Sunday, September 24, 2006

Another Pew Survey

I don't know how much of this stuff you can really predict, but I read an interesting article some responses to what the Internet might look like in 2020.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/5370688.stm

One interesting quote (although I'm not sure this is new or just applies to the Internet):

"The less one is powerful, the more transparent his or her life. The powerful will remain much less transparent..."

Should I be worried?

...or just be sure to bring a good book?

I'm going to the CODI confrence in Salt Lake City in a little over a week so I'm following the Gordian Knot -- a blog for Syrsi/Dynix users. (CODI stands for Customers of Dynix) A new posting there today by "suzyq" says she can summarize her 5 weeks worth of training and migration to 8.0 with a Foxtrot cartoon.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Have they looked at Creative Commons licensing?

A number of publishing organizations are develooping a standard protocol for granting publishing rights -- an Automated Content Access Protocol.

"In one example of how ACAP would work, a newspaper publisher could grant search engines permission to index its site, but specify that only select ones display articles for a limited time after paying a royalty."


The aim is to control spiders but I wonder if this has implications for bloggers?

Friday, September 22, 2006

Stop. You're both right....

You can always get me to read an article that promises to be about an advance toward something that will let us read novels electronically. So a BBC headline "Roll-up screens 'moving closer'" sucked me in.

Turns out some guys in Cambridge have come up with a thin, flat metal that can snap from one shape to another--from a flat sheet to a rolled up sheet. The metal is cheap and easily produced so could work well for 'flexible electronics.'

They point out that it would also do nicely for buildin emergency shelters. Although I'd worry that a heavy wind might snap my tent into a rolled up piece of metal.

Monday, September 18, 2006

serving library resources via phones

BBC article about use of net from cell phones says there's going to be a new domain starting next month -- .mobi -- that will be for sites that you can get over your phone and there will be a strict set of accessibility standards."

Go to this site to see what your web pages looks like on a phone http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php?. Oooh, the library catalog doesn't look good at all. I wonder what one of the library's portal channels would look like?

more info at http://pc.mtld.mobi/mobilenet/index.html

Could be a good Scrapple topic for Wednesday.