Odiogo - text to podcasts

Check out Odiogo for an automatic text to audio recording of your blog entries. It will also add a link to your blog so that people can sign up for an rss feed for your site that will include your podcasts.

There is a brief advertisment for the service at the beginning of each podcast and some more unique local names it may not get pronounced exactly right but talk about an easy way to provide an audio opton for visitors to your site!

Actually they call the recordings "podiocasts" because they are not generated by humans!

My job description on Wordle

Teaching Old Services New Tricks

Cheryl and I attended this Minitex webinar this afternoon in the comfort of our desk chairs! It was brief but lots of great ideas for how to use podcasts, videos on youtube, suggestions for library / technology blogs to follow and a new feature on Google calendars that uses RSS type feeds to send out informaiton about new events added to their calendar.

Our first plan/dream is to record a podcast of the library walking tour of Bob Dylan history and then with the assistance of my camera crazy son maybe a youtube video to go along with it.

So many ideas, so little time!

twitter

I started a hibbinglibrary twitter page. I think I can come up with a library related topic at least once a day.

Check it out at www.twitter.com/hibbinglibrary

Windows Live

I just signed up for the new windows live. I had to do it from home though from my work computer I was unable to access the registration page, I think it checks something with your windows software registration and my work computer would not be in an individual name.

It looks pretty neat, but I will have to find time to work with it more.

Google Gadget

Today I made my own Google Gadget with a photo of the Hibbing Library and a link to search our catalog. Once it is published I will add it to my blog for all to see.

It was pretty easy to do. I will have to see how I can promote it on our library website.

Click on "Google Gadget" to go to IGoogle and the Gadget I made. I did try to add it to this blog but it didn't work but it does work on my IGoogle page.

Thing 23 - Final Thoughts

This has been a great experience and a challenge to complete everything in the time allowed!

I have a lot of plans for incorporating these tools into our city/library website. Including Flickr Badges, Gcast Podcasts, and probably building a facebook and myspace page. I have already begun building our church library a catalog on LibraryThing. And am considering migrating my NCLA PbWiki's over to the Zoho wiki that seemed easier to use. I would also add some type of instant messaging reference option to the library website that would be available during normal working hours. Lots of dreams and plans!!

A three (four?) word description of the program: "Ultimate in Web 2.0!"

There were a few tools that did not work as expected, such as the countdown and the occasional link but there were plenty of comments on those pages noting those problems.

Overall this has been a great excuse to play with some tools that will definitely have value to our library.

Thanks to the organizers who made this program possible!