 Good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am Krista Burns, your host at the Nebraska Library Commission. Encompass Live is the Library Commission's weekly online event where we do sessions about commission activities or anything that may be of interest to librarians in Nebraska. We have topics presented by NLC staff and we do have guest speakers sometimes. Today we have a mixture of guest and local. We do these sessions every Wednesday morning at 10am central time and they are recorded as this one is being right now so if you cannot attend a live one you can always listen to any of our recordings on our website. This week is our monthly tech talk with Michael Sowers, our technology innovation librarian sitting here next to me. Hello. Hello. And he goes through just some new tech of the day and then also just some interviews which we have today. We have, actually I'll let you go and introduce him and I can just hand it over to you to tell what you've set up for us this morning. All right. Sounds like a good plan. All technical glitches hopefully solved here. As Krista mentioned, I'm Michael Sowers, the technology innovation librarian here at the commission and here in my monthly tech talk. I like to cover some odds and ends but I also like to talk to people who are actually out in the field doing things. And so today we're going to talk about the iPad. Now I got to say I'm kind of like the guys in the cartoon here. I'm not exactly the biggest fan of the iPad but it's something that's definitely out there. And in my surfing in the last month, I was reading David Lee King's blog which I've brought up here, a particular post called iPads in Libraries, Some Stories. I was like, oh, okay, let's see what he's found. And lo and behold, the very first story that came up in this blog post was from Omaha Public Library. And I'm like, hey, I know somebody at the Omaha Public Library. In fact, I know the person who sent in the story by the name of Amy Mather. Amy, are you still on the phone? I am on the phone. Yay. And where are you calling us from today? I am calling you from Rockville, Maryland. Cool. Okay, so hanging out after ALA, can I assume? Exactly, because you know I used to live in Bethesda. So I'm hanging with my peeps for the rest of the week. Oh, very cool. So why don't I tell us, we have some people not from Nebraska in on the call today. And some other folks that we had you on Encompass Live before. But could you just for a minute kind of tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Omaha Public? Yes, sure. I am the Technology Librarian. I have been at Omaha Public Library just over two years, actually moved from Bethesda, Maryland to Omaha. And I used to work for Tuesday, which eventually merged with ProQuest for about 10. So they love Omaha. I love every, my entire job. It's really fun. We have a new director in place. He's very technology focused. So it's iPads and interesting, you know, things that he's picking up as far as tech trends on our way. We hope to have actually a mobile app here soon. So for the catalog. Cool. So lots of fun stuff we're doing. Okay. So, okay, what's going on with the iPads? What's the story there? Why are we talking about this? Well, okay, here's the story. So, you know, every year, this would probably be my, this was the third year that we've had summer reading, that I'm involved in summer reading program kickoff. And, you know, watching the usage on the back end, you see people signing up for the program. And there's a few, and they kind of like trick to come in very slowly. And then summer reading program is when you see the majority of everybody signing up. But we've always had a kickoff party at a park, which to me is like a lost opportunity to actually sign people up on the spot. I mean, it was really great fun. There's clowns, there's sunken tanks, there's animals, a petting zoo, there's a this and a that. But they have to, you know, remember to go home immediately and sign up for the program online. So, Gary Watts and our director wrote a grant, a local grant to purchase some iPads because of the whole 3G connectivity. It would enable us to like sign people up on the spot and, you know, really also make us look extremely cool in front of the kids. Yes. So, even though our first summer reading program kickoff was canceled because, you know, Nebraska storms, when they come, they come very furiously. So we had to cancel it. And then we actually had it at one of our branches, which we didn't technically need the 3G at that point because we could just jump on the wireless, but we still actually used it because there was a lot of people on the wireless and it was getting hung up. So we ended up signing up probably over 500 kids just on the iPads alone, all day long, just, and they loved it. So that's the story in a nutshell. So now I'm actually experiencing, I actually had the iPad with me, so it's kind of an interesting little, going back and forth between my iPhone and the iPad. It's like tag team wrestling. Can you give us any details? I don't know how involved you were on the actual grants, like, you know, where, sorry, you know, what the grant source was, who you got the money from, do you know? Actually, I would have to get this from Gary, but I can email him right now as I'm talking to you since I do have the iPad in front of me and see what it says. Okay, all right, that works. But I don't have the specifics. Okay, so were these, these were specifically gotten with the idea of using them for registering kids kind of on the fly for the summer eating program? You're not, go ahead. But we also see, oh yeah, we see a lot more utility, especially like with going out in the community and doing some training, like if I were going to go to a business and talk about, you know, some databases or even, you know, outreach to any group and say, you know, this is what we have at the library. It's a great way to do