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I'll start off by saying, I'm bad at managing information from conferences.  I think I'm writing this as a way to start pondering how to be better at it.  I always go to conferences thinking, "this time I'll blog" or "I'll make sure I will get my pictures up right away", or even that I'll take notes and reflect on everything that I hear, but anybody who has been to conferences knows that this is so difficult.  Then you get home, you're so exhausted, and it hits you that you actually have another life that you've been neglecting!

This time I decided to blog before the conference... hopefully that counts...

So tomorrow I'll be on my way to the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in Columbus, Ohio (by the way, Go Bucks!)  I went to this conference last year as a student volunteer, this year I'm going as a student...

You learn what works from each conference you go to when it comes to managing information (there's just so much of it).  I think the key is really finding a way to aggregate everything to one place so you can find it later.  Is that a blog?  Is that something else?  I'm not sure yet.  Tags help, but it's difficult when there isn't a known tag before the conference starts, or there's a couple variations of tags.  It's good to find these things out beforehand.  Also, it's hard to blog from an event when there isn't internet... this is one of the main problems of the ASIS&T conference.  There's internet, but you have to pay for it, so most people don't bring their laptops, or they skip internet access for the event.  I also remember poor reception inside the meeting rooms last year.  I really am hoping the internet situation is better this year.

How do you keep up?

I don't have one method down yet, but I think I like to keep track of what's going on using the tools I already use.  This makes sense right?  There is a wiki for this event, there's a few things posted (but not much), I do think I pulled the tag 'asist2008' off of there, so that's what I'll try to use for the event.  I try to monitor Twitter, Flickr, and Delicious during and after events.  I don't regularly use Technorati (other than monitoring my own blog traffic), but I do throw that in for conferences to see if anybody's blogging.  That sounds like a lot, but if you can aggregate the feeds from the tools you most regularly use, you can either create 1. a decent journal of your own activity at the conference, or 2. a feed of all activity at the conference... depending on the participation level.

For IA Summit last spring I created a public Google Reader feed of these items, which was interesting for keeping up during the conference, I've already created one for ASIS&T 2008 to see how well this works again.  The Google Reader page is a nice format and not a bad way to catch up with things.  Of course all of these feeds are in one folder of my normal Google Reader, I like to make it public in case anybody else finds it useful.  Oh and it seems that Google has been changing their shared pages features and I think I'm stuck with the fish themed page, at least for now, the page where I was able to change the theme before has disappeared.

I wanted to create a FriendFeed room (well I did create one), but it turned out to be rather limiting for events like this.  I had difficulty adding anything more than Flickr photos, so I guess FriendFeed is better for individuals rather than groups or conferences.  All I ended up doing was add my public Google Reader feed, so it's just duplicating my other feed, but the FriendFeed room gives people the ability to comment on items.  Things can also be posted directly to the FriendFeed room too, but I'm not sure if that's a feature I would use at a conference.  I'm honestly not happy with the FriendFeed room right now so I don't know if that's something I'll keep messing with.

I recently discovered that Twitter Search (formerly Summize) is awesome for real time updates to what's going on with Twitter... I like to keep this open in a tab in my browser if I can (not sure on the number of Twitterers at this event though).  I think Hahlo on the iPhone has a Twitter search, not sure about tracking events on any of the other apps or how they work.  I tend to be more laptop centric at events.  I suppose if internet is flaky then I could use my iPhone more.

Flickr & Pics

I'm going to bring the Eye-Fi card, but I've never successfully got it to work on a wireless network other than my own.  To have pics automatically uploaded to my computer and to Flickr during a conference would be cool.  If I can get it to work then I'll probably let go of my perfectionist angst over pictures and use Picnik to edit them right away online.  If I can't get it to work, I'll probably make the effort to put them up right away from my computer, or later in the evening at the hotel.  I'm bad about pictures... mostly the perfectionist thing, I like to edit them all before I post them online, but then I never have time for this.  Sometimes I publish the photos real quick and edit them later to replace them on Flickr.  As I'm writing this I realized I never published my photos from ACPL Library Camp... this is why I need to do these things right away!

