Yankee in Canada.com

As with #sla2008, and again with thanks to the folks at Wordle (still a great tool!), I present you with a cloud based on the tweets from #sla2009.  Click the thumbnail to view the larger image.

Compare this year's cloud with 2008 and you may notice a few things:

• "SLA", "session", "conference"and "great" are again the more popular words used
• The divisions, especially IT, PAM, KM, and LMD were actively tweeting this year
• The concept of a re-tweet (using RT) didn't exist in 2008

SLA 2009 is almost here!  Since May 2, 2009 the #sla2009 re-tweeter has been busily sending around tweets as people prepare for conference.  Undoubtedly, the volume of tweets will increase as we get closer to conference and will balloon from June 14-17, 2009.

With a bit of help, I have designed a dashboard for the re-tweeter as a "one-stop shop" if you're interested in getting a bird's eye view of the re-tweeter's data stream.

The dashboard consists of two pages: home and analytics.

Home

The home page has two elements:

1. A continuously updated feed of the latest Tweets in the re-tweeter data
   stream.  As new tweets are sent, a link will appear with the number of
   new tweets, so you can refresh the page and view them.
2. A Live Cloud of words that are most popular in the re-tweeter's data stream at that moment.  The more popular the word, the larger the font.  Each word in the cloud is linked to a Twitter search for that word in the stream – very handy if you want to see why people are tweeting about that particular word.  Stop words have been stripped from the cloud to keep it as clean as possible.

Analytics

The analytics page has seven charts showing:

1. Daily tweet activity since May 2, 2009 when the re-tweeter was launched
2. Who is tweeting the most (Top Tweeps)
3. Who is receiving the most @replies
4. Who is sending the most @replies
5. What other hashtags are popular
6. What types of tweets are being sent
7. What links being sent around are most popular

There is also a handy set of links across the top of all pages to:

• @SLA2009 on Twitter
• The SLA2009 Homepage
• The SLA2009 Personal Planner
• The Virtual INFO-EXPO
• The SLA2009 Blog
• The SLA2009 Hospitality Wiki
• The SLA Innovation Laboratory

The dashboard is based on live data from the re-tweeter's database, so check back often to see how the data stream is changing over time.  I hope you find it useful, interesting and thought provoking – most importantly, I hope you find it inspiring!

I have seen a lot of discussion on various blogs about establishing hashtags on Twitter for the various groups in SLA. I don’t know if this list exists yet, so I am going to start one. What hashtags are out there? Add a comment with known hashtags and I will compile the list.

• #sla2008 (Annual conference in Seattle – no longer used)
• #sla2009 (Annual conference in Washington)
• #slaleads (Leadership Summit)
• #dsoc (Social Science Division)
• #slait (Information Technology Division)
• #slakm (Knowledge Management Division)
• #slator (Toronto Chapter)
• #dsol (Solo Division)

With thanks to the folks at Wordle (what a great tool!), I present you with a cloud based on the tweets from #sla2008.  The only term I removed from this graphic was sla2008. Click the thumbnail to view the larger image.

Also, here are the Top 15 Tweeps for #sla2008

1. conniecrosby
2. artquiltmaker
3. ChrisVestal
4. yankeeincanada
5. khuffman
6. nengard
7. desertlibrarian
8. leahs
9. jdysart
10. robotfrog
11. raabonte
12. CindysConfNotes
13. carolyne
14. jambina
15. lukelibrarian

Nice going y’all! There’s probably more analysis that could be done with the 1,194 tweets that were re-tweeted, so stay tuned!

I have developed a re-tweeter for sla2008 based on the Twitter API and John Eckman’s code.  Thanks John!

Starting on Wednesday June 11, 2008, the sla2008 Twitter account will become a re-tweeter.  What’s a re-tweeter you ask?  It’s simple.  When a follower of sla2008 posts a tweet with the hashtag #sla2008 in their tweet – probably best at the end of the tweet – that tweet will be posted to the sla2008 account.  The username of the person who sent the original tweet will appear at the start of the message followed by a ":".

