Hey - just me, testing out the embed part of the new flickr video option. The what??? If you haven t heard - flickr now allows video uploads for pro members (translation - those who have paid $30 a year for a flickr pro account). The limitations? Not overly produced (I think the idea is to upload those videos people take with their phones); 90 seconds max in length (you can do a lot in that time frame); and only certain video formats are allowed - if you re interested, you can read more about the specifics here.

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Formats: Quicktime | iPod Quick video of the How to Rawk SXSW, just to give you a flavor of the first session. The lighting was pretty cool, and they found an accordion player who plays popular tunes on his accordion. Here, he s singing an AC/DC song - he also closed the session by sing Hit Me Baby One More Time by Britney Spears.

YouTube | QuickTime David Free and I gave a preconference on podcasting and videoblogging at Internet Librarian 2007 - it was a blast. This video was created by the attendees - class-takers did the filming, volunteered to be talent and the video shows the podcasting part - someone did the voiceovers and someone else edited the podcast. And here s the pdf file for my part of the presentation. Enjoy!

Michael Porter made a Meebo chat room for Internet Librarian 2007 - let s see if I can embed it in this blog post

YouTube version | MP3 I recorded a new song and video for y all! This song is all about social networking and how people are using the emerging social web to connect with each other, to communicate and in my case, to sing songs to my blog readers. When writing the song, I was thinking about facebook, twitter, MySpace, and all the social connections that are happening 24/7 - I find it extremely fascinating. Social Digital Global Shift by David Lee King I haven t seen her since high school never thought I d see her again but yesterday I got a facebook request she asked to be my friend so I took a little time to catch up browsed through her photobucket and blog I watched some funny videos of her kids and then I wrote this song cause it s a social digital revolution social digital relationship social digital communication it s a social digital global shift I have friends around the world they re growing globally some of them live in Saskatchewan while others live in D.C. Enjoy!

Last Saturday morning, I gave a keynote at the LITA Forum - very fun crowd! So, as promised, here s a pdf of my slides. But wait - there s more! Why not browse through the slides while listening to the podcast version of my talk? If you think that s fun we can even go one further how about listening to the Q t attend and other interested dudes. Enjoy!

Quicktime version | YouTube version I ve owned an iPhone for about two months now, and thought I d make a video sharing my likes and dislikes.Dislikes: Stocks icon - works great, but I could care less about the stock market, so it s not terribly useful to me Calendar - again works great but I have a work calendar and an everything else calendar so I have both synced up to Google Calendar. That works fine. Usually. [translation=I haven t quite figured it all out yet]. Likes: Pretty much everything else. Ease-of-use is awesome. Included apps are great. I originally thought I d get a Treo, but waited for the iPhone to come out to see what it was like and haven t been disappointed! Update: I had a little trouble viewing the video, so I ve been playing around with it. It should work now! And there s a .mov and a YouTube version now, too.