kind of outreach, you know, mobile outreach, which will be fantastic and I'm actually very excited to start doing that. And it was, I mean, even for story time, I mean, you know, even though it doesn't work with like overdrive and all of that, we do have a problem with that. But there are some books that we can download that would be really fun to do for story time just to, you know, sort of take the traditional and make it techy, you know. So these are definitely staff equipment. This is not something you're circulating, not something that you're letting the patrons use. No, we are not. It is definitely staff circulated. But we are, you know, getting other electronic equipment. Like Sony readers, we are going to start circulating for downloadable audio books. So that would be something. So what, outside of the, you know, what you just explained, which is really good in the using of the staff, because that's actually what intrigued me was, you know, okay, you've got this device, how can you use it? I totally see what you're doing with it. What has been your personal experience with the device as to usability and functionality and I'm assuming you're liking it? I am, but I also have some problems with it. Like for traveling, it's been phenomenal because I'm not, like, having shoulder replacement from hauling around, which I appreciate. I mean, you don't have to take it out for security. It's basically like a ginormous iPhone. And so I do love that aspect and it's really easy, but as far as, like, hardcore applications, like, I can't, I haven't quite figured out. I mean, I certainly could buy it, but I'm not going to because it's not my device. But I can't do Excel or Word or anything like really hardcore applications on this. But it's definitely fine if I need to travel about and do that. And there's also, I mean, like, for instance, today I had trouble, you know, the webinar, I can't log into the actual webinar because it's not, the device is not ready for it yet. So they haven't quite gotten that synced up. So there are some problems. And I mean, it's, to me, I do love it. And if you had an extra 600 bucks laying around, you wanted to buy one, sure, do it. Absolutely. And it's fun. It's cool. It gets a lot of attention. But I'm happy just borrowing the libraries. So. Yeah, I kind of paid. Yeah, I keep saying if somebody wants to hand me one, I'd be more than happy to play with it and use it. But, you know, yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure it's, it's, it's worth my dollars personally. You know, I like my droid phone. It does everything I needed to do. Right. Right. And my iPhone actually is that way. Okay. What is your, have you just found anything just cool? Like, wow, it does X better than anything else I've ever had my hands on or other, other than the ultimate portability of it? Yes. Okay. I think the whole the, I mean, it's just a beautiful device. I mean, that to me is the appeal of it. Like, for example, like, I love that I can, the whole Epicurious app. I love to cook. So to me, having like your online cookbook and recipes is fantastic. So the apps make it beautiful. I mean, I mean, it's, what can I say, it's a really nice, pretty toy. Sure. Hey, well, yeah, to let everybody know, we didn't give Amy the questions ahead of time. So I'm putting her on this bot just a little bit here. And I will remind everybody if you've got a question, please feel free. Do we have any? Not yet. Okay. If you want to ask a question, there's the question section of your interface. You can go in there and type it in and I'm monitoring your questions here. And I can let Amy or Michael know anything you want to ask. So what, what sort of, as a staff device, have there been any policy issues? You know, what, what if somebody wants to buy an app that they think could be used is, is, did you just kind of buy them and hand them out to people? Or was there any discussion about policy with as, as a staff device? They're actually, that's a great question. We don't really have a policy yet. Like I have one because I'm in the technology office and it actually has all of my account information on it. So as soon as like somebody else wants to borrow it and that's the problem with app. It's like, cause it is very device centric. Like your, your, your, your, your iTunes and your iPod and everything is, is very connected to your, your, your, your account. So this is very connected to my account. So as soon as I had to give it up, I'd have to delete everything. And that would be a little bit of a pain because as soon as I got it back, I'd have to like load everything back on that I've actually loaded. So, and we don't really, nobody's in the, in our system has been like, hey, I need this iPad. So I'm not sure exactly how the policy will work out. It'll be interesting to see because I think we're just, you know, you know, he just bought it because of, you know, he wanted to really work this into the summer reading program. And it definitely did very well. And I could see applications. So we'd have to maybe figure out like maybe kind of a, just an ID and maybe an iTunes, like a library ID and download stuff so it wouldn't be contributed to anybody's personal information but somehow. I'm not sure. It'll be weird. And that's why we can't hand it out, Michael. So that's the thing. It's like we can't let people borrow it because it is that you do have to be tied into an account with. Right. We had a similar experience here at the commission. We own one iPod touch, which I was using for a while, but yes, was attached to my account. And people were asking, well, can you, you know, just can whoever needs it take it on a trip? And I'm like, yeah, like a laptop. And I was like, not really. Not easily. Not easily. Yeah. You would have to completely erase it, start over again, reattach it to somebody else's account. And so, yeah, that I definitely could see as an issue. So what's going on with