Recently in Web Category

Unlike WordPress, the template set and amount of available theme repositories are scarce for Movable Type.  I know that WordPress is definitely more popular, but I'm pretty well settled into Movable Type and the thought of changing everything over is a huge time investment I don't want to venture into.  I don't feel like I'm stuck with Movable Type, I kind of like it.  MT is a powerful blogging platform and I've gotten used to it, you just have to get under the hood with it a little more.

The default styles for MT are boring though.  The design tools out there don't add much to the design either, mostly just changing colors, and there's a reason for that... the StyleCatcher plugin.  The plugin is designed to make it easy to switch styles on your MT blog, it's  good idea in theory, but it can be complicated to work with in practice (which is probably why you don't see a lot of MT theme repositories out there.)  I did have a custom design awhile back, but I also had a custom CSS file that didn't match the StyleCatcher format.  I like the idea of pushing a button and being able to change my blog design, but it only works if you're willing to spend some time with StyleCatcher, this isn't really a user friendly process and you really have to understand CSS more than casually to be successful.

I'm not a designer, I'm more like a tinkerer, I can play with CSS and HTML and come up with something presentable.  I like simple and clean designs, I also like little touches, it's the little touches that can get me in trouble.  My favorite design site is Open Source Web Design, but the designs are normally static and need to be modified to fit a blog template, that's where the hacking comes in... most of the time this ends painfully.

Last night I decided to dive into StyleCatcher again, determined to make it successful.  StyleCatcher relies on two CSS files, a base file where it pulls the format based on your column layout and type of blog (in theory you can create one design then apply that same design in a variety 2 or 3 column formats).  The problem with editing this base CSS file is that all of the other StyleCatcher default themes rely on this file.  You can add your own into the directory and use that, that base file includes layout for many other "invisible" elements too, things like form spacing and buttons, comments, categories, and other things you might not consider when you're just looking at redesigning your home page.

The style CSS is stored in another directory altogether... both CSS files are called by another CSS file in your main directory.  Sure you can bypass all this stuff if you want, but it could mean more tinkering later if you need to refresh your template or upgrade your blog (which is what happened to me last year).

The approach I took was to create a new style directory, which I wanted loaded into my style gallery in MT.  I wanted to switch back and forth between my custom style or a default style if I needed to.  I also anticipate creating new blogs with the same style for some projects I have in my mind, and I wanted them to be seamless, loading them into the gallery makes them accessible to any new blog I create, now by simply applying the style.

After some playing around with the CSS and consideration, I decided not to change the base CSS file and focus on the custom style.  Working with either CSS file is a pain, they're not laid out like I would like them to be and you still have to switch back and forth to make sure you're not changing anything important.  If you want to keep the StyleCatcher functionality the most important thing is to not change any of the divs or classes, and to keep your HTML files completely in tact.  This means trying to figure out the best way to take somebody else's CSS file and translate it to something StyleCatcher can understand.

So all of that sounds like a lot of work... actually it is, but once you have it worked out it's really easy to load it into MT and applying the new design is even easier.  Movable Type has instructions for creating new themes, the one I did was #5, creating a StyleCatcher theme.  Though by the time I got to here the hard part was already done.

The current version of this design is from the website ZeroWeb and based on the theme Curiously Green by nodethritythree.  I have some more tweaks I'm going to do to the site over time, some of them will be more involved than others, but I'm pleased with the results so far.  Now, hopefully MT doesn't go messing with the StyleCatcher plugin or I'll be in big trouble.

** Update ** I added the navigation to the side last night, I'll add some more links periodically as I get the pages done, but the Lifestream is an experiment and the CSS files still need to be tweaked for that. The Lifestream is provided through Movable Type and it's known as an Action Stream plugin, it's actually a link to another blog in MT and it has yet another CSS file provided on top of the StyleCather plugin (yippee).

A new MIT study was published discrediting some of what we may believe in "the wisdom of the crowds."  The idea is that a small group of users that share a large number of reviews can distort the quality of the reviews.  I haven't read The Wisdom of Crowds (though I just downloaded the book through Audible to listen later).  I also have Crowdsourcing (saved for later listening) where the book discusses that innovation happens by opening data and resources to a large group of people.

I'm interested in the idea of crowdsourcing (or even the collective wisdom of a large group), but I immediately see its flaws.  We're often easily influenced by the reviews on Amazon or other sites, but how many of us actually go back and post our own later?  I know I don't do it very often and don't have the time.  I've started adding a few reviews to Yelp or TripAdvisor, but to add a quality review does take some thought and feels like work (actually I cheat and use the same review to post at both, Yelp is my favorite and TripAdvisor seems to be most popular). 

Another flaw to the crowd based review system is that many people normally don't contribute unless they really like something or really hate something.  In most cases people probably post reviews based on negative experiences and not so much on positive ones.  We are not really motivated to post a review of something we feel sort of neutral on.  When this happens what we then see is the extreme ends of the review.  This may not always be beneficial to somebody reading a review if the reviewer is showing any amount of bias through their thoughts.  We know from statistics that outliers exist in every situation, this really isn't any different for online recommender systems.

I think there's some slight nuances between the "wisdom of crowds" and crowdsourcing though.  A good example of a "crowdsourced" phenomenon is Wikipedia.  A couple of posts have suggested that only about 1%-2% of the users are actually editing articles.  The same sort of thing is going on here, a small number of users are contributing a very large amount of content.  What's the real difference then?  Wikipedia is a community in itself, and it attracts passionate users.  Since when have we ever thought of the reviews on Amazon contributed by passionate community members?  Wikipedia is actually harnessing the "wisdom" of its users (even if they are a few).  The community is also managed in a way to eliminate bias (at least the best it can... a librarian like myself will say don't use Wikipedia as your only source, but I stand by what it tries to accomplish).  There is actually quality stuff in Wikipedia!