The SirsiDynix Institute presentation I gave with Thad Hartman on August 14 went well! Here’s a link to the presentation (audio and screencast/video). As usual with these webcasts, there wasn t enough time to get to all the questions at the end, but Sirsi/Dynix sent me the questions that were asked… and here they are, with answers: Question: Do you have use statistics to share with us for your online / digital initiatives? e.g. How much use or users? Answer: Not yet – our new site isn’t up yet! On our current website, we have approximately 30,000 visits per month. We get an additional 30,000 visits on our various public blogs. Question: How can a reluctant director be convinced to offer computer classes in the library? He feels that other than catalog instruction, computer classes are not the purpose of the library. Answer: Placing gobs of patron requests for computer classes in front of manager’s and director’s and board member’s faces is one way to do it. Admin likes numbers. Question: What sort of staff involvement is required to maintain physical and digital displays, blogs, etc. And Question: How much staff time is spent on the digital side of this project? Answer: On the digital side – we have a number of staff working on our digital branch. We have: Two full-time web workers, one focused on design and maintenance, and one focused on programming We have a “Creative Group” made up of the two web workers and our two graphic designers. They focus on design and access issues We have a Digital Branch Taskforce make up of about 10 staff who are making decisions on the redesign And… we have all of our library staff, who will potentially be content developers (some already are). Question: David, if you remember can you post the public library with the community wiki, so we can have a look please? Answer: It’s the SCRLD Wiki Project, at http://www.scrldwiki.org/index.php/Main_Page - created by the Stevens County Rural Library District. Here’s what they say about the project: “The wiki project is dedicated to creating an online wiki guide to Stevens County, Washington, USA. We hope that all of you who know and love the area will contribute your knowledge to the wiki and all our visitors may learn more about Stevens County. If you like this site, please tell your friends! The more people who get involved, the better this guide will be.” Question: Some communities, probably mostly in schools, are reluctant to embrace 2.0 technologies. How does a librarian change those attitudes? Answer: Ultimately, you might not be able to change the school’s attitudes. You can certainly meet with school officials and show them “the rest of the story.” For example… if you block MySpace, and the local public library has a MySpace presence, the school is ultimately blocking the library (and that’s certainly NOT their intent). So education is one good way to tackle it. Also simply providing access to 2.0 technologies yourself is a great way to tackle it – kids can’t get to 2.0 sites at school, but they can learn about them and use them at the library. You could even partner with teachers to do this – for example, my library has partnered with a local high school on Second Life projects – they supply the kids, we supply the PCs and the SL island. Question: I have seen a lot of interesting ideas on the digital branch. How do you check if your clients use these new ideas? And how do you know they like it? Answer: We ask and we observe. Asking = focus groups (which we are holding in September). Observing = watching what patrons use on your library’s public computers. At my library, we see patrons using FaceBook MySpace, gaming sites, YouTube, Meebo (a web-based instant messaging service), etc… so we know they are familiar with 2.0 tools. Question: I browsed the Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library website during your presentation, and I noticed that one way you connect to your users is by encouraging them to complete a reading interest survey and then providing them with a customized, personalized reading list. Has this been well-received by your users? Answer: Yes! It’s a great service, and the patrons that are using it really like it. And like most libraries, I don’t think we have heavily marketed that service… but then, we are in the midst of writing a new marketing plan, too – so this will hopefully change. Question: How often do you have to scrub comments - moderate? Answer: We currently moderate all comments – I’m not certain how often we have to edit them (I don’t think we generally have to edit). Question: How much have you used social networking sites, such as Facebook, to promote library services and to achieve the goals of your library? Please give examples, if any. Answer: We currently use MySpace (here, here, here, and here), YouTube, and Flickr. One big goal of our library is to create a Digital Branch, and we are using these tools to help us do that. And don t forget that this presentation was the first in a two-part series! Next up on September 18: Dump the Org. Chart: Get `Er Done!: Management for a 2.0 Library by Gina Millsap and Rob Banks.

Yesterday, I participated in the LITA BIGWIG Social Software Showcase. It was very cool! The Showcase had more of an unconference feel, which was nice. So rather than doing a formal presentation with a brief Q and A at the end, I created a screencast of my presentation (linked above) about cool Twitter add-ons, and then at the Showcase David Free and I sat at a table and had good conversations with interested attendees. We talked about a range of things, from Twitter to Facebook to other techie topics. I think ALA could use some more of these my guess is the interest groups and poster sessions are supposed to cover this type of ground, but I m not sure they re achieving that. The Showcase DID achieve it. So let s definitely have more! ala2007 twitter bigwigshowcase07

Last week, as I was reading everyone s responses to Michael Gorman s blog posts, I re-read a couple of the posts myself and this phrase from his earlier blog people article started running through my head and wouldn t leave. So I did what any self-respecting closet musician would do on his day off - I wrote a song! A little more explanation - I wrote the music (with a little help from GarageBand here and there). For each line of the lyrics, I pulled random Gorman quotes from these three articles. This is probably some odd self-fulfilling prophecy, since I am a blogger, since Gorman said entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs and that s pretty much what I did to construct this song! Now, on to the song! And here s a game for you while listening: try to find each quote while you re listening to the song! I m No Antidigitalist Music by David Lee King, lyrics pulled from Gorman quotes an associated flight from expertise believers in Biblical inerrancy authoritative printed sources an extreme example of technophiliac rambling human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways verifiable credentials and demonstrable expertise derision of the professorial authority figure hyperventilating not blasphemy I m no Antidigitalist there are obstacles to such a benign outcome antihuman and intellectually debasing the endemic confusion of means the triumph of hope and boosterism over reality I m no Antidigitalist read what they want to read random facts read what they want to read paragraphs an associated flight from expertise believers in Biblical inerrancy human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways hyperventilating not blasphemy I m no Antidigitalist The structures of scholarship and learning are based on respect for individuality and the authentic expression of individual personalities. Enjoy!

