Stunning idea for annual report

I really like the creative way David Lee King‘s library looked at publishing their online annual report.

What could have been a boring link to a pdf document ended up being a pop-up interactive book – it still gives you all the fact you need, but in a really creative way.

Here’s the link to the full annual report.

 

Harvard College Library’s Digital Collection

The Harvard College Library has digitized thousands of historical photographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, books, music scores, rare maps and other rare and unique materials. The vast majority of these images are freely available online for public access.

The easiest way to lose yourself in their collections is to Explore the Collections – they have various themes that you can chose from:

• Artemas Ward House and Its Collections
• Book of Hours
• Chinese Rubbings Collection
• Digital Papyri at Houghton Library
• Digital Scores and Libretti
• Edwards Bangs Drew Chinese Maritime Customs Service Photographs
• Etz-Trudell Lantern Slides of Asia
• Gardner Collection of Photographs of the New England Landscape
• Hedda Morrison Photographs of China
• Harvard Map Collection Digital Maps
• Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System
• Images of Colonialism – Africa and Asia
• Iranian Oral History Project
• Judaica Division Image Collections
• Latin American Pamphlet Digital Collection
• Medieval Manuscripts
• Mercator Globes at the Harvard Map Collection
• Naxi Manuscripts
• The Poet’s Voice – A Digital Poetry Collection
• The Rev. Claude L. Pickens, Jr. Collection on Muslims in China
• Russian Theatre Designs from the Harvard Theatre Collection
• Tehran Propaganda Murals
• Theodore Roosevelt Collection Photographs

Of course my eye was caught by the Images of Colonialism – Africa and Asia and there are some great images from newspapers etc.

Thanks to Cheryl LaGuardia for alerting me on this.

 

Spice up your boring barcodes

Ever heard of Vanity Barcodes? I didn’t until this post from The Centered Librarian.

A vanity barcode is a product barcode turned into a decorative, fun design while still scanning like a regular barcode.  It transforms a boring barcode into a great marketing and brand tool!

There are some really fun examples on the Vanity Barcodes website – if you like one of the designs you can click it on it and order it for your company or organisation.

Here’s one for a bookstore or library:

For a petshop:

For a deli or cofee shop:

 

The state of the Blogosphere

by  samlustgarten

Technoratic will be publishing their State of the Blogosphere 2009 throughout this week.This annual study follows the growth and trends in the blogosphere.

For 2009, they took a deeper dive into the entire blogosphere, with a focus on professional bloggers.

This year’s topics include:

• professional blogging activities
• brands in the blogosphere
• monetization
• twitter & micro-blogging
• bloggers’ impact on US and World events

So far they’ve released the following:

1. Arianna Huffington Interview: SOTB 2009
   The heart and soul of the Huffington Post discusses her evolution into the world of blogging, and her ascent to the top.
2. Henry Copeland Interview: SOTB 2009
   The founder of Blogads sits down with Eric Olsen about trailblazing the business of ads for bloggers.
3. Alex Santoso Interview: SOTB 2009
   Eric Olsen speaks with the proprietor of the link sharing blog Neatorama.
4. Day 2: The What and Why of Blogging – SOTB 2009
   Self-expression and sharing expertise continue to be the primary motivations for bloggers.
5. Day 1: Who Are The Bloggers? SOTB 2009
   Overall, bloggers are a highly educated and affluent group.
6. State of the Blogosphere 2009 Introduction
   A look into our methodology and a glance at the findings.
7. Steve Rubel Interview: SOTB 2009
   Steve Rubel, SVP and Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, is well known as the blogger behind Micro Persuasion and, more recently, SteveRubel.com. Steve talks about why he made the switch to a Posterous-powered blog, the meaning (or lack thereof) of lifestreaming, digital curation, and PR 2.0, and PR and online marketing trends that form part of his “flow.”
8. Penelope Trunk Interview: SOTB 2009
   Penelope Trunk, founder of Brazen Careerist and prolific blogger at blog.penelopetrunk.com, is never one to pull a punch. Check out her take on blogging it like it is (or isn’t), entrepreneurship, and how Gen X and Gen Y view the web and social networking quite differently from one another.
9. Michael Arrington Interview: SOTB 2009
   Richard Jalichandra speaks with the major domo of TechCrunch.
10. Richard Jalichandra Keynote: BlogWorld 2009
    Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra delivered a keynote address at BlogWorld 2009 discussing the blogosphere and previewing the 2009 State of the Blogosphere report.

It’s definitely well worth a click through.

 

Another great infographic

The good people over at Good has put up another infographic  – this time to illustrate Healthcareless in the US:

Healthcareless in the USA

I particularly like how they used pills and thermometers as part of the graphic.

If you click on the image you will be taken to the flash image where you can zoom in and out.

 

the Living Library project

The Living Library is an innovative method designed to promote dialogue, reduce prejudices and encourage understanding.The main characteristics of the project are to be found in its simplicity and positive approach.

In it’s initial form the Living Library is a mobile library set up as a space for dialogue and interaction. Visitors to the Living Library are given the opportunity to speak informally with “people on loan”; this latter group being extremely varied in age, sex and cultural background.

Here are some of the posters from all over the world:

LivingLibrary@Limassol,Cyprus.

Living Library>Living Library at Kings Garden

Living Library>LivingLibrary@Ljubljana,Slovenia.

