23 Mobile Things -- Thing 7 : Content Saving & Sharing

For Thing 7: "We all save things we find on the web--ideas, essays, pictures, blogs, news sites, whatever strikes our fancy. The traditional way to save things is with bookmarks in a browser--or many bookmarks in multiple browsers. This is great if you only use your desktop or laptop, but many people now have multiple devices with different browsers and probably different bookmarks on each. How do you find all those great sites when you are on any of your devices?"

Pinterest

I've had a Pinterest account for awhile that I setup via PC. I didn't dive right into Pinterest for two reasons -- One, I'm already heavily-vested in too many other social networks that I didn't feel I needed or could handle more "fun things" bombarding me. And two, after trying it for awhile I wasn't too pleased with it. For example: I'd saved "aka pinned" a item and then I went back just a day or two later to that pin and the content was gone. The pin still showed on my board -- picture and all -- but the linked information was no longer available. Yes, I know this happens all the time and it can happen via any bookmarking system. I guess in my naivety I thought maybe Pinterest had come up with a way of actually capturing/archiving the content for future viewing -- not so. So I use it for ideas & that's about it. jd-Points

Bitly
For years I've already used TinyURL but they don't have an app. So I thought about Bitly, their app, and how I might be able to use this for our Library. 

Using Bitly I could save & share our oh-so long library links in a shortened form. Some links are long because they either go through our proxy or they display the full folder hierarchy address. Shortening is awesome because it eliminates the possibility of link address breakage. jd+Points

Here's a snip of some of the links I shortened via our iPad using the iPhone app (no iPad version app at this time but this worked just fine):

Another Bitly option is to "Bundle" shortened links. So I took some of our most used links -- like several of our most used databases -- and I bundled them together to provide one link to multiple resources.

This snip shows our "databases" bundle:

Sharing a bundle? Here's a snip showing the options for how easy it is to share: 

Yes, this has provided me with some good ideas for easily sharing our Library links. jd+Points

Thing 7 -- Web 2.0 Communication Tools

02/20/2008
E-mail -- I have had e-mail for about 15 yrs. & I currently maintain 3 personal accts (1 for family/friends, 1 for personal business & 1 for "junk"), 1 work acct, and our 1 library acct. Our library acct doesn't get too much use but I still think it is a very important tool. I mainly use it for sending overdue notices, ILL notices, and communicating with distance students. On our library website we have it listed as as way to submit reference questions although responses are only generated during work hours.

IM -- We don't use this tool in our library but I have used it personally over the years. Back a few yrs ago while I was working on a degree it was VERY helpful while working on a group project. As each of us worked on a portion of a computer programming project we could easily keep in touch by sharing new ideas, asking questions, updating each other on our progress all while working in different geographic areas.

Text Messaging -- Again, we do not use this tool in our library but I use it multiple times on a daily basis and LOVE it! A while back my brother-in-law (older than me) asked me "why"?? He didn't see the advantages of it. My sister-in-law shared with me that my 13 yr old nephew used it to get himself out of a situation where he was visiting a friend and the friend's older brother was doing some questionable things with his friends. My nephew sent a text to his Mom to come get him vs. having to "call" and sound like a cry-baby.

Web Conferencing -- Whenever possible I use this tool and think that it is great for saving time & money on traveling to & from meetings and training. There are the downfalls when the technology isn't working at it's best. But I think the overall benefit outweighs the bad.