The last day of Computer in Libraries I had a jam-packed schedule and I decided I would wait to post about any sessions. Steven M. Cohen, who writes the blog Library Stuff and moderated Tuesday’s Open Libraries track, presented hot RSS sites from Z-A with two letters missing (X and N) but with prizes thrown in to make up for it.
Z - Zoho: Zoho launched before Google Docs. SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 Awards gave Zoho second place for “Organization” in 2008 and characterized it as a “complete office experience in one.”
Y - YouTube RSS
X – Pick your own!
W - Wwwhat’s new?: The site is in Spanish, but it often links to sites in English, and clicking is not a language-dependent activity. (A recent post discusses 100 Twitter tools or 100 recursos utiles para Twitter, clasificados.)
V - Votes Database: from the Washington Post (and created by an intern). You can set up the RSS feeds for a particular member or all recent votes.
U - JD Supra: Cohen maintained, “It’s got a ‘u’ in it. That’s not cheating. I’m running this thing, buddy.” It’s a tool for lawyers to place documents on the web. The site’s tag line is: “Give Content. Get Noticed.” This could be useful in some public libraries, but mostly I like that they have a section called Hot Docs. (Man, did you see that hot doc about patent infringement? It was on fire!)
T - Tic TOCs: The TOC here refers to Table of Contents and the site allows one to set up an RSS feed. Cohen said, “It used to be in beta and it sucked, but now it’s really cool.” A great way to keep current with an ongoing research topic.
S - Scribd: “YouTube for documents.” The site was a slow when I was checking it out, but it really does seem to cast a wide net: ebooks, how-tos, resumes, periodicals, surveys.
R - Ravelry: The social networking tools for knitters.
Q - QuestionPoint: I can’t recall why this was special. Feel free to chime in if you know.
P - Page2RSS: Create a feed for any page. Enter the URL, press a button, grab feed and place it in reader. It only updates once a day, but as Cohen said, “Free is as free does.”
O – Open Congress: Taps into the Thomas page and features many different types of feeds. Cohen likes the issues option. After selecting on an issue, you can pick a feed option or choose “share this.”
N - “nothing”
M – Mashable: Social media news blog. Facebook, Google, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, you name it.
L - LibraryThing: Bazillions of RSS feeds … or more than 150,000. Follow tags, books, reviewers, etc.
K - KillerStartups: Read about Internet start-ups, like internSHARE. Interesting way to keep track of what’s coming out of the gate.
J – Justia : Search and set up feeds for federal court filings.
I - I want to: Phil Bradley’s blog includes info about Web 2.0 things.
H – Hunch : This site is not functional yet, but is coming soon. See the Hunch Inc Fact Sheet. Hunch’s co-founder, Caterina Fake, also co-founded Flickr. Hunch aids the decision-making process. I’ve been making decisions for 33 years. It’s time to turn it over to someone. (Like many people, I’ve wondered “Is this an April Fool’s joke?” I hope not. I really hate making decisions, but I’ve got this hunch …)
G - Google Reader: Cohen claims Google Reader is better than Bloglines. However, I use Bloglines.
F - Facebook: The audience attempted to break Facebook by friending Cohen at the same moment, but we failed. However, we did manage to push him over the 500-friend mark.
E – eHub: Web apps, services, sites with a focus on 2.0 stuff.
D - deepest sender: It’s a Firefox blogging client, and Cohen characterized it as “a really really slick tool.”
C - compfight: a Flickr search tool that can also be limited it to Creative Commons.
B – BackupUrl: Create a cache copy of any url in case it goes down. When I went to give it a go, the following message was displayed: Database connection failed: Too many connections. Did BackupUrl fail to make its own backup url?
A – the Awesome Highlighter: Enter a website’s url, click highlight page, and then go wild with the yellow. When you’re done, it will create a unique url (like tinyurl) that you can give out.
Comment to add an “X” or “N” suggestion.
