An announcement of OAuth’s official status was posted today on ReadWrite Web – It’s Official: Mashup Privacy Protocol OAuth Is Fair Game. The article does an excellent job of describing OAuth (including a cute little live demo of it in action) and it mentions the similarities and differences between OAuth and OpenID. I’ve mentioned previously that one of the problems with OpenID’s implementation is that it is not very usable. OAuth will correct that by allowing you to use an already existing account with some of the web’s big players (Google, Yahoo!, AOL and Twitter, to name a few). It also includes, by design, the ability to port your profile or just about any other data over to the new service. You have control over what you share in a pretty fine-grained way, too, so if you want to share some of your data from a service provider (such as Google) with a OAuth consumer (such as Twitter), you can. Just by creating a profile in Google, you can port that profile all over the web – provided that the service you want to use is an OAuth consumer.
Between the profile capabilities of OpenID and the native data portability of OAuth, we should be seeing some really interesting services crop up that will allow us to really write once, use often!
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Exchange to Google Apps Transition
I haven’t written a whole lot about our recent experience in moving from Exchange 2003 to Google Apps because I ended up writing it up for a guest post on Michael Stephens’ blog, Tame The Web. I’m not going to re-write it here, but I would like to add a few notes about the experience from more of a distance, time-wise, at least.
As I said in the post on TTW, this was an amazingly smooth transition – from my staff’s standpoint. The vast majority of them came in on Monday, opened their browser, followed the directions from the 8 training sessions I provided and checked their email before starting their day’s work. Since I wrote that post, however, we’ve continued using the system and made some changes. I have uploaded many contact files (pretty easy – just saved the contacts from Outlook as a .csv file, and imported them into Gmail) without any major issues. We’ve also switched from an open-source, kinda clunky calendar system to manage our desk hours to the Google Calendar. Our mrrl@mrrl.org address hosts all of the desk calendars and I shared them with the managers responsible for each desk. Once they entered the information and got them all up and running, I embedded each calendar into a web page on our Intranet and made them available for subscriptions if individual staff members wanted to add the desk calendar information to their own, personal calendar. The Circulation manager asked me if it was possible to share the calendar with her entire staff – I explained that this would put every shift on every staff member’s calendar and she said that was what they wanted. Since that is what they wanted, that is what I helped her do – share out the calendar with all of her staff so that they could see who was working the desk from their own calendars.
Responses from the staff have been overwhelmingly positive. I did have one staff member tell me that she was born too late, she didn’t like all this technology and she was having a hard time with the change. Despite having said that, however, she has been using it without any help from me (except to show her how to mute conversations – something she thinks might make all this change worth it…) successfully and is adapting well to the system. Other staff members have been stopping me over the course of the last week or two to tell me how much they like the new email. I’ve gotten many thanks from folks who really disliked Outlook and all the spam it let through!
All has not been wine and roses, however. The first Friday afternoon after the changeover, Gmail went down completely. Hosted and personal accounts were unreachable for almost 2 hours. All that cheerleading I’d done for how much we’d love our new email and the last couple of hours of the first week saw us down for the count. One of our staff members was having problems with accessing the secure Gmail option using Safari on her Mac, and in the course of looking for the answer, I found out that a hacking toolkit for Gmail accounts was being released. I set up the domain, that night, to require SSL security for all Google Apps that we use! I sent out an email warning folks that it may slow down their email and to let me know if they have problems. No one has, so far, but it did fix the issue with Safari… She just goes to the non-secure site, which comes up for her with no problems, then as she logs in, it redirects her to the secure site automatically. Problem solved!!
The changeover was, from my end, a lot of work and a lot of training, but from my staff’s perspective everything went quite well and most of them are more than pleased with the transition!
I don’t think I’ve completely updated my Presentations & Publications page with all of this yet, but if I do it here, I can just copy & paste later, right? This is my schedule for the next couple of months – if you are going to be around any of these places, look me up and say hi!
Sept 8-12 –National Association of Government Webmasters Conference – speaking on Sept. 11th on Web 3.0, but will be there for the whole conference.
Sept 17th – MaintainIT Webinar on making Public Computers 2.0-ready
October 1-3 – Missouri Library Association Conference – speaking on the 1st on Collaboration 2.0 (2:45-3:30) and Library Learning 2.1 (3:45-4:30) – but will be there for the whole conference, introducing speakers and going to business meetings….
October 19-22nd – Internet Librarian – since I somehow forgot to send in a speaking proposal, I won’t be speaking here – just attending!
Nov/Dec – Computers In Libraries – Article on how to use social media/2.0 tools to collaborate.
That’s it – so far! Hope to see you around at one of these places!!
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Libraries mentioned at Digital Web
I link to the occasional article from Digital Web, when they post something web-design related that I want to point my loyal readers toward. Today, however, I’m linking to Digital Web not because of a web design article, but because of a library-related article. The library angle?
I’ll discuss ways to navigate some of the clutter of older card catalogs (now ‘updated’ to the web); services like interlibrary loan that get you stuff from almost anywhere; some of the specialized database-driven applications you can’t affordably access from the outside world; and a host of other tools and issues you have probably never considered. In the end, you will come out a more agile designer and developer.
It’s basically about how to use your local library’s resources to save some cash and get some great material that just isn’t available anywhere else. It’s geared mostly to academic libraries (the author is a librarian at a university, so that makes sense) and it’s brutally honest about the challenges of navigating most library websites, but it is a great outreach effort to other disciplines to get more people into our libraries.
This is sort of what I’m trying to do by presenting at the NAGW conference this year, as a matter of fact. I deliberately chose a non-library conference to present my Web 3.0 stuff at because I wanted to share what libraries have to offer with non-librarians. No point in preaching to the choir, there… I’ll probably do a revised version of this presentation at library conferences, too, but the tone/direction will be different. It will be more of a “how to make your stuff EASY to use”, not “how to use what your local library has to offer” sort of thing.
