Google Standards Search

Wow! I just created a Google search engine for Standards. You can plug these engines into your own webpages. I'm thinking about including one of these in my guides.

Google search

Google now cas a customizable search.

Here's some examples of it. Not any for libraries yet. Maybe that needs to be rectified. Wouldn't it be great to have a search engine for (engineering) standards and include just the data sets you wanted? Or patents? Or genomics data....and link that stuff to journals or whatever?

Two cool things

Quick, I'm late for work

1. Babelfish is almost a reality
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6083994.stm


2. Rochester has already done the find videos thing we want to do-- we'll just steal from them

http://www.library.rochester.edu/index.cfm?page=videos

IPOD pod casts & NPR

I'm considering getting an IPOD finally. One thing I would want to do is download some podcasts, like from NPR. I heard today that you have to subscribe to them through a service. Is this the case? If so, do you use something you would recommend?

Treo

I'm a Treo convert. My husband got 700 and I now have his old 600. Can't wait for the 680 to come out. Read a Treo review.

Now I can get my e-mails & surf the Internet during boring meetings. How did I ever function without this phone?

Spore...exploring the universe one hard drive at a time

I'm really pushing the Scrapple limits here, but if you missed it, there was an interesting article in this past Sunday NYTimes magazine about the game called Spore (designed by Will Wright). There have been lots of interesting posts about this online, so you can google it, or look at this page if you are wondering what the heck I'm talking about.

The idea behind the game is that you start out as a single-celled organism. Once you gathered enough DNA points, you can begin to evolve. Then you colonize the planet. Once you've accomplished that you are awarded a rocket to explore outer space.

The interesting thing I thought is that the creations are then uploaded on a file server and begin to populate the games of other players. So while there will be an interactive War of the Worlds just yet in terms of the players, the characters will be built and then go off to explore the universe out of the control of the original creator.

Interesting concept. I wonder how long it will take somebody to figure out how to create a Trojan alien?

Firefox 2.0

Is now available.

Adobe gets into ebook business

If you've ever wondered if e-books were endangered, you might want to read about Adobe's attempt to jump into e-book market. As I'm reading it, Adboe will come out with a software that publishers can use to create their e-books.

-Digital Editions will support Adobe Content Server DRM, which many lending libraries currently employ.

-Publishers who like the service but aren't necessarily PDF-centric can also build e-books in Open eBook format (an x-html standard)

-Publishers will be able to offer content for free or include ads

-The client is built on Flash and displays covers and contents of ebooks, magazines, and other types of publications