Interesting CNI Presentation

At the CNI conference this week, there was a presentation about a web tool that was built at Allegheny College called Gnosh. It is a meta-search tool that incorporates components of social software into the search itself. Check it out.

not really scrapple but...

BBC reports women are voting in Kuwait for the first time ever and that there are two women candidates for one of the positions.

Serves to remind us that we aren't that far out from women getting the vote in the US. My grandmother on my father's side got the vote the year my father -- her third child -- was born. My mother's mother had two children before she could vote. Can you imagine that? When I was 11 months old my family moved to Galveston, Texas and my mother was not allowed to serve on juries there. I remember discussions about poll taxes when I was growing up and how they kept poor people from voting. (And, by the way, I couldn't have applied to Hopkins when I graduated from high school--women were not allowed. I couldn't even have eaten in the faculty club--again, no women allowed.)

Today it may feel like the air we breathe but the truth is the right to universal suffrage is relatively young. 1920 isn't that far back and people were dying in the 1960s to secure voting rights. OK, I'll get off my soapbox now.

Congratulations to the Kuwaitis.

Making Singapore secure...er

Singapore is instituting biometric passports
http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-6056746.html?part=rss&tag=6056746&subj=news. Does it surprise me that Singapore is on the leading edge of this technology? No, I have a friend from graduate school who taught in Singapore. He said that he flew in one time and his hair was longish. They whisked him out of line and chopped his hair off before he could enter the country. Of course this was in the 1970s when long hair meant something.

Sever costs??

Does a server with a dual pentium 4 or xeon processors around 2 GHz, with 1 GB RAM for memory, 8 GB for system (hard drvie) and 30 GB for data with a backup tape drive or network back up really go for $10,000?

Or can you get a good server for less than that? The above are the configuration we are looking for. I'm getting some price quotes, but wanted to know if any of you thinks this is in line or out of line with what a server with the above specs should cost...

OK, maybe we don't need e-paper

BBC reports that in the last five years the Japanese have taken to reading books on their phones in a big way. I noticed that the biggest commercial publisher of this kind of work only has 20,000 subscribers and 400 books but....

The interesting thing to me isn't that they are reading off their phones. I've read lots of stuff on my black and white Palm and these phones have color screens. No, it's the effect of this kind of media on the way people write and the reading habits of the people who read it. There's a publishing house that has launched a program to train people to write for the phone. Can't you see it on the back cover of a comic book? 'Make cash in your spare time by learning to write for the mobile phone market.' And at least one science fiction author says this kind of access "is reversing the younger generation's apathy towards reading." Of course they are reading pretty short pieces.

Now before everyone starts jumping up and down about how the world is coming to an end if people stop reading the Brothers Karamatoz because it's too long to read on a phone, check out The Singer of Tales. Or, if that's too long and academic for your reading tastes just breeze through the wiki article on it's author Albert Lord.

The point is that some of the earliest works we think of as literature (e.g., Beowulf, Gilgamesh) are transcriptions of parts of a person's performance of a much longer epic that would be told in different ways by lots of different people. That is, in the act of committing the works to writing we ended up shortening the pieces and fixing texts that had been dynamic. The oral performers of these epics (the singers of tales) varied their performances based in part on audience reaction. We're too hung up on the individual author and frozen text. There are lots of ways to skin a cat.

This could be something that has a transformational effect on society but who's to say that transformation will be bad? Shorter, fixed texts work pretty well for things like treaties and contracts. And while we all lament the passing of the illuminated manuscripts, there is much to be said for the transforming effects of the printed word and the rise of literacy.

And, interestingly enough, I think this is one of my longest entries ;--)

r u sik 2day?

BBC reports that 42% of the 18-29 year old Brits surveyed said they would miss a trip to the doctor because they had to wait.*

Maybe the National Health Care should consider IM-ing their younger patients.

ANSWR: No, sir. The nose doesn't normally spew blood. How much blood is there?

*Interestingly enough only a third said they would skip a dental visit because of a wait; sadly, 16% wouldn't give blood because it takes too long

I'm shocked, Rick, shocked!

BBC reports that Windows has announced a delayed the roll out of Vista. They also say that MS is building 6 (yup, six) versions of Vista.

"Three versions of the software, called Vista, will be for home users, two will be for businesses and one will be for emerging markets."

Wonder if the one for emerging markets will run on one of those $100 hand-crank computers?

another Google Beta [purchase]

Google recently bought Writely a web based collaborative document editor. You migh think, 'Yawn, another wiki knock-off,' but this thing looks interesting. They list the following capabilities:

• Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text (or create documents from scratch).
• Use our simple WYSIWYG editor to format your documents, spell-check them, etc.
• Invite others to share your documents (by e-mail address).
• Edit documents online with whomever you choose.
• View your documents' revision history and roll back to any version.
• Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose.
• Download documents to your desktop as Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF*, HTML or zip.
• Post your documents to your blog.

Now they also say you can simultaneously edit a document with your colleagues and that sounds cool. If you and your fellow editor collide you get a pop up warning--and I guess you arm wrestle over who's right. Sounds interesting; I wonder what counts as colliding? Do you have to simultaneously edit the same word? What if you are simultaneously editing the same sentence? couldn't that cause problems?

Docutek

Did you know Sirsi bought Docutek? I learned this when visiting Docutek at ALA, since we're trying to get e-reserves going at my library.

Three reasons I know I'm way too old for today's humor

#1. I actually thought John Stewart was funny hosting the oscars (but then I don't have cable so maybe he just wasn't up to his usual)

#2 . I still think the Fox series of Greg the Bunny was funny even though my 18 year old nephew explained to me that it was about as funny as a whoopy cushion.

#3 . I thought the idea of Google hosting the content of everyone's hard drive was a joke. Turns out it wasn't. So now I just think it's scary. Don't they teach Farenheit 451 and 1984 in schools anymore?

It's more complicated than just wanting Google

In the last six months or so I've seen several articles mentioning the fact that Yahoo is actually beating Google for user loyalty, preference or what not. Seems to go against the common notion that Google is the be all and end all of Internet access.

ClickZ, a search engine newsletter, has a recent article on the market for videos over the internet. In it they cite a report by Points North Group saying that

"Fifty-four percent of the group expressed interest in the Yahoo! Go service. Interest in Google Video trails Yahoo!'s service with 46 percent of the market."

Yahoo Go is their all-in-one suite of services for pc, mobile and video. So why is Yahoo ahead here? They say that

Yahoo!'s offerings have more market share in this situation because the portal has set itself up as more than a search engine.

So I'm wondering what this has to say about offering library services. Clearly portals are good (and thank goodness the library has a good start in that area--thank you, Elliot et al.)

But we're still stuck with the problem of presenting a complex search environment in a simple fashion. Federated searching is sort of helpful but it's not a silver bullet.

Benefits of getting new staff...

learning aobut cool undergrad library portal

We've recently hired an acquisitions librarian away from St. Cloud State University. She's told us about a very nice undergraduate portal for research they had at the last library she worked in.

http://www.lib.umn.edu/undergrad/

I love the clean look and compact design and they have a good ear for names.