the other five? You have six of them. You have one. I do have one. Gary has one. And I know that our youth services director has one as well. So she borrowed one for ALA. So it'll be interesting to hear how she used it and applied it in email for her needs. But we just really got them. So I don't think nothing has really been going out to the branches. We're focusing on the readers first and then probably we'll think about how to do the iPad. So it'll be evolving as we speak. Yeah. The readers will be another session. I'm really excited about that. That should be really fun. And I think we have a question came in. Yes, there's a question. Amanda has a question. Can you use the iPad to access your catalog and release it remotely through something like remote desktop? I mean, she means like you as like the sort of person or something, not just checking the catalog. Because she mentions remote desktop. I mean, the back end? Yeah. I don't know. I don't actually work that. And that's not my technical expertise. But I know that I can go in and do website updates from my iPad. So that's a good question. That's a great thing that I want to start testing next, because going out to the community and showing them stuff and saying, hey, do you have a library card and signing them up immediately, that would be a fantastic use for you. Yeah. I'm just kind of talking off the top of my head in response to that question. If you have web-based access to whatever, you should be able to access it. Remote desktop in and of itself, I'm not sure what Apple's support is for that through the iPad. But like personally, I use a service called Log Me In, which is a remote desktop but via the web. So I would assume that I could use that on something like the iPad because it's just a web browser. So I guess the answer would kind of be it depends, but you guys haven't done anything like that. Although you've gotten to the back end of your website, you said. Yes, but that's through just a URL and going through working out of the June loss. So that's pretty easy. Right. So web access again, yeah, exactly. Right. Just like a laptop, anything that's web-based, you can do. Yeah. So any kind of wild ideas as to what else you think you might be doing with these things, I mean, you know, signing up for library cards, I think a great idea, signing up the kids obviously for summer reading program. Kind of any other plans? Ah, would love. Well, you know, because we are working on, you know, very, very interested in working with Bootsy, who does the whole mobile catalog app. And he is working on an iPad app, is what I believe that he said. So I'm very, I think that would be very cool for just iPad owners to be able to search the catalog via their mobile device through there. So that to me is very exciting and be able to show people that. I, you know, other applications, it would be great to, you know, maybe do many digital slideshows of really cool events that we're doing. That might be, you know, just going out and do some, like, quick marketing, you know, plugs in the community. That might be fun. Because I really do think, like, any time that a librarian goes out into the community, they should have one of these. Like, it just would be very helpful. Sure. I mean, it's great, you know, to be present, but it's great to be able to, like, show stuff, like, immediately online, not having to worry about equipment that needs to set up. And one thing you just said gave me a question and then that last thing you just said reminded me of a question I forgot to ask. So I'll ask the forgotten one first. Who's paying the bill on the 3G? How is that set up? Good question. Well, I actually have to disconnect from it today because it is on Gary's account and he said you need to disconnect today. So that's another great thing to think about because I'm fine being on wireless at this point on because I'm at my friends. I can pick up her wireless or at a coffee shop. But once we do truly go global, then it will be interesting to see if we can get just one 3G account so we can always have that as a backup in case that a place that we do go to doesn't have wireless. And that's quite possible. I mean, and then we're getting more wired and wired as we speak in our communities, but not always, you know. So that wasn't something built into the grant proposal then? It was just for the actual... No, it sure wasn't. Yeah. Something for everybody to think of. Connectivity charges. Exactly. Yeah. And then you mentioned the iPad app and I'm going to play a little devil's advocate here. I know you can search Omaha Public Library via the web. I mean, I've done it. I do it somewhat regularly myself. What would be the benefit of writing a separate app to do what can already be done on the web? For... You mean like the catalog? Yeah. Oh, it's true. But it's... I definitely see your point, but this whole Bootsy app is completely sold made because it's such quick access. I don't have to... You know, when you go into a web page, you actually have to think, okay, click there, click there, click there, click. And with this application, it's like one click away and it'll have your information. And you can immediately log in. So it's basically like a one-touch and then you are saving all your catalog, you know, putting on your books on hold, you know, your account status, PF fines or whatever. You can connect to Facebook immediately, which I love. It's part of the whole application. So I think it just makes it easier for that person on to go because if I'm looking at the Omaha World... I mean, Omaha Public Library website on my iPhone, I mean, even though it's great, it's still a lot of information condensed. So I would prefer something a little bit more dumbed down and relighted than I can instantly, you know, get to what I need. And I think that regulation will spike as soon as we get this app. I really do. Okay. So basically... So basically it would