Thing 23: Virtual Worlds

1. On your blog entry for Thing 23, discuss some of the potential uses for using a virtual world for public diplomacy kind of event might be applicable to a virtual world?
-- Online game related to American Culture or holiday.
-- Story telling program
-- English Teaching Program
-- Educational Fair.
-- Speaker Program
-- Book discussion program

Can you think of a scenario where a virtual environment might richer experience than a real life environment?Language Learning through virtual world, students could access resource easily to practice speaking and reading, even interactive with English native speakers.

How might academic institutions and libraries use virtual worlds in a different way than real life?
Academic Institutions and Libraries could use virtual worlds to promote learning, reading and researching/discussion. Virtual worlds are more attractive, young people could hide her real identity, and participate in the virtual worlds programs more than real life programs.

2. How might your Embassy use a virtual world environment for a program?
We have virtual American corner, facebook, but we have not tried the virtual world yet.
I think that we may use a virtual world environment to do the following programs.
--Announcing our programs,
-- Conducting a speaker program, the audience could raise questions freely in the virtual world.
-- Organizing an Education fair

Thing 21: Short Message Service (SMS)

For the usage of SMS, we can send out as a program reminder, or holiday notice and new year greeting message to our audience. Usually AIT/PAS sent out the SMS message from Hinet – a local telecom. Here is the Hinet SMS page -




This year we sent out a New Year greeting message to 121 selected IRC electronic outreach services members and IRC colleagues. In the future, we may send out the Questionaire via SMS to collect the feedback

Here is the image.

Thing 22: The Mobile Web

1. Our website shows on Nokia N70 and Sony Ericsson after accessing dobmobi,
Nokia:


Sony Ericsson




For a mobile viewers, people are most interested in the following service at our website:
- Non-immigrant visa applications
- IRC library service
- AIT Press Release

What content would you remove from your regular web site: lots of link could not be accessed, the message is: the requested item could not be loaded (status code 502). and video, photos and graphics, pdf files will be removed.

2. Write down a few ideas you have on how Web-enabled phones will change the services you provide and how public diplomacy will be changed in the future by the wide-spread use of these devices.

-- We may use the web-enabled phone to send out the PR, programs announcement and visa services.

Thing 20: Search Engine Optimization

I used the following terms to describe our programs at American corner, and did search at Google Trends:
-- Literature program
-- Book Discussion ( I also tried the word ”Book Club”)
-- Story telling program (I also tried the word “English story”)
Only English story can not raise any search volume, the other terms have good search volume.



I also limit my search to my country –Taiwan, I have tried several keywords and failed, finally I success by using the term – lecture.




I used the following terms to do search at Google AdWords and Google Insignts
Book Discussion:global Monthly Search Volume is : 49,500. This is the most commonly used keyword.
Literature program:
global monthly search volume is: 4400. Another keyword is used more often is: “Literature”.
Story telling:
Global monthly search volume is: 90500. The better keywords are story and storytelling.

I used “Literature” to do search at Google insights for search, On the topic of “Literature” the most popular search terms in my country are: in literature and west literature.

Thing 19 Website Usage Statistics

The top 5 sites in Taiwan.
1. Yahoo! yahoo.com Personalized content and search options. Chatrooms, free e-mail, clubs, and pager.
2. 無名小站 wretch.ccPhoto Album and Blog 網路相簿及網路日誌
3. Facebook facebook.comA social utility that connects people, to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos.
4. Google繁體中文搜尋 google.com.tw提供網路、新聞、圖片等搜索服務。特色包括 PageRank 網頁排行榜、頁庫存檔、搜尋結果翻譯及類似網頁查尋。
5. YouTube - Broadcast yourself youtube.comYouTube is a way to get your videos to the people who matter to you. Upload, tag and share your videos worldwide!

The top social networking platform in Taiwan is: Facebook.

I have also set up an account at google Analytics:

Thing 18: What new with the search engines

1. Create your own custom search engine using Google Custom Search.

I have creared an search engine on "DVD/VCD procurement", I am in charge of acquisition, in the past, I usually went to each website to check, if a specific dvd is available on which sites. No I combined lots of sites and create my own custom search engine.
http://www.deltamac.com.tw/
http://www.questar1.com/
http://sh1.obuy.tw/gull/item_ca...
http://dsc.discovery.com/
http://www.pbs.org/




2. On your blog, indicate which of Google's search options you liked best, and if you found any semantic search engines that were interesting, and why.

For Semantics search engines, I like True Knowledge best.

Thing 17: Books 2.0

I have read the following three resources ~~`

LitLovers : this site provide lots of reading guides for popular and classic literature books. And it even provides information on how to discuss a book, start and run a book club. Since our American Corner has a book club, I may try to apply the tips from the blog to our American Corner book club. It can also help me select books for our American Corners.