Quicktime .mov format | Youtube version At the Computers in Libraries 2007 conference, Information Today held the first InfoTubey Awards. From their website, [the Infotubey] awards will be presented to those organizations or individuals for outstanding YouTube productions. Premiering at the 2007 Computers in Libraries conference, these awards recognize those creating YouTube library-related productions. Awards will be presented to the top five productions that demonstrate creativity, humor, and sincerity (of course!) in marketing a library or library services or enhancing the library s value. I created this video of the event enjoy! Here s the Powerpoint that went along with the event (some slides shown in the video). *warning: this video is sorta big (41MB file), so it might take a little while to play/download/etc.* **and it was a little dark in the room - I lightened it up a bit, but still dark nonetheless** cil2007

I taught a post conference session with David Free at the 2007 Computers in Libraries conference on podcasting and videoblogging, and we needed something to videotape. here s our video! ps - this is my second attempt to post it - something went wrong the first time around update: and it worked! Yippie! cil2007

I taught a post conference session with David Free at the 2007 Computers in Libraries conference on podcasting and videoblogging, and we needed something to videotape. This is our video!Â

Topeka ve done so far. Last night, we held our first event - an open house at the storefront. From my perspective, it was a success - we had about 50 attendees (two of which blogged about it)! We had a few things set up for the attendees to do. They could: sign our guestbook get a free t-shirt network with the other people/avatars who attended the event get an impromptu tour of our facility get some food (including chicken wings, sushi, and cake) get a free coffee mug with my library s logo Join in on the rooftop dancing And, of course, see what we ve been up to. So far, we have focused on original content, including: a click-through display of artwork in our library s art gallery exploring web links to info on Topeka and Kansas information about our library Meeting and events are a HUGE thing at our RL library - so we have tables and chairs set up in our storefront branch to facilitate SL meetings. And did I mention we re dance-party-capable? That s what we ve been doing with our storefront. If you re interested, here s a link to some pictures I took of the event, and here s a video I made about the event. Stay tuned for more as we continue to develop it! secondlife

SXSW is this week! For those of you not familiar with SXSW, it s a very cool content conference. It used to be pretty much just focused on music, but in recent years it s also included film and interactive tracks. The Interactive track is the cool one - it s all about techie web 2.0 stuff. Here s a description from SXSW s Interactive page - Attracting digital creatives as well as visionary technology entrepreneurs, the SXSW Interactive Festival enables you to connect, discover and inspire your link to the cutting edge. Translation = all the cool geeks will be there. I can t go to SXSW2007 this year (though I DID send my library s web manager) - but I can certainly follow along via blogs, flickr, and videos! I didn t want to add a bunch of tag searches to my normal feed reader, so to follow the conference, I m using Netvibes and tags to track the conference - this screencast explains how I set up Netvibes to do this. sxsw, sxswi, sxsw2007, netvibes

I haven t even listened to this yet - mainly trying to remember it for when I have time to download and listen. But with those three names, it s gotta be interesting! Here s the link to the podcast

ALA Midwinter was a big conference - one that had many meetings in many different hotels. To the right is a video of me trying (almost unsuccessfully) to get to a program at the conference. I was confused - the hotel the program was held at, as far as I could tell, didn t have any signs. As in, any signs providing the name of the hotel! Once I got to the program, it was great. And that sort of summed up my first ALA Midwinter experience. Looking back, it was a good conference. But for us first timers, it can also be highly confusing! What was confusing? The conference session listing didn t really say much, and there were lots of them. Someone told me to get the full session info, I d need to go to each division website to read about the sessions. Yikes! Obviously hotel signage could have been better (not ALA s fault) I didn t realize these weren t sessions but were rather discussions. Some discussions really were discussions, while some were really normal sessions with speakers and then a longer q t know, cause there was no place to read about it. So - just my experience I m sure it ll improve with experience! ALA_MW_2007, MW2007, ala2007

Michael Porter and I decided to test out DDR, which was set up at ALA s Techsource booth at the ALA Midwinter meeting just held in Seattle, WA. As you can see from the video, we had a good time! Michael Porter and I decided to test out DDR, which was set up at ALA s Techsource booth at the ALA Midwinter meeting just held in Seattle, WA. As you can see from the video, we had a good time! ALA_MW_2007, MW2007, ala2007