be like more of a native interface to the device that would just make everything a little smoother. Right, exactly. Okay, great. And it sounds like we got a couple more questions, K-man. Yep. It says here that you mentioned that you're having trouble with overdrive and the iPad. But that overdrive list... The iPad is incredible noise, according to them. Do you... What kind of problems have you been having with them? It's not that... I mean, I think the new iTunes is a little problematic with overdrive, so I'm seeing a lot of support actually come in right now with that. And the overdrive app is not... It's built for the iPhone and not for the iPad. So there's a different iPad. It does make a difference. And even though I've tried it, it's a little clunky. I think it could work a little bit better with the technology. So I think it's just okay. I mean, I feel like it's just okay. They can work on making it better. It's also my understanding, too, that with overdrive at the moment, everything works as good or bad as it does for the audio books, but not yet for the eBooks. They're working on the apps for the eBooks to make them on the Android and the Apple products. So, too, it kind of... Audio works. Electronic text yet doesn't. So the overdrive is... The whole DRM... Yeah, the whole Adobe additions problem and the flash and all of that. So it'll be interesting what comes out of that. Sure. Okay. Another question? Yeah, a question from... A question about, does the iPad have voice output? Could a patron use it in relation to your efforts to reach non-English-speaking people? Using it in some way. I don't know, actually. That's a good question. I do know that some of the... Go ahead. No, you go ahead. You might know more. Well, I know one thing on this, on the iBooks front. So their version of eBooks does have a read to you aspect, but only if the publisher allows it. So it does have some text to speech, but I think only in certain applications and then only if certain people allow it. It's not an accessibility device, definitely. And I don't know about translations, either sort of what might be built into a particular web site or application. Right. And I'm just looking at the settings here in the iPad, and I see a speak auto text, which will make auto corrections. And I'm not sure... I haven't really played around with the whole... It's a voiceover thing. Okay. Which I'm not sure it does, to be honest with you. They just came out with a new iPhone, and I already feel like the iPad is dated. Significantly. They've added to the iPhone. So a little like, I want the iPhone to be a new one. Because it doesn't have a video. To me, that was the biggest shortcoming of the iPad. It doesn't have a camera. So one of the greatest things I would love to do this would be online video meetings. Using Skype or something. So you can't do that. Very, very bad. I just would love to have that. And now you have it with the new iPhone. Video conferencing. It's very odd their way of doing things. Yes. Let's not turn this into pick on Apple. So, Amy, those are the questions that came in. Is there anything else you want to tell us? Or fill us in on... I maybe didn't ask that you want to make sure everybody knows about? No. It is a pretty product. That's what Apple really does well and designs for. It's very sparkly and lovely. And it is lovely to travel with. I mean, I will be taking this pretty much with me anytime I'm traveling on business and not my laptop. But I will be curious to see what other apps it will be coming out with that will help the robustness of people who really need to work. And not just play with it. All right. That's kind of where I'm wondering where it will go from here. Yeah. Well, definitely keep us updated. Love to hear if you guys discover any really cool use for it. We'd love to know about it and be happy to pass it along. I want to thank you for helping us do this today and talking to us and dealing with the slight technical difficulties we had getting this going. We were hoping that Amy could actually share her iPad desktop during this presentation, but there was a limitation with GoToWebinar wouldn't allow that. They're working on it. As you were just talking about, great things there could be for it. They are working on their app for GoToWebinar. It doesn't exist yet for the iPad. We'll have to wait. Do it again. Yeah, exactly. So I'm sure we'll be getting one of these next week at the commission. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks again, Amy. I really appreciate it. And we'll let you get back to your vacation. Okay. Well, it was a pleasure talking to you all. Thanks. Talk to you later. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. All right. Well, I just want to thank Emily. Amy, once again, Amy. Emily's not even in the room. She might be in another room watching us at the moment. Hi, Emily. So I just want to thank Emily. I love stumbling over those things and finding those and just saying, hey, somebody's doing something really interesting with technology. And to be honest, I hadn't even thought about using the iPad in that way. I mean, to take it out with the 3G and signing kids up. And especially if the kids think it's cool. Ooh, you're going to sign me up on iPad. Ooh, I get to touch an iPad. So yeah, I have held one. I touched one. And I was impressed. And my first reaction was, though, I thought it was a little heavier than I expected. But it is a solid piece. But anyways, that's, you know, I don't have the extra $500 to get one. So there you go. So with that, what we'll do is kind of switch gears here and talk about some software I found and some news I found. We will provide links to everything we've talked about today and the stuff I'm going to talk about now with the recording. You're welcome to write down that URL, but we will actually be posting them on a slightly different commission delicious account for our archive. So