Find Full Text is their SFX journal/article locator service in a nice interface

Research QuickStart goes to something like our subject guides (again, better name)

Top of the screen is a search box (uses X server?) that chooses some general purpose databases limiting to

• books & articles
• books only
• articles only
• newspapers

They have library pages for individual courses that seem to share a common format that allows for autogeneration of lists.

I'm really happy that these guys use SFX. I want to pick their brains at the upcoming SMUG (or whatever they call it now) mtg.
They also have a nice way of handling metasearching -- I love the link entitled 'what am I searching?'

really cool

A wireless experiment in Bath

CNN reports a wireless experiment in Bath...the city, not the tub. Seems like an effort to blend tourism and technology. For example, they will test have a server that stores photographs of building in Bath. People could take a picture and if a match occurs with a picture on the server, information about the building and local points of interest will be returned to a wireless phone or other device. Another application will consist of users uploading information and pictures to a Web site that then charts their route.

I want my M-TV -- cool and costly

Check out QUOSA! Run through a couple of demos (yes, I know the guy is a slooooow talker) QUOSA s a hacked-browser/portal??? that does lots of stuff including:

• Post-Search Automated Full-Article Retrieval -- search, click and you got the full text
  
• Article Organizing -- slect things you've retrieved and then click to dump citations into EndNote, Reference Manager, Procite. In addition to all the bibliographic info you'd expect, each entry will include link back to where you got it from (i.e., PubMed) as well as a link to your own copy on your hard drive
• Full-Text Searching -- but it's not just full text searching; you've got the stuff on your computer so searching ought to be no big deal. what they add is a something sort of like a cross between a cluster analysis and a ictionary of frequently used words. Have QUOSA build one from the articles on your disk or go grab one from, for instance, a dictionary of terms from PubMed Entrez for gene research.
  

They only show QUOSA working with PubMed and Ovid. Of course, that makes sense since it's aimed at high-end STM types more than Soc Sci or Humanities. Also, they aren't bashful about pricing. One year's subscription is $499.95.

I saw this mentioned on Web4Lib and there was a lot of concern about systematic downloading and licenses. I can see that as an issue to be worked out but really, how cool is this tool?

Google, the Khmer Rouge, and the Public Good,

That's the title of a talk by Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan's, to the scholarly publishing section of AAUP. I'm not sure where the Khmer Rouge comes in but she was defending U Mich participation in the Google Book Library Project as legal and morally justified -- for the public good. Needless to say, Pat Schroeder who was also present for the meeting did not agree.

Did you know that Google's Larry Page is a UMich alum? From InfoToday

Library School webcasts

University of Missouri - Columbia

School of Information Science and Learning Technologies

has a number of different webcast series and an archive. Of particular interest are the ones on human information behavior.

Feb 16 cast is about a project to establish a research agenda for the field of online info seeking behavior. These are people from SIG-USE group in ASIST.

I know, I'm a geek...

...but I'm really impressed with the Scientific American podcasts. Something to listen to while I'm eating my lunch at my desk. tsk, tsk. Here's summaries of first two 'casts.

FEBRUARY 15, 2006

SciAm Podcast: 02-15-06

In this episode, Scientific American staff editor Christine Soares talks about avian flu; Bruce Mirken discusses marijuana policy in the U.S. and England; and paleontologist Gregory Erickson describes the newfound long-lost cousin of T. rex. Also: test your science smarts with our quiz and hear how yesterday's comics might have handled today's news.

FEBRUARY 08, 2006

SciAm Podcast: 02-08-06

In this episode, Scientific American editor-in-chief John Rennie reflects on the Korean stem cell debacle; the National Inventors Hall of Fame announces this year's inductees; and evolution defender Eugenie Scott discusses the importance of the decision in the recent Dover evolution trial. Also: hear outtakes from the CSI show you're never going to see on TV.

Flaming on stealing

As a follow up to the last entry's complaint about stealing....

Last week I was in Mexico with Austin Smiles and I got a chance to chat with Roberto, the guy who was making a video of the mission for AS. He used to have a cool job as a photographer (videographer?) for Sony Corp in Spain. He worked on music videos for artists like Ricky Martin and really loved his job. Then Sony cut way back on staffing for videos because there was such a huge problem with piracy. Roberto says you can buy copies of music videos on the street in Mexico for twenty-five cents.

He lost his job with Sony and went back home to Mexico where he is now making videos of things like this mission and kids birthday parties. He said, 'If you'd told me 5 years ago that I'd be doing this I'd have thought you were crazy.'

I know there are people who'll justify pirating by saying the the rich artists can afford it but

1. it's still stealing &
2. those rich folks aren't the ones who suffer -- it's people like Roberto.

WARNING: Check your proxies

Got word today that there's a blog offering info on how to poach journal articles by giving out open proxy information. Hopkins was listed but we've shut down the proxy.

I'm really creeped out by the number of people who seem to believe it's ok to steal.

Funny Wikipedia Story

Wikipedia bans congressional hill IP addresses. They've been editing entries about them. I heard about it on NPR. Here's some information from Wikipedia.

Colleges Fight FCC's New Online Wiretapping Rules

A group of colleges, libraries, and technology companies has asked a federal court to overturn a ruling, issued by the Federal Communications Commission, that facilitates Internet wiretapping. The 71-page brief, filed by organizations such as Sun Microsystems, Pulver.com, the American Association of Community Colleges, the Association of American Universities, and the American Library Association, has been sent to the US Court of Appeals arguing that the FCC has overstepped its bounds.

The ruling these groups want overturned could require ISPs and colleges to rewire their networks so that federal investigators can more easily track individuals' Web browsing and e-mail use. College and library officials argued that the rewiring would prove prohibitively expensive, and that it would inevitably lead to violations of their network users' privacy. (Sources: CNET News & Wired Campus)

Visual searching

Finally, a chance to use Grokkers visual searching technology in a real life search situation. Beginning in February EBSCOhost will add a Visual Search tab to their search interface. See a flash presentation on it at http://www.epnet.com/flashViewer.php?marketID=1&topicID=407 .

It sure seems like a cool technology but I've never been able to figure out if it's more than just cool sounding because the data available to search are so small. Academic Search Premier should be a good one to try this out on.

Out of town

I went to San Antonio over the weekend for ALA mid-winter. Here's are some brief notes on some of what I saw:

• EX LIBRIS meeting we got good news from about date for starting to use x-server (earlier) and info about training (web based and we can subscribe to it for a year if we want -- I'm not sure what that means exactly but it sounded good.)
  
• Sirsi/Dynix meeting was pretty ordinary except I found I like the president of the company better than the last time I attended one of these meetings. Probably because he also likes the idea of a movie-only search space. I still don't know if we can do it now but it helps to know the president of the company is enthused about doing it.
  
• Scholarly Stats -- I hope we can get this. It's a service that harvests all your e-use stats (even non-counter compliant ones), cleans them up and puts them in a csv file. If you've ever had to gather use stats you would be falling down at these guy's feet. It's about $30-40 for each platform (FirstSearch, CSA, EBSCOhost, etc.)
  