Liveblogging

I have mixed feelings about liveblogging.  On one hand I like the idea of just getting it all out there, because I know I won't sit down and form a well thought out blog post like I should.  On the other hand, I don't always like reading other people's notes as live blogs (twitter posts I don't mind so much though).  Maybe the best way to approach liveblogging is just to aggregate?  Or is it a wiki format?  I'm really just looking for a way to keep this information for myself.  An interesting liveblogging tool is ScribbleLive, which I discovered some time ago and looks pretty fun.  There's some cool embedding feature with ScribbleLive, and I think you can aggregate things like Twitter to it too, but the embed tools seem to only work with WordPress right now.

My dilemma is that I often take notes at conferences and then they never get published somewhere where they'd be of any use to anybody... including myself, they usually just get lost somewhere on my computer.  I guess it depends on what I get the most value out of during the talks.  I like links to resources, websites, and even the presentation itself so I can refer to it again later.  This is the sort of stuff I think I need to keep better track of during events.

I know a lot of people like using their mobile phone for conference blogging, but I really don't like typing out long things on my iPhone so I use that more to check in with Twitter friends and email.  I do like to take a few quick pics with my phone and upload them to my Tumblr though.

Another interesting thing is keeping track of all of the people you meeting, who are either on different social networks or no social networks.  I collect people on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and LinkedIn pretty regularly.  It would wonderful if there was an easier way to manage those connections in one place.

I am looking for new suggestions in this area.  I think I pick up new thoughts on this as I go to different events.  In summary it seems the best ways to approach this type of information management is to collect thoughts quickly (and clearly), in an aggregated sort of way, and to make sure you have the appropriate access to a network during the event.  Realistically, getting this stuff collected after an event seems pretty difficult to do anymore.  I'm curious how other people like to manage information from conferences and what they do with it once they have it.

My mode of operation seems to save knowledge of specific features, products, tools, whatever, in the back of my brain until the need for them surfaces.  I guess this is sort of what happened with Prism.  My knowledge of Prism really started with my decision to simply not download Google Chrome.  I'm not against the browser, I just feel I'm too invested in Firefox as my web browser, and as much as I would love to play around with the new browser, I simply don't have the time.  So I didn't download it.

But some of the features do intrigue me, which is why when I saw the article in Lifehacker about putting Chrome's best features into Firefox, I filed that in the back of my brain for when the need surfaced.  I've picked up a few good extensions out of this article, but the one that I didn't think I would really have a need for, turns out to be pretty cool, and that is the Prism for Firefox extension.

Prism is an extension that allows you to create stand alone applications from any website.  I'm really browser based, I admit it.  I don't mind having multiple tabs open and working out of the browser.  That's why I wasn't sure this application would be one I used often.  The feature in Chrome to allow tabs to run as separate processes seemed like a good and useful one though.  In a way, Prism sort of replaces that function in Firefox, but you have to choose which sites you want to be made into applications.

I don't usually try these things until a need comes up, and last week the need appeared out of frustration.  If you follow me on Twitter you may have noticed I have absolutely no love for the course management tool, Blackboard.  We use it for all of our classes, and I think it fails on both functionality and usability.  Last week as I was trying to post a video link to a presentation to the discussion board of one of my classes, my browser crashed multiple times.  I also had tabs open that I didn't necessarily want to lose, but because my browser crashed with Blackboard open each time, each time I restored the session it would crash again.  The crash resulted in multiple postings on the discussion board even, which I found absolutely annoying.

It's not the first time I had browser crashes with Blackboard open in my browser.  It's just such a problematic site that I come to expect it to happen again.  That's when I remembered that extension, which I did download to my browser, but hadn't had an opportunity to try it out yet.  I decided to create a new application for Blackboard using Prism thinking that in the future if it decides to crash it won't take down my whole browser.

Not only has it not crashed, but it runs beautifully in the window!  I'm impressed, although don't think that leaves Blackboard off the hook, it should run with no problems in Firefox too.  I shouldn't have to use it in an outside environment to make it work!

Things I like about Prism:

• When I minimize, it can minimize to the system tray (yea, less task bar clutter!)
• I can create a desktop icon, start menu icon, or quick start icon (or all 3).  The nice thing about the start menu icon though is that I can now open directly using search in Windows Vista.  I do have a desktop icon created too.
  
• The window is uncluttered and simple, I see this coming in handy for doing things like screencasts!
• Links open in your browser, not your application window.

