Amazon just acquired Shelfari along with used and rare book company Abe Books. Abe Books has been a long-time partner with and 40% investor in LibraryThing, a Shelfari competitor, so the Abe Books acquisition also gives Amazon a 40% stake in LibraryThing. A crowded shelf indeed. Details covered by Publishers Weekly and TechCrunch.

I’ve never been a fan of Shelfari: the UI is gaudy, the site is slow, there’s no way to make edits on large numbers of books quickly, and there’s very little room for user input or modifications. As for organizing your collection, Shelfari’s use of tags is so secondary that it’s nearly useless. Plus, if Amazon isn’t selling it, good luck getting it onto your shelf.

Tim Spalding, founder and CEO of LibraryThing, has more serious issues with Shelfari that I think are worth repeating:

As I’ve said before, I have respect for LibraryThing’s 40+ competitors, but withhold it for Shelfari. They were rather famously called out by me and by others in a series of blog posts exposing a program of spamming and of “astroturfing” (paid employees posing as excited users in blog comments). They apologized on both occasions, but I have, quite frankly, the greatest contempt for them, and for what book-based social networking will become if they beat out LibraryThing.

Picture a boot stomping on a human face forever. Well, okay, not that. But picture the book social network wars ending with a site created by music people who probably wouldn’t get that allusion, with advertising all over, with “community managers” “managing” conversations between book lovers, and under the shadow of what will sell books and not books’ other, greater values. In short, I believe there’s something “to” the idea of book-based social networking which they don’t get, and to which they are a danger. Yes, I’ve drunk my own Kool-Aid.

I’ve been a long-time user of LibraryThing. It’s quick, allows users to contribute to book details, has active and thoughtful discussions that revolve around the books, and is great at allowing users to organize their books easily in a variety of ways. I tend to think of Shelfari as the choice for people who like to look at shiny book covers sitting on their shelf and LibraryThing as the choice for people who like what’s between those covers.

I do have two gripes with LibraryThing, though. While the UI is faster and more useful than Shelfari, and allows for lots of great ways to organize and benefit from the information surrounding the books, the actual look of the site could be improved, particularly if it hopes to compete with Shelfari.

More importantly, LibraryThing, after a long series of promises, discussions, and flip-flopping, decided not to create an official Facebook application. This was a serious mistake, in my opinion. While many of my friends are book-lovers, only a few have that combination of book-lover and web-geek that would compel them to enter, tag, and discuss their book collections on a books-only social network. However, many of my friends will happily share what they’re reading with others on Facebook, and since LibraryThing doesn’t have an app through which I can do that, I have to use another service if I want to join in on that sharing. That’s a lot of word-of-mouth support for LibraryThing that just ain’t happening.

For my needs, Windows Live Writer (WLW) is the best desktop blogging application I’ve found.¹ WLW makes it easy to insert elements and format posts, even allowing you to write using your blog’s stylesheet so you know exactly how the post will look once it’s published. I also appreciate the easy access to drafts and former posts, though WLW won’t sync all posts with your blog database as some other tools will. Still, its interface is slick and familiar, its WYSIWYG editor is smart and produces fewer code errors than most others, it communicates well with most blog platforms, and it has a growing selection of plugins to improve its functionality. Importantly, it’s also free.

Before I discovered WLW, I used browser plugins like ScribeFire for Firefox or Flock’s built-in Blog Editor. They’re both nice, but neither are as feature-rich or as slick as WLW. ScribeFire’s best feature is that it can split the browser window and sit on the bottom, allowing you to search, write, and pull text and images right into the post without having to switch windows. Flock’s Blog Editor can do the same thing with the Blog Plus addon, and the Flock browser has the handy Web Clippings sidebar to help you collect text, images, and videos for a post. Unfortunately, neither tool handles images very well and both lack the extended functionality that WLW plugins offer.

For collaborative blogging projects, online tools like Google Docs or Zoho Writer will post the final draft directly to your blog. Being able to access the drafts from any networked computer, view the history of the drafts, and collaborate with other writers are great features, but in my experience, the formatting wasn’t always preserved when the document was sent to the blog. Also, unless there’s a need for collaboration, if I’m going to compose a blog post online, I’m probably going to use the “write” page of my blogging platform to take advantage of any features it might offer.