The Living Library enables groups to break stereotypes by challenging the most common prejudices in a positive and humorous manner. It is a concrete, easily transferable and affordable way of promoting tolerance and understanding.

It is a “keep it simple”, “no-nonsense” contribution to social cohesion in multicultural societies. Read more about the history HERE.

 

Talking the talk

An excellent example of speaking students’ language! (Thanks to Tame The Web for posting this)

 

Best of e-learning each week

Since I work for a open distance learning university I’m really interested in any and all websites that deal with e-learning, mobile learning and the use of mobiles technology in education.

One of the gems I recently found is the ElearningLearning website and the blog that accompanies it. And each week the ElearningLearning Tony Karrer posts a list of upcoming events, featured sources and hot topics that all have to do with e-learning. Thanks to Tony I’ve found numerous websites and interesting posts that would have simply passed me by – we can’t read everything on the web!

This week’s post is especially useful as it includes quite a few Camtasia links and my section will be starting to experiment with Camtasia next month – so his timing was perfect!

Here’s a taste of Tony’s list (my comments are added in blue):

Featured Sources

The following are the top items from featured sources based on social signals.

1. Social Media Revolution- eLearning Technology, August 17, 2009 - even though some of the commentators had issues with the stats in this video, you still can’t argue the fact that socialnomics is here to stay and we’d better get learn how to use it to our advantage
2. Top 47 eLearning & Workplace Learning Blogs- Upside Learning Blog, August 20, 2009 – this is a like a candy store of new blogs that I haven’t found yet! I’ve bookmarked two or three already
3. Designing For Experts- The eLearning Coach, August 14, 2009
4. How Long Does It Take to Develop One Hour of E-Learning-Updated for 2009- Kapp Notes, August 18, 2009
5. Presentation: Social Networking- Dont Waste Your Time, August 20, 2009
6. Tackling a New Captivate Project- In the Middle of the Curve, August 21, 2009
7. eLearning Development: How long does it Really take?- Upside Learning Blog, August 19, 2009
8. Storyboarding The Visuals- The eLearning Coach, August 19, 2009 - halleluja! We’re currently busy with storyboarding and this will be a fantastic reference point to start with
9. CIPD’s blended learning manifesto- Clive on Learning, August 18, 2009
10. Cool ProtoSphere Video- Kapp Notes, August 16, 2009
11. Some interesting Moodle audio visual plugins just released- The E-Learning Curve, August 21, 2009
12. 25 Awesome Virtual Learning Experiences Online- Take an e-Learning Break, August 20, 2009
13. Shaping Social Business Ecosystems as Learnscapes- Skilful Minds, August 18, 2009
14. Podcasting for E-Learning: Critically Analyzing Podcasts- The E-Learning Curve, August 18, 2009

Hot Topics

Camtasia (9)

1. Lights, Camtasia, Action! , August 14, 2009
2. Camtasia for Mac – Sneak Peek, SmartFocus, August 17, 2009
3. Camtasia Saves the Day! Guest Blog Post – Nick Beaugeard, August 16, 2009
4. e-Learning Chart Toppers, August 20, 2009

Screencast (8) – I can’t wait to go through these links for tips and help

1. Lights, Camtasia, Action! , August 14, 2009
2. Camtasia for Mac – Sneak Peek, SmartFocus, August 17, 2009
3. screenr, August 18, 2009
4. Unleash Your E-Learning Graphics from PowerPoint 2007, August 18, 2009

Social Media (37)

1. Social Media Revolution, August 17, 2009
2. Socialnomics: How social media transforms our lives, August 15, 2009 - this is a fantastic video!
3. CMS vs. Web 2.0 vs. Social Media – Do You Know the Difference?, August 18, 2009

 

Things are not as they seem …

Next time you’re waiting at a traffic light (or robot as we call them here in South Africa) make sure you read the sign properly … Thanks to UrbanPrankster for these pics

These great signs were put up by Jason Eppink in Los Angeles and Ryan Laughlin in New Haven, CT.

My favorite is the last one – who wouldn’t want to reboot the universe now and then?

 

Do you behave like your generation?

I just found the site eMarketer which (according to them) do market research and trend analysis on Internet, e-business, online marketing, media and emerging technologies.

So far I like what I see … and this is what I saw in just my first few minutes on the site:

- Who finds Twitter more effective: Advertisers or consumers

I don’t know about you, but everywhere I go (conferences, departmental meetings, friends’ houses) everyone is going on and on about Twitter.  But not many co-workers (especially those in the late Baby Boomer/early Traditionalist years) understand the big fuss.

And according to eMarketer it’s not just my co-workers: For advertisers:

Only 11% of 18-to-39-year-old advertisers did not know enough about Twitter to have an opinion on its value, compared with 20% of advertisers ages 40 to 49 and 21% of those 50 and older.

Among Internet users:

55% of 18-to-34-year-olds said they were not familiar enough to have an opinion, compared with 80% of those 55 and older.

Since the majority of my co-workers are over 50 and most don’t know anything about Twitter, it seems this time the marketers got it right!

Here is the eMarketer’s graph:

- How to Old, the Young and Everyone in between uses social networks

(Thanks to Stephen’s Lighthouse for putting me on the trail of this entry)

e Marketer’s findings correlate with the above post (sorry ’bout the italics – I can’t get it to turn off! grrr)

The majority of Twitter users are in their early 30′s late 20′s – Gen X: