Archive for October, 2004
More RSS in Government
October 17th, 2004From a sidebar to an article in FCW entitled, “Finetuning Needed”:
“‘We frequently get calls from other agencies wanting to know how they can bring our information inside their infrastructure,’ said Vivian Mackey, OPM’s agencywide Web site manager. To meet this need, OPM officials came up with a way for other agency leaders to incorporate news [...]
Library Stuff Gets Cataloged
October 17th, 2004John F. Anderies e-mailed me today to let me know that LS has been cataloged by his library, and thus, WorldCat. Wow! Thanks John.
Hallie Elizabeth at 22 months,
October 17th, 2004For those that have complained that I haven’t posted any pictures of Hallie lately, here you go. This was taken on her first day of nursery school.
The Metropolitans go 6-6…and have fun at the same time!
October 17th, 2004Barring a miracle for a playoff birth, the first season of the Metropolitans has come to an end. We had a great inaugural fall season, going 6-6 and look forward to the summer. 5 long months until spring training…
Switch Bookmarklets
October 17th, 2004Feedster-bound Michael Fagan has added yet another neat tool to his repertoire. Switch Bookmarklets allow you to easily switch from search results on one tool to the search results on another tool. After I run a search on Yahoo, I usually then switch over to Google (as always, it depends on the type [...]
RSS and dating
October 15th, 2004In an article entitled, “RSS Feeds Hunger for More Ads”, the last sentence is a quote by Jason Calacanis:
“Visiting the website is dating; getting a daily e-mail is going steady — but subscribing to an RSS feed, well, that is like getting married to a news source,’ he said. ‘It’s really the highest commitment you [...]
Wondering about Wondir?
October 13th, 2004A few weeks ago, I had the chance to chat on the phone with Allen Searls and Matthew Koll from Wondir. If you don’t know about Wondir, it’s a fully open question/answer service. Anyone can ask anything and anyone can answer any posed question. It’s almost like a Q&A wiki. The questions [...]
3 Interlibrary loans with the help of the bookmarklet
October 13th, 2004Today, I was asked to interloan 3 books. Of course, I wanted to try out the Google/OCLC/OWC bookmarklet, so I found the books on Amazon, clicked the bookmarklet and found all three on Open Worldcat (OWC). The list interface was a bit different, and many more libraries showed up for my state (NY), [...]
Why I love (and hate) my customized Amazon Feeds
October 13th, 2004The great thing about my customized Amazon feeds (made via On Focus) is that I get upcoming books on the subjects I want delivered into my aggregator (I have 4 of them set up). The bad thing is that I sometimes have to wait 6 months for a book to be published.
Case [...]
More on Podcasting and Audible
October 13th, 2004Jenny sent in this commentary from eweek, which discusses Audible and Podcasting:
“This functionality is already possible for customers of the Audible service, which offers its audio book customers paid subscriptions to NPR and other radio programs. Audible provides desktop client software capable of automatically downloading content from the company’s servers and loading it onto customers’ [...]
Podcasting in the library
October 12th, 2004OK, I sound like a dork, but my thoughts on Podcasting in libraries appear on a 30 minute audio segment from Chris Pirillo. I probably should have waited at least an hour to write down my thoughts before calling the number, but thus is life.
My segment starts at the 15:20 mark and goes for [...]
Walt on RSS…again
October 12th, 2004The latest Cites & Insights has yet another essay on RSS (see page 5). In it, Walt (again) mentions that he is old and (again) mentions that he thinks that RSS is not all-encompassing. This is the same “old” stuff that he has talked about on numerous issues in his e-zine. Nothing [...]
WebMD RSS Feeds
October 11th, 2004WebMD is now providing RSS Feeds for their health news. Neat. They have been into RSS for a while with their Medscape stuff. I’m glad that they finally implemented it on WebMD. Great news.
My Techie Library Thought of the Night
October 10th, 2004Quoted from Smart Mobs:
“With ScanZOOM technology, you can capture barcodes with a mobile phone or webcam and access price comparisons. More info at Scanbuy.”
Here’s my version, with added words and phrases in bold.
“With ScanZOOM technology, you can capture library material barcodes with a mobile phone or webcam and access book summaries, links to the library [...]
Happiness is…
October 10th, 20041) …having a fellow librarian start a weblog because they were motivated by an article that I wrote.
2) …having a librarian come up to me after after a 3 hour workshop in NYC last Tuesday and hear him say, “I went to library school because of you”. Yowza!!
3) …having Chris Pirillo IM me with [...]