This could work for creating a desktop application for Gmail, or at work I decided to create a little application for our ILS, which is web based and normally I just open in a new tab.  It's really easy to use too, just visit the website, go to tools, convert website to application, check a few options... done.  It may not be a total replacement to Chrome's tab processing feature, but it works for what I need it to do.

Tonight (er, this morning) I'm working on a multimedia presentation for my Information Architecture class.  I really enjoy putting presentations together.  Last winter I did one using screencasting which I enjoyed, and this semester we're required to appear on video so I've been trying out different tools to accomplish this.

A few days ago I put a question out on Twitter asking if anybody knew a good tool for including video and PowerPoint together, Nick DeNardis responded back saying that SlideRocket "changed how he did presentations forever", so I decided to check it out.  Let me just say, wow!  I don't know why I haven't looked at this sooner.  The presentations look really simple, and they're completely editable in the web browser.  You can add video, audio, and/or images really easily, and presentations can be shared online through the web browser, or if you like an offline viewer can be downloaded.

As with any new thing there's been a bit of a learning curve for me though.  This is a group presentation for an online class so we have to collaborate completely online.  My classmates and I have to all appear on video at some point during the presentation too.  You can add video to PowerPoint I guess, but another group did this in what looked to be an attractively packaged presentation, but the video boxes included within the presentation did not play for myself or another group member.  I'm not sure why.  SlideRocket uses Flash video, is easy to learn, and the presentations really flow much better than anything I could ever create in a PowerPoint.

I was up for the challenge of combining all of these elements together, video, audio, basic PowerPoint slides (yes, you can import .ppt files!), into one presentation though.  I mentioned that SlideRocket uses Flash video, it does also accept .mov or .mp4 movie formats, but I opted for the flash, it seemed more native to what I was trying to do.  First I did raw editing of the camera .avi files in Windows Movie Maker, which is what I usually use.  It's easy for me to use, it's on my computer, it just works.  I exported those into .wmv files.  Exporting to .wmv always seem to work the best when I'm working in Windows Movie Maker.  Keeping them in the .avi format (which is actually the default) makes them huge and even distorted so I pick an appropriate sized .wmv setting to match the dimensions of the original .avi file.

I had to hunt around for a tool that does media conversion.  Luckily I didn't have to hunt too far as Lifehacker did a pick of top 5 media converters on Sunday!  I eventually went with SUPER, I'm not impressed with the interface or their website (both are difficult to navigate), but it had the most options and I wanted to do two different conversations with my .wmv files.  Despite the confusing interface, the converter works really well once you get it going!

I converted each file into a .flv and a .mp3, and now I'm in the process of uploading those to SlideRocket and incorporating them into my slides.  I wanted one of each so I could decide between a video or just an audio for slides, I didn't necessarily think that the video had to be on every slide, but the audio certainly does since this presentation will be delivered online.

It's a long process, but I have learned a few things along the way... although I'm hoping to get a few hours sleep tonight!

I love Twitter, and I was already fully aware of the usefulness of the microblogging service in a personal and professional setting, but just now, in a very serendipitous way, I discovered how a combination of Google, Blog Posts, and Twitter can get you exactly the information you need in school research too.  I'm very inspired by this.

I'm putting together one part of a presentation on Usability in Web Design for my Information Architecture class, my particular topic in this presentation is defining and describing what usability is, and I have reached the section where I wanted to talk about some considerations for usability in web design.  I have found some incredible resources, but I sort of got stuck with browser considerations, at least in a very general sort of way that I can sum up for my classmates, with maybe a few very general tools.  I'm talking real basic here... things that librarians can understand without overwhelming them.

Ugh! I know browser compatibility is needlessly complex (thanks to browsers being needlessly non-standards based), I've totally been there, but I didn't realize finding a general article, blog post, anything would be that difficult.  And to be honest with you, I can't even trace my path back to how I initially found this nugget by Jared Spool on UIE (I do know it started with Google and veered in some strange direction after that), but I'm thrilled that I did, and it was even posted yesterday!!

In sum, a client asked Jared if he could recommend an article on designing for specific browsers for one of his clients.  Jared admitted he didn't that he didn't know the answer, but thought somebody must know.  Since Twitter is awesome like this, Jared posed the question to his network and got some good responses from people he knew.  Then he posted the question and responses on his UIE blog in a simple sort of digest form, which I can now benefit from with my own research.