you will be able to find that. And everybody who's attending will get that email with that information in it. So I'm just going to kind of work backwards here with some stuff I found as of literally last night and then work back kind of through the month things you might want to be aware of. And if you have questions about any of this, please, you know, just submit them in the Q&A. And Krista, we'll ask those. This is the first one which I found out yesterday and literally used it this morning to try it out. It's called Soluto as in solution, but they've got it off. I don't know as close as I can get. And basically, I've got a laptop and it's been booting really, really slow. It seems like take forever to get to a point in Windows where I can actually start using it. So what you do is you install this program and then you reboot your machine. Okay. And excuse me, just a sec here, futzing with screen. There we go. You install this, then you reboot your machine. And what it actually does is it times how long your computer takes the boot and pays attention to what is happening doing the verb process, all the software that's being loaded up, and how long each piece of software takes to actually load. And this laptop of mine took four minutes and five seconds to completely boot up. Wow. Okay. Now that doesn't mean like I saw my desktop after like two minutes, but then there was like another two minutes worth of stuff. Still things going on. Loading on that was preventing me from working. So it timed it out at four minutes and five seconds, and then it gives me a chart of all of the programs that are loaded up, that are loaded up during boot, and breaks them into three categories. Stuff you could probably definitely get rid of. Stuff that you might want to think about and the stuff you're stuck with. Like if you don't boot with this stuff, you know, windows doesn't work. And I was able to then look through those first two categories and decide to actually turn some stuff off, or just say, you know what, delay this. Like I automatically run screenshot software on my computer all the time because I do so much documentation. Well, I thought, well, instead of loading it at boot, I can tell it, well, you know what, delay that. Boot up my computer and let it run, then wait a little while, and then load that up. I don't need it immediately. And I actually shaved my boot time down to about 2.15. Wow. And it just sets that all up, and then you reboot again, and it runs the timer, and you can watch the little clock tick off to see exactly how long your computer takes. So not for everything. I mean, if you have a really old PC, it's going to take a long time to boot. It's not going to solve that problem. But, you know, public machines, you probably don't load a lot, but if you've got that laptop, you've got that desktop, it just seems to be taking forever to boot these days. You might want to run this piece of software and take a look and see if you might be able to improve that boot time. And it's free. And it's free. And it's Windows only. So not Mac-oriented. And I tried it this morning, and it works. So just something to think about for a particular situation. Switch gears here a little bit. These are some instructions, and it's long. If you print this out, it's like five or six pages long. But it's how to take an old router and turn it into what's called a Wi-Fi repeater. So for those of you in libraries that offer public Wi-Fi, maybe you've got some dead zones in your building, or you've got some really areas with weak signals. You can take one of your older routers, and it supports a lot of different brands. And you can actually do some things to it software-wise so that it will actually repeat your Wi-Fi signal and boost it and add extra range to it. And of course, the one old Wi-Fi router I had in my house, it doesn't work on that one. But if you've got one of these LinkSys blue boxes floating around, it definitely will work with that. Like I said, the instructions are pretty detailed. They are pretty long. They do involve updating the firmware on your router, which is the software that's built into the machine. But I did understand all the instructions, and it should work, and all the comments say it worked pretty well. But give yourself a good half hour at least to set aside to read the instructions and try to pull this off. But I just want to throw it out there. You can buy one of these things for $30. If that solves your dead zone issues in your building, that might be a cheaper way to go to boost the signal instead of adding some other equipment. So, you know, just an idea. Back to my list here. Oh, this one. Okay, if you run Firefox after this, go find this page, and install this. This is a plug-in for Firefox that will automatically on a lot of websites switch you over to a secure connection. Especially if you're on Wi-Fi. This is that HTTPS. This is that when you log into your banking or when you log into Gmail, you want to have that secure connection so nobody can read what's going on between your computer and the other computer. Especially important in Wi-Fi, also very important on landline machines. Literally, all you do to install it is you bring up this page in Firefox, and you click this button here that says click here to encrypt the web. And it will say, do you want to install this? So, you log in and it works and it works beautifully. From that point forward, whenever you go to Gmail, whenever you go to a whole bunch of other websites, you will automatically get an encrypted connection in your browser. So, actually, I would highly recommend this if Firefox is the browser you're using on your public machines, install this. Give your patrons that kind of added level of extra security that they don't even have to ask for. They just have it. If you have this on a laptop and you connect to Wi-Fi a lot, and you use Firefox, you want to install this. I highly recommend