• Web of Science -- got a contact for xml gateway but the guy I spoke with pointed out that this is definitely a dbase we'll need to watch for excessive turn aways.
  
• WebFeat (http://www.webfeat.org/) -- saw presentations by several institutions using it. Some had features I like (e.g., check off box for dbase selection) I made notes so we can borrow liberally.
  
• Alamo -- I walked by it every day but never went in. I'd been in several times before and was pretty sure it's about the same--I'm absolutely sure they still haven't put a basement in it.
  
• Souvenir shops -- the best ones (if you like odd/quiry artesanal products) are definitely not on the first floor. I bought several more coconut masks (like the one hanging in my office) and a microscope made out of a spark plug, washers and other bits of metal welded together. There is some great self-taught sculpture from scraps around. Had I a few hundred dollars to waste I'd need a trunk to get it all back.
  

I'm staying with my father now in Wharton (see http://www.city-data.com/city/Wharton-Texas.html for the objective outsider look or http://www.whartontexas.com/ for a How we see ourselves page.) I got here by bus. The ride was fine except they had no lights for reading after dark and I truly wish the person I sat next to had been a good bit thinner.

On Saturday I leave for Veracruz for an Austin Smiles mission on which I'll be translating. We stay in the Hotel Camino Real. We're at the Red Cross hospital pretty much all day but in the evenings we go out to eat together.

If I get a chance to update things in Mexico I will.

Midwinter in San Antonio

It seems slower to me than in the past but I'm not sure whether it's me or if the conference has changed.

• The best thing I've seen here is Scholarly Stats, a company that will go out and gather all your online use stats, normalize them where possible and hand them to you as a csv file so that you can do your own analysis. I'm hoping we can get it.


• Sirsi/Dynix has a new scheme for rolling out their new products. They will have 'migration scripts' that will allow us to go on using the existing version of the system while we are testing our own data and then do the cut over when we want to. What's not to like.


• They told Ron that they understood why the sloooow response time to the WebReporter and think the most recent upgrade should have fixed it.


• The prospects for getting a slightly early start on x-server look good.


• Unfortunately my scheduled meeting with some folks from the International Relations Round Table fell through. We were going to talk about setting up an open URL link resolver for folks in deveopig nations. I'm not sure what happened, they just didn't show.Go figure.

ACRL San Antonio

Dear all,

I'm heading out this morning to go back home since I've been in San Antonio since Tuesday for an intensive seminar for new library directors. If you go to any of the interesting technology show case sessions, please post some of your thoughts here. I'm wishing now I had stayed longer, but also want to get back to Jonathan.

I'm looking forward to ACRL Baltimore....we'll have to have a Scrapple alum meeting there for current and past Hopkins folks.

Best,

S

AADL Catalog

Check this post out. Cool image work in the AADL catalog.

graphical passwords, as it were

Rutgers has a page (article?) announcing a graphical password system. Instead of using letters and numbers you use images and click on selected areas on the image.

I've been using a graphical password for some time now with my bank but it works slightly differently. They show me an image and a phrase I created myself to make me confident that I have indeed gone to their web site. When I see that I can be confident ane enter my password. Trust goes both ways.

what do you think of this hair-brained idea?

We have a great video collection and we know that lots of people want to pick out a movie for the weekend. Of course, that's just a royal pain to do-- you can't browse like at Blockbuster and the catalog is hard to use. So what if we had a Movie Library catalog...or maybe a Movie library portal channel. We would provide a search interface specifically desigined for searching and displaying records for films. We could do things like:

• restrict all searches to material type "videos, dvds..."
  
• restrict all searches to location "Eisenhower AV"
• change names of fields from author/contributor to director, writer, actor, etc.
• offer the choice of format -- dvd or video (we could do this because DVD call numbers begin with DVD and video call numbers begin with video)
• steal from the ncsu catalog format and give our interface a side frame with links to all the named people in the record, maybe to genre types like feature film, comedy, film noir...
• lots of records for films include a summary that would be good to highllight
• wonder if we could get images like the ones you see in IMDB?
  

We'd want to work with someone who does film cataloging to see what other features could be pulled out. And I like the ncsu catalog function that allows you to return only items that are not checked out.

your thoughts?

Cool catalog interface/engine, part 2

Wow, I looked around and it has some great features.

Here's a good powerpoint on the thinking behind it --“The Dis-Integration of Library Systems of the Future” (Kristen Antelman) http://www.lib.virginia.edu/ptpl/2005antelman.ppt

I love what she has to say -- she understands that you just can't shove everything into a single Integrated System. No matter how hard you try, something new will come along that doesn't fit the model. You have to be able to pull up related info from different sources in real time. She calls the system as a whole the E-Matrix and says what we really need is a mashup of all these different pieces of info.

OK so right now we've got (or will soon have) these knowledgebases -- if you will forgive the term

• SFX
• MetaLib (JHsearch)
• our catalog records (MARC info)
• new E-Resource Management System
  
• vendor A&I dbases like EBSCO (some full text)
  

The question is, how will we mashup all those sources? We've got our Web Site and we're going to have portals. What goes where? When do we pull in personalization?

And how do we make the switch without traumatising our patrons?

...but it's still not Google Scholar

InfoTrieve (a doc delivery company) has gone back to offering their search service for free. http://www.infotrieve.com/af.

The interface is cluttered and you still have to pay for the article. If there is a way to show our link resolver it's not immediately obvious.

We won't be promoting it any time soon.

Cool catalog interface/engine

NCSU just unveiled last week the new interface to their catalog. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/libraries.php?p=1998&more=1.

I think they are either Sirsi or Dynix but they are using Endeca to power the searching. I wonder how that works? And how does it interface with the ILS? Very interesting.

the catalog is at: http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/

I have some reservations about the number of options. We've been headed towards a cleaner interface but still...

They also have a nice interface to their e-resources. I like the narrower/broader distinction in their related dbases list.

another day another vulnerability

Is it just me or does it seem like we're seeing a speed up in the tempo of Windows vulnerability alerts. Newest one is for machines that automatically search for wi-fi connection on boot up. Not that it's that big a deal. But still...

"Criminal gangs were unlikely to target this flaw as it would be too labor-intensive to exploit, predicted MessageLabs, saying that it was "really a threat from script kiddies".

from c|net http://news.com.com/Windows+Wi-Fi+vulnerability+discovered/2100-1029_3-6027399.html?part=rss&tag=6027399&subj=news

back among the living

I've been neck-deep in the metalib project and haven't written here much lately but I'm back now. At least until I leave for ALA next Friday.

Mouse revenge

Not computer mice, but a real mouse. Just a note to never do this for a myriad of reasons.

New breed of e-books

Made possible with the advent of e-ink, we are likely to see several new gadgets of e-readers

Worth reading: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/
content/dec2005/tc20051229_155542.htm

I'm looking forward to the reader that is about the thickness of and moves like a glossy magazine page.

