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.

Another blogging break from Marsco, this time due to house move and lack of broadband.

I was showing someone Terapad (seen at I want to) the other day, it describes itself as ‘beyond blogging’, which it is.  It’s really more of a content management system, as it also comes with  PayPal shop facilities, forums, calendar, galleries, CV search etc - and it’s free.  It’s certainly something I would look into if I were selling something, and I can see that a lot of the craft and design blogs I read would benefit from using it.  If you go and have a look at the site you can find lots of examples of the different ways that people use Terapad.

Bloglines launched a new feature the other week, the Image Wall.  It’s basically a big mosaic made up of a variety of different images from RSS feeds.  It’s quite fun to watch for a while.

Unfortunately it meant that Bloglines was being inadvertantly blocked from some libraries and schools because there is no way of controlling the content of the image wall (it does come with a disclaimer though).  Many users told Bloglines about this and how they didn’t want to have to block the site but were faced with no option.

So what did Bloglines do?  They just moved the image wall over to a new url.  Simple yet brilliant, didn’t take a lot but makes a whole load of people happier.  You can see it here.

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.

From the brilliant Lifehacker, some tools that help you work and communicate with colleagues in different buildings, towns, countries, planets…

In one easy photo!

Lazybase allows you to create a database online that can be accessed and edited by whoever you choose.  Because it’s online, this could be anyone from anywhere in the world.  Don’t expect anything on the scale of Access, but it looks to be a simple utility for contacts, books etc.

Via I want to.

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).

Nothing radical in this article but another good 'beginners guide to Web 2.0' and how it can be applied to be libraries.

Via LibrarianInBlack.