If your mobile phone or handheld is setup to receive tweets from sla2008 (See Twitter Phone FAQ), you will receive the tweets everyone posts to your phone or handheld.  Also, you can check the sla2008 page directly to read what people have been tweeting about.  They will also appear on your "recent" tab as messages from sla2008.

There will be a 6 minute delay before tweets are re-tweeted.

Re-tweeting is helpful for:

• separating out your sla2008 related tweets from your other tweets
• sending broadcast messages (6 minute delay) to all sla2008 followers
• seeing what sla2008 followers are tweeting about without necessarily having to go to the sla2008 page (you have to have device updates from sla2008 turned on if you want the tweets sent to you)
• creating an archive of tweets on the sla2008 page

This will be an opt-in service.  Only your tweets with the hashtag (#sla2008) will be re-tweeted.

Using a number of tools out there, you can also follow the #sla2008 hashtag:

• Twitter (RSS)
• Summize (RSS)
• Tweetscan
• Hashtags.org

Further Reading

• Introduction to Twitter (SLA Innovation Lab)
• Twitter away at SLA (Daniel Lee aka Yankeeincanada)
• Twitter in Plain English (Common Craft)

Trendpedia (beta) is described as a "Social media monitoring, buzz tracking, brand measurement and blog trend search" tool.

It allows you to search for up to 5 different queries at the same time and display the results in 3 different ways:

• as a hitlist for each query
• as a trend chart that shows the number of posts per day for each query
• as a share of buzz chart that shows the number of posts for a query as a percentage of the total number of posts for all queries

On the front page you enter queries separated by commas into the text box and set labels for each query. On the charts page there are two columns: one for labels and one for queries. The label column is displayed on the charts, the query column is sent to the search engine.

Trendpedia also allows for boolean syntax (AND, OR, NOT grouped with brackets) and "" for phrases and supports searches in English, French, Dutch and "Any language" blogs.

Facebook, MySpace and Friendster comparison on Trendpedia.

Trendpedia also publishes a blog

BlogPulse Trend Search is a "trends" search tool that allows you to create graphs to present the "buzz" in the blogosphere using key words, phrases or links over time.  You can compare
up to three things or simply search for one term/link in isolation.  The time periods available are 1, 2, 3 or 6 months.

In the battle for social network supremacy, it looks like the gap between Facebook and MySpace closed quite a bit over the summer.  Poor Friendster.

Interesting to note these results as compared to Google Trends results for the same three terms.  The gap in search volumes also appears to be closing.

To follow-up on my recent post regarding Google’s new My Maps tool, I have updated my SLA 2007 Conference Map on Google My Maps to include the recommended restaurants on the SLA’s Rocky Mountain Chapter conference wiki. I plan to add more to the map, including:

• Museums;
• Outdoor Recreation;
• Sports and;
• Shopping.

The next challenge is to figure out how to get this map on to Google Maps on my Blackberry!

Google has released a very neat tool for you geophiles out there: My Maps.  I must admit that I am addicted to using the Google Maps mobile application on my Blackberry while trying to navigate the streets of Toronto, so I am looking forward to experimenting with My Maps, e.g. mapping my favourite restaurants in the city, etc.

My Maps allows you to make and share maps directly from the Google Maps site.  Annotation tools include the ability to:

• add lines, polygons and placemarks
• edit placemarks with HTML, images, and video
• syndicate your maps via KML

It’s very easy to add locations to your map found during a local search with a click.

Places found via GeoRSS or KML files can also be added to a map. (I haven’t yet experimented with KML or GeoRSS much, but it sounds like something to explore.)

The first map I created shows all the official conference hotels for the upcoming Special Libraries Association conference in Denver.  I plan to create another one showing all the recommended restaurants on the SLA 2007 Conference Commitee’s wiki.  What other maps would be good to make and share for the conference?

SLA 2007 Conference Hotels

A very cool tool indeed.

Most likely, I’m way behind in realizing how cool this is, but if you use Firefox and you use Amazon (.com or .ca), create a bookmarklet to search the Toronto Public Library’s online catalogue for the book you’re currently browsing at Amazon using the LibraryLookup Bookmarklet Generator.

Base URL: http://hip.tpl.toronto.on.ca/
Library Name: Toronto Public Library
Vendor: iPAC