Archive for February, 2005
Zniff
February 28th, 2005Zniff:
“What you see is the very first version of a new breed of search engines. A search engine that uses human information from normal internet users to find and rank web pages. The results you see here are from a collection of roughly 1.5 million bookmarks gathered by the users of the Spurl.net bookmarking [...]
Blogging and RSS Make the Event
February 28th, 2005Neville Hobson writes:
“If I were organizing a conference right now, at the very top of the list of communication channels that I’d be thinking about in my communication planning would be blogs and RSS. Yes, I’d also be thinking of all the traditional ways to communicate - the website, the press releases, the flyers, etc [...]
Blog Person and The Fallout
February 28th, 2005Hello. My name is Steven and I’m a blog person.
Oh, and for those that don’t think that there will be any negative fallout from Gorman’s comments, take a look at what is being said. This is harmful stuff. And according to Gorman, it probably will not be worth reading until it [...]
Bad Press
February 28th, 2005Some press out of Network World Fusion that librarian bloggers can do without:
“If you think about it, it probably makes sense that the head of the American Library Association wouldn’t love bloggers.”
I think that Gorman should think about retracting his statement before this gets out of hand (not that it hasn’t already). Mr. Gorman: [...]
Hard News
February 27th, 2005There was an interesting piece in the Washington Post this week on the future of the newspaper business:
“The venerable newspaper is in trouble. Under sustained assault from cable television, the Internet, all-news radio and lifestyles so cram-packed they leave little time for the daily paper, the industry is struggling to remake itself.”
And then later on…
“Print [...]
NorthernVoice Wiki
February 27th, 2005Did you see the wiki that was set up for Northern Voice? Audio links to the presentations, links to commentary on the presentation, and a complete “meta” section using Technorati, PubSub, Flickr, and Del.icio.us. Wowsa!
Six Tips to Enjoying Computers in Libraries 2005
February 27th, 2005Michael Stephens has written up Six Tips to Enjoying Computers in Libraries 2005. My favorites:
“Six Feet Under: Don’t miss the TechForum 2005! It’s Wednesday night, after a reception when the exhibits open so you get some food, some “festive” beverage of your choice and a couple of hilarious hours with some presenters discussing dead [...]
Yahoo! Directory RSS Feeds
February 27th, 2005Peter Scott points out that Yahoo now provides RSS feeds for some of their directory topics/subtopics. There are only a handful of them, but it’s a start. They will probably have them for all of their categories soon enough. Suweeeeeet.
How to get Published
February 27th, 2005A VERY timely article by Rachel Singer Gordon (no stranger to print and online publication). She makes a poignant statement about weblogs:
“If you do decide to publish a library or information-related blog or web site as a counterpart to other professional writing, keep these simple guidelines in mind: keep it useful, keep it topical, and [...]
Flickr In Your Sidebar
February 26th, 2005I must admit, I’m addicted to the PubSub Sidebar. I have a constant stream of real-time customized feeds right in my browser all day. It’s one of the best ways to stay on top of a subject if you don’t want to use an aggregator.
When I saw Flickrfox, I was of course, excited, [...]
Radio-Canada RSS
February 26th, 2005It looks like Radio-Canada is putting out some content via RSS (34 Feeds!). The page is in French, so I turned to babelfish for a translation:
“The wire of new RSS (RDF Summary Site) of Radio-Canada enable you to take note of the news at the time which is appropriate to you best. By using [...]
Name That Blog
February 26th, 2005In what was probably is one of the neatest reactions to the Gorman attack on bloggers Walt Crawford writes:
“Consider that most of what I make available for public consumption–publish, if you will, not including this blog lite–bypasses editorial control and traditional publishing, putting me pretty squarely in that ignorant semi-literate group of folks with nothing [...]
The Top 40
February 26th, 2005The Gorman piece is currently number 11 on the Daypop Top 40. It is being mentioned all over the place.
To clarify a point. I have no issues with those who don’t understand blogs. That’s what education is for. Gorman has a right to his views on bloggers. What ticked [...]
Dave Taylor on Weblogs and ADD
February 25th, 2005I came across Dave’s blog through one of my customized RSS Feeds. His perspective on short versus long postings made for interesting reading:
“[H]ow can I keep myself swimming in the river of deep thought when all around me swirl the droplets of tactical, reactive water? I’m not averse to writing shorter entries and sharing [...]
Flickr RSS Reader
February 25th, 2005Oooh. Neat. An RSS Reader just for Flickr:
“Flickr RSS Reader is an application built in Macromedia Flash MX 2004 Professional. This application reads RSS Feeds from www.flickr.com. It can run on your computers’ hard drive or on your website.”
I was chatting about Flickr with Jessamyn the other day and how it can be used to [...]
