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Category: Tools and Technology

Hello World

Published by Iris on Monday, August 4th, 2008

You wouldn’t know it to look at this blog, but I’ve really wanted to write more here lately. When I started writing this thing, I could never have predicted how much I’d grow to love the act of writing (I typically hate writing and am embarrassed by it, which you’d probably never know seeing as you mostly only know me through writing, which seems like the biggest oxymoron to me and makes me giggle a little inside every time I think of it). But then, I kind of stopped writing very much here in recent months.

It’s not for lack of things happening or anything like that. As far as I can tell, it started with a sudden surge in readership (which made me suddenly quite shy), coupled with extra-crazy-busy schedules, all of which coincided with my starting to work on projects with people that I didn’t think would be comfortable with their work being blogged. I also had a 6-month slump in energy, which didn’t help any of this stuff.

But I don’t think that’s all of what’s changed for me. I think that fundamentally, this space has changed. For one thing, I’m not a brand new librarian any more, no matter how much I know that I still have a world of expertise to acquire. I’m not constantly figuring out what my place is in this profession like I was when I started writing here. But more than that, like Dorothea I’m finding that changing context is changing everything, and that I’m trying to figure out either how to make this back into my living room or how to come to terms with the fact that it’s not my living room. All of which means that I’m kind of inventing a new purpose and context for this space as I go along. It’s turned far more essay-ish than it was before, with far fewer links, and I’ve felt more compelled to have “complete thoughts” than I used to. And I’m not sure if that’s good or bad or just different, or if I like it or not, but that’s what’s happened.

I’m hoping to step back into this blog and fit it to myself again. I really do miss the burning desire to get home every night and write something. And while I’ll probably never write every day, I think there’s hope that I’ll figure out my contexts, especially now that I’ve taken some time off this summer and have started to feel a little more energetic.

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The iPod Touch, One Work Week In

Published by Iris on Friday, July 18th, 2008

Well, I’ve had a full work week to bond with my new toy, and let me tell you, we are now attached at the hip. It does everything I need it to do and more (unless I’m out of wireless network range, but even then I can see my calendar thanks to the 2.0 version of the firmware). Since people asked me for my impressions, I thought I’d write up this list of pros and cons, and then throw in a my current list of things I had to figure out in order to make it do what I needed.

Pros:

  • pretty much everything
    It’s faster to check my calendar on that than it is on Zimbra, since Zimbra is kind of a slow-loading web app, so I end up using it when I just need to quickly check up on my appointments for the day. And since mobile calendaring was the primary goal of the purchase, I’d call the purchase a grand success. Everything else is gravy. And boy is there a lot of gravy. Email and contacts sync, too, and having web access is so handy. I can imagine taking this down into the stacks and checking call numbers and locations right there with students.
  • Apps
    I loving having Pandora Radio, Evernote, and Twitter apps with me all the time.
  • Lunch break listening
    I like the option of having music and books-on-iPod with me even at work. Sometimes you just need to get away at lunch, plug in, and forget about work.
  • Event notification
    I’ve turned off the sound effects so that it won’t let everyone in the room know when I receive an email or have an appointment coming up, but the screen still lights up and displays allerts about upcoming appointments, which I love.
  • Intuitive, mostly
    Except for the little trick about scrolling with two thumbs if you have to be on a web page that contains a scrolling text box, I never had to think about how to move around and zooming in and out of pages.

Cons (mostly minor… did I mention I love the lil thing?):

  • Battery life
    This is so far the only little electronic thing that I have to charge every day, and I don’t listen to music on it for more than 20 minutes a day.
  • Sounds without granular control
    I’d love to turn off the sounds that tell me I’ve gotten email while keeping the sounds that tell me I’ve clicked something, or that I have an event coming up. Right now, it’s all or nothing with the sounds.
  • Browser flips sideways (easier typing) but most apps don’t
    Typing while the keyboard is squished into the portrait version of the screen can be quite an exercise in precision and aim. It’s much easier when you can flip the screen to landscape orientation, but most apps don’t allow for that.
  • Can’t get to any but my main calendar in Zimbra (UPDATE: see comments)
    This may be just for Zimbra users, but there’s no way to get to calendars other than your default calendar. The web interface won’t let me leave the mobile version, which only shows the default calendar, and the calendar app only syncs with the default calendar. I’ve been in the habit of printing my default calendar to hang on my office door, but if I have to put things like doctor’s appointments in that calendar, I won’t be printing that stuff out to hang on my door. But I think that’s ok. Students and co-workers are much more accustomed to finding schedules online now, so I doubt anyone will miss it.

Things to know to make it work right (from my perspective)

  • Zimbra connection is achieved by setting up the Microsoft Exchange account options (as I noted in my previous post). Using these settings, I can let it sync wirelessly!
  • Two-thumbed scrolling gets you around on web pages that have scroll boxes in them.
  • You can uncheck “open iTunes when you plug this iPod in” for easier work re-charging (since an iPod can only sync with one installation of iTunes, and I regularly work with three to four different computers).
  • You can reorganize the icons on your main screen (as pointed out in the guide that comes with the iPod).
  • Searching google for instructions or apps or anything will go better if you search for iPhone and just realize you don’t have the phone or camera functions. Fewer people are writing about the iPhone’s lesser cousin, the iPod Touch.
  • The little plastic hook thingy that comes with the iPod is a stand. This was not obvious to any of us.
  • Bookmarking things (like google or the library catalog or google reader) is great. Placing icons on the main screen is even better.
11 Comments
New Toy

New Toy

Published by Iris on Monday, July 14th, 2008

New iPod Touch
Originally uploaded by Pegasus Librarian.

I’m SO excited!!! For the last year my co-workers and I have had no mobile calendars (as I’ve written about at some length). Well, after letting us test both the iPod Touch and the newer wireless Palm, my work decided to let us choose our favorite toy… er… device. I chose the iPod Touch, and today IT CAME. I spent a few hours getting it set up with updated software, registering it with the campus wireless network, and then figuring out how to sync it with my calendar, mail, and contacts. What fun!!!!

By the way, in case anyone else is wondering how to sync Zimbra with an iPod Touch or iPhone and can’t find any documentation from either Zimbra or Apple, no, you’re not insane. The instructions just aren’t out there. What you do is:

  • make sure you have the 2.0 version of the iPod software and the latest Zimbra upgrade
  • set up a new mail/calendar/contacts account
  • select “Microsoft Exchange”
  • and then enter your Zimbra account information

After that, things should work beautifully.

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Feeling Like a Celebrity

Published by Iris on Friday, July 11th, 2008

Everyone should be lucky enough to know a graphic artist! Just hours after I mentioned that my ultimate dream was to have a Pegasus image for my blog header, the amazing Tim Keneipp emailed me an image. I fell in love with that statue Pegasus instantly.

Of course, then came hours and hours of fighting with Blogger to make it sit right on the page (I’m sorry, Tim. I didn’t know it’d be such a hassle). But now each time I look at my blog I think about how talented and generous Tim is.

9 Comments