Think of what it would do for people who have vision problems reading? Sounds like a great advance.

Aggregated Customization

Inc Magazine has an article about a trend David Freedman calls aggregated customization. The article describes the latest venture for the CEO of Citrix Systems. The idea is to create daily direct flight patterns and prices based on when and where most of your customers want to fly. Since I have to either fly to Atlanta or Denver to get to San Antonio this winter, this sounds like a great idea to me.

Just Don't call it a Lego Drive.

Check out the latest external hard drive from Lacie. http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10695

More cool stuff you can do with HIP

The same person who was experimenting with the HIP 'tagcloud' is now experimenting with allowing users to tag items in a test HIP environment.

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of user-tagging for library databases, but it's a cool thing to play with. (I'm not automatically *against* the idea of user-tagging for library databases, either. I'm perched right on the fence on this one. It looks awfully cool, but I'm not sure the benefits outweigh the risks in all cases.)

Wikipedia fall out

We are always pushing technology forward to find new applications, but we often don't anticipate ways how that technology will be used and the resulting social implications.

According to a CNN article, the author who wrote a false entry linking Seigenthaler to the Kennedy assassinations has come forward.

Also from the article:

"Chase said he didn't know the free Internet encyclopedia called Wikipedia was used as a serious reference tool."

Library Elf

No, not a student worker in costume, but a package more and more libraries seem to be buying into to track loans and due dates. Interesting post about privacy concerns related to Library ELF.

Library ELF is a company based in Canada that allows you to track the books you have checked out, overdues and other things through RSS feeds.

'INCREDIBLY SMART BOOKMARKING'

Source: The Chronicle

"Open-source software being developed at George Mason University is intended to make it easier for professors to organize and cite materials they find online. The program, called Firefox Scholar, will plug into the popular Firefox browser and automatically capture bibliographic data, researchers say.

For more about information technology, including IT news reported elsewhere online, visit our Information Technology section"

Question of the Day

Are you talking about CALEA (Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act) and its impact on your network on your campus...or do you know of conversations going on? Our consortium is polling each other to see who is talking about it since it seems that little conversations are starting to take place...

Aside, Jonathan took his first five steps a few days ago! He's brilliant for figuring out how to walk before his first birth day... :)

Again with the infinite number of monkeys ...

Sue V sent me a pointer to a USA today article about the hazards of trusting our fellow humans too much. It's an op-ed piece by John Seigenthaler a retired journalist whose hopping mad about his entry in the Wikipedia. It said that he had once been suspected involved in both Kennedy assinations. that version of entry was only up for 132 days on Wikipedia was eventually corrected.

It's true that the mistake was eventually corrected and I know this is the argument that people use to support open content but there are some mistakes you'd rather were never made to have to correct them.

Firefox 1.5 is here

It's up on their site. I'm hoping this will be the version that lets us add Firefox to our public workstations. The current IE security issues have made it more attractive to the systems folks. As I've pointed out here, there are lots of extensions that would be great for library patrons. For example, I've added LibX to Firefox on my computer at work and I'm liking it.

Bring your laptop to ALA this summer

As part of its reconstruction New Orleans is getting free, municipally-run Wi-Fi system. A number of companies have donated equipment. It's begun operation in the French Quarter and central business district and should cover the entire city within a year.

can we send these guys to the Netherlands?

Marketplace has a brief story about the FCC's recently declared support for a la carte pricing for cable. Think we could get them to talk to Elsevier? (it's a podcast so have your earphones on)

Brits caption their Inet video

Pretty cool. BBC is experimenting with adding captions to the internet editions of their technology programs.

Of course, I often need captions to understand half of Masterpiece Theater but that's just me.

Easy come, easy go

Now all a merchant needs to charge a sale to your credit card account is a cell phone and a swipey device . Personally I thought we might jump straight to voice recognition or maybe eyeball scanning.

The article says Domino's won't use the device because it makes it hard for the delivery guys to drive. Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't these the guys that had to finally quit promising delivery in 30 minutes because too many of their delivery guys were getting into car crashes trying to make the deadline.

One place Google is not king

The OCLC newsletter for 21 Nov gives Nielsen data for online newspaper paper use and Yahoo comes out on top as a place to go for news.

The top five brands ranked by unique visitors for October 2005 were Yahoo! (101,790,000), Microsoft (95,879,000), MSN (89,769,000), Google (83,350,000) and AOL (75,355,000).

And they give interesting numbers on top advertisers as well.

The top five advertisers and their estimated spending for October 2005 were Vonage Holdings Corp. ($30,444,700), DeVry Inc. ($17,201,600), LowerMyBills.com, Inc. ($13,744,100), Dell Computer Corporation ($9,230,700) and Apollo Group, Inc. ($8,819,700).

Wow! Vonage spent more than $30M for advertising on the net last month! And Dell only spent a little over $9M -- those cheapskates.

The grass is always greener

Now that I'm no longer working in a Horizon/Dynix/whatever-they're-calling-it-this-month library, why do I keep hearing about all of this cool stuff related to Horizon?

Apparently someone's been playing with generating a tag cloud from Horizon and displaying it in HIP. Is this not cool?

PenTop computing

David Pogue has an article about the Fly Pentop computer, a new toy for . It is an oversized pen with an AAA battery and a computer and a camera. You have to use it with special grid paper so that the camera can keep track of where the pen is in space and a speaker to reply -- 'cause there's no screen. The cool thing is there are programs that let you draw things and then use the drawing. For example, you draw a calculator and then tap the keys and the pen tells you what the anwer is. Or you can draw a keyboard and play. The market is 8-14 year olds.

It brings to mind the PDA-sized gizmo I heard about not so long ago that you use to project an image of a keyboard on a flat surface in front of you. Then you type on the image and the gizmo stores your typing.

taxonomy is to folksonomy AS database is to ???

GoogleBase is up in Beta. Despite being quite ill the last week or so, both Danny Sullivan and Gary Price have written about Google Base this week in Search Engine Watch. ResearchBuzz also has a write up. The articles are worth purusing.

I noodled around a bit on GBase. It's kind of primitive but interesting. Google gives you a forms interface where you can add things (fields) like attributes, keywords, and notes. Merchants could enter info about what they are selling in a self-structured way. Sort of taking tagging to the next level.

Wonder what kind of stuff people will put up there?

LibX update -- try it, you'll like it

For those of you who are interested in the LibX toolbar, someone who styles himself Godmar sent me this link to install a LibX toolbar that works for JHU.

http://libx.org/libx/src/editions/jhu/libx-jhu.xpi

If you aren't at JHU these days, well, we miss you. But I bet if you wrote Godmar he'd be glad to write a URL for you, too. Write him at godmarATgmail.com

Crankable laptops?

As reported today in the Chronicle e-newsletter, MIT has announced the crankable laptop.
My first thought is that this is pretty darn cool. The shoulder strap doubles as the power cord.

It will cost $100 and have either 500 MB or 1 G of data storage. It won't have a CD or DVD drive, but will have a flash drive and will operate on Linux.

My Library, My Bookstore, My sister, My daughter....