it. I've installed it, but I generally use Chrome. So, this almost makes me want to go back to Firefox just a little bit, but I'm still loving the Chrome. So, highly recommended. If you do one thing out of this whole session, do this one right here. What's next? Ah, yes. OCLC called Nexon Client. Yeah, well, okay. I'm not here to talk about OCLC. I'm here to talk about Connection Client. Basically, if you buy a new computer these days, chances are it's going to be a 64-bit version of Windows. Go back to our archives. I've talked about this with Diane and other people. We've talked about should I buy 32-bit, should I buy 64-bit, blah, blah, blah, blah. Generally, I recommend 64-bit. This is what we have in my house. Well, my wife is a contract cataloger. So she has to use Connection Client. And the problem was is that Connection Client would not install on 64-bit systems. End of story. It just says, sorry, I won't install. OCLC has gotten their act together. They have released... Finally, as Krista says, I've blogged about this personally, they have released a new version, Connection Client version 2.2. You only need to install this if you have a 64-bit version of Windows. You do not need to upgrade it to it for any other reason than that. So now, instead of running a virtual machine with Windows XP on my wife's computer, so she can run Connection Client, I now can just install Connection Client for her and it works. So if you're thinking about getting new staff computers for your catalogers, they use Connection Client. If this was an issue, this issue has been solved. Yes. And I have installed it. It seems to work just fine. We've noticed no issues. The fact that it even installed was the plus. I just assumed it's work. My wife hasn't complained about it yet. 64-bit version of Connection Client is now available. What else have I got? I've always got a whole bunch of stuff here. This one. Nitro PDF Reader. This actually... I forgot to talk to Krista about this yesterday. I forgot about it. Adobe Reader. Adobe Acrobat Reader doesn't do much. It displays, it rotates, it resizes. This is a free PDF Reader that will actually do a whole heck of a lot of other things, such as pulling text out of PDFs, allowing you to type directly onto the page. Yes, I know. I completely forgot about this. Krista had a separate issue. There's an example that just shows on the screen about changing or inserting a graphic of your signature, things like that. If you're looking to do a little more with your PDFs but don't want to or don't need to purchase the full Acrobat Reader, you might want to try this should solve maybe some of your problems for you. And it's free. It looks, there's even an iPad app it looks like. A few others I want to throw in here. Browser plugin check. This works in Internet Explorer. This works in Firefox and this works in Chrome, even though it is from the Mozilla Foundation. This is a little site you go to and what it will do is it will look at your browser's plugins and if able it will tell you whether your plugins are up to date or not. So for this example it's noticed I do have the Java plugin I have the Silverlight plugin I have the Flash plugin I have the Acrobat plugin I have the Quicktime plugin yada yada yada and they are all up to date. If there was a newer version available it would give me a button that says this is out of date click here to upgrade it. Really really handy. Now it doesn't cover everything. For example here are three that basically say I know you've got them but I can't tell what version they are and since I can't tell what version they are I can't tell you if they're up to date. So what you can do is you can click this research button it will kind of take you through a process to try to figure out what version you have and compare that to what the current version is. So you know it's a little bit of security because usually they update the plugin because of security issues. So just something you can quickly check out. Can Firefox do this automatically sometimes? I'll get a message sometimes in Firefox saying we found a new... The organization has pushed the update. Yes. This might catch some of them earlier. And not all plugins will push updates at all. It just installs once and you're done. So just kind of an extra step maybe something to take a look at. Wouldn't hurt to run it once just to see what's going on. This is something I like to do on all of my computers a lot is make sure I'm using the latest version of everything. That's a good way to remember what the heck did I all install on here. I remember all the plugins I've put on. And this computer has got a really short list. These are pretty much all the defaults. Some of my computers at home I've got a four page list of plugins I've installed in my browsers. Just some things to think about. Okay. Internet connections being a bit... Yeah. Plug-in check went through like 12 screens. That's nice. Kind of slow. Close some of these up too here. Zillysoft I think that's how you say it. That's the name of the company. The free online video converter. This may not apply to some of you. This may apply to some of you. I literally had to do this the other day. I got a video. It was quick time video. I embed it in a PowerPoint presentation. Well, PowerPoint doesn't allow you to embed quick time video. You can embed AVI. You can embed Windows Media video. You can embed all these other versions except for the version I had it in. So I needed to convert it for quick time to Windows Media video. And so literally all I had to do was I walked through this. I added my file. I said I wanted to output it as in this case I must have done it as an AVI. And it will actually also convert a video to just an audio file if you want. So if you want just the audio out of something. You enter your email address and you click convert. It uploads your video to the system. It processes. Now, that process I've seen it