This is my first attempt at making a movie using the Second Life movie tools, and it came out ok. In the video, I m sitting down and chatting with Stephen Mandelbrot in Cybrary City. Take a peek!I have to admit - I felt kinda odd doing that! The chair had a movement sim thing attached to it (both chairs did), so we were both doing the same movements at the same time spooky! And of course, there s that albino elf thing I have going on, too But at the same time - wow! I ll also admit that the visual part of Second Life added a whole new dimension to chatting (Second Life has a chat/IM feature, which you can barely make out in the video).Now if only Second Life allowed voice chatting THAT would be cool. And I suppose you CAN do that via Skype or some other similar tool. But an in-world type of voice chat would be even better. Why? It would make the whole experience a bit more seamless and easy-to-use, just like IM ing in-world rather than having to use a normal IM service while being in-world. Just a thought.

I am playing with CamStudio, and needed to create a short screencast, so At the same time, I was looking at Sirsi/Dynix Horizon sites, and found something slightly amusing (to me, anyway) and thought I d share. Click the image to the right to watch the video (here s the .mov version too, if the m4v version doesn t work for you). Does anyone else find this amusing? Disconcerting? Can t we work on making those nothing found messages in our ILS/OPAC/Library Catalog systems a bit better? Hmm? I certainly HOPE so! And in other news CamStudio works great! It s very easy to use. The only thing I had to change right off the bat was to change the audio recording format from an mp3 file to a PCM file (whatever that is). I wanted to edit the screencast with Quicktime Pro - and I was getting silence when playing the video with mp3 audio in Quicktime. Switching to PCM (which I think is an uncompressed audio format) fixed that little problem for me. camstudio, screencast, usability

I usually do a conference wrap-up post after Internet Librarian this year, I decided to post in a videoblog format.Enjoy!

I spoke at Internet Librarian 2006 on videoblogging (among other things), and took a quick video as an example of videoblogging. Here s the Video! il2006

Some videos I ll be showing as examples in a couple of upcoming videoblog presentations: David Lee King - Sidewalk Art Steve Garfield - I Can t Open It: Progresso Soup Michael Verdi - Experiment 2 One in the Hand - Speed Dialing/Shortcut Keys Unirunner - Double Kick Consistency Orlando Public Library - Anything Goes (poetry readings) Kenton County Public Library - Student Help

For my second blogging anniversary, I m not going to spew y all with boring numbers about how popular my posts are, how many people subscribe, etc. Instead, I m going to give you some good, old-fashioned entertainment (well, maybe not old-fashioned). I m going to give you a song. And a video. About Web 2.0. Cause I m sometimes silly that way. So - if you want to download these behemoth files, here they are: Video Music only (your iPod will love this) Youtube version And of course, since my singing is most likely incoherent to some, the lyrics, in all their danged glory, are included below. Enjoy! Are You Blogging This? 2006 by David King My picture is flickring around technorati And I just discovered I am such a newb, I’m on YouTube Are you blogging this? Delicious myspace then tell me with meebo Drop my feed into bloglines, I’m so web 2.0 Are you blogging this? Blogger blummy skobee ditto seekum suckingfish Auctionmapper frappr zoomr feedwhip blish Rollyo seekum previewseek swicki wink Flickr scanr talkr cheapr soonr kitchen sink All Ourmedia’s confusing me Maybe I need to read a Wikipedia entryAre you blogging this? Google froogle blogger SketchUp calculator talk Code news catalogs academic search Finance images video alerts Mobile SMS picasa translate search Are you blogging this?