OCLC announced a pilot with Google. Now if you come up with an Open WorldCat 'find in a library' hit, the full record will include a noticable box on the right side of the screen that says Ready to buy? and gives price and a link to Amazon. The blurb says that the library will get credit on their OCLC bills but I'm not sure how that will work--how they will know which library to credit.

The problem. of course, is finding a Find in A Library book record in the humongous Google database. The contents of WorldCat may seem big but they are only a teeny, teeny, tiny spec in GoogleWorld.

Here's a search that should bring up the Find in a Library link fairly close to the top:

Kpelle Bledsoe Women marriage society 'find in a library'


If you haven't looked at Open WorldCat in a while, have a look. They've added tabs for "reviews"-- be the first person to review. And the "details" tab include ToC and notes spaces open for the public to add their 2 cents.

Maybe Google will add a separate search tool for Open WorldCat... nah, not likely.

NOTE: For the young and not-terribly-interested-in-Roman-Polanski-films reader, the 'my sister, my daughter' reference is to Chinatown [use the Find function]. It's Faye Dunaway's line and it's a very useful catchphrase when you don't feel like saying 'It's a dessert topping. It's a floor wax. . . . Stop, you're both right.'
That by the way is a line from an SNL skit joking on the old Certz commercial. Oh I've got to stop the links never end.....

RLG & Looksmart -- peddaling cultural materials?

According to Info Today, these two are getting together. Looksmart will include Trove.net in their resources. I took a quick look at http://www.trove.net and it seems to be a way to sell to the public the images in the RLG Cultural Material collections.

milblogging

OK, I promised to write about the DLF meetings and I will soon but check out this article by John Hockenberry about soldiers in Iraq blogging--what they can get by with, where the army draws the line. There's stuff about how one guy got brought in equipment so that he could extend the network connection to the trailors (I guess they don't use tents).

My favorite line is from near the end when a Hopkins graduate is explaining how useful he found his undergraduate degree while serving in Iraq,

"Neuroscience actually came in handy when I had to explain to my guys exactly why doing ecstasy in a tank when it's 140 degrees out on a road that's blowing up every day is a really bad idea."

Call me crazy but I think guys who need to be told that should not be allowed to handle guns or heavy machinery. They should be peeling potatoes and doing laundry where they will be infinitely less dangerous.

Storage space

Dear Scrapplelites,

I remember when I was at Hopkins, I think somebody (maybe you Woody?) found this great website where you could upload documents? Then from another location you could download them? It wasn't the Hopkins shared space. It had no affiliation with JHU.

Sound familiar?

OK, I'll admit it-- I'm e-paper obsessed

Through a series of links I landed on a Guardian article about yet another company's plans for introducing thin, flexible screens. This time it's Siemans and they are promoting it as cheap -- 1 square meter for about £30, which is about $51.10. They are thinking about 'Harry Potter like inserts in magazines' and then maybe some kind of computer game.

That seems like really trivial uses of the technology. I'm still looking for the small pda-like object that you can load up with your books and then read them on the flexible screen.

Oh, man, you gotta see this

LibX is a Firefox extension that does some kind of magic! On a web page you see an ISBN or a journal article citation, do a little highlighting, right-click and it takes you to your library's resources. Check out the screenshots and screencasts.

Now, what I really want is to get Firefox added as a browser for all our public workstations... and start adding some of this truly cool functinality.

Promise of better postings in the near future

I've been behind in postings for the last few weeks as I've been eyeball deep in the implementation of MetaLib here at Hopkins (we're calling it JHsearch.) But I hopw to make it up a bit. I'm leaving this afternoon for Charlottesville and the fall DLF conference. I'll try to write up a bit each evening on what I saw.

I'm going to a meeting on the Aquifer Project -- a big digization project. I'll be able to tell you more once I've been to the meeting. Also, Adam Chandler is giving a presentation on where DLF is heading with E Resource Mgmt so I'll go to that.

Slouching to e-paper

Another report on the development of e-paper. LG.Philips has combined with E-Ink, folks who've been on this quest for many years, and by the end of the next year they plan to be mass-marketing a rollable 5" display. They will price competitively with a comparable LCD--I haven't priced 5" LCDs lately so I can't give a ball park there.

They won't start with text, though. Instead they say Seiko is going to produce a watch with a curved paper display. I'm wondering who's gonna wear a watch with a display that big but hey, I'm not a visionary when it comes to marketing.

They quote a Forrester Group analyst as tut-tutting the project and warning that it can't be a technology in search of a problem. Hello! Google-Print, Open Content Alliance and now Microsoft in cooperation with various British Libraries are all ready to scan the world. Not to mention all the other digitization projects out there from the likes of LoC and Virginia. I think that's plenty of text to read.

I see the main problem is -- can they make it waterproof so you can read in the bath or at the beach?

Hermes came to mind

when I was talking to my parents. My brother is moving to Michigan to work for a software company that provides work-flow software. They described a software that cities use to track work orders and invoices. If any problem comes up along the workflow, the problem gets flagged and the appropriate person is notified. I immediately thought, wow, that sounds a lot like Hermes.

They do have a link for Higher Ed. While it's not exactly Hermes, if you scroll down you can see how they suggest tracking invoices.

http://www.matrix-imaging.com/solutions.html

Google Displays Books

That are not embroiled in the copyright battle

Making Visible the Invisible

Seattle Public Library has an interesting project on display called Making Visible the Invisible. The installation consists of 6 LCD screens locating on a glass wall behind the information desk in the Seattle Central Library.

The screens feature real-time visualizations of circulation statisitcs and catalog keywords that are generated by software that receives data each hour. Pretty neat project.

Collective Idiocy

A couple weeks ago I was at the gym reading over a recent issue of Time when an article caught my eye. The article gathered people (such as O'Reilly, Gladwell, Shirky, Dyson, etc) together to talk about the future trends most likely to affect us. Maybe it was due to editing, but I didn't really care too much for the article.

Boing-boing has an entry about the article that quotes the part I find the most interesting...even though I don't agree with O'Reilly.

From the article:

TIME: WHAT INNOVATION WILL MOST ALTER HOW WE LIVE IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS?

TIM O'REILLY, publisher and technology advocate: Collective intelligence. Think of how Wikipedia works, how Amazon harnesses user annotation on its site, the way photo-sharing sites like Flickr are bleeding out into other applications. I think we're at the first stages of something that will be profoundly different from anything we have seen before, in terms of the ability of connected computers to deliver results. We're entering an era in which software learns from its users and all of the users are connected.

DON'T WE ALSO RUN THE RISK OF HARNESSING OUR COLLECTIVE IDIOCY? EVERYONE WHO HAS BEEN ON THE WEB KNOWS THAT THE RATIO OF SIGNAL TO NOISE IS NOT ALWAYS OPTIMAL.

O'REILLY: Right, but remember what Google did. They basically said, let's look at what all the millions of individual users are linking to, and let's use that information to get the good stuff to float to the top. That turned out to be a very powerful idea, the ramifications of which we're exploring in other areas, such as with tagging on Flickr or blogs. People are finding more ways to have the wisdom of crowds filter that signal-to-noise.