take up to 5 hours. I've also seen it take 10 minutes. It really depends on how busy the system is and how big your video file is. It can't be over 100 megabytes by the way. You click that convert. You wait. You will get an email that says your conversion is done. Here is the link and you download your converted video file. Very nice. And so far I've had I think with this one there's lots of other ones out here. I just find this one is kind of the simplest to use on the screen there. But I do believe I've had 100% success rate. So if you need a video file with one version converted to another check out the online converter here. Really soft. They also make software you can buy that will do a lot more and things like that. But you know they got a free kind of online quick and easy sort of do that. All right. This I love this program. This is the Nine Night Easy PC setup. I had to upgrade a laptop recently. And I went from Windows Vista to Windows 7. And in this case I couldn't do the upgrade for various reasons. I had to scrub the hard drive and reinstall the operating system from scratch. Which you know, serious pain in the butt. But it gives you a nice clean install, fresh machine you know, nice. But you know I had programs on there that I was going to have to reinstall. We just got my step daughter, she's going off to college in next week. And we just got her laptop. And I knew there was a bunch of software I was going to need to install on her computer. And if you've ever been through this process how fun is it to search and go to two dozen different websites, download two dozen different programs and then hit install on each one. I have to sit there and click next, next, next, yes, next, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Pain in the butt. This program has totally changed how I think about this process. You literally go through this list and it starts with browsers and messaging programs and media programs and imaging. There's dozens of programs on here. Security software, run times other programs, utilities, compression you check all the ones you want. So I was going to say well you know what on this computer I want Chrome and I need to go install Skype and I use Messenger here and I do iTunes and Hulu and I edit stuff in Audacity and I go through this whole list and then you click this wonderful little get installer button once you've done this. And it downloads a small executable program. And you run that program and it's going to look something like this screen shot up here on the top. You run that program and this program will go out download the latest version of all the programs you checked and install them without you having to click the single button. Cool. Walk away and make a cup of coffee. Yep, walk away and make a cup of coffee as long as you have an internet connection it's going to work. Now it installs everything with the defaults. So if you know you want to do something like for some reason this one particular program you know you want to install them a D drive instead of the C drive or something like that then you need to go through the process manually. But if you just want dozens of programs installed I mean it literally took I think the whole thing on Sarah's laptop it took maybe 30 minutes to install a couple dozen programs. I mean it was amazing and then she's her Skype was there, her Firefox was there her PDF Raider software was there. It was wonderful. Saved me so much time. This is a definite must use if you're the type of person who sets up new computers. I mean it doesn't have everything but it does also have somewhere in here is a suggest a piece of software. Yeah, so it's like if we don't have it we'll see if we can do it sort of thing and it'll get you the latest version too which is you know a definite plus. How are we doing on time here? Okay we started 10 minutes late so we're going to keep going a little bit. Let me jump around here a little bit. I mentioned Converters before. This is what I was working with Christie yesterday although a different version of what I was working with. Oh and this is PDF to PowerPoint. I'm sorry. This Converter we talked about a video converter before. This one is somebody sends you a PowerPoint presentation but it's in PDF Yeah I know that bugs me too. I'm like give me the PowerPoint file. Don't give me the PDF. Well this will take a PDF and convert it back to PowerPoint for you. I'm getting that one. Yeah. So you literally upload your PDF. You click you enter your email address just like you did on the video one and in a little bit it'll send you a link and you download your PowerPoint file. Now it might not it will be a PPT it might not be exactly which individual thing is editable like they originally created it but it will be more editable than it was in the PDF. I find it easier to work with the format in how they a person originally created it than in something else because it's just it's clunkier when you're in the PDF you're like wait this isn't it's a PowerPoint I should be able to go advance to this or do something different make it a little Yeah. You won't get animations back. That's okay. If that's you know as a video embedded the video will suddenly appear again. It's still coming from a PDF back to a PowerPoint. Some people do print out their PowerPoints to view or to take notes on or whatever and if someone has sent it in a PDF and each slide is one page oh I hate that. Right. Actually you know true if you convert it back to a PowerPoint. I can put six slides in a page if I want to or three or however many fit and then it takes up less paper and it's just more room to write and it's just I just don't understand making a PDF. Well you make it a PDF because pretty much everybody can open PDFs and there are three people in the world who can't open PowerPoints at this point so you know just in case you're sending to one of those three people so okay we're getting a little