Thing 16

I have been a consumer of SoundCloud in a MOOC (as a student) earlier this year.  It’s a great way to communicate simple instructions or tell a story.  The app is simple to use and I love the fact that you can include background music/special effects/whatever.

Because it’s so simple to use I think this would be a great way to do podcasts.  We already do SnagIt for short instructional pieces at work – this includes audio too – so I’m not sure I’ll be switching any time soon for work related things, but for a free app this is very useful.

 

Thing 15

I would like to begin by saying that I LOVE infographics!

To get inspiration I downloaded the Infographics Hub app.  I had a lot of fun looking at what others have done.  Because I work at a for-profit, my interest is primarily in making my own though, since permissions in the for-profit world tend to be quite spendy.

So I downloaded i Visual.  I was disappointed that it does not have an iPod version because my iPad is out on loan right now.  I did not find it when I searched iTunes on my Mac.  So I downloaded the version for Android on my Nexus.  While I would like to say thanks for the warning, I would also like to say that I never got it to work on Android.  Not at all.  Very sad.  

Hopefully there will be a version that works with iPod sooner rather than later, or one that has an Android version that works.  In the meantime, I will enjoy looking at what others have done for inspiration.  I think that info graphics are a great way to spread the word (about almost anything).

Thing 14

I downloaded the Viddy app and played with it a bit; it seems to be a good app and videos can be a lot of fun.

That said, I was having a hard time imagining what the videos could be used for, but then I stumbled upon this piece from ALA Direct on the use of Vine.   Originally I downloaded Viddy because I didn’t want to be limited to six seconds, but seeing what they did by stringing a bunch of Viddys together really impressed me.

Now, there’s always the issue of how to apply this sort of thing to library services when you’re completely virtual, but I am working on it.  Six second testimonials from students at Residencies could be pretty cool, for instance.  And we could introduce ourselves to students with them too, and probably embed them into instruction pieces like Captivate tutorials.

All I need now is a little practice taking videos!

Thing 13

I’ve tested Haiku Deck before and I think it’s wonderful.

For this I downloaded Lensoo and Deck since they work on both Android and Apple.

Lensoo is good to use.  I would love to see what the premium package gets you.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m dense or if there just wasn’t enough in the informational intro but I had a hard time navigating from one page to the next at first.  It also seems as though you can add to the recording but not re-record, which is a pity.  We are extremely restricted at work with slide decks we can use and SnagIt is a great tool for making short demo videos with voiceover, so it doesn’t have immediate uses for me, but it’s a great tool with a lot of possibilities.

Deck seems to be much more appropriate to business with the ready-made charts and graphs.  I managed to crash Deck when I was playing with it and I doubt I will go back to it (bad omen).

I think Haiku Deck and Lensoo would be the most useful for my purposes – mostly for making things on the fly when I don’t have a computer with me.  Both can be used for vetting and testing ideas that I could polish up for later use.

Thing 12

I tried the Audiobooks app that you have listed because I love audiobooks.  I was surprised to hear in the introduction of the first title I tested that it was a LibriVox recording.

I already have the LibriVox app.

While the Audiobooks app does not allow you to download – only stream – the LibriVox app does, in fact, allow downloads (in sections, just like Overdrive downloads when you check them out of the library or Audible downloads when you purchase something.  It’s probably because the files are so big).

Anyway, I suppose it doesn’t matter much for people who have iPhones but I don’t have an iPhone.  I have an iPod and a Nexus so I am dependent upon wireless for streaming.  This means the LibriVox is a much better app for my purposes.

It’s kind of crazy that there are essentially two apps for LibriVox recordings (I tested a half dozen titles in the Audiobooks app and they were all LibriVox recordings).   I noticed that there are some that you can upgrade to a higher quality recording for not very much money, but I’m going to hold off on that.

Of course, the main reason I’m doing this is because of the overwhelming number of apps available, making it impossible to keep up with them all.  I’m grateful for the project because it has gotten me out of my rut and moving forward.

Still, sometimes I’ll stick with my rut.

Thing 11

I love the Hennepin County library app and have used it for some time.  I kid around that I had to move to Minneapolis because of the library, but it’s maybe not entirely a joke.

One thing that I wish were easier is moving between paper and electronic holdings, queues and request lists.  I’m not sure if it’s me, vendor restrictions, boopsie or some sort of cataloging thing, but to me that part of using the library is kind of clunky.

Still, it’s wonderful to have such an amazing public library.

Thing 10

Well, I did not know what Throwback Thursday was, but I do now.  Thanks for keeping me current 😉

I loaded Instagram and played with it a bit last night.  Ironically, I posted some old photos.  Found some friends to follow and since last night have two followers – yeah!  I’m not sure about linking to Facebook so I’ll have to think about that.

This is going to be a fun app.  Since no one blogs much any more and I don’t care for Twitter I’m thinking this could turn into something that I use a lot.  I love taking photos and following others’ photos (a picture is worth 1000 words which is a lot more than 140 characters!) so now all I have to do is find everyone.