BooksInMyPhone~~ I have been wanting to read books on my cell phone. So I explore this website and downloaded one book, but the book I downloaded has a security flaw, so I have to delete.

NetLibrary~~ The net library provide multi-language choices, so I can choose Chinese to read the web, it has more 3000 e-books.

LibriVox ~~ I have found some audio books from this site, I can even find some classic Chinese documents, the audio for the Chinese classic documents sound very odd, speak too fast, hardly to understand, I also try to change the speed, but still odd. I also found some audio books in English, the voice sound just OK and clear enough to understand.


I have installed Worldcat application at my Facebook. Because I am a technical librarian, so this function will be very useful to me.
I have run a search on “the age of Innocence” and the full bibliographic data shown. It also provides vendor information and readers’ reviews. I can use the data for acquisition and cataloging purpose. Not all of my country libraries are listed on the library list. So I can not find a copy of "The age of Innocence" at Taiwan library in Worldcat.

Facebook Applications

Thing 15: Discover Podcasting

I have created an account at Podnova and subscribed 5 podcasts, one on private, four on public
~PodNova Clippings
~Around the Net: After Hours Edition
~Movie Review
~The Arts Of Honolulu
~this WEEK in TECH - MP3 Edition




I have tried many times to manually add a channel, I tried the NPR feed, white house Obama Speech or weekly address, but all failed. The message is: Something went wrong, in dowloading or processing of this feed. Reason of failure: Timed out




On America.gov, I found a very interesting feed, we even dicussed the book at our American Corner.

Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers


I think that we can upload the our AIT Director’s press conference or remarks at Podcasts, and the audience can download from our website.

Thing 13: CO.NX Webchats

1. Indicate on your blog which Webchat you participated in. Please write a few sentences about the chat. Did you have any problems?

I have participated the whole program of “U.S. Diplomacy in the Americas: a conversation with the Diplomatic Corps” In Taiwan, we have less news and concerns about Latin America, the Caribbean. It’s good to hear the Ambassadors talk about the current events in these places. The webchat format is different from ours, Taipei IRC has done many webchats for years, our systems are text only. This webchat with video and audio, we can see and hear the ambassadors’ talking very clearly, and responded by sending questions. I planed to ask a question about Haitian Orphans, but only one person raised question, so I just gave up.



2. Become a fan of the CO.NX: See the World Facebook page.




3. I've signed up the CO.NX facebook to become a fan of that webpage.

Taipei IRC has two CO.NX webchat rooms:
https://statedept.connectsolutions.com/ait/
https://statedept.connectsolutions.com/ait_2/

Thing 16: Online Book Catalogs

*Insert the link to your LibraryThing "catalog" on your blog.
Here is the link and image for my book: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/VickyTsao

Thing 14: Online Videos

1. Create a post in your blog about the exercise by answering any of these questions:

*What did you think of “An Anthropological Introduction YouTube?”
This video is very informative and educational, I also agree with the idea – when media change, human relations change.


*What makes a “Viral Video” go rival?
I think if the following elements could create a viral video~~
 --Interesting
 --Something that people could relate to or care
 --Humorous
 --Or something really funny and make everyone laugh

*When exploring youtube, how did you discover new vides? Through specific search terms or browsing related videos?
I will use advanced search – set the specific term, the date, language.

*How might you use Youtube as a way to engage your audience?
I think we can videotape our programs and shorten the video to 10-15 minutes and upload the youtube, that can attract our audience and publicize our programs. We may also make our IRC introduction to be a video and upload to the youtube.

Thing 10: Introduction to Share Point

We plan to do a IRC Flyer, everyone just insert their parts.
I have uploaded the following~~

Thing 12: Mashups

1. Using the "My Maps" feature in Google Maps, create a Google map and insert the link.


My map: Bangkok attractions

在較大的地圖上查看My trip to Bangkok


I plan to visit Bangkok next summer, so I create a my map at google, and added some attractions.

2. Blog about potential uses for Google Maps and your thoughts on Google Latitude.

Whenever I travel to a new place, no matther where it was in my home country or in other country, I will use google maps to find the driving direction, walking route, the restaurants, and how much time does it need from one place to the other. It is very convenient, and I won't get lost, and I can easily enjoy visitng a new place.

For Google Latitude, I think that we can use it when travel to a new country, if everyone has the google latitude on the phone, then it will be easy to trace the missing person. Or if I go to a new place, and then the google lattitue shows that a friend just nearby, what a surprise to see a friend in a new place!

Thing 11: Photo Sharing

I have uploaded one photo from Libray of Congress photostream, and one photo from America.gov. I also uploaded 5 personal photo albums.
You may find my photo here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vtsao/

Thing 9: Social Networking

I enjoyed being in facebook.
I also joined "the 23 thing" group, and found some colleagues from the other posts.