What would William Do?

27 Thing #20, 21, and 22.

libworkspace
Originally uploaded by YorickWell.

#20

This is fun. Amusing and yet at the same time causing one to be mindful.

This is my favorite font. (Comic Sans MS. In case the actual posting changes the font, [posting did change the font, but I put it back by editing the post here at Blogger] the first two text lines were in Verdana--a completely uninspired font as far as I can tell. Okay, Verdana does get some good marks for unassuming readability, but it strikes me as just a step or two away from complete invisibility. It's certainly not carrying any emotional weight.)

I was going to post solely from GoogleDocs because it has an obvious connection with blogger, but Zoho has a button to publish to one's blog as well, so I'll have to publish from both to see what happens. And which ever one gets published 2nd, I'll change to draft so that I can finish items 21 and 22 on the one post.

Concerning what I think: I think I'll have a too-strong coffee and some 2% milk. No. Ummm, I think that the collaboration and the take it anywhere features are great. I'm very pleased to have alternatives to offer patrons who might want to do word processing or might want baseball box scores in a spread sheet and yet don't have MicroSoft applications available at home. (And with MS whining, suing, and wheeling and dealing in the (tech) news about Open Source software violating their patents, I'm even more glad to show people these alternatives.)

I also think that I don't have a favorite between Zoho and Google Doc yet. I'll have to try doing more with each before I can settle on which one is really better. Although in terms of an Integrated experience, Google, Gmail, Blogger, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets are all there together. Zoho is a whole other account and log in.

#21
Google Labs test drive.

What worked: Music Trends seemed to work. It could be useful to know songs and artists in the top 20 (among GoogleTalk users. Of course it is an unidentified demographic beyond what assumptions one might make about GoogleTalk users--generally younger, techologically connected). But at this point it is merely another pulse check on pop culture rather than an authoritative information source. Google Trends worked, but if one's search terms are not popular enough to get a graph, it doesn't tell a person a lot about how many if any were searching on those term(s). It works, but I don't at this time see as much use for it as even Music Trends. Google Page Creator works, but I'm not entirely sure just what would make it better than a Wiki or a Blog--Wiki if one wants to constantly, regularly update bulletin board on Newsletter type information, Blog if one wants to update with continuous narrative as we're doing here. In someways, a Page Creator strikes me as very Web 1.something rather than Web 2.0 or higher.
Google Voice Local Search and Google Accessible Search which seem self-evidently useful for those with abilities related accessibility issues are the exception; the other choices didn't pique my interest enough to even look to see if they worked. It's also possibly a failure in Marketing....

I've already mentioned above which ones I found potentially useful.

#22
Web 2.0 Awards. Before I move on to the actual award winners, let me note that Technorati took 1st and Bloglines took 2nd in the Blog Guide category. In a cursory glance, it seems that the user interface made the difference between 1 and 2. In my own experience, I've been a little disappointed in Technorati because I've claimed my blog, allowed as I think Technorati to have access, and yet, when I search for words in my own blog that I know are in the post(s), it comes back with nothing found. Technorati has also been slow or unknowing about when I update my blog, even though I send it a separate ping from time to time.

I did change the spelling of my blog's web address, and I had to delete my original claim and re-claim the new spelling. So I wonder if that has caused connect problems between the blog and Technorati. But when I had to do an analogous procedure on Bloglines, it found me (back) right away. (In a note of sadness, I should have announced it before I did it, because I had been "watched" by 15 subcriptions on Bloglines before the address change, and now I'm being watched by only me. :-( )

The awards I looked at were the top 3 in the Books category. I can understand why Lulu.com got 1st--it's a place to self-publish on the web and sell one's "intellectual property." As the cut quote from the SEOmoz interview says, "“The ultimate goal for Lulu was to become a digital marketplace, like a mix of eBay and Amazon.com, a place for people to monetize their intellectual property instead of stuff.” ( Read our interview with Lauren Parker, PR Manager, Lulu --link to their interview) (While we're at it, I think "monetize" is needlessly jargonistic. The PR Manager is trying to impress people with the stuffy word instead of a more direct word. Points off for stuffy diction, as far as I'm concerned.)

I know Biblio.com is very cool for finding books you didn't know you could find again. But I'm not sure why it beat Alibris which does essentially the same thing. (I used Alibris to find the very first chapter book that I remember reading myself. It was $25 plus shipping, but it was worth it.) I read the paragraph at zeitgeist#award-selection page of the Awards site, but it didn't really give me a clear understanding of "what were they thinking?!" I suppose one thing is that some of their expert web site judges this time included marketers, so naturally they'd have an impact in award choice.

For my ranking of the three in books, I'd switch LibraryThing which I find completely addictive like Flickr with Biblio.

That's my experience; that's what I think.