Thank you to Jared who thought to post these responses so that others may be able to enjoy!  I looked through a few of the suggested links and did find some resources closer to what I was initially hoping to find when I started on this web searching journey. 

More evidence that Twitter just rocks.

Everybody manages their personal information differently, and if you read through some blog posts here you can see that I usually struggle with managing mine.  The iPhone has definitely made it easier, but it's taking some work to get everything organized to a point to where I'm happy.

The push/sync stuff is pretty cool, but the price tag of MobileMe is not.  I am on the trial of it right now, but I'm not getting much use out of it.  First off, I'm not a Mac user, and I'm quite happy not being one.  It does work with Windows and Outlook, but I'm also not an Outlook user.  My calendar doesn't change very much in one day either.  Maybe it would be useful if I had a lot to manage, or if I was already accustomed to using .Mac or something, but I don't.

I live online with everything, including my email and calendar.  I realize Google pretty much owns me, but it works for me, and even the iPhone makes it work easier. 

Email

Setting up Gmail to sync and even push to the iPhone is not a problem, there is an option for this in iTunes already.  I don't have my email app on the first page though.  While I do use the iPhone app for email, I still prefer to check my email in the Gmail page (which is nicely optimized for the phone).  The app is good for checking how many new messages I have, or quickly browsing new email, but I cannot star or archive mail there so I still prefer visiting Gmail online.

Contacts

Managing contacts on the iPhone is awesome.  You can call, email, map addresses, even visit hyperlinks straight from the contact page.  It is so useful... assuming you have updated information stored in there.

There is an option to import contacts from Gmail, but my contact list there scared me.  Gmail likes to automatically add frequently emailed contacts in your list of regular contacts, and I accumulated a scary list of people I didn't know over the years.  It took me about a day and a half, but I got this list down to about 100 real contacts that I could be happy with keeping in my phone.  I went the extra step of looking up friends on other social networks (Facebook mostly) to make sure I had updated contact information for them.  I can also import vcards from LinkedIn and other networks that will merge with existing contacts in Google.

Once this is done the contacts can automatically sync to my iPhone when I plug in to iTunes.  Now I can update contacts on my iPhone or in Gmail and they will be the same in both places.

I can push contacts to the phone too, but I haven't set that up yet.  The process will be the same as the calendar push I talk about next.  I just wanted to try the push out with the calendar first so I didn't accidentally delete a bunch of contacts while playing around with it.

Calendar

The only thing that the iPhone didn't support was syncing the calendar with Google Calendar.  There is an optimized page for Google Calendar, but the app version of the calendar is actually quite a bit nicer.  I can change the views and get reminders, and it's accessible even when the internet is slow or off.

Having your Google calendar sync to your iPhone without using MobileMe is actually possible.  I originally found the solution on Lifehacker, but the blog post that explains it is here:

Using Google as a *free* MobileMe alternative (with push contacts & calendar)

It's a multi step process, and everything seemed to work fairly well for me.

There was a problem with the captcha unlock not going through right away, but NuevaSync emailed me to fix that.  Once I did the calendar syncing happened with no other problems.

This only syncs your main calendar to the phone.  I have many many many different calendars in my Google Calendar, which will not appear on the calendar app, but that's fine with me.  The main calendar is where all the important stuff is anyway.  To view the other calendars the Google Calendar page is still a good place to go on the iPhone.

If you do a contact sync through NuevaSync you can also use Google, the difference between this and what is already native to iTunes is that the contacts will be pushed to your phone without the sync from iTunes, which is a pretty good deal.

If you're a Plaxo user you can also set up Plaxo to sync with your contacts on your phone with this service.  I've only been playing around a little bit with Plaxo, but so far I'm pretty happy with what I can do with my Google contacts so I probably won't be switching things around.

I have no compelling reason to keep my MobileMe after the trial now.  I did mess around some with the photo gallery, and there seems to be other cool features, but nothing I can't get elsewhere for free (as opposed to $99/year).  The photo gallery seems really nice by the way, but I had some frustration using it because it seemed to integrate more with iPhoto, which I obviously don't have being a Windows person.