MARK DERY, author and cultural critic: I find the fetishization of the wisdom of crowds fascinating. It has a whiff of '90s cyberhype about it. I'm fascinated by the way in which it contrasts with individual subjectivity. A lot of technologies, such as Flickr, blogging, the iPod, seem to turn the psyche inside out, to extrude the private self into the public sphere. You have people walking down the street listening to iPods, seemingly oblivious to the world, singing. More and more, we're alone in public.

I have to say that I find the current treatment of the wisdom of crowds to be a bit droll. It's like saying that we're always going to go with the audience a la Who Wants to be a Millionaire. What happened to self-determination?

I think there is distinction to be drawn between wisdom of the crowd and the effects of social power on a society. Remember that blue eye vs. brown eye experiment or the failed prison experiment?

Digital Textbooks

A while back I wrote an entry on my blog about how some campuses were selling e-books to students in the campus bookstore. One such campus is West Virginia University, the place where I first learned how to be a science librarian. Anyway, I digress. According to a recent Wired News, from The Chronicle, sales have been somewhat sluggish, accounting for "5.7% of textrbook sales at those institutions."

For more on the digital-textbook project, see an article from The Chronicle by Andrea Foster.
--source Wired News from The Chronicle

The Gordian Knot

In case y'all aren't aware of it, The Gordian Knot is a collaborative blog for SirsiDynix customers. There's not much there yet, but it's a cool idea, I think.

(Now I need to find out of there's such a thing for Voyager customers...)

Computer Scientists Discover the Brandeis Model

BBC reports that two guys at Cambridge have come up with an AI system that automatically identifies and answers FAQs. Sony plans use it to provide tech support for Play Station 2 online. Questions that can't be answered by the system will be forwarded (by e-mail) to a human who will answer the question and add it to the MetaFAQ.

Look for more chicken little reports of how Reference Librarians are about to be replaced by machines. Take a deep breath. Do not be alarmed.

Play Station 2, a human designed computer system that is sold to customers on the assumption that it works. One would hope that most of the technical support questions would already be easily identifiable and aswerable. If that's what you are doing in the reference office then shame on you.

This work replicates Virginia's theory of reference service that's more than a decade old--and very misleadingly called the Brandeis Model. With the Brandeis model we use graduate students instead of a MetaFAQs to answer the easy, repetitive questions and human beings (not e-mail msgs) are passed back to the reference librarian when a question falls outside those limits.

Reference librarians in the RCO don't really answer questions. What they do is interview patrons to figure out what they need. More often than not, they can't articulate their research needs. A student might walk up to the desk and ask where the microform machines were. A half hour later we could easily be knee deep in the guide to ESTC on microfilm trying to find a pamphlet her professor mentioned in class.


My advice to people who are worried about Artificial Intelligence machines taking over human intelligence jobs is to read a bit in macro-linguistics, the philosophy of language and throw in a basic reader on the social construction of reality.

Just make sure you have a job that calls for creativity and human conversation and you're safe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2055491.stm

Text message & concerts

In the Sunday Omaha World-Herald, I read an article about how kids these days are using their cell phones to text message at concerts. For more on this idea, look here.

The article in the World-Herald touches on intellectual property as a reason why some musicians have banned cell phones. According to the article, Bon Jovi is coming to Omaha and will allow this text messaging. Book your flights now! :)

I thought the idea of text messaging to a huge screen at a live venue was a very interesting idea. Here's a pretty cool application of this idea that happened back in August.

Nonviolent Games

Thanks to ultraviolent titles like Quake and Grand Theft Auto, the video-gaming industry isn't exactly known for its high-minded political insight. But Ivan Marovic, one of the founders of the influential Serbian student resistance group Otpor, is hoping to change that perception. Mr. Marovic is working to design a game -- called A Force More Powerful -- that teaches the tactics of nonviolent conflict, not the art of the shoot'em-up. (Wired News)" -- source The Chronicle

Isn't it about time though? I'm so tired of violent games. Haven't we had enough of violent games?

Pointless and yet impressive

Check out the site Toogle http://c6.org/toogle/.

In the search box I started out with King Henry the eighth. Whoa. see what it spits out.

Did fine with yellow roses

But try a query with just the word scrapple.

Somebody has an awful lot of time on their hands.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia

Google, Google, Google. Those guys are everywhere doing everything.

Word is they are about to go live with their Google Base. They let you put anything you want up there, tag it, sell it, whatever. Three bog entries that popped up in at http://a9.com/google base

ZDNet says they got confirmation Tuesday from a Google Spokeswoman.

There entries in flickr for screenshots of the new service

ArsTechnica (Ken "Caesar" Fisher's blog) says it's almost up and goes on to speculate:

There's another level to this as well. By letting people post nearly anything, Google will get their hands on a massive database of items that have been given user-created attributes. Google then can use that data to try and generate a kind of universal tagging schema for information and items, which could then be used to classify information across the net.

Ohmigod, one uniform language for describing things! These guys are pathologically hopeful.

Wisdom of The Crowd

WARNING: This is more of a rant than news and it's really only scrapple-related. I've been reading some stuff that's really, really irritating me.

The wisdom of The Crowd is a very popular notion just now and I'm in agreement with the idea in many situations--but not all.

Let's remember that Nazi Germany was brought to you by The Crowd. They didn't vote for Hitler but they voted for the guy who handed the government over to him.

I, for one, do not want a free-for-all discussion in the operating room on how to proceed with my surgery. I'd like one, single, very well educated, highly trained, expert on my problem to be in charge, to be wielding the knife and to be calling the plays.

I don't want riders on the bus debating whether or not we can make it across the train tracks before the train arrives.

My point is that we don't want to take an idea that's good in some situations and try to apply it everywhere. That kind of 'Well, it worked before, it ought to work now' thinking leads to abominations like Rocky XXXIV.

There is a time and a place for expertise. And you really shouldn't depend on volunteer work to develop a body of complex knowledge or make time limited decisions.

I'm just calling for a bit of balance.

But maybe you disagree...

EDUCAUSE review editorial scolds librarians

The editor of EDUCAUSE review, Paul Gandel, has published a short but severe scolding to librarians for not getting with it. Says the commercial front is going to overwhelm us and we will disappear off the face of the earth. Or something like that.

In some ways this guy is just another Chicken Little, but he is pointing out some of the issues we need to be thinking about. And some of them are larger than just the library world.

I'll stop here and put my ranting in a comment so that you can skip on to the next item in your overly busy day.

Big wheels on a tiny car

PC magizine reports that James Tour's group, from the chemistry dept at Rice have developed a one molecule car. It's got suspension and big wheels (relatively big, that is). Why would you want a one molecule car? To tote molecules around and put them where you want, of course.

Think of building a chip using lots of little bitty cars. Take this molecule 5 nanometers, turn 45 degrees right, go another 150 nanometer, put the molecule down and then go back home. If you could do that you could make really small circuits.

