Mendeley- Have been trying to avoid this one but it has finally caught up with me

Well since it's been nearly ten years since I finished my studies (trying not reveal my real age ;) ) I thought Mendeley has not much to offer for me that's why I delayed it up until now but I guess I have to look into it now we are reaching the end. When you are doing a lot of research managing the literature could become an essential but tiring task. In my days I just made a word document and saved all of my references in there but I guess these days with things such as Mendeley this tedious task is becoming much more easier. It's like a library manager for all of your papers, it helps you organise your pdfs. It also has the aspect of social networking with which you would be able to communicate with people who do a similar research to yours. You can also create groups. Same as any similar websites you get the free version and the paid versions, with the paid version you get more storage space and a few more facilities, in my opinion not enough to tempt me to go for the paid version.

I found "Import to Mendeley" bookmark to be incredibly useful. Most services are going towards the "one click" option and I thought this bookmark is what makes Mendeley stand out among similar rivals. But if you are not a big fan of that the you always have a choice of doing through "My Library" tab. You can also download the desktop add which I think would prove very useful if you have a massive library of pdfs. Another useful feature is the ability to import references from Endnote.

So to sum it all up a very useful feature for researchers, and as a library assistant exploring it helped me understand it a bit better so in future if I get asked questions in regards to it then at least I know what our users are talking about.

GoogleDrive- Is my content safe?

A bit like Apple and its bad reputation with making their products as exclusive as possible with not much leverage for modifications, Google has managed to build itself a reputation for stealing people’s contents. Cloud storage technology is not new, the first time I noticed it  it was on the Microsoft version, Skydrive on the Hotmail account. Some photographer sent me some photos that due to their size they used  Skydrive . I didn’t like it very much back then, it wasn't very straightforward.

After that I was introduced to Dropbox, it was brilliant. My band used it to upload tracks and we could use them to practice or add our bits to the songs (Those of us who had recording equipment) and we could access them anywhere we went. It even had the handy mobile app. Also I had photographers sending me PDF files of contact sheets. Basically anything that was too big for mailbox, Dropbox was used as a replacement. However there is a  storage limit for it just like any other similar services but if you manage to get people to sign up to it your storage allowance would go up.

As an Iphone user I have been introduced to Icloud as well. And I must say I don't think it is as good as Dropbox. Just like any other Apple interface, nothing is where you expect it to be and it's a bit of a puzzle to work out where all the options are.

Anyway I’m having my doubts about Googledrive. Intellectual property is a very sensitive issue and although the user agreement is a standard one used for many Google products but a part of it is really worrying, making it easy for me to understand all those rumours about Google: 

“give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.”

Not very comforting, is it? It could be interpreted in many different ways; although it states that you definitely own your files but it reserves the right for itself to use your content for the  “purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones”

Saying that I think this could only apply to the contents that you make public, if you chose the private option then you're more or less safe. I gave it a go and just like anything else Google related it is very user friendly and straight forward and I would use it for things that I'm not too worried about them getting stolen, but I think for more important stuff I will stick to Dropbox,

QR code- Future of CV’s and Business cards?

The first time I came across this was when I went to Brooklyn museum, NY looking for Red Dragon by William Blake. The painting wasn’t there and where it should have been was this funny looking black and white square that gave instruction to scan it with I-phone. I already had a scanner on my phone for scanning normal barcodes and thanks to museum’s free WI-FI I was taken to a page on the museum’s website saying something about the painting not available to public viewing  (No it wasn't eaten by Ralph Fiennes like in Red Dragon –the movie, well I hope not anyway) I was quite disappointed but fascinated by this new technology. I tried to recreate what I saw, I had to shorten the URL using Bitly beforehand, if you haven’t used it before it’s very handy: https://bitly.com/

I noticed loads of them dotted around the museum that gave extra information and trivia facts about different pieces kept there, which were really useful.

23Things gave clear instructions on how to create one. I went on the websites recommended and tried them out, but I also found one: http://www.qrstuff.com/ that you could customise it to a degree. I was also deceived by one on the App shop called Qrafter, which was a total rip off! I was under the impression that for £1.99 it will let you do a lot of customising but it only had a limited number of colour changes and that was that. So try and avoid that one.

I might try Photoshop when I have more time on my hand to customise one for myself.

Like everything else it has got its good points and bad points:

It’s free and incredibly easy to create and use

It could save us a lot of paper and space; It’s the future of CV’s, business cards, flyers, posters, and even information plaques in libraries/museums/historical places etc…

Put one of these on the back of your business card and the recipient can have access to your entire portfolio/cv and contact details .

I can see it being very useful in the music industry especially for new bands. In my days we used to produce single cd-s and hand them out in pubs/nightclubs so people can have a taste of our music. But stick one of these on a flyer and you would save yourself tons of money.

One of the downsides of it is that it’s in the danger of being over-used. It has still got some novelty and our curiosity would lead us to scan the random ones we see occasionally, but imagine if we keep seeing them everywhere, eventually we are going to stop caring and they will lose their functionality

In case of Library I think we can make great use of it. In case of Journals we could use them  in Level 1 to lead people to the link on TDNET or maybe even the actual journal’s URL. In course collection on each course box we could have one leading people to the articles that have been digitised for that course code.

Instead of printing hand-outs and instruction leaflets for Microfilm readers/printers/money loaders/scanners we could have one of these codes that will tell people everything they need to know.

I had lots of fun scanning other library bloggers’ ones to see where they would take me and there were some interesting ones there.

