Marsco Information & Research

Several months ago I used Meebo Rooms for an online discussion group for a research project I was working on. It was really successful (although due to the subject we attracted tech-savvy participants) and I would definitely use it again. I’ve blogged about it in the post below and I would definitely use it again as it is so easy and simple.

LibrarianInBlack linked to an article about adding Meebo’s instant chat widget to a library catalogue, seems like Meebo has loads of uses and this one is particularly good.  Can’t find something in the catalogue?  Chat to library staff online who can help you.

It’s ok, this isn’t going to turn into a Meebo fan site!  It could do with more content though.  Sorry.

I trialled using Habbo Hotel the other week, for an online discussion I want to hold for a work project.  My colleagues and I had a bit of fun coming up with outfits and dancing around the room.  Here’s what we thought:

• We liked being able to have ourselves represented as people, although it took us a while to work out how to move around.
• We liked being able to choose how we looked (to a certain extent).
• We liked being able to have a private room that was password-access only.
• We didn’t like that we could only use a limited number of characters in one go.
• We didn’t like that our speech bubbles disappear off the top of the page so you can’t go back and look at people have already said, if you are concentrating on writing something you might miss part of the discussion.
• We all found that backspace didn’t work when typing something in, maybe a technical glitch?  We were all using IE7.

To be fair, Habbo isn’t really set up to have meaningful discussions in, maybe most users don’t want that.  There was also an issue about getting a transcript, we would have to have a member of Habbo staff in the room at the same time to get this, I’m not sure what effect this would have on the conversation, even if they are not joining in, it’s a bit strange having someone standing in the corner.  Although it would be possible to use it for my project, I thought I’d investigate other options.

Fortunately that day Phil Bradley had blogged about Meebo Rooms - thanks Phil!   It sounded just like the sort of thing I was after so we had another trial, and this is what we thought:

• Meebo Rooms look like IM but are based online, this is familiar to lots of people making it easier to use.  I haven’t used MSN Messenger for few years (people kept wanting to talk to me!) but Meebo had the same feel and I got into it straight away.
• Although you can register, you don’t have to!  All I need to do is give the participants a url and password and they can log in.  They can also change their username from ‘guestxxxxx’ to something more meaningful.  Much, much easier than Habbo.
• It’s easy to scroll up and look at what has been said, plus the conversation is colour-coded according to who said what (you can also choose your own font/colour).
• You can personalise the room with an image or logo, giving it more of an official appearance.  In theory anyone could set up a Meebo room in our organisation name and download a logo from the website, so it doesn’t prove that we’re ‘official’ but certainly helps.
• You can share websites with each other.  As my project is about online social networking this could be very useful if participants want to illustrate a point.  It also means we can have our organisation website up to promote it and help with the ‘official’ feel.
• The only downside is that it hasn’t got the fun elements of Habbo Hotel.  However, I think Habbo’s cons would irritate people after a while to cancel out the pros.

So hopefully we will be using Meebo Rooms, and I’d recommend anyone wanting to do something similar to check it out.  Habbo appeals to the sort of person I need to recruit as a participant, but I don’t think our data will be as useful/interesting as it would from Meebo.

I’m currently trying to arrange a space for a virtual discussion group for a work project.  I’m hoping to use Habbo Hotel (due to the age of the participants, not because I think it’s great) but it may not be suitable so I’ve been looking at alternatives.  I’ve found most of them on I want to, but am always looking for more.  LibrarianInBlack mentioned Yugma recently, it looks good, but I don’t want my participants to have to download anything.

I’m hopefully going to trial Habbo this week (if they let me but that’s a whole other story) to see how it works for discussions.  Will everyone actually ‘listen’ to each other or just type their answers to questions over the top of each other?  Anyone had any experience of this?  Whatever I end up using needs to be simple and young-person friendly.

Will report back!

I read a stupid amount of blogs, and am always finding more I want to follow.  If it wasn’t for the mighty Bloglines, I’d never keep up.  Of course, there’s always the view that I should just read less blogs and streamline it down, quality not quantity and all that.  Not sure I’m ready for that just yet…

Another post that’s been sitting in my saved items on Bloglines is one from Phil Bradley, linking to a brilliant post all about Bloglines, and how to use it.  If you want to find out more about RSS and Bloglines, or know someone who does/should, go and have a read.

I tend to prefer taking notes on good old-fashioned paper, it feels quicker and you can easily draw diagrams alongside.

Much of what I write about on here is inspired from when I was a public librarian on a stupidly limited budget and travelling round libraries all the time (3 a day not unheard of).  I didn’t like having to carry things round with me, especially since I travelled on the bus and often then had to walk some way from the bus stop.  I now work for a charity and have my own desk, PC, don’t need to travel around, but I am still drawn to finding ways of doing things online so that they can be accessed anywhere.

A while ago LibrarianInBlack linked to an article called Fifty Ways to Take Notes, which has loads of ideas and tips for keeping your notes online so you can find them anywhere you can find an internet connection.  Have a look and see what you think.  Many of the recommendations can be accessed by a group of people for collaboration (again, great when I was a librarian as my colleagues were scattered all over the city).

I've had this article sitting around for over a month, but Phil Bradley posted about the Web 2.0 Awards.  Web 2.0 seems to be everywhere with everyone claiming they have a brilliant new application -it's hard to keep up!

Having a look through the winners and honourable mentions gives you an idea of what's out there, although you could be on this site all day!  

What applications do I use?  I'd be lost without Bloglines, my personal blog is signed up with Technorati (time to get this one up too), Flickr to organise my photos, del.icio.us for keeping track of all the good things on the web, Blink for keeping track of business sites on the web, I keep up to date with news affecting my work with a personalised Google page…

(My other half has just informed me of an interesting BBC news article on the Web 2.0 revolution, check it out.)

Just found out, thanks to blogher, that there is an online conference at Tech Soup on the use of social networking applications in non-profit organisations. It's home is the US so may be some time differences, but get on over there if you want to know more.

So glad this kind of thing is online then more of us can take part.

Zoho Chat markets itself as a 'way to make group decisions faster' but you could use it for anything.  It is all web-based so you don't need to download any chat software that your IT people might not like.  It could also be a way of engaging with your clients/users.  I seem to meet lots of people who need to communicate with several colleagues at once but are based in different sites/towns/counties…  Maybe applications like this could help.  Of course you could use MSN Messenger or something similar but many companies and organisations frown on the use of these.

Via I Want To.

I've had this bookmarked for a few weeks now, meaning to post about it here. Gabbly is a web application that allows you to chat to someone over the web, about a particular website. If you ever need to guide someone through a website, or want to do some surfing with other people, Gabbly could be the tool for you. When I was a public librarian my colleagues and I were based in different libraries throughout Leeds and trying to help someone with a website when you can't see what they're doing is very hard.

This may also be useful for parents just getting into using the net who keep calling up for your help! (Mine are past that now…)

Via Lifehacker.