Cool Technology Tools from Kalamazoo

I am in Kalamazoo, for the Michigan Library Association Annual Conference, always a worthwhile event.

This afternoon, I attended an excellent workshop – Tech Tools for Reference – presented by Holly Hibner, from the Salem-South Lyon District Library, and Christine Tobias, from Michigan State University Libraries.

Hibner’s presentation, directed toward public libraries, was especially interesting to me. She presented twelve Web 2.0 – free – technologies that all librarians should incorporate into our tool chest.

Take a look at these:

Delicious.com – a social bookmarking site and one of The Tech Desk’s favorites.

Twitter.com – a microblog, and another of our favorites.

LinkBunch.com – put multiple links into one short link can be sent easily via text message, IM or email.

Drop.io – drop files that are too big to email onto this site and share them via a variety of outputs.

Meebo.com – chat across platforms, with no software download required.

Scribd.com – publish and share doc, xls, pdf, txt, and Open Office files with the world.

Slideshare.net – publish and share your presentations with the world. To view this workshop’s presentation using slideshare, go to www.slideshare.net/hhibner.

Camstudio.org – create AVI files by recording screen and audio activity on your computer.

Googlelittrips.com – an experiment in teaching literature, by using Google Earth to help students discover where in the world the greatest road trip stories of all time took place.

Cueprompter.com – turn your computer into a teleprompter.

Readthewords.com – create an audio file out of text.

Zamzar.com – convert files without needing special software.

The coolest of these? It has to be googlelittrips.com. Follow the journey of John Steinbeck’s Joad family from The Grapes of Wrath.

What do you think?