Now that some of my personal information is cleaned up, especially the contacts, I think I will be more diligent about keeping it that way. 

** Update **

I just turned on the NuevaSync option for contacts on my phone and one really really awesome feature is that it also connects the profile pics that the person sets in Gmail as their contact image on my phone!

This morning I've been looking at a variety of blogging tools made specifically for the iPhone. There's a lot of near tools out there but I'm really impressed with the iMT plugin for Movable Type. Once installed it simply renders your dashboard automatically optimized for use on the iPhone.

I suspect I might use Tumblr more for mobile blogging, I will have to play around with the tools to see what I'm more comfortable with.

This blog has been quiet but I've been around. I'm over on FriendFeed and Twitter a lot and I have been using Tumblr for shorter posts on random things. I like to think of this blog as a place for well thought out expression which is probably why you haven't seen much on here lately. Hopefully there's more rolling around in my head after summer vacation is over.

Oh and yes I did type this entire blog post on my iPhone. I think I'm realy getting used to typing on the keypad. It's small but not so bad.

If you haven't been using Drop.io you should.  This is like the Swiss Army Knife of file sharing and they keep adding new features all the time.  It's easy, you don't need to create an account, you can control privacy on drops, and you can even control how long a drop stays online. 

An intriguing feature of Drop.io is the ability to add drops by phone, which are saved to your drop page as mp3 files.  There's also number for conference calls, but these won't be recorded to your drop.  I haven't tried it yet, but the fax option appears to be interesting as well.  Faxes can come in and out of your drop.  To receive a fax, however, the sender has to use a special cover sheet.  I don't send faxes very often myself, but this will be handy when I have to, and I could do it easily from home instead of waiting until the next time I work.

Drop.io has recently added document viewing with Scribd's iPaper.  Since iPaper is flash based, it allows people to view your documents even if they don't have a compatible program (Office 2003 vs. Office 2007 for example).  I'm also a huge fan of Scribd and do enjoy it when things I like are compatible with one another.

I see a huge potential for Drop.io in the area of collaboration or group work, especially with so many different ways to connect to the drop. 

Being so inherently digital, you might never think that I have an obsession with paper.  I love the way it looks, and the way it feels.  I especially enjoy a clean sheet of paper.  I always remember how happy I was to pull out a new sheet of paper in school, and how sad I was to have to write on it.  The first words I wrote on the sheet always had to be perfect, if they weren't then it felt like I let the paper down.  I do still rely a lot on paper.  I like holding paper books (although audio is quickly becoming my preferred format), and journal articles on paper (yes I print them from databases, it's so difficult to read them online).  I still buy paper calendars every year that I stop using after a few months.  I prefer to read my magazines analog style.  I buy notebooks that mostly remain unused (with the exception of my moleskine, which only works because I have imposed no organizational system to confuse and befuddle its purpose as a notebook of randomness).

Given all that, I always thought I would be the last person in the world to finally say, "I'm going paperless."  Well it's time.  Paper is controlling my life, and it's sucking my time.  I really believe it's beyond GTD too.  Paper just seems to be the way we operate, even still in a digital world.  There's the junk mail, the non-junk mail, the paper receipts, the little notes we write to remember, the keepsakes.  We're drowning in it, and a lot of it is because we just like paper.  Paper is a thing we can touch, and see.  Paper has a place, and if doesn't have a place you can make a place for it.  Digital exists in random formats, it can exist in many places at once.  Some of us still have not been able to wrap our heads around digital, but the shift will happen, and needs to happen.  Sometimes paper is good, and we need it, but often, with the right tools, it's not necessary.  This epiphany has been brewing for awhile.  It seems every few months I spend entire weekends sorting through paper.  Weekends that could be better spent doing other things. 

How do you go paperless in a paper filled world?  Like with most digital technologies, the way a person uses it, and the tools that they use are a matter of personal balance.  My desire to become paperless seems a bit schizophrenic at times too.  The tools depend on the place I'm at, or the access I have at that moment.  The key is to know what tools you have an how to use them.  However I do admit this is rather natural for a librarian, this is how we approach our jobs.

Mail is a huge issue, my solution is to try to deal with it as it comes in.  This doesn't always work for me, and at the moment it's a bit piled up.  Moving bills and statements to paperless is a step in the right direction though.  Plus it's now in my inbox, which is grand central to my life.  From there I can delegate to Sandy or deal with it as it comes in. 