Revenge of the Blog People?
February 24th, 2005Conversation breeds education. Conversation breeds education. Everybody now. Conversation breeds education.
I had to take a long, deep breath, walk around my dining room table (where I am sitting this evening), and think of taking a shot of Tequilla after reading Revenge of the Blog People!, by Michael Gorman, the ALA president-elect. [...]
AP Feeds…Direct From the Source
February 23rd, 2005Susan Mernit reports that AP has started distributing RSS Feeds. Great news. No reason to go through Yahoo or any other carrier now. Although, I will still use them to create customized feeds until AP decides to do this themselves. Still, great news.
My favorite? The featured feed (right now, it’s Nascar).
RSS Feeds From the House of Blues
February 23rd, 2005Do you offer an RSS Feed for upcoming events in your library? I would love to get that from my library (I’m working on ‘em). Maybe we should look to the House of Blues for inspiration. They have started to provide a feeds for their upcoming events just added to the calendar [...]
Networking groups make employees, customers happy
February 23rd, 2005An interesting article from HeraldToday.com:
“Many groups started ‘when the diversity movement was kind of a hot topic in the mid- to late-’90s,’ said Todd Campbell, diversity manager for the Society for Human Resource Management, a trade group in Alexandria, Va.
Such groups often evolve from informal employee social networks, Campbell said. They become formalized as companies [...]
Make Your Own Search Bookmarklet
February 23rd, 2005For those who aren’t familiar, a bookmarklet is a hot button, written in javascript (usually), which can placed in your browser’s links bar to perfrom all sorts of tricks. I live off of using bookmarklets and don’t write about them as much as I should. They make my Web life so much easier [...]
iPod Shuffles @ Your Library
February 23rd, 2005Booker from The Centered Librarian notes that the South Huntington Public Library (here on Long Island) has started to circulate iPod Shuffles to audio books preloaded in them.
They must have just started the project. When I go to their What’s New page (actually, I had to search for it), there is a [...]
Wikiphilia - The New Illness
February 22nd, 2005I was taught (by whom I can’t remember) that in order to have confidence in your own views, you must understand the opposing viewpoints. I still believe that today, as there ae times when I am too quick to jump on an idea without thinking about the other side. It’s the nature of [...]
Powells RSS Feeds
February 22nd, 2005Peter Scott (and please notice that I’m linking to him here) mentioned the other day that Powell’s has RSS Feeds: 7 to be exact. Thanks Peter.
Absolutely Deeel.cio.us
February 22nd, 2005How much do you love playing around with del.icio.us? Here’s a resource for you to look though which contains a long list of del.icio.us tools.
One that is on this list that should be starred is the Spid.ero.us sidebar, which put all of the latest, popular, or recommended tags from del.icio.us, Furl, Spurl running alongside of [...]
Dan Chudnov Wins LITA Award
February 22nd, 2005‘rarin points to an ALA Press Release touting the winner of the LITA/Brett Butler Entrepreneurship Award. It’s our good pal Dan Chudnov:
“Chudnov led in the creation of two online communities (oss4lib and usrlib) and in the organization of successful hackfests at Access2003 and Access2004. He has been described by a colleague as “a continual [...]
The Government Says
February 21st, 2005The Government Says is a simple aggregation page of many (if not all) government offices in the UK. The feeds are scraped (meaning, the feed is created by a third party), but that doesn’t take away from the possibilities that this resource provides.
Getting government information shouldn’t be hard. In fact, it [...]
Two Veteran Librarians Are Now Bloggers
February 21st, 2005I’m absolutely thrilled that two well respected librarians have joined the library blogging circle:
1) Theoretical Librarian, by Gerry McKiernan:
“Theoretical Librarian, in general, will include announcements of past, present, and future personal publications and presentations as well as postings on current and emerging technologies and their actual and potential application for enhanced information and library services.”
Check [...]
My Weblog and the People Who Read It.
February 21st, 2005Over the past few years, I have had more and more traffic to LS and I feel so excited when I see another comment come into my aggregator. Lately, the frequency of those comments have grown aplenty and have shocked me at times, in a good way. A few examples:
1) Last year at [...]
The University of Warwick Gets It
February 21st, 2005Amanda Etches-Johnson mentions a campus-wide blogging effort at The University of Warwick. Probably the nicest looking and content driven university weblog projects that I have seen in a while (although nothing beats UThink). The site is full of useful information, from an FAQ, to blogging ideas. Also, while checking out the [...]
BlogMarks.net
February 21st, 2005BlogMarks.net is yet another open tagging resource that jumped online about a week ago. What makes this different than the others is that screenshots are available for each bookmark. Nothing too impressive, but an interesting use of the open tagging schema. Do screenshots make sense/work within these types of resources?