Push and pull doesn't quite get it

Seth's Blog has a post on push and pull which seems to ignore the fact that you can create feeds from wikis, for example notify me on the Information Fluency wiki. I'm not saying the concept works well, at least from my limited experience (I wasn't terribly impressed by the feed we created from the Library Instruction wiki: spam galore), but it does seem unfair to say that wikis do not allow you to push information. Maybe they don't push information well, but that's another story.

I'm not sure how push would be handled on an Intranet where you may likely need authorization to read content, but wouldn't that be the same issue with blogs?

Blogging survey results, compliments of Meredith Farkas

In her 2007 Survey of the Biblioblogosphere: Blog Demographics, Meredith Farkas provides some interesting blogging figures, including how long respondents have been blogging, to what type of blog(s) they contribute, why they blog, and more. She also provides demographics to accompany these results. Out of 839 respondents, she had 18 from Eastern Canada, 16 from Western Canada, and 20 from Middle of Canada, which gives a tidy Canadian total of 54 "bibliobloggers" (i.e. folks who write library-related blogs). Or to look at in from a slightly different angle, 6.5% of the total number of respondents were people living in Canada. Not bad! Here's the post in which she announced the survey in July 2007. These data are certainly informative regardless of the issues surrounding surveys in general, how the respondents were sought, etc. She's also got an index. Thanks, Meredith! I hope the filtered results will put a regional spin on the blog demographics too...

Bloglines vs Google Reader Update: Can Bloglines Hold On?

Bloglines vs Google Reader Update: Can Bloglines Hold On? Google Reader is catching up, although Bloglines is still ahead of the game. I haven't given up on Bloglines yet. I love their search options and my Google Reader trials over the last year haven't swayed me. But then again, maybe it's just force of habit...

Bloglines' new design in beta

Bloglines Beta - There goes our entire workbook!

CHLA_ABSC_podcasting.pdf (application/pdf Object)

New fact sheet on podcasting from CHLA.

del.icio.us: Pages tagged with "information_literacy" on del.icio.us

You can subscribe to the feed for pages tagged with "information_literacy" on del.icio.us. Nice example of another use of social software! It obviously misses variant tags like infolit and informationliteracy but it's still pretty neat.

Pay Attention

CHLA Conference CE on Social Software

CHLA/ABSC Continuing Education(CE) Course - Social software in health libraries - SLAIS534

Dean Giustini & Eugene Barsky created a Wiki for their CE workshop on social software in health libraries. They cover lots of territory, including RSS/blogging.

The workshop is hands-on, and I'm not sure if this means that participants will sign up for accounts and subscribe to content during the workshop, or will just be encouraged to explore the services and websites.

What an idea though - instead of a workbook/webpage/slide presentation, to use a Wiki to deliver the workshop. Wish I'd though of that!

RSS To Speech Gadget

RSS To Speech Gadget

This product is the Giveaway of the Day for May 1. Seems like an interesting app which opens up new possibilities for RSS.

Also, xFruits, which I've posted about before, offers something similar.

Rothman's Update on EBSCOhost RSS Features

David Rothman has posted an Update on EBSCOhost RSS Features which clears up a lot of the perceived problems he thought the new RSS one-click feature had.

EBSCOhost RSS Feed and Search/Journal Alert Upgrades

EBSCO: EBSCOhost RSS Feed and Search/Journal Alert Upgrades

According to David Rothman, the policy needs some tweaking, as it requires users to "access" the feeds within a week of creation, and they must remain "active" or they will be deleted.

Sadly, this makes no sense, and the people at EBSCO seemed to have missed the point of feeds. I will have to look into this further, especially since I currently have four feeds from EBSCO databases, and would really hate for this to be deleted without warning.

How Much is Our Blog Worth?

Not that much, apparently.

How Much is Your Blog Worth at Dane Carlson's Business Opportunities Weblog: "Your blog, infopill.blogspot.com, is worth $3,951.78"