Where I've made the most success is with receipts.  I just don't take them anymore.  I never did anything with them anyway.  If I do get them, they no longer go in my wallet, where they would pile up for years, they now go in my purse where I shred/recycle them when I get home.  I now keep track of my expenses when I'm out using Xpenser.  This simple web app takes my expenses either by Jott, Twitter, IM or SMS, and yes I have used all of them depending on the situation.  Jott works well when I'm recording messages by myself.  If I don't want to announce to the world how much money I just spent at Borders then I use SMS.  Sitting at my computer IM and Twitter also work very well.  I get an email, which is a nice reminder to transfer those purchases to Quicken the next time I'm at my computer, a practice I sometimes neglected in the past has taken a drastic upswing with a few simple changes in productivity. 

An added bonus of Xpenser is tracking my gas mileage.  When I purchase gas I also send the price I paid per gallon and my car's current mileage to Xpenser in the note field.  I use these numbers to then update FuelFrog next time I'm at my computer so I can keep an eye out on my current mileage.  All without bothering with little bits of paper.  The reports make it easy to glance at similar purchases at once for quick comparisons of purchases.

My new favorite tool is Evernote.  The updated version of this note taking service is now in public beta and I think it's a fabulous way to sync information from computer to web.  The mobile version is currently inaccessible to me and my phone, but I think when I finally get a decent phone this will be an indispensable app.  I don't care for the Windows client interface, but it works, and it can still sync to digital.  I've already determined that Evernote would be a service that I would actually pay money for because it is incredibly useful.  I'm able to integrate this with Jott, I can call in notes directly to Evernote without being at my computer or online with my phone.  I would love to use Evernote as a repository of all things digital and all things that become digital.

The bridge to all of these things for me has really been my phone.  My failure with paper has been syncing the digital with the analog.  One day I realized that when I'm not at my computer I do always have my phone, that's when the eureaka moment hit me.  I can use voice, or text, or the phone's browser to keep the flow of information digital without being at my computer to produce a digital output.  It works, and it's because of these tools, and the APIs, and the simple ways that these systems talk to one another that it does work. 

Once I clear the paper off of it, I will be using my scanner more to archive things in digital formats.  I want this stuff out of my life (in the physical sense) and not taking up space.  I hope less paper also means more time for blogging, which I noticed has taken an obvious dip in the past month.  Now you know it's because I'm buried up to my neck in paper.

I do like Facebook, while I'm not on it as much as I used to be, I still try to check it once a day.  My profile has got a bit out of control though.  I've been adding a lot of friends lately too, mostly awesome librarians, but I realized that compared to my other networks, Facebook is probably my most diverse.  I have old school friends, new school friends, people I meet at conferences, people I meet online... the personal/professional lines are criss-crossing on Facebook more than any place else.  I'm ok with adding professional friends on Facebook, but it puts more pressure on me to make sure I'm managing my online profiles a little more effectively.

The biggest reason why I like Facebook as opposed to all other social networks so far is that I get more control over who sees what on this network.  Given the nature of my network, this seems necessary too.  Of course, I also co-wrote a paper on privacy in Facebook this past semester so I'm well aware of just how granular Facebook's privacy settings are.  I think it's an often overlooked benefit of Facebook.  I know most don't care about the specific privacy features on the site, that's fine, some people do and I think it's nice to have those options available.  My personal thoughts on privacy are that each person needs to manage their identities to the point where they feel comfortable.  I'm still trying to find that balance for myself, but the specific thoughts I have on privacy online are probably best kept for another blog post.

There are some people that use Facebook as their main starting point for everything, I don't.  I use GMail, Twitter, Google Calendar, Google Reader, Del.icio.us, and a whole slew of other services that I have instead.  I like that I can put some of these services into Facebook using apps.  For me Facebook is just another place to aggregate things about me.  Yesterday I went through my applications and added a few that seemed useful, while deleting a whole lot of junk I've been collecting on the profile over time.  I also changed some privacy settings with the apps (yes you can control specific privacy settings with certain apps, it can be tedious but quite useful if you're concerned about privacy).  Also, this article from ReadWriteWeb about making Facebook useful had some good suggestions for apps, I did use it as a guide as I went.