There are many other tools out there, some free, some not.² One tool I find particularly impressive, and my “runner up” for blog-writing tools, is Zoundry Raven. It’s open-source freeware that lets you manage multiple profiles and multiple blogs, sync all of your posts with the desktop version, and browse posts by categories, tags, links, or images. If you’re a WordPress user, Raven will even manage your pages. Its composing features are rich and work well, and it can even be installed on a flash drive so you can take your posts with you. WLW still wins for its plugins, stability, and the ease of use of its features, but Zoundry Raven’s management features and portability make it a close second.

Footnotes:

1. Obviously, if you’re a Mac user, you might not feel the same and will probably opt for Ecto or Mars Edit 2.
2. Deepest Sender (a simple Firefox plugin), Thingamablog, Rocket Post 2, w.bloggar, Qumana, and BlogJet, to name a few

I received an email from a teacher/friend asking for tips on script format to pass on to her creative writing students. I sent a quick reply,¹ but I also mentioned that the students should consider using some software that was developed specifically for writers (instead of business professionals).

I’ve tried a number of these tools, but the email motivated me to go back and review the offerings. It also motivated me to think about what tools I would recommend to student writers in a few categories: blog-writing tools, word processors, research and note-taking tools, and creative writing tools.

In a few upcoming posts, I’ll give a brief overview of the tools in each category and provide a justification for my tool of choice. The posts aren’t meant to be exhaustive, but they will include what I’ve found to be the more popular options in each category. Comments and additional tools or resources are welcome.

If you just want the quick list of my chosen tools, here it is:

• Blogging: Windows Live Writer
• Word Processors: OpenOffice.org (runner up: Zoho Writer² )
• Research & Note-Taking: Zotero³ (runner up: Diigo)
• Creative Writing: Rough Draft⁴ (runner up: Celtx for script, yWriter for prose, and Zhura for online, collaborative script-writing)

Details coming soon …

Image: 2/365 Days - Pen and Paper by Athena

Footnotes:

1. How to Format a Screenplay; A Few Notes on Formatting; How to Format A Stage Play; BBC’s Script Formats
2. This announcement gives it a distinct advantage over Google Docs.
3. Particularly when installed on a USB drive with portable Firefox and portable OpenOffice.org.
4. It’s not as powerful as the other tools, and it’s no longer being actively developed, but it can equally handle both script format and prose. It will remain my default choice until I find another program that can do both well.

Setup: Part One

One of the requirements for my Masters in English¹ was the standard scholarly research course. The major assignment of the course was to create a bibliography on a subject or author and then compose a bibliographic essay from the findings. I chose to research H. P. Lovecraft because I’d been interested in his fiction and his influence since my undergrad years.² The result of that project was a pretty extensive EndNote bibliography of Lovecraft criticism from 1990 to 2004.

Setup: Part Two

I’ve been playing with Zotero for over a year, and enjoying the improvements the Center for History and New Media folks keep cranking out for it. ³ I’ve also kept in the back of my mind the idea that I should get that Lovecraft EndNote library into Zotero, and then I should probably poke around and see if I can revise or expand it.

Converting Bibliographies

I’d had trouble with this, though, because it was a pretty large collection. My browser would freeze when attempting to import an EndNote XML file. This morning, I found bibconvert, a really handy online tool that will convert a number of bibliographic formats. I uploaded my EndNote XML and converted it to BibTex format (apparently, the preferred Zotero import format) in less than a minute. I imported the result into Zotero, also in less than a minute, and now have my entire Lovecraft bibliography in Zotero ready for tweaking, expanding, etc. Happy!

Side Note: Diigo vs. Zotero

I’ve observed the recent flood of educators switching to Diigo, and I think that’s great. It’s a really good tool with a lot of excellent features. I still use both del.icio.us and Diigo: del.icio.us for saving everything (personal, academic, professional, etc.) and Diigo for saving and annotating educational/academic pages (which are also sent to del.icio.us).

But I also use Zotero for any serious research project, and here’s why: Diigo and Zotero are not designed to do the same things. Diigo is primarily a bookmarking service, allowing users to save, annotate, tag, and organize web pages. Zotero is primarily a bibliography service, allowing users to save, annotate, tag, and organize sources, whether they are online or not. Certainly, Zotero is full of tools to make that process easier if you’re working with an online source, but you’re not limited to online sources. Also, Zotero and Diigo export their data in significantly different formats, gearing Diigo exports more for transfer between bookmarking services and Zotero exports more for transfer between bibliographic services.