OK, I'm confused. Can anyone out there explain?

The NYT says universities and EDCAUSE are complaining about the FBI's requiring some universities to upgrade their networks to make surveillance easier.

It would require universities to re-engineer their networks so that every Net access point would send all communications not directly onto the Internet, but first to a network operations center where the data packets could be stitched together into a single package for delivery to law enforcement, university officials said.

That sounds like humongous deal. Various university folk are saying they would have to redo all their access points, that we're looking at major expenses--enough to drive the cost of tuition up $450 annually.

On the other side the article quotes 'some government officials' as saying that it's not really that big a deal because they wouldn't be picking up the Intranet traffic, only the stuff that goes off campus. Basically "schools would be required to make their networks accessible to law enforcement only at the point where those networks connect to the outside world."

So which is it? Does every single switch in every single closet have to be replaced? Or could they route everything out of campus through a single line. Then, at that one point where the campus meets the world, they could pull traffic off and examine it there? Would this do anything to speed?

Or, is it something else? Or maybe both? Can you really tell from the article?

BTW, if this is an accurate quote about only caring about what goes off campus, it represents a serious lack of understanding of the nature of university work.

Velociraptor Bad At Disemboweling -- nrs

That's the title of a posting in Slashdot. Some MechE Brits did robotic modeling and found that a claw on this dinosaur was better at pinning things down than ripping them apart.

The posting itself is not half as good as the title. Sorta like this one.

Never underestimate the power of a good headline
-- it can draw readers into almost any material.

nrs [not really scrapple]

Sound bites bite

Goodness knows, I'm not cheerleader for Microsoft but this is truly slanted writing.

A Slashdot item this morning read "Microsoft Thinks Africa Doesn't Need Free Software." My immediate reaction was what kind of lunacy is this? And, since it was about Africa (which by the way is an entire continent, not a country) I had to pop over and read it on ZDNet. The tag line above the article reads,

"You can give people free software, but they won't have the expertise to use it, says Microsoft Nigeria's manager."

Well, duh. OK, that makes sense and I expect that MS is in fact supporting training. (After all, Gates is big into support for conquering malaria). Then the lead paragraph flips back to the sound bite,

"Microsoft has claimed the cost of software is not an important issue in the developing world."

Back to the lunacy. But read on. The next paragraph begins

"In response to a question on the role of open source software in Africa, Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria,..."

Key points are

• They are focusing on Open Source so the discussion appears to not be so much about the ability of peoples in developing economies to afford it as it is a response to the notion that Open Source is a good thing there. So that explains why MS is saying this.
• The quote is from an office in Nigeria. Nigeria is a much, much richer country than its neighbors. Oil profits make it unlike any of its neighbors in sub-Saharan Africa. What I'm saying here is that a person working out of an office in Nigeria is not the best person to look to for an economic analysis of the financial worth of the vast majority of people living on the continent.
  

Next we get the meat of the article that includes some paragraphs quoting the head of MS for Europe, the Middle East and Africa about how MS is hitting on all fronts--equipment and training. So they are doing good, right?

Don't get too comfortable because the final paragraph is all about organizations that are offering Open Source software training. In that page there are a number of links to those organizations and those links draw your eyes to that part of the page.

So, if you read the whole article you get a subtler understanding of the players, the context and the details of their arguments. But the thinking in journalism is that as people skim through the news they often only read the first and maybe last paragraph. If you'd done that here you'd have only picked up the 'sound bite' version and as a result gotten a very skewed understanding.

This is the print equivalent of those talking heads whose idea of a political debate is to name call the opposition and it drives me crazy. I don't care which side of the fence you are on--commercial or Open Source--this is just lousy reporting.

At the bottom of the page are links to two other articles.

Microsoft 'lends security expertise' to Nigeria

Emerging markets a priority for new Microsoft head

Did I follow the links? Naw, they looked like puff pieces -- minimally re-writen versions of PR releases. [insert grin face icon here]

====

And, BTW, I'm always irritated when I see people write about Africa as if it were a single country. It's a hugh place! Three times the size of the US at least. Thinking all Africans are alike makes about as much sense as saying that all North Americans are alike. Try telling an Alberta cowboy that he's just like a Mayan Indian in Guatemala. Arghhh.[flame off]

OK, it's not really scrapple...

But I can't resist posting a BBC article about 'Zombie worms' off Sweden. They feed on whale bones and are also called -- and this is the great part -- "bone-eating snot-flowers". Really. And the reason they are called that is because part of the worm looks like a flower and the section that is exposed to the water is "covered in a ball of mucus, so they are quite snotty."

Cool. Who knew they let 8 year olds name worms.

Electronic Paper . . . At long last

I can't believe it. E Ink announced today that they have really produced e-paper. The basics of this technology have been around at least since 1997. At that point the resolution was lousy. They made a big banner that Sears in Worschester, MA used for announcements. Now, though but they finally have produced a 10.1" flexible electronic paper display.

This technology, combined with The British Library's "Turning the Pages" project and you've got a good start on finally mastering print.

Copyright & Blackboard

Hello everybody. Did you all get the mass e-mail about Blackboard adding a copyright permissions building block? The e-mail links to an article in "Inside Highered.com" that says:

"The Copyright Permissions Building Block...will allow professors at the 1,200 colleges that use Blackboard's course management system, to automatically tap into the copyright center's authorization process...to make it easier for faculty...to get permission to use the materials they chose."

Forgive all the ... but I just wanted to put in the necessary to text to convey the author's meaning. Seems like he is saying that Blackboard will have a component that will let users tap into the Copyright Clearance Center's approval process for copyrighted material.

Anybody looking into this at Hopkins? Seems like it would be useful to allow faculty to post articles directly in Blackboard. Are there any cons to it I wonder?

What would Ray Crock say?

BBC reports that McDonald's currently offers for-fee wi-fi in some of it's joints but now they are working with Nintendo to provide free internet access for Nintendo DS handheld games consoles. It gives Nintendo a gateway for kids to play online who might not otherwise have access to the internet. McDonald's presumably gets lots of kids buying lots of food.

May be a smart move; might not. I sure wouldn't want to be the manager of a McD's where kids could come to hang out and play games.

Ray Crock, the original owner of McD's had some very strict ideas about what's allowed and what isn't in a McD. Vending machines were out of the question because he didn't want any of his stores selling cigarettes. Something tells me he wouldn't have been thrilled with this development.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see if it flies. McDonald's Hamburger & Internet Cafe?

BBC's related stories include:

FROM OTHER NEWS SITES:

Xinhua News Agency Nintendo to offer free wi-fi access at MacDonalds - 2 hrs ago

Click10.com Ronald, Meet Mario: DS To Get Free Wi-Fi At McDonald's - 4 hrs ago

United Press International Nintendo with those fries? - 13 hrs ago

CNET News.com Will free Wi-Fi 'Supersize' obesity rate? - 15 hrs ago

I'm not sure this is what they had in mind...