Events

I use Facebook more for discovering events rather than managing all of them there.  Facebook's Events application is of course necessary, especially if you want to keep up on your friends' birthdays.  The Upcoming Application adds events that you are watching or attending through your Upcoming.org account to your profile.  I recently discovered an application called fbCal which allows you to view your friends' birthdays (and another link for upcoming events) in Google Calendar (or preferred calendar).  This is great application for freeing you from the burden of checking your Facebook profile everyday.

Professional Profiles

The nice thing about some of the privacy settings in Facebook now is that you can control how professional your profile appears to some of your contacts.  It does take some planning and a little bit of forethought when you add new apps to your profile (all apps are automatically defaulted to all of your networks and friends), but I don't think people have to be excluded from a network list just because someone thinks it "isn't professional enough".  The Professional Profile Application makes it easy to include your resume on your Facebook profile, and if you already have a LinkedIn profile it's even easier, it just pulls your resume from there.  The Business Cards Application allows you to create a tagline and attach a business card to your profile.  If you use Facebook to contact people professionally it can be attached to messages as a sort of signature.

Sharing Files

Box.net's Files Application allows users to share files with one another.  I personally like Box.net and I do use it on occasion, but my new favorite file sharing tool is Drop.io, I would love to see a Facebook application for this one instead.

School

The ReadWriteWeb article mentioned the Blackboard Sync Application... well as much as I loathe Blackboard, this one seemed useful, except for this nice message when I tried to add it:  "Your Blackboard system administrator has blocked access to Blackboard Sync for Facebook."  Good one WSU...

One feature I miss from old school Facebook is the ability to add my classes to my profile.  The Courses 2.0 Application fills in that gap.  If some of your other classmates are also using this application you can connect with them on there, as well as manage your class schedule.

To Dos and Calendars

There are quite a few applications to manage your to do lists and calendars, but like I already mentioned, I don't prefer to manage my life through Facebook.  I use external sites like my GMail, I Want Sandy, Twitter, and Google Calendar for personal productivity, but if you're somebody who does like to use Facebook like this, there are quite a few apps available for you.

Social Networks

Facebook started adding support to import outside social networking sites into your news feed.  I do prefer these to applications.  The reason why is because I do have problems with buggy applications killing my internet connection.  I also like simplicity.  Currently I'm importing my blog as Notes, Flickr, del.icio.us links, shared items on Google Reader, and favorite songs on Last.fm.

If you're on Twitter and/or FriendFeed, there are also a couple of applications available to put those services on your profile.  The Twitter Application will let you update your Facebook status with your tweets, this never really appealed to me though.  My new favorite site seems to be FriendFeed, the FriendFeed Application is decent.  There are lots of things going to there that are ending up on my FB profile too (like Twitter and del.icio.us), I like it on one hand, but I also wish I could avoid some of the duplication.  The profile app gets a little long too so I've put it in the extended part of my profile.

I'm playing around with a lot of location based services lately, but Dopplr is my favorite so far.  The Dopplr Application is definitely included in my profile, I'll decide if I'll be adding more later. 

I like Skype, I would like to use it more so I added the Call Me on Skype Application.  I haven't advertised my Skype presence much.  It is one of the tools I have considered using for virtual ASIS&T meetings next year.

The As Seen On Application links my profiles from other sites.  I basically copied what was already on my blog... those things are hard to keep track of when you're using so many different sites.  I think I've resorted to only including the sticky ones.

Music

I went a little overboard with the music apps before, and I think these are the ones that were killing my profile.  I've limited myself to three different ones.  I've added the Last.fm Music Application, the Music Application (this is a Rhapsody app), and I kept TuneSocial because I've been saving my CD collection to that.  The compatibility features of the Last.fm application seem especially cool.  I have the Rhapsody application added because I'm a subscriber, but I do feel that Rhapsody constantly fails with social stuff and keeping their stuff locked up tight behind closed doors.  I mostly listen to music through Rhapsody though so it's something I'm pretty tied to.

Books

I do keep track of the books I'm reading through the Books iRead Application.  I think if I can get my data exported to GoodReads or LibraryThing easily, I might switch to one of those other ones instead.  It's really helpful for me to keep track of books I want to read, sometimes I forget.