Next Steps and Hopes

I still feel a bit limited with Zotero because the sources sit on my computer and can’t be easily shared with others. I certainly can’t build a collection collaboratively with others. But, as CHNM has promised, both of these limitations should be removed in the near future. Hope, hope.

These limitations aren’t solved by Diigo, either, because I can’t collaboratively build a bibliography of sources on Diigo, nor could that bibliography later be exported into a format easily adopted by scholars. I would love to see a Diigo-like ease of use and collaboration for a Zotero-like focus on bibliographies. Maybe CHNM’s plans for Zotero will deliver that or something close. Hope, hope.

Finally, I’ll be looking for some online research groups devoted to Lovecraft in the next week or so. If I don’t find any, maybe I’ll start some myself.

Resources

For anyone interested:

• My Lovecraft bibliography (currently unedited): RTF, EndNote, BibTex, Zotero
• My bibliographic essay (currently unedited): Google Doc version or CommentPress version⁴
• An admittedly bad PowerPoint that summarizes the bibliographic essay (currently unedited)

Feedback

I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has experience with any of these tools, or some answers/guesses to these questions:

• Anyone know about any Lovecraft-centric online research groups?
• Is my analysis of the differences between and limitations of Zotero and Diigo correct? I think it is, but maybe I’m missing something …?

Any other comments are also welcome.

Footnotes:

1. Teaching of Writing & Literature at George Mason University
2. In fact, my roommate and I used to get groups together pretty regularly to play the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. An ideal game for casual play, actually, because everyone ends up dead or insane by the end of the night. More recently, I’ve introduced my girlfriend to the Call of Cthulhu CCG, an interesting but complicated game.
3. I’m excited about their plans to add server-based syncing and group-managed collections, at which point I think Zotero will be THE go-to tool for creating, storing, and sharing annotated bibliographies.
4. If you’re into Lovecraft at all, I’d love to see some of your comments there. I setup CommentPress on a WordpressMU install just to see what it would be like. If it keeps working, the plan is to post some other shorter writings there and, perhaps, created some sub-blogs for longer works. We’ll see …

It seems like the last week or so has been filled with some great updates to some of my favorite online (or online-related) services. Admittedly, they’re not all directly related to education, but good news is good news.

Here are the highlights:

• Wordpress is updating to version 2.5, and it looks pretty sweet! (I don’t want to think about plugin compatibility yet … just let me enjoy the buzz.)
• The Vertov plugin adds video annotation to Zotero. Zotero is an awesome research tool, and adding video to its list of impressive features is a big step.
• Digsby adds Twitter to its list of social networks! Digsby is a great and easy way to keep track of the major IM platforms, webmail providers, and social networks, and now Twitter joins the Digsby collection.
• Diigo improves its look and its toolbar! Already a great way to archive and annotate online pages, Diigo’s update makes using the service even easier.
• Mytopia brings cross-network gaming, which means you can waste time with friends all over the place, even if they’re not on the same network!
• Facebook adds more nuanced privacy options, giving users more control over who can see what.
• And earlier in the week, Flock released version 1.1, adding webmail to its slew of social-goodness.

If you haven’t already heard, some exciting news (and two clarifications) from Dan Cohen:

I’m pleased to announce a major alliance between the Zotero project at the Center for History and New Media and the Internet Archive.

The Zotero-IA alliance will create a “Zotero Commons” into which scholarly materials can be added simply via the Zotero client.

Cohen’s blog is also where I first heard about ScholarPress, which provides two (so far) cool educational plugins for Wordpress.

If you haven’t already heard, some exciting news (and two clarifications) from Dan Cohen:

I’m pleased to announce a major alliance between the Zotero project at the Center for History and New Media and the Internet Archive.

The Zotero-IA alliance will create a “Zotero Commons” into which scholarly materials can be added simply via the Zotero client.

Cohen’s blog is also where I first heard about ScholarPress, which provides two (so far) cool educational plugins for Wordpress.

Over the last week or so, reading and the role of books have been popping up everywhere, it seems:

• Reading is getting a lot of play in the press: the NEA warned that Americans are reading less and their proficiency is declining, though it appears the NEA needs to learn how to read data.  Then, the reading portion of the Program for International Student Assessment was invalidated because of, ahem, sloppy proofreading.
• E-paper continues to creep closer to an everyday reality (and hip-kid variations are making commercials).
• Amazon’s Kindle was released, along with many reviews and write-ups.¹
• And David Weinberger challenged Anthony Grafton’s take on the future of books and libraries.²

As for me, I think people are probably reading as much, or more, as they have been for the last thirty years or so, though they may be reading differently.  (Still, my local bookstore is almost always busy with people of all ages.)  And I’m not really concerned about "books as objects" disappearing.