Here’s another one I made for my blog:

Tagxedo and Wordle- Splash of colour

This is the first time I have heard of both these two services. I have seen word clouds before but I had no idea how they were created and what purpose do the suit (I'm still a bit vague on that). The instructions were brilliant as usual so it was fun and very easy to play around on both. I guess they are both used as a tool to give more prominence to words that appear in the text more frequently. Also if you copy and paste a whole text written by you into them it gives you an idea of your vocabulary choice and the words you use more frequently. I can see it being very useful for English teachers to highlight keypoints. Also when you are doing a book/chapter review you can see what words/themes are more prominent.
In my opinion there are a couple of disadvantages to this system:
Context- taking words out of context, you can see a word appearing but since you can't see what context it has been used in, it might affect your judgment on that whole thing
Frequency- I don't necessarily agree with frequency being an indicator of importance. But I think human mind is designed to think that way.
As for the difference between the two systems, you get more options in Tagxedo. Wordle is just a simple version of Tagxedo with less options for customising and format savings.
Here are the two I created for my blog on both of these websites:

FlickR and Common Creative- Free promotion? Maybe but with a hidden cost

I’m not new to it. I have been using it for years for my modelling portfolio.  It’s a great place to store pictures while maintaining their quality, and a great way to promote your work and meet like-minded people and come across possible business opportunities. I have never used it as a photographer though. Although in my eyes it’s an art to be admired but I completely lack those skills and am not at all good at it.

Some of the useful features I have come across are as below:

It’s free- unlike other similar photo-sharing websites which are either not free or their free accounts they offer are literally unusable. Flickr free accounts give you a generous allowance and many useful features.

Tagging system- It’s very useful and very easy to do and it gives you the opportunity to be promoted for free for those who are looking for the same tags.

Privacy settings- It gives you a lot of flexibility to be a private or as public as you like. And it could be worked with either individual photos or sets.

Organising feature- Creating sets is a wonderful way to organise your photos, and the easy “drag and drop” feature makes it a pain-free and enjoyable task.

Phone App- Excellent feature! Allows you to take your whole photo collection with you on your phone without using up the space on your phone. However there is a downside to it; Although it allows you to email and share on Facebook/Twitter, etc. you can’t directly save photos from it to your phone

Now here are the things to be aware of specially to do with Creative Commons and copyright issues:

Theft- It’s something I have come across many times in my career. I do work both of TFP/TFCD (time for print, time for cd) and paid basis. And I always sign a “ Model Release Form”, it’s the best way to protect both the model and the photographer. Photographer owns the rights to the photos but as a model you get to do what you agreed on the release form with it. The usual terms are if the pictures are used for commercial use both people (the model and the photographer) should have an agreed share of the profit; You are usually not allowed to make any changes to the pictures unless running it past the Photographer; And the obvious one of the pictures are not allowed to be used for any indecent purposes.

However saying all this I still had my pictures being sold by various photographers in large prints behind my back, and since I don’t have the money to take them to court for it, I just have to add them to my blacklist and not work with them again. And in some cases flag them up as dangerous cases on modelling and photography websites so other people won’t fall into the same trap.

The other thing that’s happened to me on various occasions was for people to steal my pictures, removing the watermarks with Photoshop and posting them as their own on websites such as Facebook. Now admittedly FlickR is very good in dealing with cases like this (however it does put you in a vulnerable position by offering a high quality versions of your pictures, making it very easy for people to steal them) but if you notice something on FlickR that you believe has been stolen from you or someone you know. They are very good at getting it removed.

Look at the two pictures below: friends of mine found thebottom picture to be used as someone’s profile picture on Facebook. As you can see from the original picture (the one at the top) not only they changed all the colours and background but they were cheeky enough to remove my name that was put at the top by the photographer and the photographer’s logo at the bottom of the page:

Bottom line is you can do as much as you can to protect yourself but when something of yours gets stolen, unless you have the money and the means to take the person to court, then you are pretty much helpless and by sharing things on internet you do put yourself in a vulnerable position. So it is free promotion but sometimes with a hidden cost.

Solution: In my opinion the best solution is to make your whole Photostream Private/Friends only and just send the links to those whom you trust. In the privacy section it’s got an option to stop your account even appearing in searches. Mine is usually set to private but for the purpose of Sot23 I have made it public for a little while.

I don’t think I’m going to take part in the competition with my portfolio though. Although I’m free to use the pictures I have up on my FlickR account but I’m not the photographer, and I think all the credits for a picture should go to the photographer. So I think it would be very unfair of me to take part in it using those.
I'm going to add a couple of the scenery I took with my IPhone

However here’s a link to my FlickR account for those who are interested:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/azadehbrown/

Librarything: A pleasant trip to the past

It was a completely new concept to me. I signed up on there and set myself a little task; to add all the books I can remember from my bookshelf when I was in Iran and the ones I recently read that made an impact on me. The challenge was on and the more I added the more I remembered and with it came a sense of Nostalgia and all the memories that were attached to that particular book. By doing that I remembered a particular enjoyable read that me and my sister used to follow up on these weekly magazines called “Roshanfekr” (translates to “Intellectual”) that my dad printed during 30s-50s and collected them all. It was a collection of macabre and supernatural stories by the celebrated author Alexandre Dumas.

Librarything triggered me to go and do a bit of research to see if I can find it and to my surprise I did . It has only been translated into English recently and I was lucky enough to find a copy on Amazon, here’s the cover of the French copy:

Also here’s a link to my account, feel free to have a look and add me on there. It would be interesting to know what books we have in common:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/AzadehBrown