The Utopian Library

A few weeks ago MPOW purchased a new poster printer. Our network manager, with the support of the library director, approved the donation of our previous printer to the local hospice CareCenter. The LAN staff readied the printer for transport and I had the honor of delivering it…

CareCenter does good stuff: home health, palliative, and hospice care; community education; grief support. Its staff and volunteers work tirelessly to raise awareness and funds so that the good stuff will continue to be available for individuals, families, and the community.

Thank you, SPL, for your generosity.

Filed under: @my library, in support | No Comments »

So, getting back to that family dinner where Flickr was the word of the day…

I’ve been helping Adrienne get social with her eStore. This week: Facebook for marketing.¹ After months of asking me how FB works and what the kids are up to, she’s finally set up her own presence. She’s found a few friends, developed a page for her business, and we’ve both been sharing that page with our FB friends.² We’re learning together how “friend,” “fan,” and “share” can put her eStore in places way beyond its URL.

We’re sitting here in the den, sipping morning beverages and talking about how the reach of social networks can promote presence and availability of so many things. It’s a much smaller scale than what I do @MPOW, but helping Adrienne with her small business marketing is like a learning lab for me. I’m playing, sharing, teaching, and helping Adrienne get where she wants to be. I’ll take that.

1. Next week: meebo for customer service [↩]
2. Yes, that could be you. Please take a look! [↩]

Filed under: marketing and outreach, social software, unlibrary | No Comments »

This morning’s FeedBurner greeting, remixed:

Filed under: libraries, signs and things | No Comments »

The family gathered for dinner this weekend. At any given time there can be five laptops open in the family room, text messages crossing the dinner table, iPhotos snapped and sent to the niece away at school, at least one cell phone conversation passed around the room, an occasional video, one buzzing Blackberry, and a circulating dog on the prowl for wayward edibles.¹

There was more than the usual tech talk at this gathering. Two of the family recently added a new product to their eStore and there was a lot of discussion about how to optimize sales: who to target, where to market, what adwords to use. This new product requires the customer to submit a high-resolution digital photo (or a print, by snail mail) during the order process, so I suggested linking the eStore to Flickr.

There were at least 12 of us in the room, among them a few high school students, a hairstylist, two grandparents, a guy who looks like Ray Liotta, a graphic artist, two real estate professionals, the owner of the eStore, and me. At least eight asked, “What’s Flicker?” So I explained the “what” and “why” of “Flicker.”

• It’s a photo sharing website.
• You can upload photos as large as 20MB and download sizes from 75×75 square to original.
• Plays better than many ISPs for emailing the hi-resolution stuff.
• Offers APIs for creating web services to streamline (and socialize) the ordering process.
• It can be free, or at least inexpensive.

I love my brother-in-law, but he argues like… um… (immunity, please)… a 1.0 librarian: “I guarantee you that the majority of people who buy these things won’t be using Flicker.

How does he know? I mean, the guy knows a lot of things, but how does he know that most of the people who might buy his product aren’t using Flicker? The real story, which he admits, is that deciding which photo to download from Flicker would be more work than having the customer just email one photo. OK, I said, but what if the customer’s email provider denies attachments larger than 2MB? What if the customer works around that limit by sending one crappy photo that can’t be used to make a good product? Huh? Then what, smartypants?

He’s thinkin’ from his keyboard and not from his customers’.

And it’s Flickr. F-L-I-C-K-R. Dot com.²

1. And under the table where I sat was a the Twitter version of Steven Cohen’s holiday dinner. [↩]
2. At least I didn’t have to explain Twitter. [↩]

Filed under: @ruth, immunity island, social software | No Comments »

TUL’s feed apparently went out for a walk after a disagreement between TUL’s category titles and FeedBurner. The issue has been addressed and the three are back in business.

If you’re reading this, please update your TUL subscription.

Sorry about that. And thanks for visiting!

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