When I packed up my own book collection, the 27 boxes I carried up and down the stairs had me asking, repeatedly, why the hell I owned so many.  I’ve also found myself occasionally doing strange things when reading printed text, like looking for the search box or the Google Toolbar to find a word, or wishing I could drag-and-drop a hunk of text into my blog writer.  So the idea of an interactive, networked, paper-quality device (in Weinberger’s words) sounds wonderful to me.

Kindle isn’t that device (yet), but it’s a step in the right direction, and a direction we should be headed.  I know the Romantics will have a hard time letting go of the "feel and smell" of a book, but the same was said of LPs and cassette tapes at one time.  eReaders will make more and more sense as the technology improves: financially, environmentally, spatially, and socially.

Reading through the various responses to the above issues, though, I did discover a few concerns.

Beginnings and Endings
One thing I don’t want to see disappear are the beginnings and endings of stories brought about by hyperlink technology.  I’m not looking forward to books that hyperlink a word every few paragraphs, constantly pulling me out of the story and "extending" the story’s scope.  Stories should have crafted, chosen beginnings and endings.  Making the right choices for that is part of the author’s craft, so I don’t need an endlessly hyperlinked story destroying that craft and blowing off the ends.

Haves and Have Nots
Unless we make the technology much cheaper and more accessible, it has the potential to widen the literacy gap.  I realize paper-bound books aren’t going anywhere any time soon, so this isn’t an immediate concern.  Nevertheless, it’s one more way to wedge money between the well-educated and the poorly-educated.

Who’s Got the Backup?
A small concern for now, but eventually: how will we "preserve" our libraries?  I know that in Amazon’s current model, users can download their purchases again should anything happen to their copy.  But on a larger, longer scale: how will we guarantee our writings to future generations?  How do we pass on our libraries?

Who’s Gonna Pay for This?
The largest issue right now seems to revolve around the DRM.  People seem to want open files that they’re free to copy, share, trade, etc., and they get angry when their use is restricted.  But realistically, we can’t produce movies, music, and books for "free."  Those things take time to create, and the people working to create them need financial support.  I don’t like the idea of any agency having more rights than I do over something I purchase from them.  On the other hand, the ability for creators to make a profit from their work needs to be preserved.  I haven’t yet seen a viable solution (or proposal) for this problem, and "completely free and open" isn’t going to work unless we find another way to support the creators.

Image Credits:

• Gary H. Spielvogel, Craning for a book, Photograph, Flickr, 31 Mar. 2005, <http://flickr.com/photos/gaspi/7971252/>
• Daniel Horacio Argostini, Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body, Photography, Flickr, 26 Jan. 2006, <http://flickr.com/photos/dhammza/91435718/>

1. The major critiques seem to be that it’s kinda ugly (though the idea was to make the text the focus, not the gadget), the DRM means no sharing (though that’s not Amazon’s choice, they’ve left that to publishers), annotations are hard to share (which is also true of printed books, but I agree–it should be easy on digital devices), it’s expensive (yes, but it will probably drop in price and improve in function soon), it’s limited in its use (instead of an all-in-one), and no one’s going to pay to read blogs or newspapers on the device (agreed).
2. Anthony Grafton takes a long look back at the history of publication and libraries and makes a few conservative predictions in The New Yorker article "Future Reading." Weinberger, author of "Everything is Miscellaneous," disagrees with Grafton’s Romantic nostalgia and tech-pessimism in "The future of book nostalgia," asserting that metadata may solve the multiple-database challenge, the collective power of readers will lead to new insights, and networked reading devices will make reading a public, and therefore radically different, experience (which brings us back to Kindle, and what it’s missing).  Weinberger also gives an interesting utopian description of a future library.

Over the last week or so, reading and the role of books have been popping up everywhere, it seems:

• Reading is getting a lot of play in the press: the NEA warned that Americans are reading less and their proficiency is declining, though it appears the NEA needs to learn how to read data. Then, the reading portion of the Program for International Student Assessment was invalidated because of, ahem, sloppy proofreading.
• E-paper continues to creep closer to an everyday reality (and hip-kid variations are making commercials).
• Amazon’s Kindle was released, along with many reviews and write-ups.¹
• And David Weinberger challenged Anthony Grafton’s take on the future of books and libraries.²

As for me, I think people are probably reading as much, or more, as they have been for the last thirty years or so, though they may be reading differently. (Still, my local bookstore is almost always busy with people of all ages.) And I’m not really concerned about “books as objects” disappearing.

