CIL 2009 "Best of the Web" Aaron Schmidt

• Search.Twitter.com: search for your library's name, see who's talking about the library then reply to people's posts and connect with them virtually.
• Wikimedia Commons: open source images can be used for promotional purposes, websites, etc. Different licenses for attribution exist, so check what the requirements are before using something.
• Today's Meet: Create a temporary online space where people can gather and chat.
• Colour Lovers: designs and color combinations and color schemes that you can grab for your own site design.
• LetMeGoogleThatForYou (lmgtfy) - This is great if you have friends who bug you with questions because you work in a library and because they’re too lazy to Google for themselves. Say they’ve asked you to find out how many different cat breeds there are. You go to imgtfy.com and put in your search terms (in this case, ‘number’ ‘cat’ and ‘breeds’). Google does your search and then you are given a tiny URL to access those results automatically. You send that link to your friend, telling him to click on it for his answer. When he does, he is taken to a variation on Google’s homepage where he sees his question being typed into the search box, the “search” being clicked on, and then the message: "Was that so hard?!" Try it. Very clever. BTW, he also gets the answer to his question.
• TweetDeck: monitors Twitter activiity, lets you search for terms, includes access to your replies, etc.
• Google Voice: Get one number for all your phones, voicemail that is easy as email, call blocking and screening, voicemail transcripts, call conferencing, international calls & more
• Bacolicio.us: Run any webpage through this and it super-imposes a piece of bacon over the site. Now tell the truth - isn't this just what you've been waiting for?!
• Thematic: an exceptionally nice WordPress theme: basic framework, clean code, easy to modify & adjust.
• TED talks: really expensive conference held in Monterey with scientists, computer people, business people, artists, etc. The stie includes talks on a variety of topics that can be inspiring or expose you to new ideas and connections.
• A commercial from Lithuania that airs often and adavertises libraries. The basic point is that you must use the right tool for the job, and the library is the place to get that information. (saw this during session but haven't been able to find it since).
• Lovely Charts: lets you create wireframes, flowcharts, organizational charts, network diagrams, anything.
• Wordle: similar tool for creating a tag cloud
• Qapture: a real-time aggregation of what's going on on Twitter.
• Typetester: enter text, choose all of the CSS paramaters and results are displayed. You can compare three different options at a time. Then you can copy and paste the CSS you like best into your stylesheet.

The following were added by people in the audience:

Evernote: I use this all the time and I love it. I was using Outlook's "Notes" feature, but it was awkward to have to go into Outlook everytime I had something I wanted to remember. Evernote tags sites and put them in folders. Del.icio.us married to Bookmarks.

TaDa List: helps you create lists of sites. Save lists that you use often (e.g. conference packing lists, holiday lists, etc.). You can share your lists via RSS. Archives the lists.

Google Chrome: fast, works like Firefox, not for Linux, only PCs and Macs. Supposed to be super-secure.

Toodledo: Site for temporary to-do lists, lets you annotate, tag, put them into folders