Menu

Subscribe

internet

Internet Librarian 2007 Presentation: Building Web 2.0 Native Library Services

The conference program says I’m speaking about designing an OPAC for Web 2.0, and I guess I am, but the approach this time is what have we learned so far? And though it’s the sort of thing only a fool would do, I’m also planning to demonstrate how to install Scriblio, a web 2.0 platform […] » about 100 words

Who Owns The Network?

Note: this cross-posted item is my contribution to our Banned Books Week recognition. We’ve been pitting books against each other, hoping to illustrate that there are always (at least) two sides to every story. Most of the other books were more social or political, but I liked this pair. Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony […] » about 300 words

Don’t Mistake Me (Please)

Over at KLE’s Web 2.0 Challenge I was surprised to learn:

Both Bisson and Stephens are so excited about this concept of Web 2.0 they have not taken a good look at what they can’t do for our libraries. …with all this new technology we can not forget that what is the most important in our libraries is the personal touch. We are one of the few institutions left that still offers individual attention.

KLE is doing some cool things, so I can tell this isn’t an offhanded rejection of Web 2.0 concepts, but the criticism makes me feel as though I’ve been missing my target somehow.

We wouldn’t accept poor service at the desk or over the phone, why should we treat our patrons so poorly online? I don’t think we’ve yet figured out what “good service online” is yet, but that’s what I’ve been focused on. Make no mistake, the future of libraries demands outstanding service everywhere we serve our users.

[tags]web 2.0, library 2.0, lib20, service, quality, libraries, criticism, online, good service, good service online[/tags]

NYT: The Link Is The Currency Of The Web

The New York Times has struggled with TimesSelect, now they’re killing it. But the news here isn’t that a media giant is giving up on a much hyped online venture. The news is that a media giant is endorsing what we now call web 2.0:

Since we launched TimesSelect in 2005, the online landscape has altered significantly. Readers increasingly find news through search, as well as through social networks, blogs and other online sources. In light of this shift, we believe offering unfettered access to New York Times reporting and analysis best serves the interest of our readers, our brand and the long-term vitality of our journalism. We encourage everyone to read our news and opinion — as well as share it, link to it and comment on it. [Emphasis added.]

If only they’re realized it back when they started it.

OneWebDay

Have You Thanked the Internet Lately? OneWebDay, our opportunity to celebrate “one web, one world, one wish” is just about a week away (though it falls on Yom Kippur). This video explains a bit and Tim Berners-Lee is planning his own video (worth mentioning: his net neutrality post).

If things work out, I’ll be posting a video too, even though I’ll likely be offline most of that day (not observing Yom Kippur, at a friend’s wedding).

Designing the Obvious

Robert Hoekman, Jr is speaking now on Designing the Obvious, his book and philosophy: These principles include building only what’s necessary, getting users up to speed quickly, preventing and handling errors, and designing for the activity. I just added the book to my must read list, but what I’m hearing here sounds like instructions to […] » about 100 words

Whose Technology Is It Anyway?

I wasn’t planning on posting much about Keen’s Cult of the Amateur, but I did. And now I find myself posting about it again. Thing is, I’m a sucker for historical analogy, and Clay Shirky yesterday posted a good one that compared the disruptive effects of mechanized cloth production to today’s internet. Yes, that’s actually […] » about 400 words

Keen Says I’m Killing Culture, Byte By Byte

Andrew Keen‘s The Cult of the Amateur; How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture is getting a lot of attention from usually quiet corners of the web, and I’ve had to quell the urge to write a story under the headline “Andrew Keen Tells YouTubers to Eat Spinach.” Keen’s argument rests on the belief that […] » about 300 words

The Rules, 2007

ContentsOpen SourceBuilt for RemixingWell Behaved and SocialWeb 2.0 has matured to the point where even those who endorse the moniker are beginning to cringe at its use. Still, it gave me pause the other day when Cliff (a sysop) began a sentence with “Web 2.0 standards require….” Web 2.0 is now coherent enough to have […] » about 700 words

Speedy PHP: Intermediate Code Caching

I’ve been working on MySQL optimization for a while, and though there’s still more to done on that front, I’ve gotten to the point where the the cumulative query times make up less than half of the page generation time. So I’m optimizing code when the solution is obvious (and I hope to rope Zach […] » about 500 words

PHP Libraries for Collaborative Filtering and Recommendations

Daniel Lemire and Sean McGrath note that “User personalization and profiling is key to many succesful Web sites. Consider that there is considerable free content on the Web, but comparatively few tools to help us organize or mine such content for specific purposes.” And they’ve written a paper and released prototype code on collaborative filtering.

Vogoo claims to be a “a powerful collaborative filtering engine that allows Webmasters to easily add personalization features to their Web Sites.”

“Smart Networks” Are A Stupid-Bad Idea

This story in MIT Technology Review scares me. Instead of letting all computers within the network communicate freely, Ethane is designed so that communication privileges within the network have to be explicitly set; that way, only those activities deemed safe are permitted. “With hindsight, it’s a very obvious thing to do,” McKeown says. No matter […] » about 600 words

A Visual Explanation of Web 2.0

Kansas State University‘s Digital Ethnography group — “a working group of Kansas State University students and faculty dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography” — posted this visual explanation of Web 2.0. It’s by Michael Wesh, assistant professor of cultural anthropology, and it rocks.

