Web 2.0: What is a blog?

Asking “what is a blog” on a blog seems a bit circular, but I’m going to do it anyway. If you’re reading this, you may already know what a blog is. Or you may have just stumbled upon this blog on the Durham County Library’s website. If you are the latter (or a curious member of the former), please read on.

Blog–a definition:

On tax day, 2008, Wikipedia defined a blog as ‘(an abridgment of the term web log) “a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. ‘Blog’ can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.”‘ Most blogs have a specific theme, ranging from a diary-ish record of their lives, to politics, to books, etc.

What does this really mean? Let’s use the Durham Library Tech Blog as an example. The blog is maintained by an organization, acting as an individual. We update this blog at least once a week with new material, occasionally more. The most recent entries are at the top. Our blog is themed around technology–explanations of web 2.0 technologies, hints about using the library website and catalog, and getting the most out of your PC.

What do you do with a blog?  The first thing you can do with a blog is to read one.  If you are feeling ambitious, you can also comment on the blog and engage in a dialog with the author and the other readers.  Mostly, blogs are fun to read.  The ones I like have beautiful pictures, tasty recipes, and good reviews of books.  My husband reads blogs about sports and I know people who read blogs about technology, politics, and cats.  If you can think it up, if you are interested in it, someone has a blog on it.

I’ll post some examples of blogs in a later entry. Please leave your questions and comments!

–Jennifer

The Wonders of Right Clicking – part 2

Right click on your desktop and go to the properties link. Have you been here before? When Windows XP came out it offered a way to change all of these options without having to go through the Properties Window. Your mission today is to play around with your display properties.

(A word of caution: before you start making changes, it’s a good idea to write down on a piece of paper the original settings you see BEFORE YOU MAKE CHANGES. This will assure that if you make a change you don’t like, you can go back and fix it…an added bonus is that by writing it down, it might help you understand it better as you have to take the time and really look at the current settings.)

Although the first tab is Themes, let’s skip that one and move right on over to Desktop. This is where you get those nifty wallpapers for your desktop. If you have a picture stored somewhere on your computer that you would like to have as your wallpaper, this is the place to do that. Click on the Browse button and search your computer for the picture you want to use. Double click on it and you should see it in the little screen. You can then use the Position drop-down menu to center, tile, or stretch the image. Click on the Apply button and your changes will be made. You can also choose the Customize Desktop button and play around with your icons.

Next tab over is Screen Saver. You can play around with these to your heart’s content. Plus you can use your own images to create a slide show screen saver that will be uniquely yours.

Next tab over is Appearance. This tab works in conjunction with the Themes tab. The Themes tab changes EVERYTHING about the look and feel of your menus, fonts, etc., while the Appearance tab allows you to change things individually. The Advanced Button is a bit tricky, so not for the faint at heart. Just remember, if you don’t like the individual changes you make, you can always go back to the Themes Tab and get your original theme reloaded.

Last is the settings tab. The most important thing on this tab is your Screen Resolution. What is screen resolution you ask? Well the images you see on your computer screen are made up of pixels. Pixels are just little blocks of color all put together to make an image. Screen resolution is how many pixels wide by how many pixels tall your desktop is. Your resolution could be viewed at 800 x 600 pixels, 1024 x 768 pixels, 1280 x 1024, or maybe even 1440 x 900. When those of us who are in the web page building business who are purists build our pages, we like to fit them at the 1024 width pixel resolution, however, since a lot of people still have their screen resolution set to 800 width pixels you would have to scroll horizontally to see a page built at the 1024 width. If your resolution is set to 1024 pixels and a web page is built to 800 pixels, you will see white space. If you are set to 800, try changing to the 1024 for a while. If it hurts your eyes and you have to strain, change it back. You might find that you like being able to see more! — Jill

The Wonders of Right Clicking

Do you use your right mouse button? Are you aware of the power it holds? The right mouse button is something you should experiment with. When you are thinking of selecting something, stop, take a moment, and right click to see what happens.

Today I’d like to talk about right-clicking on the desktop. Go to your desktop and right click. The first choice is “Arrange Icons By.” This is a great tool to clean up your desktop and organize all those pesky icons. Your choices are name, size, type and modified. You don’t need to select any icons to make these organizational moves. Just try them. Your icons will go flitting across your screen into new columns.

Some other options for cleaning up your desktop under the “Arrange Icons By” selection are Auto Arrange and Align to Grid, Show Desktop Icons, Lock Web Items on Desktop and Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard. Some of these may already have check marks next to them and you can uncheck them.

Take a few minutes and try all these tools for organizing your desktop. Next time I’ll talk about the Properties of your desktop. — Jill

Library Conferences

Last week I went to a conference in Northern Virginia called “Computers in Libraries.” The conference was enlightening and motivating!

Most conferences like this have a “track” you can follow throughout the conference that is related to your specialty. In my case it was the Web Design track. I learned a lot of tips and tricks for behind the scenes things I can do to improve the Durham County Library web site, but I also saw a lot of things I can add to our site to enhance your visits.