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Becoming 2.0
Bobbi and I finished up our 4-day workshop on all things Web 2.0 on Friday. I was surprised at how tired I got after each day of teaching, but it was also strangely invigorating, too. The students in the class were really engaged and willing to learn, although there was a lot of complaints about too-full-heads, I think they got some good information out of it and I’m really looking forward to seeing what they do when they get back to their home libraries and get some time to put this stuff into practice!
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What do you want?
I’m doing a bit of “audience testing” – if you all could request specific information in a book about collaboration 2.0 – anything at all – what would you like to see? I’m not promising I’ll include everything (it’s more of a booklet than a book so space is limited…), but I’d love to hear what you all are interested in and what would make you think this is a non-pass-upable bit of reading!
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Rut bustin’ at the library
You all might know that I’m the Information Technology Manager for the Missouri River Regional Library. This means that I work behind the scenes a lot, making sure that computers are working, networked bits are flowing and that everyone has the technology they need to do their jobs. I also spend some time working on the PCC desk, our public computer service point, but that’s about the only interaction I get with patrons. Until today. We are pretty seriously short staffed, so when an email went out asking for help in the circulation department, I volunteered for a 2 hour shift. I have to say that I’m really glad I did.
I’ve worked circulation before – for a few minutes at a time and about 4 times over the past 10 years – so it’s been rare and short. Getting 2 solid hours to see the kinds of questions they get, the sort of needs they have and to actually talk to patrons who are using the technology I provide is pretty cool. I’m also doing a bit of dual-training. The Circ manager is working with me and is being incredibly patient as she’s training me, but she’s also picking my brain about various tricks she would like to use with our new Gmail interface to mail, so I’m training her on the use of our new email system, too! This is something I may try to do far more often – it’s been a great way to get me out of my all-computers-all-the-time rut (though I’ve been working on my Web 2.0 presentation in between patrons…) and into the main life of the library!
Engaged Learning has a series – just wrapping up this week – on 15 common objections to social sites and media in the workplace. There are LOTS of things that I’ve heard from folks and some great ways to combat those ideas. He’s encouraged comments on each of the objections, too, so you can scan through and get an idea of how other people would approach the same problem. Read through these and be armed next time someone tells you that blogs have nothing to do with training or that allowing access to Facebook will cause all employees to spend all their time socializing instead of working!
These are geared toward corporate environments – but some of the ideas may work well for schools, which do a lot of banning of social sites. Either way, it’s worth a read and being better prepared to handle objections is never a bad thing!
Now that everything is officially official, I can let my loyal readers know what my next big project will be (besides 4 presentations in 3 months and a changeover from Exchange to Google hosted email)! While I was in Anaheim for ALA, I was approached at my table at the Social Software Showcase by an editor for the ALA Tech Source Tech Reports and asked if I’d like to write one for them. After some discussion of topic and timing, I can now say that the May/June 2009 issue of the Tech Report will be on Collaboration 2.0 (working title – it’ll probably change…) and will deal with using Web 2.0 tools (Facebook, Ning, Twitter, Flickr, etc.) to provide a platform for collaboration in libraries. I’m pretty excited about the project and am champing at the bit to get started! I’ll be doing some serious tapping into my social network to get examples of collaboration from my librarian buddies on Twitter, Facebook, Ning (starting to sound familiar?) and the like. Don’t feel like you have to wait to be asked, though, if you are doing some collaborative project and using these tools – feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you are doing any time!
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TGIF
Ok, play by play for my Friday:
8:00am – get to work, count money in the PCC, get computers started, meet Mike and head to our Linn branch library to do some work out there.
9:15am – get into the Linn branch and find the DVD color settings. Doesn’t make much difference, the sky is still green and the houses and people are alarmingly red. We can get it to sort of work, though, so it will do until I can get to Best Buy and pick up a $30 DVD player to replace the one that won’t display colors correctly any more. I also install the VPN client into her new computer so that she can check email and such – 3 weeks before I change the email. I’m timely…
11:15am – get back to the library and grab a quick lunch
12:00pm – start my regular Friday shift on the PCC desk. I spent the first hour clearing my email inbox and perusing the online “weekly sales” flyers that we don’t get at home, since we read the paper all online these days. 2 of the big grocery stores in town offer the flyers at home, so we don’t really need to get the newspaper to get the specials and the coupons. Yeah! I enter the stuff I want to get into RTM, separated out by location of the store, then print off my shopping lists by store as well. I now have a somewhat organized shopping list and some idea of what I’ll be cooking next week. I feel organized.
Shortly after my first hour on the desk, we have a problem patron issue and I have to ask the young woman to leave. After that there is some discussion about the issue on FriendFeed and I’ll have to admit to egging on Stephen Cohen’s rants about video games in the course of the discussion. That takes up most of my second hour on the desk.
I spent the last hour of the shift reading through my blogs and FriendFeed stream while also answering computer questions, selling printouts and creating temporary cards for visitors to our area.
3:00pm – Break time!
3:15 – I get to sit down in my office chair for the first time today and spend some time checking email, reading through the rest of my blog posts and getting the first batch of GApps accounts set up in Google’s systems. I also got a call from our Linn branch manager about PCC policies for porn viewing and for hacking our systems to get extra time from our PC Reservation software.
4:30 – Find and download sysprep for Mike as he finishes getting the OPACs ready for ghosting – again – and demonstrate how to use it.
4:45 – go home.
That’s it – that is my week at work. Hope somebody found it helpful, or at least as amusing as Nikki did. She thought my Wednesday post was “LOLworthy” (as she informed me via txt on Thursday). I’m glad someone enjoyed my pain…