making use of the social features of this Web 2.0 tool by inviting buddies to your event.

I also show how 30 Boxes interacts with Facebook and Twitter.

View the screencast (3:14)

[transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 23 Podcast: 30 Boxes

30 Boxes is an online calendar application with built-in social networking features. Central to 30 Boxes is the concept of buddies (which you can add, just like any other social networking site) with whom you share your calendar to the extent you decide.

30 Boxes also interacts with other Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter and Facebook.

Listen to the podcast (4:53)

[transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 22 Podcast: LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a social website revolving around books. It allows users to create online catalogs of their personal libraries, tagging and rating their books and making them available for others to view and to match with their own books, in order to find people with common interests and to discover new books to read. It also lets users create book groups, add information about local bookstores, libraries and events, and get recommendations. LibraryThing also provides a number of tools that libraries can use to connect online catalogs to the LibraryThing database, allowing libraries to add a range of community-driven functions.

Click here to hear the podcast, or here to read the transcript.

Cool Tools Episode 22 Screencast: LibraryThing

LibraryThing is a social website revolving around books. It allows users to create online catalogs of their personal libraries, tagging and rating their books and making them available for others to view and to match with their own books, in order to find people with common interests and to discover new books to read. It also lets users create book groups, add information about local bookstores, libraries and events, and get recommendations. LibraryThing also provides a number of tools that libraries can use to connect online catalogs to the LibraryThing database, allowing libraries to add a range of community-driven functions.

Click here to view the screencast.

Cool Tools Episode 21 Podcast: ShoZu

ShoZu is a downloadable application which links video and photos from a mobile device to an online outlet. Using SMS messaging the application will directly upload media files to any online community of choice such as facebook, flickr, or blogger. Each post can be edited on a mobile device, or through the account online giving users the freedom to share, publish, and edit media content anywhere at anytime.

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View the transcript in Spanish

Cool Tools Episode 21 Screencast: ShoZu

ShoZu is a downloadable application which links video and photos from a mobile device to an online outlet. Using SMS messaging the application will directly upload media files to any online community of choice such as facebook, flickr, or blogger. Each post can be edited on a mobile device, or through the account online giving users the freedom to share, publish, and edit media content anywhere at anytime.

View the Screencast

Cool Tools Episode 20 Screencast: Digg

Digg is a social networking website where users can discover and share content - news stories, blog posts, web links, photos, and videos - from anywhere on the Internet. Voting stories up and down is the site's main function, respectively called "Digging" and "Burying". Digg has created a community that collectively decides what “makes the news” for their users.

View the screencast (3:00)

Cool Tools Episode 20 Podcast: Digg

Digg is a social networking website where users can discover and share content - news stories, blog posts, web links, photos, and videos - from anywhere on the Internet. Voting stories up and down is the site's main function, respectively called "Digging" and "Burying". Digg has created a community that collectively decides what “makes the news” for their users.

Listen to the podcast (3:46)

[transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 19 Screencast: Mibbit

Mibbit is a tool that allows people to connect to IRC, an internet chat service. This tool is incredibly useful for getting people to communicate because the chat program can run right in a browser using Ajax. People can put it on their blogs or webpages and have visitors gathering and talking about stuff in real time.

http://mibbit.com/


Watch screencast.

Cool Tools Episode 19 Podcast: Mibbit

Mibbit is a tool that allows people to connect to IRC, an internet chat service. This tool is incredibly useful for getting people to communicate because the chat program can run right in a browser using Ajax. People can put it on their blogs or webpages and have visitors gathering and talking about stuff in real time.

http://mibbit.com/


Listen to podcast

Download the transcript

Cool Tools Episode 18 Screencast: Google Docs

Google Docs is an application that allows you to create documents (text, spreadsheets, or presentations) on a shared server location and then collaborate with others to edit them in real time. This screencast demonstrates how to use the history option to revert to an earlier version of the file (in this case, a spreadsheet file). It also talks about using chat when two people are editing the file. There is also an episode 18 podcast for Google Docs that discusses more features. The link for more information about Google Docs is at: Google Docs

View the screencast (3:04)

Cool Tools Episode 18 Podcast: Google Docs

Google Docs is an application that allows you to create documents (text, spreadsheets, or presentations) on a shared server location and then collaborate with others to edit them in real time. You can publish them a website for viewing and also save them in various formats, including PDF. While editing the files, you can communicate with other collaborators in chat sessions for spreadsheet and presentation file formats. The link for more information about Google Docs is at: Google Docs

Listen to the podcast (5:03)

[transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 17 Vidcast: iMacros

iMacros is a record and playback tool for your browser. Use iMacros to capture repetitive browser tasks, such as: opening a series of web pages, entering your email login name and password, and extracting data from web pages.

View the screencast (3:30)
[transcript]

Cool Tools Episode 17 Podcast: iMacros

iMacros is a record and playback tool for your browser. Use iMacros to capture repetitive browser tasks, such as: opening a series of web pages, entering your email login name and password, and extracting data from web pages.

Listen to the podcast (3:51)
[transcript]