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.