Movies

I'm not a big movie person, I used to have the Movies Application installed, and it's pretty good if you like movies, but I'm also a Netflix user so I really don't think to go on there and rate movies.  I also work in a library so knowing what movies are new or coming out is never an issue with me... whether we like it or not, librarians are constantly getting recommendations from patrons on books and movies.  I have installed the Netflix Movies Application, it shows the movies I have at home as well as what's in my queue (which I have to admit is a little scary right now, I should really clean that up).  The application on the profile is a bit bulky though, I've put it in the extended part of my profile.  Although with Netflix I'm going down to one movie a month because I just haven't been watching a lot lately.  I really don't want to cancel my account though, I love Netflix!

People

Funny thing about this RRW post, it says to find people using Spock's people search app... sorry, that just ain't happening.  I don't use Facebook much to find people, people usually find me ok.

Fun Things

I like the Friend Wheel friend visualization, also newly discovered Nexus Application for sorting through friend connections.

Fun Cards is installed but profile disabled.  I just like sending birthday cards on people's birthdays!

Geocaching Stats add a widget to my profile with my current count of geocaching finds.

Memorable Web Address for Profile is just a simple application that makes your Facebook profile URL a little cleaner and shorter.

The Where Is It Application is profile disabled, but this is a nice one for attaching maps to messages or wall posts.

Of course you can't forget the xkcd Feed Application.  Every Facebook profile needs a little funny.

Might Use More

I found that I installed the Extended Info Application and never used it.  It looks a little involved, but it could be a great way to customize my profile a little more in depth.

Apparently you can send video using Facebook Mobile using the Video Application?  I can shoot video on my sucky phone... although not sure if this is something I am interested in trying out.

Why Not?

Gifts, why not, it's a Facebook thing. 

The Photos Application isn't one I use much, but when I take pictures of people that are taggable on Facebook I like to include those pictures there.  Using Flickr kind of makes the Photos app unnecessary for me.

Groups, I join them, but they're not as useful or interesting as Pages.  I think groups are more of an identity thing.  But Pages do rock!

Posted Items is a another Facebook thing, I don't use it much, other than to post things about Facebook.

SuperPoke is currently profile disabled, but it's probably the only completely meaningless and annoying application I still have installed.

Settings

There are lot of different privacy settings and friend management features I still want to go through.  Some people don't like to "categorize" their friends, but for me it's really a way to keep track of how I know a person.  This is especially important if you meet a lot of people online or a few times every year at conferences.

Now the challenge for me is to keep from adding more stupid applications to my profile here on out.

I know, I know, I haven't posted in a long while.  I won't bother making up excuses though, I've just been busy.  I just wanted to write a short bit about my adventures into Windows Media Center, which I have to admit is pretty darn cool.  Recently I set up WMC with my TV Tuner.  The TV Tuner card was purchased with the computer, I just never hooked it up.  I have cable TV now running to my computer and I'm using WMC as a DVR.  I've even opted for watching TV on my computer, which is handy when I'm working on it, I can make the screen smaller and view both windows on the same screen, or my screen is nice and big enough that I don't mind watch across the room if I'm not working on the computer.  The tuner card did come with a cool remote and a USB censor so I can control WMC from across the room.

I was thinking today that it would be cool to be able to access the recorded TV files on the PS3, but after some reading online it looks like this might only be possible by finding a program to convert the files, and that's not really worth the effort.  I'm sure getting the PS3 to see the files is no problem, but to actually read them is another story.  I have this issue with my Rhapsody library, the PS3 will see the tracks in my library, but will not play them due to file type incompatibility.

The other thing I found for Windows Media Center is just a little plugin application called MceFM which adds some Last.fm functionality to WMC.  This sounds a lot cooler than it really is though, it's pretty limited.  I can create a queue based on tags or artists, that's just about it however.  I don't have access to any of the social aspects of Last.fm and it doesn't seem to scrobble the tracks.  The website does say it's in beta and has a request for features in the forum, so who knows, maybe it'll develop into something cool someday.

Overall, I like Windows Media Center's pretty interface, and the fact that I can control it via my remote is not bad either.  I know there's a lot more I can do with it, especially in regards to extending it to the PS3, which I hope to figure out someday.