Clear Blue Dei

As I was taking our cat, Ubi, to the vet this afternoon, I turned on the radio to NPR and there was a fascinating discussion on Talk of the Nation about the web’s role in the presidential debate. It was called Digital Democracy: YouTube’s Presidential Debates and you can listen to a podcast of it on that site. It is very well worth listening to. It is about what role Web2.0 tools such as YouTube, MySpace, blogs, web searches, etc. will play in politics, both in the upcoming presidential debate and in politics in general. Here is the NPR Blog of the Nation post entitled Democrawikiyoutubia 2.8 that is about this NPR broadcast.

As you may or may not know, CNN is asking people to submit YouTube videos with a question for the presidential campaign debate that will be taking place next Monday, July 23. Here is where you can submit your video. And here is a Washington Post blog post entitled CNN/YouTube Debate: The Best of The Questions So Far that has videos of some of the best questions that have been submitted so far. There are also many interested comments for this article.

Another interesting fact is that much of this information is in blog format, such as the NPR Blog of the Nation, The Washington Post’s Blog and the Official Google Blog post where the YouTube Presidential Debate program was introduced. YouTube also has a You Choose ‘08 channel for the 2008 presidential campaign.

And after listening to this broadcast and reading the associated articles and blogs, I realized just how much Web 2.0 is permeating our culture in every way. Yes Virginia, there is Politics 2.0.

~Susie

Through my usual browsing and following links, I happened upon a very interesting site called “What I Learned Today“. And on that site, I found a post about WikiMindMap. This is a fascinating site that takes whatever you are interested in and maps it out in a parent-child diagram (or “mind map” I guess they are now being called) that shows supporting topics in a way that is very easy to read and follow. I tried to capture a picture of what the site returns, but couldn’t get it to size right and finally decided it wasn’t worth messing with. But if you go to the WikiMindMap site you can see for yourself.

I mapped Learning 2.0 and got some very great links that I am still exploring. Be sure to drill down where applicable to get the full picture. One note, it seems to come up searching wikipedia.de instead of wikipedia.en (english). So be sure to change it on the first page where the search box is located.

Then I thought I would see what other wikipedia tools there were and found this on the wikipedia site. I haven’t had a chance to really look at it yet, but it looks like there are a lot of interesting tools to explore.

It would be nice if WikiMindMap had some interfaces to it, but I couldn’t find any reference to them on the site or doing a general browse.

~Susie

As you know, I am playing with my 2 blogs and trying widgets and code and whatnot. So I was playing around with the various page elements on my Google Blogger blog and found one called Newsreel that let me search for certain keywords in the news and display news about them.

I put in Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and Learning 2.0. Then I went to my page to see what it looked like. It is really cool! There were all sorts of interesting news bits. So I clicked on one that sounded interesting and lo and behold, it was a link to a site I’ve been reading lately – ilovelibraries.org. And it was talking about all the neat things they have in their store, like posters (nice one of Orlando Bloom and bumper stickers and all sorts of paraphenalia that anyone who loves shopping and reading (and helping libraries) would love.

This was a bumper sticker you could buy. I love it! You can buy it here. And here is a link to their store. They have posters and umbrellas and mugs and clothing lots of things, all with a really neat reading theme.

And revenue from products in the ALA Store provides direct support to the programs and initiatives of the American Library Association.

So go check it out! And look around the site too, it is very interesting and well worth a visit.

~Susie