Really - go check Gliffy out (also mentioned by Stephen Abram and the Librarian in Black). Now. Especially if you are in charge of your library s website or mess around with web design. What is Gliffy? Gliffy is a free, online version of Microsoft s Visio, which is a flowchart, diagramming, layout, floorplan designing kind of software. Visio, while useful, has a definite learning curve, is pricey, and if probably overkill for most of us library website managers. All we really need (if we re interested in wireframing a website) is a simple illustration or graphics application, and it d sure be dandy if it had built-in presets for things like search buttons, textboxes, and other normal web thingies. And that s where Gliffy comes into play. It s a great and easy online tool for wireframe, user interface, and web layout. Here s a quick example to the right - this was done using Gliffy. I know it s basic - but that s me, not Gliffy s fault. Here s a link to a screencast showing how to use Gliffy to create a wireframe. It s really pretty simple. Also, here s a link showing Gliffy s wireframe example, and a link showing a web layout example. So - go try it out! gliffy

I ve wanted to play around with screencasting for awhile now, and recently when looking at job ads, it dawned on me - why not make a screencast of some bad website usability? That way, I can test out screencasting and at the same time, provide something marginally usaful to my blog, too. So here it is. In this screencast, I show and comment on some less-than-perfect usability on a college s jobs page (basically, they let their jobs database get in the way of their design). I m not sure how clear my points are, but then again it s my first time doing this. It comes close to me thinking out loud. For the screen capturing, I used Camtasia. Then I added a little video, titles, and editing via Windows Movie Maker, and then saved it as a Quicktime .mov file. And let me add this: screencasting is COOL. I think screencasting could be extremely useful on websites - can you say quick, downloadable instruction sessions? Think about those subscription database tipsheets you make that explain, using text and screenshots, how to do a basic search. Why not turn those tipsheets into dynamic 1-2 minute videos that show how to do this earch, where to click, etc? And keep the original tipsheet, too - people learn in different ways, so the more reinforcement, the better. Is anyone else using screencasting on their library websites? screencast, screencasting, web design

I m still experimenting with video, as you can see here. This was taken today, at my library s First Fridays event. This month, we had a band performing on the stairs to our way-cool library parking garage. We also had free hotdogs and an information booth! It was fun (if you re interested, I took some photos, too). So here s an example of a video snippet taken of a library event. This snippet (assuming it s good enough for the average joe - I m no Steven Spielberg) can be used to showcase library events, future First Friday events, etc. If a library has a blog and/or an RSS feed, the video can be sent to patrons - what a great way to get the word out about cool library events! And it s done in more of a story format, rather than in a formal, look we paid lots of money for a TV spot style, which seems to be nicer for the web. The video briefly tells the story of the First Fridays event, and provides viewable snippets of the event at the same time. Time spent on this? Let s see 45 minutes of actual video shooting (including time spent eating a hot dog). 1-2 hours of downloading, editing, and exporting to Quicktime. And that s because I m not used to it yet - it would be faster if well I was faster. And then the time it took me to upload the video to blip.tv and write this blog post. Any thoughts?

In my post on Pointers for Successful Webcasting, I mentioned buying a better microphone, and also going one step further and setting up a podcasting studio as ways to improve your podcast and webcast sound quality. This post goes into a little more detail on microphones. To do a podcast, you need a way to record your voice, and you need a way to turn that recording into some type of usable audio file (usually an .mp3 file). So, let s start off with the microphone. There are a number of choices: Cheapie Radio Shack mic, like this one. This mic looks alot like the mic that came with my Mac LC a long time ago it has a 1/8 inch plug, so you d plug it into your sound card. Cost? $12. This version has a clip so you can clip it on to your shirt or tie, like a lapel mic. That way, it s out of your face. One step up - the Logitech USB Desktop Microphone. It s a USB mic, so you plug it into a USB port on your computer. The Logitech site claims the mic sounds great but I m picky, so I doubt it. But still, it ll work and it s simple. Cost? $30. Another step up - the Samson C01U USB condenser microphone. It s cool because it s still pretty cheap, but it will sound HUGE. It has better internal guts and a better-quality diaphram (the little thingie inside all mics that captures your voice s sound waves), so it will most definitely sound better than the two mics mentioned above. Plus (and this is a big one) it plugs into a USB port, so you don t have to mess with audio soundboards or preamps (geeky musician stuff). Cost? $ 79.99 at Sam Ash. Even better the Blue Snowball (yes, that s really it s name). It s really much like the Samson mentioned above, but it s a little better quality, and it looks REALLY COOL. Cost? $139.99 at Musician s Friend. Or you could just buy a Mac. Most modern Macs include a built-in microphone (all the laptops and the iMac do, anyway). It ll sound similar to #1 or #2 above, but it s simple - nothing to plug in. Cost? Free (of course, you have to buy the Mac to get the mic ) Update: I just discovered another option - the Samson Q1u microphone - $50 at zzounds.com. Podcasting