Library Stuff

Tim Berners-Lee apologies.

I think we forgive him.

Duh

BBC – “The “affirmation of commitments” will reportedly give Icann autonomy to run its own affairs for the first time.”

Update from the BBC US relaxes grip on the internet

CNET – “The Internet offers everything from searching to shopping to social networking, but Net users still spend most of their time on plain old content sites, according to a survey from the Online Publishers Association. In the latest installment from its monthly Internet Activity Index, the OPA reported that Internet users are now spending 42 percent of their time online using content sites, more than any other category. That figure represents a 24 percent jump from 2003 when Net users spent 34 percent of their time on content sites.”

NYTimes – “News Web sites in China, complying with secret government orders, are requiring that new users log on under their true identities to post comments, a shift in policy that the country’s Internet users and media have fiercely opposed in the past.”

Guardian – “If you have to take a quick break from reading this article to check your Blackberry, send a text or reboot your Xbox 360 before you reach the end of this paragraph, then the good news is that help is at hand. reSTART has been opened outside Seattle, the rain-soaked north-western town where high-tech companies are as common as cattle are in Texas. It claims to be America’s first residential detox centre for internet addicts.”

USATODAY – “Applications for the first of three rounds of funding are due Friday, August 14. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), overseeing the broadband stimulus project with the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), today announced a limited, one-week extension for some applicants.”

NYTimes – “It has been 15 years since Marc Andreessen first developed the Netscape Internet browser that introduced millions of people to the Internet.”

Zogby International – “As broadcast television network newscasts continue to lose viewers by the month, a new online survey by Zogby Interactive shows that the Internet is by far the preferred source for information, and that it is considered the most reliable source as well.”

Gant Daily – “Michael Furlough, assistant dean for Scholarly Communications at the Libraries, sees today's students collaborating more than their predecessors. Able to do solitary research from anywhere, students increasingly take advantage of the social aspects of the library, such as open study spaces and group meeting rooms. Recent studies suggest that digital media, far from turning students and researchers into lonely, disconnected readers, have actually promoted more networked modes of learning. (Digital humanities scholars, for example, seem to do much more collaborating than their “traditional” counterparts.) Digital media have helped transform libraries into communal spaces for students to research, discuss, and study together—which, notes Furlough, has made them much louder places than you may remember.”