SOCIAL NETWORKING IN FINANCE

Tip’d is a new “community for financial news, ideas, and tips.” Registered users (free) can submit news stories or tips, vote on stories they like, and comment on others. They cover business, currencies, entrepreneurship, green, private equity and venture capital, stocks, commodities, economy, funds and etfs, personal finance, real estate, and technology. There is also a blog and you can subscribe by RSS or email.

Tip’d was created by “a US-based, privately held company. The founders are Jimmy and Andy (aka Jimandi)—regular businessmen who enjoy discussing the day’s financial news.” As of mid-November 2008, there were 1760 current members, 805 articles published with another 1973 in the pipeline, nearly 24,000 tips, and over 1250 comments.

If you work in the business or finance area, this is definitely worth a try.

URL: http://tipd.com

BORN DIGITAL TALK NOTES

If you're interested in learning more abou the net generation--and if you aren't you should be--you'll want to read about John Palfrey's [Harvard Law School] presentation on "Born Digital."

They have 5 characteristics:
1. "I blog therefore I am."
2. They are multitaskers.
3. They create content.
4. They create mashups.
5. They have an international perspective.

Read Jenny Levine's post on her blog,The Shifted Librarian, at http://theshiftedlibrarian.com/archives/2008/11/13/john-palfrey-born-digital-presentation.html

NEW BLOG FOR WOMEN LAWYERS

Ms. ND: Changing the Face of the Legal Profession

“Concerned by the rates at which women opt out of the legal profession, the lack of representation of women in the highest courts and echelons of the legal community, and the role of gender in the progression of many women’s legal careers, a group of female law students from Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley), Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, NYU, Stanford, UCLA, UT Austin, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and Yale came together and created Ms. JD in March 2006. Serving women in law school and the legal profession, Ms. JD is an online community that provides a forum for dialogue and networking among women lawyers and aspiring lawyers.” Ms. JD launched at a national conference co-hosted by Yale Law School Women on March 31, 2007. The Chairwoman of the Board and President is Elizabeth Pederson, a third-year law student at Stanford Law School.

URL: http://ms-jd.org/

THE PRESIDENT OF A HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANY IS BLOGGING

If you are in the healthcare industry or at least are interested in it, then you have to read this blog. It is by Charlie Baker, President and CEO, Harvard Pilgrim. Yes, the blog is self-serving and promotional, but Baker also plans for some posts to be informative and/or provocative.

URL: http://letstalkhealthcare.org/

LIST OF LIBRARY-RELATED WEBSITES

libSite.org describes itself as “a recommendation for library-related websites.” It comes from Leo Kline, a Chicago librarian. It “features a blog, a wiki, RSS feeds and email alerts…users can rate sites and add them to a ‘favorites’ page.” It will work only if people contribute to it, of course.

But do we really need another website/wiki for library sites? There are so many I can’t keep track of them all, and I certainly can’t contribute items to all of them. I wish we could all cooperate and have just one or two of these community sites—but I guess that’s wishful thinking, so check this one out.

URL: http://libsite.org/

TWO INTERESTING WEBSITES

The UK Statute Law Database
http://www.statutelaw.gov.uk
From the Department for Constitutional Affairs, this is “the official revised edition of the primary legislation of the UK.” You can see how the legislation has changed/been amended over time.

Top 100 Education Blogs
http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blogs
The Online Education Database has created this list. Nineteen library-related one are listed, including these that I follow: David Lee King, Free Range Librarian, Information Wants to be Free, librarian.net, LibraryBytes, Library Stuff, Panlibus, Rambling Librarian, Research Buzz, and Resource Shelf (see the site for their addresses). Other categories include tips for college students, e-learning, education news, education policy, Internet culture, learning theory, teaching, and technology.

TIPS FOR BLOGGERS

Avinash Kausnik [Intuit, Inc., Mountain View, California, USA] has a great post on things he has learned as a blogger. Here are the ten tips, but go to the post to read the details and some comments.
1. Nobody cares about you, they care about what you can do for them.
2. Have a personality, reflect your core beliefs, be honest, have fun.
3. Blogging is a very serious time commitment.
4. Pick a subject matter you are passionate about and that you are good at.
5. Respect the intelligence of your audience.
6. Blogs need constant promotion, participation and evangelism.
7. Being “digg’ed” is great exposure but traffic builds gradually over time, one person at a time.
8. Have goals, whatever you want them to be.
9. Be nice, save your hidden agendas for other uses.
10. Nobody will read my blog.

URL: http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2006/10/top-ten-blogging-tips-
insights-from-a-novice-blogger.html

PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITY FOR INTRANET MANAGERS IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND

The Intranet Leadership Forum has been established to help all staff, provide a model for implementing blogs and RSS feeds, to help understand how wikis can be used, and “find better ways to manage the balance between day to day operational tasks and the bigger picture strategic thinking for your intranet.”

This sounds like a wonderful idea. Why isn’t there something like this in the USA? (Or is there?)

URL: http://www.intranetleadership.com.au/

WALKING PAPER: IT BLOG

I just ran into this blog by Aaron Schmidt [Thomas Ford Memorial Library, Western Springs, Illinois]. Walking paper deals with "new(ish) information technologies. He explains the blog title, "things like IM and text messaging are like active, animated paper to me." Some of his categories are: audio eBooks, phones in libraries, future libraries, gaming in libraries, teenagers and the library, wifi, and of course instant messaging and information technology.

By the way, Aaron is also a member of the 2005 class of Library Journal Movers and Shakers.

URL: http://www.walkingpaper.org/

TWO ARTICLES ON BLOGGING THAT YOU SHOULD READ

Should you blog or not? Here are two differing opinions: one advocating blogging by executives and the other warning job seekers not to blog (and aren’t we all job seekers at some time?).

Schwartz, Jonathan, If You Want to Lead, Blog, Harvard Business Review Reprint FO511J, 1 November 2005. (available for US$6.00 at http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/common/
item_detail.jhtml?id=F0511J) Schwartz is President and CEO of Sun Microsystems and blogs at http://www.blogs.sun.com/jonathan.
Excerpt: “For executives, having a blog is not going to be a matter of choice…. If you’re not part of the conversation, others will speak on your behalf—and I’m not talking about your employees.”

Tribble, Ivan (pseud.), Bloggers Need Not Apply, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8 July 2005, p. C3, http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/07/2005070801c.htm
Excerpt: “Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interviews, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know ‘the real them’—better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn’t want to know more.”

BLOG ON WI-FI IN LIBRARIES

Wireless Libraries is Bill Drew’s blog “to advance the use of wireless local area networks in libraries.” Most of the posts relate to public libraries, but have relevance to all kinds of libraries. (Drew is associate librarian at Morrisville State College, Morrisville, New York, USA.)

URL: http://wirelesslibraries.blogspot.com/