Text is unilinear…when written on paper.

Digital text is different.

Hypertext can link.

With form seperated from content, users did not need to know complicated code to upload content to the web.

Who will organize all of this data? We will. You will.

Digital text is not longer just linking information…Web 2.0 is linking people…people sharing, trading, and collaborating.

We’ll need to rethink a few things…

Thanks to the Google Operating System blog for bringing this to my attention.

Communities Are As Communities Do

Right there are the beginning of Esther Dyson‘s ten-year-old book, Release 2.1, she alerts us to the Web 2.0 challenge we’re we’re now beginning to understand: The challenge for us all is to build a critical mass of healthy communities on the Net and to design good basic rules for its public spaces so that […] » about 300 words

Competition, Market Position, and Statistics

Watch this video a few times. It’s funny. It’s catchy. It’s kitsch. Now watch it a few times more. The ad, for a Lada VAZ 2109, appeared sometime in the 90s. It reflects the influence of MTV and other cultural imports from the West, but the details betray it’s command economy provenance. The snow appears […] » about 400 words

Welcome To Your World

In pointing this out to me, Lichen noted “if this isn’t evidence that Web2.0 is an undeniable force, I don’t know what is.” “This,” of course, is Time Magazine‘s announcement of the 2006 Person of the Year. And the answer is you. Yes, you. Michael Stephens was right on top of it, pulling this quote: […] » about 300 words

Presentation: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0

MAIUG 2006 Philadelphia: Designing an OPAC for Web 2.0 (interactive QuickTime with links or static PDF) Web 2.0 and other “2.0” monikers have become loaded terms. But as we look back at the world wide web of 1996, there can be little doubt that today’s web is better and more useful. Indeed, that seems to […] » about 400 words

“This Would Make A Really Great Blog Post…”

A <a href="http://xkcd.com/c77.html">comic from XKCD</a>: <blockquote>“I feel like I'm wasting my life on the internet. Let's walk around the world.” “Sounds good.” [panels showing the world's great beauty, a truly grand adventure] “And yet all I can think of is 'this will make for a great Livejournal entry.'”</blockquote> » about 100 words

Rocking Wirelessly: Verizon’s V640 EVDO Card

After <a href="http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11012/">vacillating for a while</a> (and <a href="http://maisonbisson.com/blog/post/11418/">waiting for it to become available</a>), I finally purchased one of the <a href="http://www.verizonwireless.com:80/b2c/store/controller?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedPhoneId=2407">Verizon</a> / <a href="http://www.macsimumnews.com/index.php/archive/novatel_v640_expresscard_34_solution_works_with_macbook_pros/">Novatel V640</a> <a href="http://www.expresscard.org/web/site/qa.jsp#01">Express Card</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EVDO">EVDO</a> adapters that <a href="http://raibledesigns.com/page/rd?entry=evdo_express_cards_for_macbook">everybody's talking about</a> for my <img border=0 width=1 height=1 src="http://ad.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/show?id=XfFSogqWv7s&bids=77305&type=2&subid=0" /><a href="http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=XfFSogqWv7s&offerid=77305.118&type=2&subid=0">MacBook Pro</a>. » about 300 words

Treo 650 As Dial Up Network Adapter

Sometime ago I started work on figuring out how to get dial up networking (DUN) access via my Treo 650. Now I’m getting serious about mobile internet access and looking at this again. The plan is that you should be able to make a Bluetooth connection between your laptop and the phone and then get […] » about 500 words

Verizon EVDO Service And The Mobile Office?

The much anticipated Novatel V640 Express Card EVDO adapter is out. Verizon is pimping them for $180 with 2 year contract and GearLog says it’s “almost too easy” to use these goodies with the MacBook Pros. Then GearLog reader Brad commented: “If you had to install a driver, I wouldn’t say it was the true […] » about 300 words

…It’s How You Use It

Not A Pretty Librarian has kicked things off well with a first post titled “It Is Not A Tool,” covering an argument about which has more value to a teenager: a car or a computer.

On one side is the notion that “She can’t drive herself to work with a computer.” While, on the other side is the growing likelihood that she won’t drive to work at all, but instead simply work at whatever computer she has available. But then, this is a teenager, and maybe practical matters like work don’t top the list. And that’s where Not A Pretty Librarian (who are you?) asks:

Can you imagine being nineteen right now without computer access?

Indeed, when college students are spending so much time on AIM and logging into Facebook daily, is a car really as important as a computer in a teenager’s social life? When 89 percent of students start their research in a search engine, isn’t the computer more important than a car to get to the library?

Technology Scouts At AALL

I’m honored to join Katie Bauer, of Yale University Library, in a program coordinated by Mary Jane Kelsey, of Yale Law’s Lillian Goldman Library. The full title of our program is Technology Scouts: how to keep your library and ILS current in the IT world (H-4, 4PM Tuesday, room 274). My portion of the presentation […] » about 300 words

I Want URL Addressable Spreadsheet Cells (and cell-ranges)

When I heard news that Google was to release a spreadsheet companion to their freshly bought Writely web-based word processing app, I got excited about all the things they could do to make it more than just a copy of Numsum. Let’s face it, Google’s the Gorilla in the room here and they’re gonna squash […] » about 300 words