When I packed up my own book collection, the 27 boxes I carried up and down the stairs had me asking, repeatedly, why the hell I owned so many. I’ve also found myself occasionally doing strange things when reading printed text, like looking for the search box or the Google Toolbar to find a word, or wishing I could drag-and-drop a hunk of text into my blog writer. So the idea of an interactive, networked, paper-quality device (in Weinberger’s words) sounds wonderful to me.

Kindle isn’t that device (yet), but it’s a step in the right direction, and a direction we should be headed. I know the Romantics will have a hard time letting go of the “feel and smell” of a book, but the same was said of LPs and cassette tapes at one time. eReaders will make more and more sense as the technology improves: financially, environmentally, spatially, and socially.

Reading through the various responses to the above issues, though, I did discover a few concerns.

Beginnings and Endings
One thing I don’t want to see disappear are the beginnings and endings of stories brought about by hyperlink technology. I’m not looking forward to books that hyperlink a word every few paragraphs, constantly pulling me out of the story and “extending” the story’s scope. Stories should have crafted, chosen beginnings and endings. Making the right choices for that is part of the author’s craft, so I don’t need an endlessly hyperlinked story destroying that craft and blowing off the ends.

Haves and Have Nots
Unless we make the technology much cheaper and more accessible, it has the potential to widen the literacy gap. I realize paper-bound books aren’t going anywhere any time soon, so this isn’t an immediate concern. Nevertheless, it’s one more way to wedge money between the well-educated and the poorly-educated.

Who’s Got the Backup?
A small concern for now, but eventually: how will we “preserve” our libraries? I know that in Amazon’s current model, users can download their purchases again should anything happen to their copy. But on a larger, longer scale: how will we guarantee our writings to future generations? How do we pass on our libraries?

Who’s Gonna Pay for This?
The largest issue right now seems to revolve around the DRM. People seem to want open files that they’re free to copy, share, trade, etc., and they get angry when their use is restricted. But realistically, we can’t produce movies, music, and books for “free.” Those things take time to create, and the people working to create them need financial support. I don’t like the idea of any agency having more rights than I do over something I purchase from them. On the other hand, the ability for creators to make a profit from their work needs to be preserved. I haven’t yet seen a viable solution (or proposal) for this problem, and “completely free and open” isn’t going to work unless we find another way to support the creators.

Image Credits:

• Gary H. Spielvogel, Craning for a book, Photograph, Flickr, 31 Mar. 2005, <http://flickr.com/photos/gaspi/7971252/>
• Daniel Horacio Argostini, Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body, Photography, Flickr, 26 Jan. 2006, <http://flickr.com/photos/dhammza/91435718/>

1. The major critiques seem to be that it’s kinda ugly (though the idea was to make the text the focus, not the gadget), the DRM means no sharing (though that’s not Amazon’s choice, they’ve left that to publishers), annotations are hard to share (which is also true of printed books, but I agree–it should be easy on digital devices), it’s expensive (yes, but it will probably drop in price and improve in function soon), it’s limited in its use (instead of an all-in-one), and no one’s going to pay to read blogs or newspapers on the device (agreed).
2. Anthony Grafton takes a long look back at the history of publication and libraries and makes a few conservative predictions in The New Yorker article “Future Reading.” Weinberger, author of “Everything is Miscellaneous,” disagrees with Grafton’s Romantic nostalgia and tech-pessimism in “The future of book nostalgia,” asserting that metadata may solve the multiple-database challenge, the collective power of readers will lead to new insights, and networked reading devices will make reading a public, and therefore radically different, experience (which brings us back to Kindle, and what it’s missing). Weinberger also gives an interesting utopian description of a future library.

Are geography teachers paying attention?

Starting today, Google Maps supports collaborative map-making, so multiple people can edit the same My Map. Just click the "Collaborate" link and enter the email addresses of the people you want to invite. [more…]

Of course, any discipline that has a connection to geography (so, all of them) should also start thinking about the possibilities here.   A big step toward helping students understand that all ideas are situated, conceptually and physically.