starchy. Sorry. That's alright. You saved me a lot of time. Yes. Okay here's another tool I find this really cool now I've already mentioned excuse me that I make a lot of screenshots okay and I have software I've purchased to make screenshots. Yes. In fact I use it for my writing a lot so I am going to change the size of this to lose that animation there because that's going to kill our bandwidth. But and that software I've purchased will allow me to do a lot of things that just hitting like all print screen won't do. Yes. So what if you're going to afford the software and in a particular situation you want to create a screenshot of a web page but that web page scrolls okay now the software I spend 50 bucks on will do this for me okay but not everybody has that not everybody needs that what you do here is you put in the URL of the web page you want and I'm only going to go so far with this process and you click take screenshot and after a couple of seconds what it will do is it will do a screenshot of the full page as if you scroll and give you back I think it's a jpeg but I will admit I've had mixed success sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't and I have yet to figure out what the cause of it not working is right it could be just a glitchy system it could be that particular web page I don't know but if you need a screenshot of a long multi-screen web page here is a free option for you that will probably work how's that for an answer it's the only one I found I mean so you know if I find a better one I'll point people to it but at the moment this is pretty much it so you know little utility available to you alright let me just show you one or two more here try to and actually these other two I'm not going to talk about those sometimes I bookmark things and then I decide you know not worth it this was cool you can say email, text or at reply so you can get an email you can get a text message or you can get an at reply via twitter and then a certain website is up so let's say OCLC is down okay and you know what I want a text message at my phone number excuse me if I don't put my phone number in there and tell it that I am I would have to actually find my service provider here probably Verizon not a pager PCS they've got a lot of service yes they do I mean it's worldwide email is probably the easiest one email me when oclc.org is up again and you put your email address in there and you click K thanks and then you just sit back so you've got that OCLC is down okay I'm sorry does that happen or not I don't know OCLC never goes down but when it does you can set up this little notice when it's back up again and what this service will do is it will check now I'm not sure I think it's like once a minute but don't hold me to that it's pretty darn often and the moment we'll definitely get it back to you more a lot quicker than the service itself saying oh we're back up or you don't have to sit there and go refresh refresh refresh refresh or you know whatever so and I love the fact that it's email really really handy so if there's a website you really got to have back up again and it's down this will notify you when it's back up again I think that's really really handy I've used it a couple of times alright that's my list that's a lot we didn't do this last month because we had a full interview with Tim Spalding so I had some extra stuff kind of left over from last month anybody have nobody's covered any questions while Michael was speaking does anybody have any questions for him while we are still here hit me not literally not on video no questions coming in if that's fine and you know if again I will stress we have some people who haven't been on these before don't worry about you know you missed a URL you missed the name of something we will on the recording you will get an email about it there will be a link to a delicious page yes with all of this content on it so including the one or two things I didn't actually get into all that much mostly due to time issues but experiment for yourself find the two that weren't on there and I will try to remember to link to Blippi Blippi Blippi is a completely different service does something very different but Blippi we will link to that if that sounded interesting to you so what Omaha will be using to kind of create their iPod iPad versions of the catalog I do believe OCLC is actually involved in that also there was a WorldCat connection they are doing things like putting WorldCat anywhere and everywhere they can absolutely maybe we should get one of the super geeks we know from OCLC to talk about future stuff we know one or two actually Karen we will work on that it's an idea speaking of future sessions we already know we are going to interview next month which is July 28th we will be talking to Bobby Newman about library transliteracy and what does that mean I'm kind of intentionally not knowing I want to find out from her she talks about it a lot on twitter I know there is a library transliteracy blog and so I'm going to kind of play it in the noob next week and ask her what all that is about it sounds really interesting based on the few things that I have heard so I highly encourage you to tune in that will be a month from now as Michael said that is our next tech talk July 28th the last Friday in July and next week our next week is Nebraska libraries host prime time family reading time which is a family reading program designed for low-end families Erica Hamilton who is the state coordinator of this program from the Nebraska Humanities Council will be with us to talk about this family reading program that sounds interesting so we hope you join us then so thank you very much I don't think anyone has any questions no thank you very much for joining us and this recording will be available later today maybe tomorrow you'll get an email and we'll send it out to you and they'll be up on our website so thank you very much