Date: November 9th, 2010
Time: 12:30 – 1:30pm
Location: SLAIS Terrace Lab
Presenters and their “cool tools” (also available as a PDF)
Will “Firebug & Firesheep”
Firebug
- Shows html, css for each element in a web page
- Can test/see how styles were implemented to specific elements
- Look at layout (ex. pixels in padding & layout)
- Other features – will tell you what elements are causing issues if pages are having trouble loading
- Can help identify errors/messy code (it’s nice to have clean code)
- People can use cookies to steal your information
- Dealing with cookies – install it in your firefox for when using wifi networks
- Making sure you use secure wifi networks
- Should see https if the wifi is secure instead of http
Alex “Yahoo Pipes”
- Interface is confusing, but should be aware of the tool
- Can send RSS feed links to friends etc.
- Can use for sending filtered (types of) images from flickr
Meghan “cIRcle”
- UBC Digital repository
- SLAIS graduates’ work are not being heavily represented
- Contribution to cIRcle helps increase visibility, helps students, helps for future job opportunities (ex. can send employers links to works)
- Uses open source software
- Think about submitting your papers for showcasing your work
- In sending paper, student is not giving up copyright
- Just need to 1) sign form to say cIRcle can showcase it on the site, and 2) have a professor email cIRcle saying “yes this is a good paper.”
Catie “blekko”
- Search engine uses slash tags in search box
- ex. search query can be watchdog /Christian … Recipes /vegan … Recipes /vegan/ gluten-free … etc.
- If a slash tag doesn’t exist in the list of slash tags, you can add it to the user index
- The user generated libraries added to the index is makes this search engine different
- So the user searches through the site’s original list of slash tags and users’ added slash tags
Tosha “GazoPa”
- Image search engine
- Search by image (not by keywords – no words needed)
- Upload, draw, or type in URL of image to search
- For example, upload an image and get results of similar images and information on how similar retrieved results are to the searched image
- Can change view of results
- Good for finding information with an image that would be very difficult to describe using words
- Has flickr option, so you can search through license types for images (fair use or copyright)
- Can retrieve information about the subject in the image
- Advanced search with colours, shapes etc. to find other related images
- Cross-language
- If you upload your photo, it doesn’t get added to the images searched – but it does stay on their server
- You can add text to your image
Cynthia “Foxit”
- free for downloads
- PDF reader tool if you want something different from Adobe
- Can add annotations/notes to all pdf texts (not same restrictions as in Adobe)
- Text recognition is a little wonky, but still okay
- Add notes to highlighted sections of the text (icon put in the margin)
- Write comments in the margins of the text (easy to add and delete)
- All notes are visible and readible in the actual document
Alex “Mendeley”
- Mendeley is another type of reader that also allows for annotation in notes and also is good for creating bibliographies.
- Foxit is good for editing pdf when done (ex. good for signing a pdf document etc.)
- In January a PDF conference in california will be held for fixing the tool
Justin “ebook management”
Calibre
- Open source e-book management
- Tag all books, metadata
- Conversion tool – take a pdf and convert to other style of document
- Features include ability to set it up to sync through wireless to your phone from your desktop at home
- Built in e-reader (for epubs and other ebook formats)
- Possibly useful for annotation – need to explore that option
- didn’t want to be locked into the system from Amazon/Kindle
- Good site for finding public domain ebooks with better interface than Project Gutenberg itself
- Can browse through different categories – ex. creative commons
- Get in different formats (html etc.)
- Also check Baen who have a good good selection of older or advanced reader copies for sci-fi DRM free and for cheap.
Qinqin “Wink”
- Free download – capture screen shots for creating instructional videos etc.
- Can set it to capture many screen shots/frames over a set period of time
- Can use voice overs/audio track to accompany video
- Create video project of frames taken, edit frames, copy and paste frames, set time duration for viewing of each frame
- Set streaming medium in firefox
- File size is very small
- Can send to friends
- Compatible for Mac and PC use
- Limited features, but good for creating basic videos
Shannon “What I Learned Today”
- Blog by Nicole C. Engard (Director of Open Source Education for open source library systems)
- Talks a lot about gadgets
- Library based tech blog and other library related topics that might not be found elsewhere
- Useful for keeping track of information related issues
- For example, getting announcements about Facebook’s privacy setting changes etc.
Comments/suggestions from participants:
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In posting summary notes of tools presented, tools should be hyperlinked to their live web urls.
Justin
January 16, 2011 — 8:41 pm
As an update to my Calibre Cool Tool, here’s a way to strip the DRM from your ebooks using Calibre.