Remember when the President of the French National Library was grousing about how American literature would overwhelm that of other countries with the advent of Google Print? Well, Google is now opening sites in 8 European countries to run projects like their Google Print. Gonna announce it at the Frankfurt fair this year.

It will be along the lines of the American business project rather than a French academic site but what the hey. We blend when we enter new markets.

Don't they sell rice instead of french fries at the MacDonald's in Japan? I know I remember that T.R. Reid once said that the Japanese celebrate Christmas by going to Kentucky Fried Chicken -- sit down tables with linen and everything. Apparently you have to make reservations well in advance.

Susan, what do they serve at Mikey D's in Indonesia?

More info more good? not everyone agrees

I have to say I wondered about this myself. Some governments are complaining that Google maps show too much detail and could be of use to terrorists. OK, I wasn't thinking terrorist but just the general issue of security.
Google defends themselves on two points:

• the maps aren't all that current
• they are all from publically available information

India's President Kalam has voiced major concerns. Before he became president he was scientist who guided India's missile program.

BlogSpot sites could get filtered out of blogsearches

Not that I care. I do this for myself and my friends but Tara Calishain at ResearchBuzz gripes that the volume of Spam that comes from BlogSpot sites is ruining her searches.

"At the moment you can get around it by appending -site:blogspot.com -site:info to your searches on those search engines that will allow it. Which unfortunately isn't all of them, but cleans up Feedster and Google Blog Search at least."

For those of you tracking tech lexicon she tells us that blogs that are essentially spam as splogs. And, although she refers to BlogSpot as SplogSpot, there is actually a site http://splogspot.com that you can use to filter splog.

A Google-Print's-not-so-bad article

ARL Bimonthly Report 242
October 2005
The Google Print Library Project: A Copyright Analysis
by Jonathan Band

This guy is a lawyer who "does not represent any entity with respect to the Google Print project. He may be contacted via his Web site http://www.policybandwidth.com/."

He argues that what Google is doing is absolutely legitimate and that Pat S & her group are over reacting. He cites a number of different legal cases and I have to admit I lost interest before he got too far into that stuff but what I read of the article was persuasive.

NCES

Some one on a listserv pointed out this link...I think I've used this before, but it was interesting to play with this site again. You can compare academic libraries by region, expenditures per FTE, collection size, and so on:

http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/compare/index.asp?LibraryType=Academic

A very useful tool. Especially if you want to compare your library to peer institutions...

IPOD

Anyone going to get one of those new video IPODs? I have to say, I haven't been too tempted to get an IPOD before but this just might do it for me. I would love to catch up on my favorite TV show, which since Jonathan we've more or less banned TV while he's awake.

If NBC signs a deal to license the Apprentice (the Trump version), I'm so there.
How much will I pay to download each episode? They might as well make seasons available for download at a slightly discounted price. I think they said it's $2.99 per episode without the commercials. Will be interesting to see how advertisers react.

Hopkins prof in US News

Richard Shingles of the Bio dept leads an article in US News about using technology in the classroom. Apparently his students use some sort of wireless device to 'vote' on the answers to questions he poses. More from the active learning front.

WorldCat to become a Wiki?

OCLC is starting a pilot project to let users add content to OpenWorldCat. But have plans to bring this up in regular WorldCat.

" OCLC will first offer this service through Open WorldCat and later expand it into the WorldCat database in FirstSearch."

Many Hats

So in addition to supervising catalogers and dealing with cataloging policy and serials issues, I've been drafted to help with developing the catalog- and index-related questions for our web-usability survey. We have a survey that pops up occasionally when people use our website, but the catalog-related questions are general enough that the answers provide very little in the way of useful data for us. (Well, except for the almost universal comment of 'We want full text online!')

This is a completely new thing for me, and since I know some of you Scrapple folks have done more of this than I have, can you point me to some good resources on developing library-related web-usability surveys? Right now, it looks like most of our data is being gathered in the form of free-text entry fields, and I'm thinking we'll want to phrase more questions as yes/no or multiple choice in order to give us data that's easier to analyze. Any other suggestions?

More on municiple wireless networks

Earthlink is going to build a wireless network in Philadelphia

Philadelphia plans to offer free Internet access in public spaces such as parks, covering about 10 percent of the city, but outside of these areas, monthly subscriptions will cost from $10 to $20.

The name for @ in many languages

It's not new (1997) but I just stumbled across a site that lists some of the many different names for the @ in other languages.

My favorite? Pickled herringg. In Slovak and Czech one calls the @ sign a pickeled herring. Thus my e-mail would be:

woodson pickeled herring jhu dot edu

Mapping VS searching

CD|Net has added a Vivisimo-like mapping tool to it's web site. When you pull up one of their articles you also get The Big Picture, in the right-hand frame of the screen. The big piture is a mapping tool that draws a kind of star-like image with the current article listed at the center of the page & other related citations attached like rays to the center.

I'm still not sure what I think about these tools. They don't do anything for me but maybe it's just my unfamiliarity with them.

Fluwiki: Wisdom of the Crowd VS Science?

Check out David Mattison's blog for a discussion of the Fluwiki. Call me crazy but I don't think public health is one of those areas where everyone has an equally good chance of getting it right.

Someone writes in something wrong, I look at the site, it's corrected a few minutes later...I still got wrong info and more importantly, I don't know I have wrong info.

Yahoo tests the digitizing waters...

Yahoo Works With 2 Academic Libraries and Other Archives on Project to Digitize Collections

http://chronicle.com/free/2005/10/2005100301t.htm

Communication aid for paralysed

Japanese scientists have developed a headband that can help people who can't move any muscles express their wishes by reading the flow of blood in their heads. To answer yes you focus your thoughts -- try to solve a math problem or remember the words to a song. That pulls the blood to the front of your brain. Relaxing and thinking of nothing leaves the blood as is. The headband has a little gadget that uses near-infrared rays to measure the flow of blood. In about 30 seconds you have your answer. It only works about 80% of the time but patients' families are glad for that.

I'm just wondering how you know whether a particular answer is one of the 80% or one of the 20%.

Subway maps on your ipod

William Bright has a web site where you can download miniaturized versions of subway maps that you can view on your iPod. New York and San Fransisco have sent him 'cease & desist' letters but you can still download maps from:

Berlin, Germany
Bilbao, Spain
Boston, MA
Hong Kong
London, UK
Los Angeles, CA
Lyon, France
Melbourne, Australia
Milan, Italy
Montreal, QC
New York, NY
Paris, France
Philadelphia, PA
Salt Lake City
San Diego, CA
San Francisco, CA
Seoul, Korea
Singapore
Tokyo, Japan
Toronto, ON
Vancouver, BC
Washington DC

They don't let you smell mimeograph ink anymore, either

Now, truth be told, I never bought an honest-to-god new car but I know a lot of people say the smell of a new car is wonderful. Well, before too long we won't be able to smell that smell anymore. Toyota is taking the lead in getting rid of the smell which, it turns out, is a toxic cocktail of

volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that leach from glues, paints, vinyls and plastics in the passenger compartment. The fumes can trigger headaches, sore throats, nausea and drowsiness.