The Partners Page is getting an overhaul! And we need your help!

The AskUsNow! Partners Page has served us well as the Staff Support website for many years. But it's time for an overhaul. The Baltimore County Public Library (the grant's fiscal agent, and kind keeper of our cubicles) has given us access to DRUPAL (drupal.org), a robust Content Management System (CMS) on which we will be building our new staff support website.

We envision the new Partners Page to not just be a place to GET information, but a place where you can also SHARE, COMMUNICATE, make CONNECTIONS and build RELATIONSHIPS with each other. But what we think doesn't matter if it doesn't jive with what you guys need.

We need your help, everyone's help, to let us know what they want out of a site like this. PLEASE TAKE OUR BRIEF SURVEY (3 questions!) and tell us what you want the Partners Page to be able to do for you. 

Sky's the limit, tell us everything: 
http://tinyurl.com/chlkp7

The survey will be available until April 10th so get your opinions in now while you're thinking of it!

New look for AskUsNow.info

At 2.18pm today AskUsNow.info got a new look! The changeover went smoothly and we're all very excited about it!

Thank you all for your help, feedback and comments on the site. Little tweaks here and there are still in the works, but the main issues have been worked out.

AskUsNow! using Twitter!

On our staff support site, we have 2 sections that *should* be updated with some frequency- recent questions and comments from customers.

Unfortunately, these sections have *not* been updated with as much frequency as Joe or I would like. Until now!

The recent questions section is now helped along by Twitter. Lots of libraries are twittering (see David Lee King's brief list here); it's an easy way to update "followers" on what you're doing. If you're totally confused, check out twitter.

Here's how we're using it
While doing my daily question review, I cut and paste the customer's question (sans any identifying information) into our Twitter. The updates get to our staff website using a Twitter badge. Many apps today have badges- flickr (we've got one of those on the sidebar of this page), librarything, del.icio.us, etc. It's a quick and easy way to integrate your many identities and accounts into one place.

New logo for askusnow.info!

As part of the 2.0-ifying of the askusnow.info page, I've been playing around with different tweaks and versions of the logo to make it appear more 3D:

I beveled it, angled it, morphed it, and reflected it about 50 ways from Sunday and finally came up with a version (and reflection angle) that I liked:

This is now the logo that shows up on the current version of the askusnow.info page. It will be the logo used on the 2.0ifyed version of the .info page coming to a browser near you by the end of the summer.

Links of interest:
The Logos of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 Logo Creator (just for fun)
Drawing Web 2.0 logos in PS
Designing for 2.0