Both Wikipedia and Amazon rely on crowdsourcing for content, they both are integral in explaining the Long Tail, except that where passionate users on Wikipedia can be found editing in Wikipedia, the niche markets around products sold in Amazon exist elsewhere on the web.  Let's say you're into a band, then maybe you're posting your thoughts and reviews on their MySpace or Facebook pages instead.  Conversations are happening on another platform, and then they go to Amazon to purchase (or iTunes, or wherever).  What's left on Amazon is a filtered view in a way.  Niche markets like niche tools, and Amazon is too mainstream... besides, if we really like something, we don't want to tell the world, we just want to tell our friends.

There have been some attempts by a few services to focus on improving user reviews.  Some companies have thought to remove the outlier reviews from their recommender systems (remove the best and the worst and focus on the bulk in the middle).  Others have been fine tuning their systems to focus on the user and how they compare to other users with the same interests.  Both are a step in the right direction, but I think they're also missing a key component and that is the network.

There's a lot of great services out there that people just don't use.  For example, I'm on Yelp (and do use it), but I only have a few "friends" on there.  When I'm really stuck on where to go I usually turn to Twitter for help, this is where my network is.  Other people may do the same but go to Facebook, or whatever service their network mostly communicates.  If I'm going to proclaim that I really really like something I'm going to do it on Twitter... what if Yelp (or some other relevant service) could parse from my Twitter stream that I was at a certain place (which they could tell because I checked in via Brightkite), and then that I thought the food was really good, but the service was incredibly slow (of course based on my excessive complaining about service and praise of meal in some succession of tweets).  Boom, instant review.

Ok, I realize I'm now in the fuzzy, abstract world of the Semantic Web, but it could happen.  Actually I believe it will happen (that's another blog post a few years down the road, I hope).  We're sharing the information, but we're doing it the way we've always done it, in conversation, word of mouth, and with our friends.  There's wisdom out there, in large groups and small groups, I think you just have to know where to look for it.

After reading Presentation Zen I became interested in finding places to search for free quality images online.  Last week I realized that I had a pretty nice list saved in my bookmarks and it seemed a shame to keep that to myself.  This list does focus on free, public domain or Creative Commons licensed images, but I have nothing against paying for quality stock photography either.  As a matter of fact I've purchased some credits over on iStockphoto that have come in handy on occasions when I can't find exactly the right image using other sources (which is also a highly recommended site if you don't mind paying a little).

But focusing on free stock images I often don't need to go as far as stock.xchange.  I've had my account on stock.xchange for a long time, but I recently "rediscovered" it after I read Presentation Zen and was interested in good stock photo sources.  There are plenty of free high resolution images to download, and some of them of excellent quality.  Searching the site is pretty easy, and you are able to favorites to your account.

If you're looking for public domain images try morgueFile, the images here are free and completely available for use as stock photography.  There's keyword search as well as an advanced search.

Another good free search is Image * After.  I recommend Image * After for stock photography, but it's also a good source for free textures. 

The Multicolor Search Lab is an excellent search tool for discovering images based on color, and with a little advanced trick it's easy to get the exact color you're looking for too.  Let's say you want images for specific color in your palette, just embed the hex number at the end of the search string:  http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolour#colors=201974;  You can even add more than one color for even more control over the color options:  http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolour#colors=201974,842959;  You may add up to 10 colors in the search.  The images are from alamy stock photography which does include some licensed as well as royalty free images.

Then if you're looking for a meta search site, everystockphoto includes some of the ones I already mention including Flickr and a few others I didn't mention.

Of course Flickr is an excellent source of images, but if you decide to use images from Flickr it's good to understand and respect Creative Commons licensing when choosing photos.  What's nice about Flickr is that its API allows many developers to create some pretty awesome search tools based on the site.

One very cool search tool is the Content Based Visual Image Search.  This tool unfortunately doesn't allow you to narrow your search by license type, so it's very possible your searches will yield a photo with a restrictive license, but it's a great site for showcasing what's possible with the Flickr API.  The search tool lets you browse by tag, and when you find an image you like you can search again by that image's theme or by color/texture.  I found it fun to play around with the options, it's too bad there isn't more options for refining the searches though.

Flickr.Storm is a Flickr search that does let you filter by license.  I find the interface a little strange, but it does a good job and returns a set of nice images based on tag from Flickr.  The advanced search allows you to narrow to a specific Creative Commons license which is useful if you know exactly what license will suit your needs.

As Flickr searches go I definitely saved the best for last though, and that is compfight.  The quality of images returned are excellent, the interface is excellent, and it will allow you to filter for Creative Commons.  There's an added feature of a blue band that pops up when you mouse over the results that displays the image's original dimensions, very helpful if you're looking for an image of a specific or relative size. 

I really found this list helpful when searching for images for presentations, and I've started using it more in basic web designs I'm considering for my class and personal use.  Even if you're looking for something to spice up a blog post, you're not going to have too much trouble finding the perfect image from one of these sites.

-UPDATE-

I closed the comments to this post recently due to comment spam, but @mir_b gave me a link to Roy Tennant's FreeLargePhotos.com site.  Thanks mb and thanks to Roy for putting this together!  Definitely another great site for the list.

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.

A quick test of the website QuarkBase using my blog as an example.  Quarkbase will give you nice detailed information about any website in a really user friendly format.  The screenshot here hardly touches the surface of what information is available to you on this page.  Information includes related websites, domain, tags (library, blog, web2.0, libraries, blogs), social popularity, Alexa stats, Associated People (that's me!), and information from Technorati about my site.  There's a bunch of technical stuff at the bottom too.

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. 

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.