Pew/Internet & American Life reports of Online Activities & Pursuits.  Includes Wikipedia users, Tagging, Social Networking Websites and Teens, and more.  Other Pew report topics you can link to here cover:  Demographics, Internet Evolution, Technology & Media Use, Health, Family, Friends & Community, Major News Events, Public Policy, E-Gov & E-Policy, Education, and Work.

Add Website to Google: Screencast
Brief, instructive screencast on how to get Googlebot to visit your Website.  If you follow the directions and enter your URL, you will get information from Google, including this:  “Your site URL has been successfully added to our list of URLs to crawl. Please note that we do not add all submitted URLs to our index, and we cannot make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.” [via eContent]

Using Google Desktop
Google Operating System blog gives tips on using Desktop’s features.

13 Popular Wikis that actually ‘WORK’
Makeuseof.com lists popular and successful wikis, focused on specific areas i.e, book summaries, cooking, and HowTo’s.

24 Hours of Flickr : Global Photo Project
QuickOnlineTips notes that photographers, professional or not, should mark their calendars for May 5, 2007.  Photo sharing service Flickr is sponsoring a “24 Hours of Flickr” day-long global photo project for which folks are invited to snap photos and chronicle their day.

“The aim of the 24 Hours of Flickr project is to illustrate one day in the life of the Flickr community — May 5, 2007. You can only submit a photo taken on May 5, though you have until May 21 to add your photo.  Join the 24 Hours of Flickr group and then post your best photo to the group. Make sure you add your photos to the map using the Organizr.”

Fresh News Become Standard Search Results
Google Operating System blog notes that Google’s web search results now integrate results from Google News. The standard news OneBox that was displayed at the top of the page for queries related to recent news was replaced with a list of links to news articles, displayed anywhere in the top results.

“The important news will rank higher than less important ones and they become a standard search result. This is the first step in Google’s big plan of integrating every type of content in one index: a universal search engine that mixes web pages, images, videos, books, scholar papers, news articles and more.”

Google Adds Picture Thumbnails in Search Results
Amit Agarwal at Digital Inspiration shows some examples of Google’s experiments with image thumbnails in organic search results. As he suggested, I tried a Google search for Vladimir Putin and a thumbnail showed up.

Currently, Amit says, the website thumbnails are displayed only for the Google News results placed after the top three organic search results.  He posits that this may bring some bad news for regular web sites that are also displayed in the organic results in that thumbnails will help draw the attention of search engine users and may alter the traffic on regular websites that don’t have a thumbnail.

Justice Dept. Is Asked to Investigate Reading Plan
The New York Times reports that inspector general John P. Higgins testified about his request to investigate Reading First at Congress’s opening hearing on the program.   Reading First awards grants to states to buy teaching materials and for training through the Bush administration’s $6 billion program to teach poor children to read by third grade.

Mr. Higgins has issued a half-dozen reports finding conflicts of interest, cronyism and bias in how federal officials and private consultants operated the program and awarded the grants.  The data showed that most of these states used a once obscure assessment which the inspector general’s report suggested had been unfairly promoted through Reading First.  See the article for more details.

Broadband communications growth elsewhere outstripping U.S. 
An Information Week article says, “The United States continues to lose ground when the number of people with broadband communications connections here is compared to other countries.”  U.S. broadband penetration among worldwide industrialized nations dropped from 12th to 15th place, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

“We are failing to bring the benefits of broadband to all our citizens, and the consequences will resonate for generations,” said Ben Scott, policy director of Free Press, a national lobbying group whose goals are to reform the media and universal access to communications.

Hallmarks of Web 2.0
An ALA TechSource blog post details a presentation by Lee Rainie on the hallmarks of Web 2.0 at the 2007 Computers in Libraries Conference.  Rainie works for the Pew Internet and American Life Project that just released “Teens, Privacy and Online Social Networks: How teens manage their online identities and personal information in the age of MySpace”

According to Rainie, there are six hallmarks of Web 2.0:
   1. The Internet has become the computer.
   2. Tens of millions of Americans, especially the young, are creating and sharing content online.
   3. Even more Internet users are accessing content created by others.
   4. Many are sharing what they know and what they feel online.
   5. People are commenting and sharing their knowledge and content online.
   6. Americans are customizing their content and online experience, thanks to Web 2.0.
  
Promoting Internet safety
American Libraries Online reports that social networking website MySpace has joined with the Illinois Library Association in a campaign to inform children, teens, and parents about online safety.  The article includes a link to ILA’s Internet Safety page.    
[via American Libraries Direct]

RSS in Plain English
A neat video that clearly and succinctly explains the what, why, and how of RSS, at Commoncraft, “social design for the web.”  [via Mundell.org]

PC World’s “how to” videos
Selection of videos demonstrating a range of technologies

How-To: QuickFlicks
Video Tech Tutorials Every Monday

5min How To Videos
“The vision behind ‘5min’ is a very simple one: any solution can be visually explained in no more than 5 minutes.” From Lifehack.org.

