del.icio.us

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

i should love del.icio.us.  this tool stores all of your bookmarks online, organized in whatever manner you decide to organize them.  if you want to pull all your websites about monkeys or organization together later, you just tag them with those terms when you save the bookmark.  you can even rename a bookmark to make it more meaningful for you.  the metadata behind this tool makes my mind googly with joy, and yet i’m not a fan.  the interface doesn’t do it for me.  it’s just so, i don’t know, blue or something.  i’m going to keep working with it and perhaps it will grow on me.

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Journal of Visualized Experiments

Posted on April 2, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

just yesterday i commented to a colleague that for a discipline as visual as medicine, the libraries that serve it still tend to be text-centric, and then, bam! i hear about a journal that embodies what i imagine is the kind of learning experience that works best in medicine: the journal of visualized experiments.  it’s a video-based journal with a focus on biological experiments, highlighting protocols and discussion.

thanks to the imaginary journal of poetic economics for pointing me to it. 

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organization punk

Posted on April 2, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

punkmonkey1.jpg

made at the punk rock jacket generator

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Archie McPhee sells monkeys

Posted on March 31, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

catmonkey.jpg

how am i just now learning about the archie mcphee website? they sell monkey items! if you’re looking for a present for a certain organizationmonkey, she may like to have some cocktail monkeys.

thanks, bob!

Posted in monkeys/bananas | 4 Comments

unexpected connections

Posted on March 28, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

last week i co-taught an online course on wikis.  i looked through a lot of the ones that were developed in the class to learn what my colleagues around the u.s. were thinking about or working on.  a few wikis stood out to me and i posted them on my blog as a reminder to myself to watch their development.

yesterday i joined in on a giant chat session that focused on the implementation of the new nih public access policy, and what it means to libraries around the nation.  near the end of the time alloted for the chat someone wrote that they weren’t done yet discussing and wondered where a likely place would be to continue with those that were interested.  someone mentioned that a wiki would be a good place to gather documents and have a place to continue chatting.

i realized then that one of the wikis i had been keeping an eye on, http://publishingbiomedresearch.wetpaint.com/, was about that very topic.  i pasted the url into the chat and wrote in that people could gather their documents and thoughts there.  i think it’s great that a wiki that someone developed for their own interest could turn out to be a watering hole for a large group.  this kind of software connects people in unexpected ways.

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ItSpace

Posted on March 23, 2008 by Marie Kennedy

“ItSpace creates a network of pages within the social networking site MySpace. Instead of featuring people, the pages feature everyday household objects. Each page has a photo of the object, a description, and most importantly, a 1-minute piece of music composed of recordings of the object being struck and resonated in various ways. All the pages, or objects, are ‘friends’ with each other, so that visitors who discover one object may jump to the others by clicking on the ‘friends’ pictures at the bottom of each page.”

link to the project page for itspace: http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/itspace/

i appreciate the creative idea of using an existing social networking site to explore how items might connect with each other.  i think the composer missed out on an opportunity to learn how people may interact with his items and their sounds by not allowing his items to be friended.  this closed approach to a site that is about unexpected connections is too bad.

that said, the sounds the items make are intriguing.  my favorite is the pillow.  the mashup of the bannister and the pillow, the “banillow”, is nice too.

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