I tried Audioboo. I’m
not sure what I was expecting, but I was surprised at what I found. Audioboo seems to be the bastard child of
Twitter and talk radio. I tried
recording and uploading; it’s very easy.
I searched through some of the other users’ posts and, in particular,
spent some time listening to things tagged as poetry. I didn’t go back and look, but it seemed
like there was a weighting towards English posts (as opposed to American). This added a different perspective to some of
the political postings which I found refreshing. However, I do not see myself
using this app regularly (if ever) in the future.
Showing posts with label communication tools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label communication tools. Show all posts
Monday, June 2, 2014
23 Mobile Things - Thing #15 - Infographics
I’ve seen a lot of infographics in the past couple of
years. I can’t decide whether I like the
trend or not, but I have to admit that the simple graphics often get me to stop
and look at the information. I guess
that means they are successful in conveying the information.
I wanted to actually
try to make an infographic, so I tried using I Visual Info Touch Lite for this
thing. I did watch the YouTube
introduction first. The app program was
very easy to use (the hardest part was deciding what to make an infographic
about). I thought that the collection of
images other than shapes was odd in this free version. If I end up using this app regularly, I will
probably upgrade to the paid version just to get a wider variety of
images. (I can’t see myself using the
guns in any library related material, but it would be nice to have a larger
variety of animals and other icons to use).
 |
| These numbers aren't accurate since I was making this at home with no access to library stats |
I can see that my library board and city council would be
very happy to have information presented to them in this manner. Several often ask me for charts for
statistics or flowcharts for procedures to help them understand things; this
would be one more way to give a visual along with the written information for
those who process material in that way.
23 Mobile THings - Thing #14 - Videos
I hadn’t heard of Vine, but decided to try it since the 23
Things organizers recommended it as hot and the videos are short. Hmm … finding it on the iTunes app store was
a little confusing since there were so many related choices; I actually ended
up following the Wikipedia link to get
to the correct app.
Vine seems easy to use with one caveat – it can be a little
challenging to hold an iPad motionless to get a better video while still
touching the screen to record. (And, as you can see, I should have held the iPad in a different orientation since I didn't find a way to rotate it later). My only
other challenge was that the star of my short video (okay, my cat) was feeling
like a bit of a diva and didn’t want to perform on command.
I looked briefly through some of the editor picks and was
surprised at how many were of people doing something that they had obviously
set up in advance. I guess that I had
expected more animal or natural shots or spontaneous action … perhaps it was
just the selection that I viewed.
I could see using this as a booktalking tool in a library
setting. It might be easier to record
with two people though – one to do the talk and the other to handle the device
and record.
23 Mobile Things - Thing #13 - Presentations
I hadn’t used any of these suggested apps and decided to try
Haiku Deck. It was very easy to use –
making the sample deck was slick (one of the better introductions on how to use
a program that I’ve seen). When I tried
making another deck on my own, I only needed to use the help on one item (and
the help actually told me what I wanted to know on the first answer
screen). One caution – the app currently
only lets you build decks on an iPad – the smaller mobile app will access
already completed decks.
Here's a sample deck that I put together as a quick tourist guide to the town where I live:
Ely Visit - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
I can see this being a very useful tool in the library. It would be particularly good as a quick way
to make tutorials for people on commonly asked questions – which could then be
posted to our website or used as part of a class. I may even use it for the “forensic library
skills” course that we are offering to elementary students this summer since
using a screen tends to get kids attention quicker than just explaining
something out loud.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
23 Mobile Things - Thing #7 - Content Saving and Sharing
I have been avoiding Pinterest because it seemed like one of the electronic holes that you can fall down and look up to realize that you have spent the last four hours on the internet and really have nothing to show for the time. However, I know many people who absolutely love it, so I decided to give it a try.
Some things that I like:
Some things that I like:
- being able to copy pins from other people
- you can categorize your boards however you like
- you can make some of your boards private (nice for those of us who work in public service)
- nice to save visuals of some things - especially things you might want to copy
- needing a picture to pin an article (I know, it's a visual place but some of us are text people) - I tried to pin a news article with an accompanying YouTube video, and it wouldn't let me because there was not a header photo
- linking it to my Facebook account meant that I was automatically following a whole bunch of people - many of whom I didn't want to follow and I had to go through and take them off so I didn't see their pins
- what you see when it opens seems pretty random - I did realize that it was the most recent pins from people that I was following (see point above)
- didn't find a way to group boards or subdivide boards you had already started - maybe this is there and I haven't found it yet
- I think almost every account that I looked at had at least one board about food and many had one on travel possibilities
- some of the items I repinned from another user seemed to only have the photo and not an accompanying link (like photo of a recipe, but no link to the actual recipe). It don't know if this was due to the original pin or the recipe being removed from a site or something I was doing wrong.
23 Mobile Things - Thing #3 - Utilities
I already had a QR reader and a WiFi finder app on my
devices. I use both occasionally. I would caution people using WiFi finder (the
same one listed in the 23 things site) to not rely totally on it for finding
hotspots … of the 4 locations listed in downtown Ely, 2 have gone out of
business (new businesses at each location – one still offers wifi but the other
doesn’t), one (the library is located incorrectly on the map even though the
address is correct, the last is correct.
I know of at least three more locations that offer WiFi in the area but
are not listed with the app.
I tried the Google search app as something new. I wasn’t very impressed. You can use voice commands like Siri but the
results take you through more steps. A
general google search is fine using this app but the other pieces of the app that I explored as
easily accessible to me using other apps that I am more familiar with. Perhaps if I used gmail as a primary email account rather than a secondary option, this app would be more useful to me.
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