I hope to be adding a lot of new features to our site in the near future. Some of these features will be introduced when we launch our redesigned site this summer. Others I have already begun incorporating already (such as adding a video to our home page during National Library Week).

So keep coming to the Durham County Library web site – we are making improvements all the time! — Jill

Selecting Text

One of the most difficult things to learn when using a mouse is text selection. The “click, hold, drag” function can be tricky for many people when first learning to maneuver your way around a computer. So today I’ve got a few tips for you.

Open up a document with some text in it and click your mouse cursor near some text. Now, hold down your shift key and use the arrows on your keyboard to select text. You can go forward, backward, up or down using those arrow keys. Easy!

Using your mouse move the cursor to the left margin. When you see a big arrow pointing to the right, click your mouse button. The line of text your arrow was just pointing at should now be selected. Now move that mouse over again and repeat the process, but this time, click twice. The whole paragraph should be selected now. Three clicks and the whole document should be selected.

Try these tips in conjunction with your keyboard shortcuts for cut, copy and paste and you may find you save yourself some time and aggravation. — Jill

What is Web 2.0?

Perhaps you have heard the term Web 2.0 bandied about and thought “Web 2.0? I’m still getting used to Web 1.0. What is this nonsense?”

There are several different definitions of Web 2.0–ask a different person what Web 2.0 is and you will get a different answer–here’s mine:

Web 2.0 is using the internet to do more than just send and receive information. It is using the internet to generate new information and content.

What does this mean for you? It is bigger than sending email to keep in touch with friends–you are using the internet to share photographs with a group of people, keep in touch with friends (and meet new friends) on MySpace or Facebook, and making your own blog. With Web 2.0 technologies you can share videos and your own radio show.

Still not sure what all this means and how useful it really is? Check back on this blog. I will be posting information about different Web 2.0 functions I like to use, along with information about how you might use them in your own life. If you’ve heard some Web 2.0 term that you want to learn about, put it in the comments and I will address it in a blog post. Any other questions or comments, please comment on this posting and I will be sure to address them.

–Jennifer

Auto Repair Reference Center

Durham County Library has a new database! Auto Repair Reference Center contains repair procedures, service bulletins, service recalls, wiring diagrams, labor and quick tips for cars produced between 1945 and 2007 from the former publisher of Chilton.

Content includes:
• More than 31,660 vehicles, from 1945 to present
• Over 205,000 drawings and step-by-step photographs
• Approximately 75,000 technical service bulletins & recalls
• Over 130,000 enhanced wiring diagrams for easy viewing and printing
• Specifications & maintenance schedules
• Labor Time Guide & Estimator
• AutoIQ
• Quick Tips – a complete guide to vehicle ownership & maintenance

Please leave comments to this post with your questions. – Kathy

Keyboard Shortcuts

I love keyboard shortcuts, they take me back to the days when I had a computer that didn’t even have a mouse! I’m going to list a few of my favorites today that you can start using immediately!

First of all you need to become familiar with your Ctrl key on your keyboard. This key does lots of magical things just like right-clicking your mouse does. When we use keyboard shortcuts, we are going to be using the Ctrl key a lot. So find it on your keyboard now.

Let’s start with cut, copy, paste and undo.  Open up a document that has text in it. Using your mouse select a word anywhere in the document by double-clicking on it. Now hold down your Ctrl key and press the X key. Did the word disappear? You just Cut the word. Now click your mouse somewhere else in the document and hold down your Ctrl key and press the V key. Did the word reappear? You have just performed Cut and Paste with keyboard shortcuts. To undo what you just did hold down the Ctrl key and press the Z key – do it again. You just undid your previous two tasks and your document should now be exactly as it was when you started. Now for copy – select a word again by double-clicking on it. This time hold down your Ctrl key and press the C key. Move your cursor anywhere else in your document and hold down the Ctrl Key and press the V key. Copy and Paste!

Anytime you need to undo (Ctrl Z), cut (Ctrl X), copy (Ctrl C), or paste (Ctrl V)  you can now use these keyboard shortcuts. Once you start using them, especially Ctrl Z, you will find how much easier it is to complete some of your tasks without even touching the mouse button. In my next post I’ll tell you how to select text using your keyboard. — Jill

More on Shortcuts

Yesterday I talked about keeping a neat desktop by moving icons to your Quick Launch toolbar. Today I want to talk a little bit more about shortcuts.

Shortcuts can be defined two ways in Windows. First, you have icon shortcuts – these are the icons with the black arrow in the left corner that live on your desktop. Second, you have keyboard shortcuts – these are techniques to use your keyboard, without touching your mouse.

To create an icon shortcut you just need to find the program, document, or whatever you want to make a shortcut to. There are two ways to make a shortcut depending on where you are pulling from. From the Program menu, right click on the program name and look for the the Create Shortcut option. Click on that and a second icon will appear on your program menu. You can now drag and drop that to your desktop or your Quick Launch bar. The second way to make a shortcut is to just click, drag and drop. This will, however, often remove the icon from where you took it. So be careful with the click, drag and drop method. Always try the right click option first.

I’ll write about keyboard shortcuts in another post where I’ll teach you how to cut, copy and paste without having to go to those pesky menu bars. — Jill