How To Maximize Video Learning
From About.com, use these tips to promote active viewing and maximize learning.

Adopting Streaming Video Technology for Library Instruction: “Any Time, Any Place”
One page PDF from the Health Sciences Libraries, University of Washington, with a number of links — some requiring off-campus log-in for complete access.

Download of the Day: Better Gmail 0.4 (Firefox)
Gina Trapani continues fast-paced upgrading of Better Gmail, a free download which works with and wherever Firefox does.  Version 0.4 “includes the Air Skin in addition to Super Clean and sports a re-vamped, tabbed options dialog. Update an already-installed version by going to Firefox’s Tools menu, Add-ons, and hitting the Find Updates button.”

Gmail Attachments
Google Operating System blog explains how Gmail handles attachments and gives some great tips, including how to upload files using a drag and drop Firefox extension.

“Google offers you the option to view online a lot of file types: Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint files, PDF, RTF and even edit Word and Excel files using Google Docs. This is a simple way to convert all these file types to HTML. You can also listen to MP3 files directly from Gmail.”  [via Lifehacer]

Open Google Notebook in the Firefox sidebar
Mitchelaneous brings us a way to open Google Notebook in the Firefox sidebar. It makes possible a full notetaking application that is larger than Google’s Notebook widget from their Personalized Homepage and opens and shuts quickly. [via Lifehacker]

Announcing the Google AJAX Feed API
In case you missed it, Google has launched the Google AJAX Feed API, an API that takes the pain out of developing mashups in JavaScript. “Now you can mash up feeds using only a few lines of JavaScript rather than dealing with complex server-side proxies.”

 New download: Libraries and Google Book Search
If you want to learn more about Book Search or need a handout for a presentation about it, download the file and distribute it to anyone who wants one.  Google Librarian Central has a number of files and posters about using Google.

Wondering what your patrons/customers think of you?  There are a number of ways to find out, including the Vovici EFM Continuum product suite.  Calling itself, “feedback that drives vision,” they say, “Feedback has the power to transform business practices and strengthen relationships both inside and outside organizations.”

The system features tools and services that enable the collection and management of feedback from customers, partners, and employees to help shape organizational strategy.  For “real-time, actionable feedback” they claim that Vovici is the only provider with products and solutions that span the entire continuum of feedback management - from conducting surveys to fully integrated solutions.
 
For library systems, library membership organizations and associations, for instance, you could ask:

• How can you improve patorn/member/employee interaction?
• Which services do your patrons/members hold most valuable and why?
• What additional services would they like?
• What do your patrons/members say about you to their neighbors and peers?
• What hot-button issues would your patrons/members like to have addressed at an upcoming event?

The name Vovici is a stylized aggregation of the words Voice and Vision.  The inspiration comes from “Listening to the Voice of the customer lends Vision to the direction of the organization”.

Can games be used to make self-directed learning more fun while adding value to the educational experience?  Online Learning News & Reviews asked the question and reports several responses.

For fairly dry subject matter, Susie Kjell and team created a puzzle into which learners had to fit component features of an ATM.  “It was fun and fairly easy to do and it worked as a great review of the components of the ATM.”

They also made an assessment into a crossword puzzle in which learners had to figure out the answer to the clue and then put it in the puzzle grid. To create the game, her team used ToolBook Instructor 7 from SumTotal Systems Inc. in Mountain View, Calif., which Kjell says worked well. 

I think either puzzle technique (and others) might be effectively used in teaching information and/or computer literacy.  Of course, the type of software or course management system you are using would make a difference, and it also requires extra creative thinking and effort.  Have any readers successfully used gaming in their instructional design?

Photo by chewywong.

 Better Gmail 0.3 (Firefox)
Lifehacker brings us an updated version that includes Gmail Super Clean, One Click Conversations, Hide Gmail Invites, Unlabelled and more.

How to Make Gmail/Gcal Rock Your Tasks
No excuses for not being superorganized and productive if you utilize the suggestions for putting Gmail and Gcal to work for you.  [via Lifehacker]

Sync Google Calendar and Gmail contacts to your desktop
Gina Trapani tells us, “Two-way update and sync between your desktop and the web is the ultimate golden ticket; it gives you offline access, local backup and the rich desktop experience while dealing with data stored in the cloud.”  Find out about installing and using GCalDaemon.  Since it is a command line application, it’s good to have help in editing its text configuration file.