Rules For the Library
October 10th, 2004This old post just popped into my aggregator. Hilarious. It is also available in MP3 format.
5 Ways To Use RSS To Boost Your Business Or Organizational Success
October 10th, 2004Many great ideas in an article about RSS. A few that I particularly liked:
“Create An “Announcements And Special Offers” Feed – If your business offers classes, seminars, products, services, specials, sales – essentially anything that changes, updates or rotates throughout a cycle – then creating a dedicated RSS feed could save you (and your clients) [...]
Researching News on Westlaw: See Articles Once, but not a Thousand Times
October 10th, 2004From the press release:
“Tired of seeing double when researching business and news resources? Thomson West, part of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC), today announced a new de-duplication feature on WestlawÃ’ that automatically identifies, tags and sorts duplicate copies of news articles and business records in search results. Westlaw users can chose to remove [...]
LookSmart’s Furl – Firefox Toolbar
October 8th, 2004I just installed the Furl Firefox Toolbar. Very cool. As if “Furling” someone couldn’t get easier. Now I have all of the Furl options right on my browser. Go Firefox Go!! (link via Mike’s Musings)
Online Community Report
October 8th, 2004“The Online Community Report is a free twice-monthly e-mail newsletter covering news and best ideas in online group collaboration. Articles and features address many venues in which users interact with other users online: online communities, web conferencing, distance learning, knowledge management systems, online auctions, and other topics. The Report should be of interest to anyone [...]
Collaboration = Trust
October 8th, 2004Gary, Shirl, and I have been saying to each over via IM and e-mail for the past few months that collaboration works. If you haven’t checked out Resourceshelf lately or our new adventure, Docuticker, you will see that collaboration, indeed, does work. Here’s the key to collaboration, IMO. Find people you trust. [...]
Books, Movies, and Music Reviews by Librarians….via RSS!!
October 8th, 2004The librarians at the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library are providing RSS Feeds for their reviews of music, movies, and books. Even better, their users are provided with direct links to the items on their catalog. Hip Hip Hooray. Now, that’s shifted!! (link via NewsIsFree)
Releventa
October 7th, 2004“Relevanta provides a unique, community-driven approach to information gathering and reputation management. Based on the firm belief in the wisdom of community, Relevanta relies on and rewards members for their involvement.”
For an example of Relevanta in action, see their politics page. Of course, I’m excited about this resource and, of course, I wonder how [...]
LIScareer News Blog
October 7th, 2004I’m clearing out my drafts folder tonight, so some of these next few posts may be old news.
LISCareer has launched a weblog for updates to their site. Congratulations to Priscilla and her staff for taking this logical step forward.
Rojo
October 4th, 2004Say hello to Rojo. I culled this from their blog:
“One of our core beliefs is that our community—our friends, family, and associates—play a major role in helping us discover and understand information. It may be your grandmother sending you a clipping from the local paper, or your friend emailing you a link to a [...]
Amazon Light 4.0
October 3rd, 2004Michael Fagan del.icio.us’d the new Amazon Light 4.0, complete with Library Lookup installed. Just set up which library you want to search, run the search, and click “Library Lookup” on the results page. There are many other neat features, including “Blog This” and Gmail this buttons. Impressive.
There Has Been A Jenny Levine Sighting
October 3rd, 2004Jenny IM’d me tonight. She is having some issues with her blogging software (again), but she did push a few posts to me that I thought I would share. If she can’t get her great stuff out there, then I’ll be happy to do it for her. Here we go.
1) She’s started [...]
Yahoo for Docuticker!!
October 3rd, 2004Docuticker was a Yahoo! Pick of the week. Look at October 2nd. Here’s what they had to say:
“When Sen. Kerry referred to the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, during a recent presidential debate, many viewers were likely expecting elucidation on the topic. Instead, the talk shifted to the familiar issues of Iraq, North Korea, [...]
Aggregator Newbies
October 3rd, 2004Will Richardson blogs:
“Today, Alan writes about RML with RSS as he’s building combined feeds with Blogdigger. The “rip” is to take feeds from a number of different sources, “mix” them into one feed, and “learn” from the results. The easy example for students is to create a number of search feeds for the same terms [...]
WebJunction Article about Techie Library Blogs
October 2nd, 2004Michael points to an article entitled, Tech-Focused Library Blogs. As Michael points out, it is is far from inclusive. Library Stuff gets a mention, which is always nice. It is also the first article to mention my weblog in relation to “virtual community and networking.”. Cool.
